“So sombre”: The 1981 album tour that almost destroyed The Cure
Music can be a source of therapy for a lot of people, but some issues are so momentous that a tune and some lyrics simply don’t cut it, as The Cure once found out.
A lot of the time, we don’t vocalise our true feelings, either because we’re worried about how people might react to them, or because they’re too impossible to actually put into words. This is why we have so many songs about both love and loss; both emotions are difficult to bring up, and it’s often the case that when we do bring them up, we can’t properly articulate them.
Songs are a good workaround in this instance, for people can either find the necessary words to describe their emotions within a song’s confines, or they can listen to a song about the emotions they’re feeling and have them addressed in a way that helps them feel less alone. This is the connective power of music, and it’s a pretty powerful thing.
When The Cure started writing their album Faith, they did so with the intention of making an upbeat piece of music that people could have fun listening to, but during the writing process, the band members all lost loved ones, and it completely changed their creative approach; suddenly, the desire to write an upbeat album slipped, as they focused on themes of loss and mortality.
“The whole band had a family member die, and that really colored Faith,” recalled Robert Smith, “The initial demos that we did in my mom and dad’s dining room are really quite upbeat. Then, within about two weeks, the whole mood of the band had completely changed. I wrote ‘The Funeral Party’ and ‘All Cats Are Grey’ in one night, and that really set the tone for the album.”
Playing such emotional songs live can work one of two ways for musicians, where some of them love it, as they see the art of live performance as a great way to unleash the different feelings that have built up in the creation of these different tracks. For instance, Axl Rose has often said that ‘Coma’ is one of the most heartfelt songs he’s ever written, and he loved playing it live for that reason.
“Being able to dance and rejoice in a song. That came from situations and emotions that were killing me,” he said, “You know, we pretty much mean everything we say. We don’t put anything down that we’re not willing to stand behind or attempt to stand by for the duration.”
However, there is another side that can come with playing these emotional songs, as some bands struggle to put themselves back in the mindset they had when writing the tracks again and again. Doing a tour for a particularly emotional album can be incredibly difficult, and that’s something that The Cure realised when they hit the road for Faith, where fans enjoyed the gigs, sure, but it almost tore the band apart, as they were caught in a vicious cycle of late nights and grief.
“When we toured on the back of this album, the mood was so sombre,” said Smith, “It wasn’t a particularly healthy thing to do because we were reliving a really bad time, night after night, and it got incredibly depressing. And so I kind of have mixed feelings about Faith.”
