My first abortive attempt at a new musical career was with the short-lived band Presence. I formed it soon after I left The Cure with Gary Biddles, who had worked for The Cure and with Simon in his time away from the band. Michael was also involved in the beginning. I listen to the songs now and I hear a band out of time. I think if we had recorded those records a few years later we might have had a better chance of the band staying together. I believe the biggest impediment to us succeeding was the baggage that came with me. If it had been a new band that nobody knew, I think we might have got a different reaction. We were either too much like The Cure (surprise, surprise) or not enough. We couldn’t win.
Truth be told, by the time we had our second album deal with Island in 1993, I was burned out on the whole idea of being in a band. Although I enjoyed making both the Presence albums, Inside and Closer, in London and Los Angeles, respectively, I didn’t feel the way I’d felt when I’d been in The Cure. We lacked the sheer joy, excitement, and passion that The Cure had. In The Cure, even the bad times were good. It certainly got crazy at the end, but at least I felt like I was alive. I can’t say with sincerity that that was the case in my new band. I have much admiration for the various parties involved, but I think it was probably doomed from the start.
I had some money, as it was before the court case, so I funded the first album, and out of that we got a deal with Smash Records based in Chicago through Chris Blackwell’s Island Records. The second album, which Smash declined to release, was made at Sound City Studios in Van Nuys, California, with John Porter of The Smiths fame producing. Sound City is now a very famous piece of music history, following Dave Grohl’s documentary about the studio. Back then it was really pretty worn out and old, but it still had an undeniably special sound.
We tried to keep the band going after we made the album, but I got the call from Smash shortly after, saying they had decided not to put it out in the foreseeable future. I hunkered down, and for a while lived a very quiet life bringing up my son.
Eventually I knew I had to do something creative again. I could not exist without it. My son was getting older and more stable and secure in his life, so he needed me a little less. As with many parents, although I found it hard to let go, I knew there would come a time when he would have to fly on his own, and I had to allow that to happen. It’s a natural process.
I was trying various ideas and sounds and had spent a lot of time trying to educate myself about the new electronic music. I have always had a great love for all kinds of experimental music, especially the early synthesizer pioneers like Morton Subotnick, and I loved Don Buchla’s electronic machines. So I wondered: Could I try and make something that was an offshoot of that?
There had been a less avant-garde vein of that running through The Cure with songs like “The Walk.” With that recording we had made a song that was mostly electronic except for vocals and a little guitar.
So I started to make music again. I took it slowly at first, and then, as I grew in confidence, I finally made it back to the studio. That’s the other thing that had been zapped by my alcoholism. I’d lost confidence in my own abilities as a creative musician. With Presence, I was able to hide behind the other musicians. Alone in the crowd. Now I felt strong enough to express myself with my own voice. Goodness knows I’d had enough experiences the past few years to write about.
I had a new manager, Jay Frank, and a new lease on life. One day I was in the garden at my house. I was trying to think about a singer for the songs I had. Cindy was walking around the house, singing like she always did. She’s a much more demonstrative person than me. I was sitting outside in the California sun and suddenly like a bolt out of the blue it hit me. Cindy should be the singer, and right there and then Levinhurst was born. The name was a portmanteau of both our last names.
I had spent most of 2002 writing the songs that would become Perfect Life, the first album with a new friend, Dayton Borders. Jay found us a great engineer in Meghan Gohil, a wonderful man and good friend. We put most of the album together at Meghan’s studio in Hollywood, and Cindy would come to sing on the finished tracks that Dayton and I had made.
It was great to be finally working with my own agenda in place and a newfound confidence, born in part from finding out that my wife had a wonderful singing voice.
I wrote most of the lyrics for Perfect Life in a few sessions. I wanted to express how much things had changed for me in a positive way after coming to California and Los Angeles. That’s why it’s called Perfect Life. I had learned one of the most important lessons in my journey: that for life to be perfect you have to be willing to accept life on its own terms and be in the moment rather than casting a look backward or forward. You just have to live, and that’s what I was finally understanding. It had taken living in a place known for its excesses for me to understand that. For every yin there’s a yang. I think that’s very true of Los Angeles. There’s a dark underbelly of broken dreams, but it’s a wonderful place of hope as well.
We took Perfect Life on the road for a bit around the USA. With Presence, I had played a few gigs in America and in the UK, but it felt like I was on the road for the first time since I had left The Cure. It had only taken me fifteen years! We played up and down the West Coast and then further afield, getting all the way to New York, my first time back there since I had put together a DJ set as Orpheus. That was a few years back and had been a fun experiment, but it didn’t really go anywhere.
Perfect Life garnered some great reviews, including this one from Joanne Greene in the All Music Guide: “Shimmering with delicate atmospheres, filled with supple and subtle effects, Perfect Life is indeed nigh-on perfect.” I have to admit that felt good to read after years in the wilderness.
Perfect Life made enough waves to get noticed by Rob Gordon at What Are Records, and together with Jay I made the trip to Boulder, Colorado, and met with Gordon. I had previously talked to him at an event at the South by Southwest music conference and we got on immediately. It took a couple more years, but the relationship we forged with Rob Gordon that day led to one of my favorite albums I’ve been involved with since Pornography.
House by the Sea was the first time I had done something that was completely and utterly me. I made most of the songs from the various bits of electronica that I had developed over the years and were lying about in the house, which of course is the House by the Sea of the title.
Both Robert and I have lived in houses close to the sea. For me it’s the healing nature of the water. In England, the waves crashing upon the shore create a melancholic atmosphere. In California, it’s both different and the same. I am especially fond of the humid air that hangs at night as a cool fog over coastal areas. It is at once gloomy and mysterious, but lovely too, like gray velvet. It is this feeling I tried to get with House by the Sea. More than that, though, it’s an exploration of a father and a husband adrift creatively. It helped me focus my energy and purpose back to what it should be. It’s not easy to sustain a musical career over several decades, but I feel blessed to have been able to do just that. It’s been a design for living that has given me untold freedom, and I still live in a house by the sea. I always want to.