The 1978 song Robert Smith was so insistent in re-releasing it almost killed The Cure
While gothic rock isn’t exactly everyone’s cup of tea, seemingly appealing to a very specific target audience, The Cure have somehow managed to establish themselves as the sort of band who are capable of transcending the firm boundaries of genre appreciation.
A large amount of this is down to the strength of their singles catalogue, which even from the earliest days of the band showcased an immense amount of variety and willingness to write as many commercial-sounding pop hits as they did moody masterpieces. It’s very unusual for a band to be able to demonstrate such versatility as shown in tracks as disparate as ‘A Forest’ and ‘Boys Don’t Cry’ while still in their infancy, but The Cure managed to pull it off with aplomb.
As is the case with most acts who have garnered plenty of attention for an impeccable singles catalogue, they chose to celebrate their varied discography in 1986 by releasing a greatest hits CD, celebrating ten years of their existence as a group.
However, the release of Standing On A Beach, which compiled some of their early album singles and other assorted hits of theirs that had been released as standalone singles, landed the band in more hot water than they possibly could have anticipated because of how its opening track, ‘Killing An Arab’, was misinterpreted by the American audience who hadn’t previously heard this 1978 single.
While the title suggests some form of racially-charged theme being present, in actual fact, the lyrics take an anti-racist and anti-violent stance, with it having taken inspiration from the plot of Albert Camus’ 1942 novel, L’Etranger (The Stranger), where the protagonist shoots a man of Arab origin on the beach.
However, while frontman Robert Smith insisted that the title was not a reflection of him or the band holding any sort of malicious feelings towards another ethnic group, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee filed a complaint to their label, Elektra, who were forced into issuing the record with a sticker on the cover to explain the context of the song, while also requesting that the song was removed from all radio stations.
Of course, the bizarre part of all of this was the fact that the song had already been released eight years prior, with some, but significantly less, pushback from the public. Speaking in 2015 about the debacle, Smith said, “It was a compromise, really, but one that was forced on us. There were other ways out of it, but they all would have been more painful for us. We could have insisted that everything stay as it was, but I had to make a gesture that people would understand.”
He continued, stating that he didn’t want to make the wrong move either way, in the hope that it wouldn’t damage their career. “I just despaired, really,” he continued. “I had to step in and explain, and I got very annoyed at Elektra’s initial suggestion that they delete the song but keep selling the album, which we refused to do. I said that they could delete the album if they wanted to, but they couldn’t take the song off.”
Of course, while Smith and The Cure won their battle to keep the song on the compilation, much like Elvis Costello’s ‘Oliver’s Army’ and its controversy-courting line has seen in the years since its release, a song with a progressive meaning behind it had been wildly misconstrued by its audience, something which the writer was later able to recognise and accept their misjudgement of. Smith regrets giving the song its title, but at least he’s able to atone for this mistake.
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