Never Enough Page 5

  While Smith’s ideas about lovemaking and romance hadn’t developed in quite the way he’d hoped, music was becoming an increasingly useful outlet for him, especially now that he was making the difficult transition from the more relaxed Notre Dame Middle School to the “fascist” St Wilfrid’s Comprehensive.

  As The Obelisk morphed into a band called Malice, it seemed as though Robert Smith – the teenager who was hell-bent on doing everything he could in order to do nothing at all – might just have found his calling.

  * Gnasher was actually a dog!

  † Smith has remained a serious QPR fan throughout his life and was a well-regarded school footballer.

  * Years later, Smith would help Bowie, the master of reinvention, celebrate his 50th birthday in front of a full house at New York’s Madison Square Garden, fulfilling his teenage dream of singing alongside the Thin White Duke.

  * It didn’t last: Notre Dame’s original site is now a housing development.

  * Even when he could afford better gear, Smith had the pick-ups from his Top 20 axe fitted to his brand new Fender Jazzmaster, “to the amazement of everybody”, according to Tolhurst.

  Chapter Two

  “We don’t like your songs. Not even people in prison would like this.”

  – Hansa exec to The Easy Cure, 1977

  IN many ways punk rock was the revolution that never quite happened. Even in June 1977, when a snarling, spitting Johnny Rotten helped the barnstorming Sex Pistols gatecrash the UK Top 10 with their anti-anthem ‘God Save The Queen’, the green-toothed former John Lydon was still sharing chart space with such relentlessly mainstream acts as Rod Stewart (moaning ‘I Don’t Want To Talk About It’), Barbra Streisand (crooning ‘Evergreen’ from her 10-tissue weepie A Star Is Bom) and The Jacksons. Even the unbearably cute Muppets were in the same Top 10 as The Sex Pistols. And during the heyday of punk, it wasn’t as though the airwaves and charts were completely laid waste as the purveyors of all things punk had planned: in the wake of the Pistols, regular chart-toppers still included such lightweight easy-listeners as Brotherhood Of Man, Showaddywaddy, Hot Chocolate and Olivia Newton-John. But as a young and impressionable Robert Smith was soon to understand, the concept of punk was flawless – you didn’t have to be a note-perfect singer or a master craftsman to play, as so many prog rock posers of the time would have you believe. A fuck-you attitude, a certain indefinable sense of alienation, a fine line in bondage trousers and some strategically placed safety pins were all you needed to form a punk band. And thousands of disenfranchised youngsters (mixed with the usual bandwagon-jumpers, of course) heeded the call to arms.

  Robert Smith remembers punk from a slightly different perspective to most people. He was no Joe Strummer, out to kick the establishment in the arse. For Smith, punk wasn’t so much a social movement as a chance for him and his mates “to go out and get drunk and jump about”. To Smith, 1977 was the peak of punk. “It was just good fun. The summer of 1977 was like this pinnacle. Everyone says, ‘Oh, 1975.’ It wasn’t at all. In 1977, The Sex Pistols were number one. And in the charts there was like The Stranglers, The Buzzcocks. It was brilliant. You thought, ‘Ah, things are changing.’”

  Lol Tolhurst had a similar punk-inspired awakening. “It was the end of the Seventies; to a lot of people who started at that time, the idea of being in a band and making records was kind of like a pipe dream,” he said. “To us, we thought you had to be really, really good to do that and it seemed out of our reach. But then all the punk stuff started happening and we realised, ‘Hey, we can do this.’ We’d flick through the Melody Maker and go and see The Stranglers and realise we’re not tremendously different to that. Up until that point, it all seemed too mysterious to us, too complex.”

  As with many of the best revolutions, there were a couple of possible locations for the epicentre of punk. Radicals on the English side of the Atlantic would swear on a stack of Sniffin’ Glue mags that punk came to be in Sex, the Chelsea boutique owned and operated by Vivienne Westwood and her partner, Malcolm McLaren, the same man who’d been savvy enough to manage The New York Dolls, briefly, in 1975, before turning his attention to The Sex Pistols. Americans, however, insist that the revolution officially began in 1974 when New Yorker Hilly Kristal threw open the doors of CBGBs (as in “country bluegrass blues”, the type of music he’d actually intended to put on display in his club). The shoebox-sized sweatbox, located in bum’s paradise The Bowery, would soon welcome such acts as The Ramones and Johnny Thunder & The Heartbreakers through its doors, as the punk outbreak spread on both sides of the Atlantic.

