A Timeless Starter: The early Cure song that Robert Smith thinks still stands up
A fumbling goth hit machine seems like a dichotomy as profound as an igloo in the desert. Fumbling goths are not meant to have hits, that’s the province of polished Motown and confident pop stars. And yet, like the world’s strongest baby, The Cure defied all expectations and crept out from a darkened corner where they were gazing at their shoes and captivated a fair chunk of the mainstream as they influenced the wave of alternative acts to come.
“The eastern sky grows….cold / Winter in water colours / Shades of grey,” they sang on their debut, Three Imaginary Boys in 1979, and lord knows such flowery prose was not in keeping with the times. Punk went up like a bomb, and although its force was certainly still felt in ’79, there was already a sense that the explosion had been and gone. While a snarling vocal style lingers on their debut record, the mascara-clad melodies and deeply introspective lyrics already singled The Cure out as something different.
However, being different takes time to perfect. While it is certainly celebrated, there is also a discreet sense that the band were still finding their muse with Three Imaginary Boys. Smith had already had his heart set on weirdness. “David Bowie’s Low is the greatest record ever made,” he once proclaimed, making it clear that mainstream-defying mystery was something he valued dearly in music.
He also loved a sense of musical resonance, highlighting Axis: Bold As Love and Five Leaves Left as albums that he ”can cry to”. A young band trying to juggle that into a debut that was also bold enough to muscle through the melee of punk and pop that subsumed culture at the time was a very tricky task, but the group certainly didn’t fail.
Released by Fiction Records, the album did as well as it possibly could have, which was, frankly, not very. But it captured enough fans for them to be offered a second effort, and that was all they wanted. Amid its muddled refrains, Smith also thinks that one effort hinted at their defining sound that still stands the test of time. In fact, he told the BBC that it could’ve easily sat on their latest album, Songs of a Lost World.
“It’s a song I’d be happy with now. It still resonates with me,” he said of the album’s title track. ‘Three Imaginary Boys’ is a song that has stayed with the band throughout their tenure. It is tenth on the list of tracks they have played live the most, with the group dusting it off a reported 680 times. During that time, it has been a touchstone to the past for Smith, and far from a regrettable one.
In fact, playing anthems that still mean something to the forthright musician is what keeps them going. As he commented, “I’m 70 in 2029, and that’s the 50th anniversary of the first Cure album [Three Imaginary Boys]. If I make it that far, that’s it. In the intervening time, I’d like to include playing concerts as part of the overall plan of what we’re going to do. I’ve loved it; the last 10 years of playing shows have been the best 10 years of being in the band. It pisses all over the other 30-odd years! It’s been great.”
That greatness was hinted at from the get-go, even if their essence was still in the making. Boldness takes time, and it takes happy little breakthroughs like ‘Three Imaginary Boys’, too.
