Reference to:
Goth: A History
By Lol Tolhurst
2023, Quercus
Goth: A History by Lol Tolhurst Quercus, 2023.
Notes on the origin of some lyrics from:
Goth: A History by Lol Tolhurst (Quercus, 2023).
Below are a few snippets from the book, which is, as Lol describes on page 255, “a historical memoir of sorts”. It confirms some of the sources as listed on this site, and contains no refutations. An essential read for Cure aficionados.
Lol as lyricist and responsible for the initial band name ‘Easy Cure’.
He says on page 129:
“I know this story will surprise many readers who think of Robert as the sole lyricist for The Cure - that simply wasn’t the case. It’s not so much a secret as a reclaiming of my past. Over the decades, assumptions have been made about the band’s creative process, after I wrote Cured I thought it was time to speak up. It’s about repossessing my art…”
“I believe that the creative process is often the sum of many psychic streams converging and reinforce each other…”
“With our lives are so intimately entwined we are naturally a self reflecting feedback loop...”
On page 120 he says: “Martin… departed in January 1977, and we changed our name to Easy Cure… a name change seemed like a good idea and the name is taken from some lyrics I had written.”
Specific songs which Lol refers to as including his lyrics:
Play for Today
[Note that ‘Play for Today’ was at the time the title of a weekly drama programme].
On page 128 Lol says, about ‘Play for Today’: “… for the first time words I had written for a song by the Cure came from my direct experience of how I felt abused by dubious business relationships… My attempts before were more abstract or flowery like “Fire in Cairo”.
A Forest
P128 For 'A Forest': “I played a type of motorik beat… I think we created a whole different atmosphere… I remember Robert playing the idea he had for the track at his house…. I thought of the title right there at rehearsal: ‘A Forest’. Such a primaeval title with a cool psychedelic vibe felt just felt right. Lyrically it evokes that helpless feeling one would have being lost anywhere, but especially in a dark, foreboding forest. I extrapolate that as an acceptance of vulnerability.”
In Your House
P128 "The lyrics were about being at my then girlfriend’s house late at night, about guilt and desire… To have her love when I wanted it. I was “pretending to swim” in two worlds at the same time.… The song is full of Gothic themes: darkly romantic but unresolved love (Wuthering Heights), a lurking monster (Frankenstein). Feeling unfulfilled and unsatisfied no matter which course I chose."
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Other Voices
P 136: “In “Other Voices” … Some lyrics came from my new life on the road.”
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All Cats Are Grey
P136 "For “All Cats Are Grey” I wrote about my mother’s impending demise from cancer. Full of despair and anticipating the coming event, I couldn’t bear to wait to the end. So I wrote a song about it.”
First verse: "… about the surprise at waiting in the anteroom for death…
Second part: I use the idiom “in the dark all cats are grey” which means that in darkness appearances are meaningless… The insinuation was that during romantic trysts in the dark you might not know what the other person looks like or even know who they were. But it didn’t matter”.
Third part: “about disappearing into the next world imagined in the afterlife… I wanted to get across the idea that it’s as much about my feeling of imagining this happening as me imagining what her experience going through the end might be like.”
Doubt
“The song 'Doubt' came from a musical idea of Simon's and then Robert and I developed the lyrics together. A true collaboration. As most of 'Faith' was written in studio, it was by its nature collaborative.”
Faith
“We put “Faith” at the end because we felt it was a summation of the album’s themes… The lyrics were composed collaboratively between Robert and me, which Robert then trimmed to fit his vocal style. Whatever words I gave Robert he would have course need to have the last say in what was used and in what way he could sing them.”
Siamese Twins
"One of my favourite guitar lines... appears in Siamese Twins.… I added a few lines to the lyrics. "Is it always like this?" was inspired by reading the Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. In the book the protagonist.… starts to haemorrhage. "Is it supposed to hurt" she says to [her lover] "sometimes it hurts" the reply from her unconcerned lover.
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The Figurehead
"Robert says in Cure News #9: ”The Figurehead” was about a grotesque skull sculpture I discovered in the disused asylum we used in the “Charlotte Sometimes” video."
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Pornography
P144… "I considered man’s inhumanity to his fellow man and the subject of oppression of others was the real pornographyin the world."
P145 “We recorded some late-night TV discussion and reversed and manipulated it. Full stop. A program with Germaine Greer about sex. We put everything we felt into the record; it was our therapy and our salvation.”
Insights into the origins of other tracks
P4: confirms the influences of 'L'Etranger' by Camus, 'The Bell Jar' by Sylvia Plath and 'Nausea' by Jean-Paul Sartre. Influence of Jean-Paul Sartre and Camus are repeated on page 30.
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P 20: The title 'Three Imaginary Boys' refers to the three band members, Thompson, Smith and Tolhurst.
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P 20: influences of Kafka and TS Eliot: The latter specifically refers to the title of Eliot's ”East Coker”, but nothing more specific.
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P 32: confirms 'Killing an Arab' was a reference to Camus’s story.
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P 34 influences of Sylvia Plath’s Ariel (the title of a Cure song which appears to be more about the Ariel in Shakespeare’s Tempest) and Plath’s “Crossing the Water” poems, nothing specific.
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P37 refers to the influence of Catcher in the Rye, which confirms the Salinger connection, which I had previously construed from references in ‘The Top’ and ‘Bananafishbones’.
How Beautiful You Are
p51 Confirms the Baudelaire influence further, as suspected and detailed on this site: on page 213 ”… The lyrics for “How Beautiful You Are”… were inspired by the Baudelaire poem “The Eyes of the Poor.”
M
P129 M: “One of the few songs Robert wrote that mentions his wife in such a straightforward way”.
At Night
P 130: Confirms “At Night” is a short story by Franz Kafka Robert had become enamoured with.
P126-128: Refers to the Influence of their Catholic upbringing and Catholic guilt in the lyrics.
The Holy Hour
Page 135: “The Holy Hour”… The straightforward religious reference marks the mass as a performance, with the church serving this theatre and the mass it’s gloomy ritual.
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