In 1987 we toured in South America for the first time. We found that Cure fans in Europe, North America, and Australia were more or less the same. In Japan they tended to be more reserved and polite. In South America all reserve was thrown out the window and it was a joyous and riotous occasion. However, there were a couple of gigs in Argentina that were more riotous than joyful.
We arrived in Argentina in March 1987, not that long after General Leopoldo Galtieri and his minions had been wrenched from power. Soon after the Falklands War, the infamous, self-appointed president was arrested and his death squad, Intelligence Battalion 601, disbanded.
We were one of the first bands of our generation to come to the new Argentina after the end of that bloody dictatorship. Even after a couple of years of democracy, the country was still a tumult of emotions and distinctly unsettled. It felt like anything could happen and probably would.
Galtieri, you might recall, was the Argentine military leader who sent conscripted teenagers to face British Royal Marines and missiles in the battle over the Falklands. We were in Germany when that particular episode of British history had started, and were unaware of the nature of the war until we saw a newspaper in a service station on the road to Berlin. Upon reading about the Falklands War, I had felt that I’d made the right choice to leave Hellermann’s for a life with The Cure. Once I learned that the various things we manufactured at Hellermann’s ended up in those aforementioned missiles, I wanted no part of it.
After we arrived at the airport in Buenos Aires, we were driven through the melancholy streets of the capital. We were escorted to our hotel by several cars full of “bodyguards.” We were told that they were probably previously employed as henchmen by the military junta. We shuddered to think what they might have done in their previous role. They drove around in unmarked cars with their revolvers placed on the dashboard. This had the advantage of making the public aware of just who was in the vehicle and still in charge.
The city of Buenos Aires was like nothing I had ever seen before, a little like Werner Herzog’s film Fitzcarraldo. The Paris of South America indeed. European grandeur in the jungle. Long stretches looked sad, dark, and derelict, which wasn’t surprising. The “people of the port” had been through a lot in the preceding years of the fascist dictatorship.
The next morning I looked through jet-lagged eyes out of the window of my hotel room to see several hundred people gathered in front of the building. One of them spied me looking at them, so they all turned their heads as one, like a shoal of herring, to look my way.
“Lol!”
“Welcome to Argentina!”
“We love you! We love The Cure!”
They smiled and waved, and I sensed even through the fog of jet lag that something extraordinary was going on here. Music really is the international language. All the places I’ve been in the world are divided by language, ideology, religion, and so on, but music unites us all. It’s quite spectacular, really. I realized in that moment music’s extraordinary power to heal, to help in a very real sense. I was really looking forward to the concerts.
We had two gigs arranged at FCO Stadium, a large football stadium that held almost 25,000 people. In forty-eight hours we would play to about 50,000 Argentinian Cure fans. These were fans who had never before seen us play, and after living under the boot of fascism needed something good in their lives to celebrate.
The day of the first show we went down fairly early to see how things were progressing at the stadium. I walked out into the center of the grass pitch and looked at the stage. Something didn’t seem quite right. I wasn’t sure immediately what it was, but as I walked closer to the stage it became apparent: the wooden barrier between the stage and the audience was so high that in order to see the band at all the crowd would have to stand a good fifty feet back from the stage. I couldn’t imagine that this would be something the fans would be okay with. I knew they liked to get as close to the band as possible.
I voiced my concerns to Mick. “Why is the barrier in front of the stage so fucking big? Won’t that just piss the fans off?” I asked.
“Definitely!” But Mick explained that unfortunately the powers that be said the barrier had to be that big, as they had TV cameramen in the pit in front of the stage and they wanted to protect them from the audience. They expected it to be pretty wild. People hadn’t had a reason to celebrate for quite some time.
“Well,” I said, “I’d lay even money that it will be down in a matter of minutes once we start to play.”
“You know, Lol, I wouldnae be surprised,” he said, with that Scottish/Polish grin that lit up his whole face. I loved Mick’s understatement. He was not one to be troubled by anything in the concert business. He had seen it all.
