The door of the studio swung open and suddenly it seemed as if the past twenty years had gone by in a blink. It was May 2011. I was back in Cure land. There was Simon hunched over his bass in skinny black jeans and boots, just like the first time I saw him play in his first band, Lockjaw, thirty-five years ago. Hair slicked back in the best rock-and-roll tradition. He had hardly changed in all those years, and was still totally youthful-looking even though he was in his fifties. After a quick scan around the rest of the room I saw Robert’s bird’s-nest hair, with some salt and pepper stubble and grayish sideburns adding gravitas to the overall impression of an Afghan clan chieftain with the various layers of sweaters and shirts he had on.
I greeted Robert and, with his guitar still around his neck, he embraced me.
“Welcome back, Lol! Good flight?”
I nodded in the affirmative. I had in fact just got off a flight from Los Angeles to London and been chauffeured down to the south coast town of Brighton, where The Cure was rehearsing for the two gigs at the Sydney Opera House that ultimately would become the “Reflections” tour. I was a little jet-lagged, but far too excited to worry about that. I had been thinking about this moment pretty much nonstop for the past few months, ever since Robert had replied to my idea that we celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of Faith by suggesting that we play the first three Cure albums back to back in Australia. It felt as if the perfect way to reconcile the past was to go back to where we first came from musically and celebrate these albums.
When I got to Brighton I had no idea what to expect. I think there was some trepidation on everyone’s part that maybe things had gone so far for so long that it might be impossible to put us all back together again. Could we all be on the same stage and expect the old magic to happen?
As it was, no one needed to have worried. It was so natural for us to play music together that it was as if no time had passed at all. We were laughing and joking in a matter of minutes. The teasing started the first time we did a proper stage rehearsal, with us all set up like we would be onstage rather than in a circle facing each other the way we would be in a rehearsal studio.
“Si, I think I’ve been staring at your arse for most of my life on-stage!” Simon was always slightly to the right and front of me.
“That’s right, Lol!” He beamed his toothy grin and pulled his bass slightly to one side so I could see that he had cut out a picture from a cycling magazine of his latest cycling hero and pasted it on the back of his bass. The more things changed, the more they stayed the same.
The rehearsals went well, and after a week or so I think we all had the songs locked in. Then it was off to Southampton to rehearse with all the lights and paraphernalia of a live gig in the Gaumont, a big old theater from the Victorian era about seventy miles along the south coast.
Being back in England, playing all the old Cure songs, and revisiting my teenage years along the Brighton seafront were very emotional for me. After rehearsals, everyone else went back to their homes, but I had no home in England anymore so I stayed in a hotel on the shore. In the morning I loved to go for a walk along the famous Brighton seafront and its pebble beach. It holds so many memories for me, as we would often come down to Brighton from Crawley, it being about the same distance as London but much easier to get to. It only took thirty minutes to drive here and a little longer on the train, so we loved to visit as much as possible. Just a straight shot down the A23, through the magical stone pylons at the entrance to greater Brighton, and finally around the Brighton Pavilion, that strange, Indian-inspired royal residence that together with the winding lanes and stony beach give Brighton the eccentric edge that appealed so much to us in our formative years. We saw a lot of bands here, and sometimes we went to the smaller clubs, like the New Regent, that hosted bands like Sham 69, U2, and XTC.
In the dusk the lights from the old Georgian hotels spilled out onto Marine Parade—warm yellows and fluorescent blues. A flood of images from my youth came to me in the chilly spring air, and a few tears too as I waxed nostalgic. There was a tattered poster advertising a one-man show featuring Suggs from Madness on the old ironwork balustrade that lined the sea wall, and I realized just how long I’d been gone.
I have always been a restless type. I ran away to Paris and I ran away to California after The Cure ended for me. Robert was never one to travel much outside of touring, and he’s pretty much lived within twenty-five miles of his parents’ house his whole life. We are like chalk and cheese. Unlike me, Robert always had a reason to go home, whereas I didn’t have a home to go to after my mother died. I loved to be on the road touring. Just to get on the bus and go to the next gig, the next town, the next country, was all I ever wanted.
