Given the Cure’s tumultuous, sometimes acrimonious history, you might expect Lol Tolhurst’s forthcoming memoir, Cured: The Tale of Two Imaginary Boys, to be a lurid tell-all. And in some ways, it is. There are fist fights, run-ins with the police, too many blackout-drunk nights to count, one distressingly bitter lawsuit, and not a few unfortunate urination incidents (including one involving Billy Idol’s leg—as the peroxide-headed rocker locked lips with a paramour while propped against a urinal, making for a spectacularly awkward case of double in flagrante delicto).
Unlike other tell-alls, though, the focus here remains squarely on Tolhurst, 57, and his struggles to correct his own mistakes. “A lot of memoirs seem to be score-settling things,” Tolhurst told me recently, speaking from a friend’s home in the English countryside, where the longtime L.A. resident was preparing for a round of press in his native UK. “And mine obviously isn’t. At all.”
Tolhurst was the founding drummer (and later, keyboardist) of the Cure—he gave the group its original name, Easy Cure—and part of the trio lineup behind Seventeen Seconds, Faith, and Pornography, the revolutionary, charcoal-hued trilogy that defined British post-punk at its most devastatingly desolate. Along with Robert Smith, his childhood best friend, he was the group’s only constant member—at least, until 1989, when Smith kicked him out not long after finishing Disintegration.
The title was all too appropriate for Tolhurst’s state of mind at the time. His drinking having long since spiraled out of control, Tolhurst spent most of the recording sessions rifling through the studio’s liquor cabinet. By his own admission, he contributed next to nothing to the album, yet in a listening session after the final mixdown, he drunkenly shouted at his bandmates, “Half is good, but half is shit!” It was the final straw.
Cut loose from the only family he knew, Tolhurst went to rehab and got sober. Ironically, it was only then that he actually hit rock bottom. Seething with resentment, he sued Smith for a larger share of the band’s royalties—and lost.
The book’s final section, and its emotional center, recounts Tolhurst’s long journey back from the wilderness: Coming to terms with the failings of his own father, an alcoholic WWII veteran; resolving to break the cycle of poor parenting after his own son’s birth; and ultimately reconciling with Smith and the rest of his former bandmates. What begins as a coming-of-age story—and a fascinating snapshot of late ’70s small-town Britain, a world rapidly fading from view—ends up as a remarkably moving redemption narrative, one fueled by Tolhurst’s considerable wit and welcome candor.
“One of the things I realized very early on in writing,” he says, “is that if I’m not prepared to be honest about what I’m going to write, there’s very little point in doing it. Because most people reading it will very soon figure out if you’re hiding something.”
Tolhurst these days (photo by Scott Witter)
Pitchfork: When you started the project, was it daunting? I can only imagine looking at that blank Word document the first day and thinking, What have I gotten myself into?
Lol Tolhurst: Absolutely. Because I looked at it, and I thought, This is 40 years of memories, how am I going to do it? And pretty soon, I found that it’s like dominoes. I would have a memory, and then one memory would trigger another.
I asked my editor, Ben Schafer, what’s the best book you’ve ever read about the craft of writing? And he recommended Stephen King’s On Writing. So I read that and I followed his dictums, except I didn’t listen to heavy metal.
What did you listen to while you were writing?
If I’m totally honest, ambient—Boards of Canada, stuff like that, with no lyrics. Because if I had lyrics, I’d end up writing out somebody else’s lyrics in my book.
Were there things you remembered as having happened a certain way that, upon researching, you were surprised to discover took place totally differently?
Yes and no. A lot of things are memories of memories, and they’re very slippery anyway. I had always thought my mother passed away when I was 21, and after a little research—there was a very useful website where I could see every show the Cure had ever played, and when I knew where we were in particular years and times, that would trigger memories that happened around those dates—I realized that my mother actually died when I was 22. So my whole life, I had something completely different in my mind. That was kind of weird.