Mick had started out promoting monthly blues concerts in the Shetland Isles in the late 1960s, which meant constantly dealing with running fights between fishermen and oil workers drunk on whisky. Before that he’d worked for the local Scottish health authority bringing insane crofters into the hospital who had gone mad alone up in the Highlands. Apparently the police would escort Mick up to these lonely shepherds’ farms and open the door of the farmhouse while Mick, armed with a syringe full of some heavy-duty sedative, would run full tilt at the mad crofter, plunge the needle in, and then help drag the sedated shepherd out to an ambulance. Obviously he was destined for the crazy world of rock and roll.
Somehow, after winning a card game with Marc Bolan, he ended up working for Pink Floyd and their company Brit Row, which was how we had come into contact with Mick. Rumor had it he’d single-handedly given the Mafia a run for their money in Los Angeles when he was working for Pink Floyd in the early 1970s. Some Mafioso thug had waved a gun in Mick’s face in the parking lot of the Forum in Inglewood, California, insisting that the Floyd’s crew would do as he said, “or else.” Mick responded in a very Scottish manner with a “Glasgow kiss,” sending the thug running back to mommy with a broken nose. Gun or no gun, you couldn’t intimidate Mick Kluczynski. He was from Scotland. Obviously nobody had told the Mafia what had happened the last time the Romans tried to run roughshod over the Scots. Hell, Hadrian even built a wall to protect himself from the wild Highland men in woad!
Before the first show, one of the team dressing rooms served as our backstage. For a relatively poor nation, Argentina lavished money and attention on their football stars, so there were a series of sumptuous warm-up rooms and the best masseur I have ever met. The team physiotherapist was a small and wiry man but blessed with healing hands. I walked out onto the stage later that night almost floating after his ministrations.
Just then Mick came in with an update. “Getting a little out of hand out there, boys.”
“Why, Mick?” asked Simon.
“They just had a scuffle with the security not letting people come onto the pitch from the stands. They had some dogs but it seems to have calmed down. You’ll be fine, nae problem.”
I did not share Mick’s certainty, and I would unfortunately be proved right. The audience was anxious and their adrenaline was pumping. The night air was pungent with the smell of weed and the humid heat of the South American jungle when we walked out onto the stage. A roar went up and, as Boris launched into the powerful drum roll that starts “Shake Dog Shake,” the place erupted. All the pent-up energy repressed for so many years was unleashed. By the third song, “Play for Today,” it was obvious that the promoter had made a really bad decision in erecting an enormous barrier in front of the stage. First I saw flaming yellow wads of rolled-up newspaper sailing over the top of the barrier, with some landing directly on the TV cameramen and their equipment in the pit. Every time this happened a security guy would come running out with a fire extinguisher, trying to douse the onslaught with little bursts of white powder. They couldn’t keep up with the torches, and the TV men sensibly beat a hasty retreat. They lasted two songs longer than I thought they would.
Then it happened. A small crack appeared in the top of the barrier right in front of where I was standing. It was like a medieval siege and I caught a glimpse of the marauding faces through the expanding fissure in the wooden panels. I felt my heart pound the way it had when as a small child I’d fallen off my bike, the moment before I hit the pavement—that split second when I knew just what was coming, but couldn’t do a thing to stop it.
A piece of the barrier disappeared into the crowd and the hole enlarged. I could now see many more faces, smiling but angry at the same time. They were happy to have broken through, but still incensed that they were being blocked from seeing the band they’d paid to see. A piece of wood about the size of my arm flew over the top of the remaining barrier, braining the security guy standing underneath. His compatriots picked it up and threw it back at the crowd. Bad idea.
The crowd tore more pieces from the barrier and a sizable hole appeared in the structure. Bodies flew like arrows over the top of the barrier to land in the pit. Security fled for their lives, leaving nothing between us and the rabid fans. I had the awful realization that we might actually get hurt here. Bits of the barrier were being hurled forward into the now deserted pit, but a few well-propelled chunks landed on the stage. Suddenly, the barrier disappeared under the onslaught of the crowd, as if a machine was munching it up into tiny pieces.
I looked over to my right at Robert. He had a steely, determined look on his face. He wasn’t going to back down or give in because of the violence. We had come to play to the Argentinians and that was exactly what we were going to do, his expression told me.