I walked along the parade, looking across the gray sea to the horizon blurred by the leaden sky. A slight salt mist chilled my face as I recalled the pier on which I had enjoyed the innocent fun of teenage summers. The smell of fish and chips wafted out from the shop next to the sweetshop selling sticks of Brighton rock, with the word “Brighton” running from end to end. I had a picture in my mind of being here as a small boy with my grandmother, her woolly lavender embrace comforting me as we looked out to sea.
At first I wasn’t sure of what I was seeing in the early evening gloom. It looked like washed-out Japanese calligraphy on the canvas of the sky. I walked down the shallow steps to the beach path and onto the stone-filled beach. As I got a little closer I could make out what looked like a huge black dinosaur skeleton in the water. Finally, I realized it was the West Pier, which had closed in 1975 and was later partially destroyed by fire. The charcoal limbs of the supports were all that remained of the old structure. I vaguely recalled hearing about the mysterious fire that had engulfed the pier several years ago, but to have it here in front of me was shocking. I felt the pull of yesterday, uncomplicated and pure, coming through the years as I stood on the beach. I wondered how it would all turn out as I wandered along the seafront. Was it too late to make it all work again? Had we drifted too far apart? Had we changed too much? The lapping of the water reminded me that change was constant and always with us.
The tears wouldn’t stop. It was all too much for me. As my salty tears streamed down my cheeks I found that I could not staunch the flood of emotions that filled me to overflowing, pumping in waves threatening to overcome me as I stared at the small screen on the wall in front of me.
I was deep in the heart of the Sydney Opera House, that iconic bit of 1970s late modern architecture that instantly identifies Sydney, Australia, to the rest of the world. Tearfully I continued to stare at the flickering TV screen above my head. I was waiting in the labyrinthine basement of the Opera House, about to take the stage with my oldest friends for the first time in almost a quarter of a century. I was alone in our dressing room, not that the presence of others would have been enough to stop the tears and the raw, gut-wrenching surge of feelings coursing through my body. My God, real feelings! I never thought I’d experience those again!
I was fifty-two years old and I had known both happiness and tragedy in my life, but nothing had prepared me for the brutal assault my emotions were going through now. A mixture of joy and grief for all that we had experienced together.
On the flat-screen television above me were my old bandmates, Robert and Simon, two men I had known since childhood, as well as Roger O’Donnell (a midterm addition to the band) and Jason Cooper, the “new boy.” He had been unknown to me before this month, but soon proved himself to be a wonderful addition to this remarkable collection of musicians. The Cure, the Imaginary Boys, virtual inventors of alternative rock music, the founders of a worldwide brethren of difference, and, as Robert Plant would graciously have it, “the last great English rock band.”
After over twenty years in the wilderness and self-imposed exile on the edge of the Mojave Desert in California, I was back. The prodigal son had returned once more to the bosom of his family. This was the culmination of a set of improbable circumstances and, I suppose, fate. I don’t question these things anymore. I have seen enough of life to know anything is possible, and that the truth is always going to be stranger than fiction. I barely took note of the empty room as I traveled through the past and present in a dizzying hallucinatory vision of all that had brought me to this moment. How did I get here? To understand the present I drifted back into the past.
I imagine that many of us have in our mind’s eye a perfect time, a perfect place in our lives when we were supremely happy and fulfilled and felt intensely alive. Sometimes if we are lucky we get that more than once. I have been that lucky and blessed several times in my life. I have also known the pain and dark despair that go along with not living life on life’s terms.
The first few years of The Cure were such an extremely beautiful time in so many ways that I never considered that I would be on any other path. It seemed to me to be fated to be that way forever. We were young men barely out of our boyhood and yet felt as if the universe had decided we should be the ones, and I was more than happy to go along with that decision. To travel the world with my best friends doing what we wanted was a dream come true. However, I don’t really think any of us had the wisdom to see how things might turn out down the line. If we had had the knowledge of what would ultimately happen, would it have made a difference? Would we have changed anything? Probably not. We were being pulled with inexorable force toward greatness or oblivion. Or maybe both.