  While cultural historians still debate its origins some three decades later, what is known to be fact is this: by the second half of the Seventies, some truly pioneering acts – The Ramones, The Sex Pistols, The Clash, Blondie, The Damned, Australian outcasts The Saints – had at the very least embraced the do-it-yourself attitude of punk, if not the back-to-basics, three-chords-one-too-many aggression that typified punk rock’s sound. In LA, such clubs as The Fleetwood and The Masque dared to put The Weirdos and Black Flag on their bills, while at the same time Rodney Bingenheimer, the self-styled Mayor of Sunset Strip, flogged the music of The Ramones, the Pistols and The Clash on his Rodney On The ROQ radio show. Meanwhile, in the UK, these very same reprobates were glaring from the pages of New Musical Express, Melody Maker and elsewhere. Slash celebrated the scene in the USA. The mainstream media, naturally, feared punk like the plague, especially when The Sex Pistols made their infamous appearance on Thames TV’s Today show in December 1976, Steve Jones daring to drop the word “fucker” on live television. After a reporter witnessed the male-bonding ritual that was slam dancing, the LA Times ran a paranoid banner headline that screamed: THE SLAM. Punk’s lure to the youth of many nations was irresistible.

  Suburban Crawley was several light years away from the dingy clubs of London, New York and Los Angeles – where the whiff of danger was as strong in the air as the pungent aroma of hairspray – but punk’s DIY spirit wasn’t lost on the young men of The Obelisk (or Malice, as they were soon to be known). In fact, at least to Lol Tolhurst, being based in Crawley had its advantages. “On reflection, I think it was a pretty good atmosphere for what we ended up doing,” he said. “On one hand we were close enough to the capital to know what was going on, but we were far enough removed from it to not feel part of any scene. All those little towns, like Horley and Crawley, spawned a lot of unusual characters. That shaped our attitude to most things. We weren’t city boys and savvy with all that, but we had our own quirky atmosphere that we grew up in.”

  And while punk would provide Smith, Tolhurst, Dempsey and the rest of their floating line-up with an attitude, if not a specific sound, the wave of post-punk bands soon to emerge would directly influence their music (once Malice had outgrown their limited repertoire of Hendrix, Alex Harvey and Thin Lizzy covers).

  It didn’t take a doctorate in logical thinking to figure that post-punk was the next evolutionary step from punk rock. Many of the basic beliefs stayed in place: the underground spirit ruled, the notion of “stardom” was anathema, long-winded solos were a no-go zone punishable by public humiliation, while the more austere the countenance, the better. Malice weren’t exactly the most skilled band on the planet, so these essential, self-imposed limitations suited them perfectly.

  Such acts as The Gang Of Four, Talking Heads and Wire, who all took an art-school approach to punk, led the charge of post-punk acts. In Manchester, a writhing, twitching vocalist by the name of Ian Curtis was fronting Warsaw, who would soon become Joy Division. The group’s beginning was flawless: they’d formed immediately after members Peter Hook and Bernard Sumner had witnessed a crash-and-burn Sex Pistols gig in Manchester on June 4, 1976. Curtis then responded to a “seeking singer” ad in the local Virgin record store. All of these bands would have a direct impact on the early music and outlook of Robert Smith and co, especially Joy Division – or more specifically, their second coming as New Order – who�
�d go as far as to accuse The Cure of plagiarism. Their claim wasn’t without some basis in fact, either, but that was some way off in the future.

  It wasn’t just Sumner and Hook who would respond so powerfully to The Sex Pistols in that northern summer of 1976. Robert Smith was at a party during his last year at school when he first heard ‘Anarchy In The UK’. “I remember thinking – ‘This is it!’ You either loved it or hated it; it polarised an entire nation for that summer. You had to make a choice: you were either going to be left behind or you were going to embrace the new movement.”