The audience had reached the lip of the stage, pushing the last of the barrier out of the way. The surging crowd that seemed on the verge of boiling over held back and did what they came to do: they danced to the music. I felt so relieved to be looking at a calmer sea of faces again. I sensed from Robert’s demeanor his determination to win them over now that the barrier was completely gone. I could see faces smiling up at me out of the crowd. Their fearful power to scare and terrify dissipated in the hot and humid air as we charmed them with our music.
However, we were not out of the woods yet (even though they were out of wood to throw). We had one more show to play, and it, too, proved to be a day to remember.
The next day was even hotter and more humid than the one before. We arrived at the stadium and tried not to think about the violence of the previous day. It was so hot that our crew had covered all the keyboards and other sensitive electronics with foil space blankets to protect them from the scorching effects of the South American sun. We soundchecked with cool white towels draped over our heads to protect us from the piercing rays. It was going to be an intense day.
An hour before the gig, we were sitting calmly in the basement of the stadium next to the warm-up rooms. It seemed like a good idea to use the facilities, so Boris and I were doing just that. Through the walls of the subterranean locker room came a strange howling sound with a sort of roaring behind it. I asked one of the crew what was happening up in the stadium.
“The police have dogs out and are chasing a bunch of fans off the field into the stands.”
“Well, that’s stupid,” I said. They would be spilling out onto the pitch as soon as the music started, so why stop them? Just creates more conflict. I supposed a lot of the junta’s henchmen had been assimilated into the police force or private security and had little training, patience, or desire to deal with concertgoers, much less hard-core Cure fans.
Boris and I moved to the next room, which was closer to the stage entrance area. The sound was louder here and quite frightening. I turned my mind to the songs we were going to play and hoped that everything would be okay.
Eventually the appointed hour arrived and we trooped out onto the stage. Looking out onto the crowd, I thought of Christians being thrown to the lions in the Roman Colosseum.
We started with the same song as we had the night before, “Shake Dog Shake,” and things seemed calmer. Maybe things would be okay. Then I noticed something hovering slightly in front of me and just out of reach. It looked like a small drone in the mold of a Harrier Jump Jet, but of course it wasn’t a Harrier or a drone. It was an insect, a huge fucking prehistoric insect, and it proceeded to land on the keyboard surface right in front of me. I looked at its fiery red eyes and bright green body and felt that kind of primeval terror Stone Age man must have felt the first time it laid eyes on this damn thing. I stared at it intently, willing it to go away. No chance. It enjoyed tormenting me. I couldn’t swipe it away with my hands because I was playing a song and I was scared that it might actually take a chunk out of my hand. It lifted off the keyboard just in time for me to see the shower of sparks flying through the darkness behind the spotlights on the stage. It took me a few moments to realize that they were coins that had been hurled onstage. All manner of other stuff came flying at us. Small felt toys are okay, but anything with a hard edge presents a hazard. Once, someone lovingly tossed Robert a small metal cross. Unfortunately, it landed down the side of his boot and worked its way down to his foot, where it proceeded to cut and scrape his flesh—a fact he only noticed after the gig.
I heard a shout to my right and looked over at Porl. He had been struck by something much harder and larger than a coin. It turned out to be a huge wood and metal cross, and there was blood pouring from a gash on his forehead. As Porl was ushered offstage to get medical help for his wound, Robert went up to the microphone and in no uncertain terms told the idiots in the audience that they would have to stop throwing things or we wouldn’t play anymore. It took a great deal of courage to do that. In my experience, most audiences are really happy to have you there to play, but there’s always a handful of morons who think it’s a good idea to try and start trouble. They throw things, they start fights with people, and they almost always sit about three rows back, because they think we can’t see them because of the stage lights. Wrong, morons! We can see you and you can’t hide your intentions. Robert looked straight at these guys in row three and told them what’s what. I don’t know if they understood Robert’s south London English, but I’m sure the message got across because they slunk back into the crowd.
Porl came back with a large bandage on his head and we went on with the show. The dogs were back, too, as were the security guards. I could see them on the periphery of my vision at the edge of the stadium. I had a bad premonition, and as we continued, an uneasy calm descended on the crowd.