“Band exiting stage right at the end of this song!”
My reverie was interrupted by the crackle of the film crew’s walkie-talkies. They were here to record the momentous undertaking that was “Reflections,” a gigantic concert showcasing our first three albums played back-to-back-to-back in their entirety for the first time ever. The film director’s commands cut through my musings and informed me that my compatriots were indeed about to join me in the dressing room during the intermission between album sets, having just completed the whole of Seventeen Seconds, our second album, to rapturous applause from the Sydney audience.
Hastily, I dried my tear-stained face as I greeted them with warm hugs and back slaps for a job most definitely well done. I hoped they were unaware of the maelstrom that had been going on in me for the past hour or so, but as I greeted them, a kindly but concerned look crossed Simon’s face, and I knew that he understood.
“All right, Lol? You’re up next!”
Simon had had his own emotional upheavals with the band, so it shouldn’t have come as a surprise that he would be so perceptive, just like a brother would be.
I only had a few more moments to prepare for the final segment of the show. Now it was my turn, after nearly a quarter of a century, to tread the boards, to trip the light fantastic with my boyhood friends once more. I gently inserted my in-ear monitors, effectively isolating myself from any external noise and focusing my attention on what I needed to hear of the music we were about to perform. I flipped the switch on the radio pack on my belt to activate my own personal monitor sound feed, and as we walked up the stairs to the stage, I could hear the restless Australian audience, anxious to hear Faith, the final album of this triple-album show.
As we momentarily paused in the wings of the huge Opera House stage, I pulled one monitor slightly out so I could hear the rest of the band talking as we stood waiting for the house lights to be extinguished. We all wished each other the best of luck, and as I put the monitor back in my ear, the lights dimmed, and for a tiny moment just before the roar of the expectant crowd, there was complete and utter silence in the darkness, as if we were standing on a dark midnight beach hearing the ebb and flow of the waves in the blackness. Then the adrenaline surged forth and . . . show time!
I strode out onto the Opera House stage to my appointed position: stage left behind my bank of percussion and keys. Looking into the sea of faces, I was instantly overflowing with the pure joy I always felt performing as part of The Cure. It was a totally wondrous feeling that took my breath away as I stood on the wooden stage. I had almost forgotten what it felt like. In my ears I could hear the first loping, almost languorous, bass notes of Simon’s introduction to the opening song “Holy Hour.”
I raised the percussion mallet high over my head and brought it down hard to strike the first opening ringing bell-note of the song. It took everything I had to stay upright with the insanely powerful emotional forces racing through me. Ye Gods! I felt like Thor with his hammer! In that instant, as the immeasurable power astounded me, the final vestiges of pain and spiritual baggage I’d been carrying around with me jettisoned away from me like shooting stars into the vast cavernous Opera House. I finally felt like I was completely and utterly free. It was an absolutely transcendent moment.
The rest of the gig was a wondrous blur of sound and light. As I looked into the audience I saw many familiar faces smiling back at me, many older like myself, but still utterly familiar from the recesses of my memories. I always felt completely at ease on the stage with The Cure. It felt as comfortable as sitting in my own home, which I suppose it was, really. Yes, I was finally home again.
Like Einstein, I believe time is relative to what’s happening to you and how fast you are traveling. To me, this three-and-a-half-hour show passed in an instant. I was transported effortlessly to another dimension of existence where I was entirely in the moment. I was completely present, like a surfer on the crest of a wave, entranced by the music and performing it as a single experience. I knew that the audience could feel this remarkable power because I could see it in their faces from the stage. It was a beautiful feedback loop of love from me to them and back again. Love for my brothers onstage and, finally, a love for myself that cascaded off the stage and spread outward into the dark Antipodean night and on and on across the endless universe.