  A northern act that would have an equally tangible impact on the early songs and sounds of Robert Smith were Mancunians The Buzzcocks, who formed in 1975. The four-piece, who in their original formation comprised Howard Devoto (the former Howard Trafford), Pete Shelley (aka Peter McNeish), John Maher and Steve Diggle, aligned themselves more with the burgeoning New Wave scene at the time, although their buzzsaw guitar arsenal was the envy of most punk and post-punk hopefuls. But The Buzzcocks were fully aware of the past: such early, nervy outpourings as ‘Orgasm Addict’ and ‘What Do I Get?’ (and further down the line, ‘Have You Ever Fallen In Love’) managed to combine the restless urgency and futility of punk with the bittersweet melodicism of The Beatles and The Kinks. That was no small achievement – and it wasn’t lost on Crawley dreamers Robert Smith and Lol Tolhurst.

  In a 1999 discussion of The Cure’s roots, Smith would namecheck various punk and post-punk outfits, including The Buzzcocks. “In the very early days, when we were just a three-piece, I wanted to be like Wire or [Siouxsie &] The Banshees,” said Smith. “These were the people I emulated on a very immediate level. They were the generation immediately preceding me, literally by a year. They had a certain kind of power to them that transcended punk. I wanted The Cure to be that, but we never were. We actually sounded like The Buzzcocks in the early days, but I think that’s because my songwriting was still in its very early stages. I think it was influenced by early Beatles [as brought into Smith’s world by his sister Margaret] – the sense of a three-minute guitar-pop song.”

  The almost-anything-goes aspect of punk and post-punk wasn’t wasted on Smith, who’d quickly tired of his formal guitar lessons with “the gayest bloke I ever met”. Learning by experience seemed much more natural to the free-thinking teenager. “What inspired me [about punk],” Smith said, echoing his bandmate Tolhurst, “was the notion that you could do it yourself. It was loud and fast and noisy and I was at the right age for that.” Even in his early teens, Smith was smart enough to use and abuse the aspects of punk that suited him – and it had nothing to do with fashion accessories. “Because of not living in London or other big punk centres, it wasn’t a stylistic thing for me. If you walked around Crawley with safety pins [or a black velvet dress, as Smith had already learned] you’d get beaten up. The risk involved didn’t seem to make sense,” he continued, “so luckily there aren’t any photos of me in bondage trousers. I thought punk was more a mental state.”

  Embracing a punk state of mind, however, was not at the forefront of Robert Smith’s world in the early months of 1976. He had more immediate concerns to deal with, such as his contempt for the regime at St Wilfrid’s. The teacher/pupil relationship had deteriorated to the point where Smith was briefly suspended from school, although his father’s active role on the school board ensured that it was a very short suspension. “They said I was disruptive, but it was a personal thing – I hated the headmaster,” Smith said.

  By this time, Smith had already developed the type of lively ego that would come in handy when he became an accidental pop star. “When I was in school,” Smith said simply, “I thought I was better than the teachers.” The truth, however, was that Smith’s time at St Wilfrid’s wasn’t as tough as he would go on to tell the world. According to at least one of his St Wilfrid’s teachers, Smith was popular, even with the teachers. (“Especially with the younger ones,” I was told. “[He] was creatively anti-authoritarian, without being insolent – he was too well brought up.”) According to Michael Georgeson, Smith and Tolhurst’s Drama teacher from St Wilfrid’s – he was also their Form Tutor and remains a close friend of Alex and Rita Smith – Smith’s solid upbringing ensured that he never stepped too far out of line. “Robert was brought up in a caring and supportive family,” Georgeson said, “and never displayed any undue unease in or out of the classroom at St Wilfrid’s. He was cheerfully co-operative, but very much his own man.” Tolhurst, however, didn’t leave quite the same impression on Georgeson. “Laurence Tolhurst was a pleasant enough boy,” he said, “but lazy and with minimal talent. But he was a very good friend of Robert, who showed long-standing, patient loyalty towards Laurence.” Georgeson knew little of Dempsey, apart from the fact that, like Smith, he was also popular.