Just before the second encore, we were all standing at the entrance to the dressing rooms, anxiously deciding if we should go back on again. We had never been to Argentina before, and The Cure has never been a band to shortchange anybody. I don’t know if it’s the old Catholic guilt or just a sense of responsibility to our fans, but The Cure, and Robert in particular, always wanted (and still wants, as far as I am aware) to play as many songs as we could and give the fans the best show possible. It is something that we were known for, and Robert wanted us to go back on despite the dangerous atmosphere.
We all concurred and out we went, but halfway through “10:15 Saturday Night,” Robert turned around and motioned for us to stop playing. I think he had had enough of things being thrown at him, and I have to say it was scary. He basically told the people doing it that they were idiots spoiling everything for everybody else who wanted to see the gig. A great cheer went up from the audience. The Cure generates great loyalty from their fans because they know that the band is on their side and a part of their lives. As a result people are very committed to The Cure. They wanted the show to go on. I sensed that and so did Robert. Turning around, he motioned to Boris to count us all back in, and off we went to finish the encore. As I walked off the stage, I felt the heavy weight from all the coins that had been thrown at me in the front pockets of my gray/blue suit.
The next day, the headline on the local paper read, “Three Die at Rock Show!” That was about as far as I could get with my schoolboy Spanish. I was flabbergasted and went looking for our interpreter.
“Please tell me this is not what I think!”
He quickly scanned the story. It turned out that a man at a hotdog stand outside the stadium had had a heart attack when his stand had been attacked by a mob, and that two of the police dogs had also died. All very sad and regrettable, but not quite as dramatic as the headline had me believe. We left Argentina with heavy hearts. I think for some years afterward, Argentinian fans believed that we harbored some misgivings about playing there, and that there was some ill will because of those two gigs. I know that was not the case. The Cure have never been afraid to go to the front lines, as it were, if it meant we would be able to play our songs to people who really wanted to hear them. I always believed that we felt we were sincerely wanted in Buenos Aires, and it was just the release of a lot of emotional repression and ill treatment by the military junta that caused the insanity of those two gigs. It had nothing to do with us or our fans, but what we represented was perhaps too dangerous to the status quo for those in power, so they tried to sow unrest and discontent. The power of The Cure has always amazed me.
My drinking worsened during the South American tour of Argentina and Brazil. The Brazilians have a white rum called cachaça that’s made from sugarcane. We had lots of it to drink and, combined with the heat and humidity, it was absolutely lethal. I found it very disorientating and there are many missed moments in time from that tour. Once I thought that I might actually be hallucinating, which was disconcerting, to say the least!
We had been taken out to a rooftop nightclub by the local Brazilian promoter after the second of our sold-out gigs in Rio. It all seemed fairly normal, but normal to me was completely crazed. Reality had started to take a back seat to the wild hallucinations going on in my life on a daily basis. Drinking, drugs, and anxiety about my position in the band compromised my mental state. It was fast becoming a catch-22 situation for my fractured psyche: the more I thought about what was going on, the less I was able to come to terms with fixing it, which would lead to more anxiety and more self-medicating. I was caught a vicious circle with no end in sight. Despite my best intentions, I couldn’t get off the crazy roundabout of violent emotional twists and turns, and what made things worse was the knowledge that I was doing it to myself.
My relationship with the rest of the band was deteriorating because all they saw was someone who wasn’t pulling his weight. Not only had I been given an equal share in the band while providing very little creative input, but my drunken antics were getting old.
Back in the nightclub, I was certain that I had seen a very well-known figure in British cultural history: none other than Ronnie Biggs, the Great Train Robber. An older man in a white suit had passed me by and I was sure—no, I was certain—it was Ronnie Biggs. I grabbed Simon to give him the news.
“Hey, Si! Did you see who that was?”
“No, Lol. Who?”
“Ronnie Bloody Biggs!” I said, clutching my umpteenth glass of sugarcane rum. I could tell Simon didn’t believe me.
“No, really! It was!”
“Really? You sure, Lol?”
“I’m going to go find him and say hello.”