As the title implies, the book is a redemption narrative. Perhaps the most powerful thing, besides you getting sober, is the realization that the lawsuit against the band was a terrible idea motivated primarily by resentment. Do you think that you would have had the same epiphany had you won?
That’s an interesting question. Let me put it this way: I’m kind of glad that I didn’t win. Because what I know now about the psychology of being an alcoholic means whatever victory I would have thought I’d won at that point would not have lasted very long, and I would probably have ended up in much greater discomfort and pain. Had the judge said, “Here you go, here’s a big chunk of money,” I don’t think it would have done me much good, to be honest.
Did your views on your father change at all when you came to terms with your own alcoholism?
I understand him better now, and I cut him a little more slack towards the end of his life. Unfortunately, though, a lot of it is wound up in early childhood memories and the way he interacted with the family. I’ve forgiven him. But when I raised my son, I was determined to be the exact opposite of the way he was. I don’t blame him; I see how it was for his generation. He didn’t have the tools to cope with children. Having seen what he saw in China [in World War II], he was really shell-shocked—he was a PTSD victim. I think if he were still alive now, I would perhaps have more sympathy for him. But as a teenager, it was very hard to be around him, because you weren’t able to engage him in any way, really.
You’re very upfront about your drinking, but as far as drugs went, you allude to them only in passing. Were they a big part of life on the road or in the studio?
I always tell people, two big lies that everybody who’s in a band will tell you are, “There were no drugs, and there were no groupies.” People who aspire to have some kind of influence in that sphere will always approach young men or young women who are just starting out and explain to them why they should take this or take that, and what a wonderful idea it is, and we were no different. But ultimately, for me, it was not extra vision that I sought—it was oblivion. And the cheapest and most widely available form of oblivion is the one I chose. Didn’t mean I didn’t do any of the other things, because of course I did. But it didn’t stick with me. It’s a cultural thing as well. Even today, I don’t think the English have a grip on the idea that perhaps, for some people, it’s not a good idea to drink all the time, or even drink at all.
The Cure in 1987, with the lineup (from left to right) of: Simon Gallup, Boris Williams, Smith, Tolhurst, and Porl Thompson (photo by Michael Putland/Getty Images)
What do you think are some of the main misconceptions that people have about the Cure?
I think a lot of people would expect us to be a lot more morose. To be sitting in a room crying all the time. But the very best moments together were lighthearted and joyful and witty. One of the first things my wife Cindy said to me when she met Robert for the first time was, “He’s incredibly humorous; he has a great wit.” People don’t expect that out of us; they expect us to be very dour. And that’s not really the case.
I was surprised at how much fighting there was, especially in the early years—not within the band, but in the streets, with Nazi skinheads, even in the audience!
We grew up in the ’70s, pre-European Market. The thing with Brexit: People forget how dire it was back in those days before we joined everything. There was the three-day week, there was a lot of unrest, and there was a lot of violence. Walking down the street, dressed as we were, we would always provoke something. There was still that hangover from the more austere times, and some people didn’t want to see anything change. Because punk was changing things. Some of the first places we were playing are outside of the main metropolis, and people are perhaps less sophisticated, and it’s threatening to them.You have to remember that everything that happened after the Second World War, in England, didn’t really recover until the ’80s.
Are you at all surprised at the direction the country has taken with Brexit? You talk in the book about going back in 2015, and how uneasy you felt being there.
Last year, the first time I came [back] here, it seemed that London had this huge growth spurt, but outside the capital, I would go to villages or towns I’d been to as a teenager. All these places would have 300- or 400-year-old pubs, and that was the center of society, and now they’re all closed up and becoming pound stores. It’s all decaying. But I think it’s happening worldwide—you only have to see Trump and all that nonsense. I was talking about this with someone else the other night, and he said, “Because things are this extreme again, maybe there’s a chance for another band that changes a whole genre to come along.” Maybe there’s something good that’s going to come out of all this unrest.