  None of this support did anything to diminish their enthusiasm towards the musical possibilities of Malice, the band formerly known as The Obelisk. Who knew what was in the future: maybe music presented the perfect opportunity for Smith and Tolhurst to steer clear of the workaday grind that they could see was a hell best avoided. “When it [The Cure] first started,” Smith said, “I didn’t have any objectives or ulterior motives other than not to have to work.”

  If middle-class, suburban Crawley was the unlikeliest spot for the birth of an influential and hugely successful band such as The Cure, they chose an even less likely venue to master the art of rock’n’roll. On January 23, 1976, Malice – whose floating line-up now included Smith, Tolhurst, Marc Ceccagno, Dempsey and another school friend called Graham – got together at St Edward’s Church, Crawley, for their first “real” band rehearsal. Smith recalled the jam session in Ten Imaginary Years.

  “I think it all came about because Marc Ceccagno wanted to be a guitar hero. Michael had a bass, I had got hold of a guitar and our first drummer, Graham, had a drum kit. His brother had an amp and a mic so he sang.” The band then rehearsed every Thursday night, but soon began to experience a recurring problem that would plague their early progress: no one could actually sing. Smith, again: “One night we decided [the vocalist] couldn’t stay, he just couldn’t sing – and the same night, around the end of April [1977], Lol arrived and convinced us he could be the drummer. The problem was, he didn’t have a drum kit, but we took him on anyway.”

  Dempsey, speaking in Ten Imaginary Years, remembers having “to teach Lol the drums. We had no aims. It was just something to do, something to talk about.” Tolhurst repeated this when we spoke in 2005. “One of the main reasons we started the band was because we wanted something to do.”

  By October, Malice had not only fleshed out their repertoire with covers of Bowie, Hendrix and Alex Harvey songs – Smith clearly exercising his influence over the rest of the group – but had now begun practising three nights a week. Ceccagno, who was more taken by jazz, had dropped out, which meant that Malice were on the lookout for another guitarist. Enter Paul (Porl) Stephen Thompson, a man who would drift in and out of Cureworld for the next 30 years.

  Thompson, the eldest of four children, was born in Wimbledon, in south-west London, on November 8, 1957. In 1962, the Thompsons briefly shifted base to Melbourne, Australia, before relocating to Crawley in 1964. Along with his sister Carol and brothers Andrew and Robert, Paul attended Southgate Crawley Infants and Junior Schools and then finished his education at Thomas Bennett Crawley Comprehensive School, leaving in 1974. When he met up with Malice, he was working as a waiter at nearby Gatwick Airport. He would usually turn up for rehearsals in his waiter’s uniform, which was in sharp contrast to his free-flowing, almost Marc Bolan-like mane of wild curly hair. If every sleepy suburb was permitted only one rock star look-alike, Crawley’s was definitely Porl Thompson.

  The connection had come via Tolhurst, who was dating Thompson’s sister Carol. (One for keeping it in the band, Thompson would much later marry Smith’s younger sister Janet.) Thompson – who already had a certain notoriety around Crawley as a guitarslinger of note – had al
so previously met Smith when he was working at the counter of a local record store. The pair bonded over esoteric music. “He came in to buy Songs Of The Humpback Whale,” said Thompson, “and we found we liked the same stuff.”

  Tolhurst was soon spending more time with Porl than his sister Carol. “Eventually I got more interested in talking with Porl about music, much to the chagrin of his sister who dumped me because of that. Then I said to Porl, ‘Well, we’ve got a band going, why don’t you come along?’ Because he was the local guitar hero, we scored a coup with that.”

  “He had a real reputation when we were back in Crawley growing up,” Smith confirmed. “He was the guitarist in Crawley.” According to Tolhurst, “Porl was very artistic but he was in with a group of thugs [at Thomas Bennett school].”

  When Thompson first became involved with the band that would become The Cure, Smith was savvy enough to realise that Thompson’s status as a home-town legend might actually entice a few punters to see the band. “He was in the first incarnation of The Cure,” Smith said in 1989, “because he was the attraction. We used to go play in pubs when we were 16; people would come see us purely because Porl was playing the guitar. They didn’t even know the name of the group, it was just Porl playing guitar. So it was quite funny.” Not laugh out loud funny, mind you, for someone with songwriting ambitions such as Robert Smith.