I had a habit when drunk of introducing myself to any random celebrity who happened to be passing by. Both Sir Clive Sinclair (inventor of the ZX80 home computer and the C5, an electric vehicle) and the singer Nina Hagen were victims of my drunken bonhomie. Sir Clive seemed bemused by this apparition in front of him at the Virgin Records party in the old Biba shop in London.
“Siiir Clive Sinclair! I love computers too!”
Nina took it in better stead when I introduced myself to her in Athens.
I went looking for the older, white-suited gentlemen I had seen, the one I was sure was the Great Train Robber.
I ran up and down the rooftop terrace, and at one point I caught sight of an older gentleman descending the stairs out of the club. I swear he turned and looked directly at me and smiled that notorious Biggs grin before disappearing in a throng of people. I was sure it was him, but I couldn’t catch up in time and he disappeared.
The mystery will never be solved. I’ve talked to people who were there and they can’t recall seeing him, and Ronnie himself passed away in 2013. So we will never know.
Back in London, things were not getting any better for me. I just carried on like I always did, except I was no longer in control. I used to go to a club at the Camden Palace on a Thursday night with friends. But after one night we got so drunk we got in an accident, wrenching the door off my friend’s car as we reversed down a street, and hitting a post in front of the bar. It seemed unwise to go back after that.
Instead I resolved to stick to my friend Pete’s wine bar down the street in Queen’s Park. A pleasant lunch followed by a few too many drinks ended up with me lying comatose on the street. I have a vague memory of being picked up by a couple of burly coppers and being dumped in the back of their van.
I woke up and the light bulb on the ceiling seemed to be swaying a little—or was that me? I squinted at the brightness above my head and steadied myself with what looked to be a concrete bench. I sat upright, and as my eyes adjusted to the greenish-yellow glow of the room, I realized exactly where I was. A police cell.
Suddenly the little spyhole in the door opened and I heard a voice.
“Oh, awake now, are we?”
I glanced at the source of the sound and saw the unmistakable uniform of a Metropolitan Police officer. I heard the sound of the door being unlocked, and then a bucket and mop were pushed into the room.
“Clean up that mess and then you’re out of here.”
I looked over to the corner of the room at the stainless steel toilet. Apparently I had used it when I arrived, but my aim was off and I got nowhere near the intended target. I rose unsteadily to my feet. The smell of alcohol mingled with the disinfectant in the bucket, and I retched. This time I made it to the correct place in time.
I cleaned up my mess as asked and then banged on the door.
“I’m done, officer!” I slurred, still a little drunk. I tried to look at my watch, then saw it was no longer on my wrist. Hmmm . . . I wonder what happened to that? I didn’t have time to think about it as the iron door of the cell swung open and the policeman was framed in the doorway.
“Okay, come out here now and sit in the chair by the wall.”
I did as bidden, shivering a little in the hallway of the police station. I realized my jacket was also missing. I sat on the hard plastic chair, shifting on the uncomfortable surface.
My ears adjusted to the sound of radio static and people moving about the station as I wondered what had brought me here. I remembered talking with my friend Pete, bidding him goodbye, and then walking toward home. Did I fall and bang my head?
I reached up and noticed a little lump forming on the right side of my head. I looked at my fingers. No blood.
“Okay, sir, here are your possessions and jacket.”
So they had taken them before putting me in the cell. I looked up and saw a policeman at a desk across the hall. He motioned to me to come over and sit opposite him.
“Sign here.” He pushed a sheet of paper toward me.
I focused and read something about a warning and acceptance of my possessions. I signed the paper.
“Am I being charged with anything?” I croaked.
It seemed the right thing to ask at this juncture. I had seen it in a lot of movies.
“No, sir, we are just giving you a warning this time.” He glanced at another policeman sitting in a cubicle across the hall. “You’re very lucky. Go home.”
And with that I gathered up my belongings and pushed open the door. I didn’t need to be told twice. At 4 a.m. I made my way out of the station and up the hill back to my house. Meanwhile, my girlfriend Lydia had finally worked out where I might be and called the station, only to be told that I’d just been let out. She drove down to meet me, but for some reason we missed each other. On returning she found me face down on the living room carpet. As she got closer she could hear me muttering, “Bastards, bastards . . . ” As to whom I was referring, I have no idea. The voices in my head, maybe?
