How America Fell in Love With The Cure. Robert Smith of The Cure. You. Tube. By 1. 98. The Cure had been leading the British post punk scene for over a decade. But here in America, unless you were a devotee of independent record stores and college radio, the legendary group was still something of a well kept secret. That all changed 3. Soon after The Cure released their ambitious double album Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me on May 2. Kiss Best Of Alive 35 Chrome' title='Kiss Best Of Alive 35 Chrome' />Just Like Heaven were dominating U. S. radio. Im a sucker for short and sweet hit pop songs like Just Like Heaven. And Why Cant I Be You does the trick for me too, says guitarist for Bauhaus Daniel Ash, whose post Bauhaus band Love Rockets also enjoyed the after effects of Kiss Me in 1. So Alive. Partially recorded at the famed Compass Point Studios in the Bahamas, Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me interjected the dark tones of their earlier work with elements of bleeding edge R B, Prince esque funk grooves, warm jazz and dreamy psychedelic pop that caught fire on such prominent American radio stations as Los Angeless KROQ and New Yorks WLIR. Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me, for The Cure, musically it was a breakthrough, says longtime WLIR DJ Malibu Sue Mc. Cann. And for The Cure on NYC radio, it blew the doors wide open for them. The undeniable electricity of songs like Why Cant I Be You, Just Like Heaven and Hot Hot Hot set fire to the airwaves in 1. Starting a new kind of British Invasion, the runaway success of Kiss Me broke down the walls for other beloved cult British acts such as The Smiths, New Order and Echo The Bunnymen to infiltrate the mainstream U. S. airwaves soon after. But just how did The Cure do what so many of their peers in the British post punk scene couldnt All credit is due to the outstanding lineup the group enjoyed at the time, comprised of intrepid leader Robert Smith on guitars and lead vocals, Porl Thompson on lead guitar and keyboards, group co founder Lol Tolhurst making the permanent move from percussion to keys and electronics, Simon Gallup on bass and Boris Williams on drums. This combo is largely known as The Cures classic lineup, first established on the bands 1. LP The Head On The Door and perfected through the incessant amount of touring they did throughout the mid 8. Theres almost a sense throughout Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me that Smith is comfortable enough to showcase the collective work of the musicianslike a handy dare to the world, saying without saying it, Hey, check out who Ive got working with me, veteran music journalist Ned Raggett stated in his wonderful recent analysis of Kiss Me for The Quietus in April. Having toured regularly with that lineup for a couple of years at a time of increasingly greater attention, it underscores the sense of confidence at play. In honor of its 3. Observer recently spoke at length with Tolhurst about what it was like creating Kiss Me back in 1. Tftp Smsboot X64 Pxeboot.Com. As a co founding member of the band, and author of the recent Cure memoir, Cured The Tale of Two Imaginary Boys, his perspective on this particularly fruitful period in the bands history serves as the most revealing testament to the legacy of The Cure yet. There are many people, myself among them, who feel that the lineup of Robert Smith, yourself moving from drums to keyboards, Boris Williams on percussion, Simon Gallup on bass and Porl Thompson on keys and guitars is essentially the classic Cure lineup, a la the Mach II version of Deep Purple. What do you think To me there are two versions of the Cure from that era. The one which youre right with myself, Robert, Simon Porl and Boris. Putt Putt Travels Through Time Torrent. The best PC games are here, but what are they Matt Damon takes the top honor, but he wasnt alone in turning up the heat. Check out some of the sexy men Patrick Brad who made PEOPLEs list. The Walking Dead Collection The Telltale Series. Full Game. PS4. Ive heard some Cure fans call it the imperial lineup, which strikes me as sort of strange as a name but is I guess a more melodic version of the band. However, the version that ended with Pornography in 1. Like many Americans, 1. I picked up on The Cure, having been exposed to them by listening to the Long Island alternative rock station WLIR. One of my first memories of the band was hearing Why Cant I Be You on the radio while driving to the Roosevelt Field Mall to go clothes shopping for my final year in middle school and feeling inspired by the song to pick the threads I did that day. LaughsThat was a pivotal time for us because right before then the way we managed to introduce ourselves to America really happened with MTV. In the early days, we had made a few videos and had made a few pop singles, and MTV was really small. There were maybe six or eight videos released every week, so they had to play us, as there wasnt a lot of material otherwise. So that really resonated with the sensibility of The Cure. In general, weve always appealed to people from small towns in suburbia like ourselves. Installer Reference Issue Microsoft Silverlight there. People ask me why is it that out of all the bands from the 8. America are The Cure, Depeche Mode and The Smiths. Its because we came from the same kind of place, so it doesnt matter if its suburbia in South London or suburbia in Southern California it means the same thing to people and that the thing that we were able to express, and people understood that. Thats why it kept going, that and we played an awful lot and went on very, very long tours. Originally, we started off playing in peoples hometowns, and it felt as though we were like adopted sons even though we were adopted from 5,0. I still meet people who saw us play at the Whisky in Los Angeles or Harrahs in New York when we first came out to America. People remember that and communicate that loyalty still today. The Cure. You. Tube. What made you want to do a double album I think more than anything the combination of touring and college radio paid off for us in a big way. When it came to Kiss Me, we started off with a hundred bits of songs, because everybody contributed. We all had home studios at that point. We said, Heres what were going to do. Were going to get together and bring all our home demos from the last year or two and were going to play them for each other and score them out of 1. And the ones that get high marks, were gonna explore them further. So out of a hundred pieces, we narrowed it down to about 3. Boris house. We took his house over for a month and we demoed those there, and out of those 3. I think about 1. 9 made it to the album. But it became a double album because we just had a lot of songs. It was very fertile period because we had the right combination of band members, really. What inspired The Cure to make your fans want to dance on Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me One of the things I remember Robert saying me at the time was, This is like us pretending to be another band. And we did it in a style of somebody that we liked. On the road, Robert had a selection of music that he listened to in his room, and hes got stuff on it that was more poppy and funky, which counterbalanced the melancholy things he listened to as well. Pop for The Cure was never a dirty word and we always had an appreciation of that. We can be different kinds of bands or we can deviate from where we were in the realm of post punk into a more pop oreiented area, and we can do it without losing the intensity. Because there was some intense songs as well, and we wanted to mix it all up. There was so much material that it just seemed a shame not to make it a double album.