What blows my mind about the Cure—and you address this in the book—is how quickly everything happened. In a five-year span, you covered the amount of ground it would take five different bands to cover today.
I think there was a much better atmosphere to allow that to happen. The first time we came and played in America, there were maybe 700, 800 bands of a similar stature going around America, playing colleges and small clubs, and they were able to exist doing that. I don’t see that now. I talk to my son Gray, because he’s younger, 24. He’s got a band, he tries to do music, and it’s a lot harder! There’s just so much stuff out there now.
With us, it was a simpler process. You had to actually get out there and visit all these people. That’s what I always thought made the difference with the Cure. A lot of people always stuck with us because they felt we were like adopted sons. We would go into a small town and play a small club that they were used to seeing all their local bands in, and six months later when we came round again, there was that groundswell. I still meet people and they say, “Oh, I remember seeing you in Salt Lake City and there was dirt on the floor.” People remember all that stuff, so they become very loyal. I don’t think there’s the possibility for bands to do that any more.
Have you given any advice to your son about surviving the industry?
Well, I got him to stay in school until he’s got a string of degrees. [Laughs] We were very lucky in lots of ways. You have to have some talent, and you have to have something to say, but you also have to be in the right place at the right time, and you have to meet the right people at the right time, and even if that happens it still might not work. That’s really what I counseled my son. I always said to him, I don’t mind what you do, I just want you do something that you really believe in, because then you stand a chance of being good at it.
Do you think you’ll ever play with the Cure again?
I think it’s a distinct possibility. Robert always says at the end of every tour, and I’m sure we’ll hear it at the end of this big world tour they’re doing, “That’s it, I’m done.” But I know that’s never going to happen. They’re going to be playing until the day he doesn’t play any more, which will be the day he dies. The thing that we did last, Reflections [when the Cure played their first three albums in full, back in 2011], was really an adjustment of ourselves with each other as older men. There’s still time, and I’d be happy to do it. But the good thing for me is that I’ve found my life and it’s part of that, and it’s been resolved. That’s what I’m really happy about, and that’s what I want for everybody that’s ever been in the Cure. I’m going to meet a couple of the people that were in the Cure that I haven’t seen for quite a few years here in England, and that seems to be the purpose of my book: It seems to have reunited a lot of people, which is wonderful.
I love the passage when you’re playing the reunion shows in Australia, doing Faith in its entirety, and you talk about how cathartic it was. That album is so powerful to begin with; it almost felt like it had been created for that express purpose, all those years later.
For me and Robert, there was a unity of purpose when we were recording that, because we had his grandmother’s death and my mother’s death at the time. I’m proud of that album because I think it focused all of the talents that the Cure had as a three-piece. Pornography is a stronger, more aggressive album, but Faith is really the statement of purpose about how we felt about that part of existence, without sounding too pompous.
But yeah, you’re right. That’s the magic of music. When it works, you have a flow, and you don’t even question why. And luckily enough, it happened quite a few times with the Cure.
It was recently brought to my attention that the Cure’s very first single, “Killing an Arab,” isn’t available for streaming on Spotify or Apple Music. It’s just disappeared from the albums it was on. Do you know anything about that?
Uh, easy answer: No, I don’t. But I would imagine, it’s a time that things can be misinterpreted, right? I think that’s really it, and I don’t think that Robert would particularly want that to be the case. Like I describe in the book, when people first came to see us, they expected something that it wasn’t about at all. I don’t think any of us would want to add to that, you know.
I have one last question for you: How do you feel about the fact that “LOL” has become internet slang?
It’s funny, this morning I was thinking, maybe I should open all my events with, “My name is Lol, and this is what it means, and I was here way before.” There’s no way I’m ever going to escape it. It’s an opening, really: This is my name, and it’s an English abbreviation of Laurence. It helps if people know that, but if they don’t, I can’t undo it in the fabric of the universe now.