I still think that the “Kissing” tour that started the second half of 1987 was the best production we ever had as a band. In terms of visual presentation of The Cure, I don’t believe there’s been a better gig while I was in the group. I loved the white kabuki curtains that hung over the front of the stage.
As anybody who saw that show will tell you, it brought the audience to a fever pitch before they had even seen us!
The curtains surrounded the whole stage so the audience couldn’t see what was going on. When they entered the arena, the first thing they saw was a gigantic white rectangle. As the show started we screened the film Eyemou on the white curtains. This was a film of Robert’s lips and eye. We would creep onto the stage behind the curtains and assemble into our positions for the show. By the time we started up with “The Kiss,” we could feel the excitement building in the arena as the audience realized that we were actually onstage and playing—but they couldn’t see us yet.
The best moment, in fact the absolute climactic crescendo, came when Robert sang the opening lines “Kiss me, kiss me, kiss me,” and the kabuki curtains dropped into the pit in front of the stage in the space of a second. All at once there we were: The Cure!
People went nuts. It was pretty wonderful to experience that every night of the tour. Then we went straight into “Torture,” during which we had lights roam over the audience like gigantic green tubular searchlights. These were very special and had not been widely used before. The Cure has always been at the forefront of new types of lighting equipment, thanks mostly to our lighting specialist, Mac. Robert always took a keen interest in the visual displays we used during our performances.
We played over sixty gigs for that tour, and they were some of my favorites despite my problems. Even when it went wrong, the kabuki was great entertainment. On a couple of nights I looked out from the stage into the pit to see Mick swinging like Tarzan, pulling down the recalcitrant curtain that had got stuck in the lighting truss up in the rafters.
I remember playing at the Santa Barbara Bowl and how from the top tier of the bowl you could look out and see the Pacific Ocean. It looked idyllic and reminded me of the first time I had come to California six years before, happier and healthier, just me, Simon, and Robert. Now the band had doubled in size, and so had my problems.
It’s strange now looking back at our gigs at some of the most prestigious venues in the world: Paris Bercy, New York’s Madison Square Garden, the Los Angeles Forum, the Rotterdam Ahoy, and the Philipshalle in Düsseldorf. All grand and great concert halls. The finest the world has to offer. Playing these places meant that we had most certainly arrived.
One would think that this would have made me really happy. It was the fulfillment of a boyhood dream to play Madison Square Garden. I used to read about it when I was marking up newspapers in Horley as a teen. There was always a review from “Madison Square Garden in New York,” and I would let my mind wander and fantasize about playing there. Now it was a reality. I was just twenty-eight years old. I had done so much and been to so many places over the course of the past decade. But happiness cannot be manufactured, nor can it be pursued as a goal. Rather, it is a by-product of our other life experiences. It didn’t matter how many people came to the gigs or how many records we sold. Deep inside I was desperately empty, and my loneliness was a vast hole that my addiction couldn’t fill. All it had done was isolate me from those I loved, especially Robert. Most importantly, I no longer knew who I was or what I really wanted. On the outside it might have seemed to a casual observer that I had it all—fame and fortune and everything that goes along with it—but I was an empty shell of a man, and nothing I could put in that huge gaping hole would fill it. No amount of fame or adoration would subdue my misery, and no amount of alcohol or drugs could numb me.
The tour ended in London at Wembley Arena—another iconic place where I had dreamed of playing as a boy. We finished the “Kissing” tour with three nights there. As it was the end of a long tour, we thought we might have an end-of-tour party. My friend owned a restaurant where we could relax and enjoy a drink and have something to eat with friends and family. I don’t remember a bit of it. In pictures from that party my eyes are just pinpoints. I look like a man whose soul has been zapped. It’s terrible and sad to look at.
We ended the last gig of the year on December 9, 1987, with a cover of a song we all loved and remembered from our teenage years, “Merry Christmas Everybody” by Slade. But there was no cheer in my heart. As the cannons blasted fake snow at the ecstatic audience, I sneered, “Merry bloody Christmas!”
It was to be the last gig I’d play with The Cure for nearly a quarter of a century.