The Cure

The Cure are a successful English rock band, widely seen as one of the leading pioneers of the British alternative rock scene of the 1980s. more...

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A combination of lead singer Robert Smith's iconic wild hair, pale complexion, smudged lipstick, and the frequently gloomy and introspective lyrics have led to the band being primarily classified as gothic rock.

History

1970s

The first incarnation of what became The Cure was The Obelisk; a Notre Dame Middle School band from Crawley, Sussex featuring Robert Smith (piano), Michael Dempsey (guitar), Laurence "Lol" Tolhurst (percussion), Marc Ceccagno (lead guitar) and one Alan Hill on bass guitar. This group was formed in December of 1972. Smith later played in another school band known only as "the group", and was also a member of his older brother Richard Smith's The Crawley Goat Band (see also Robert Smith). In January 1976 former Obelisk guitarist Marc Ceccagno formed Malice with Robert Smith (now also on guitar) and Michael "Mick" Dempsey (switching to bass), along with two other classmates from St. Wilfrid's Catholic Comprehensive School. Ceccagno soon left, however, to form a Jazz-rock fusion band called Amulet. Increasingly influenced by the emergence of punk rock, Malice's remaining members became known as Easy Cure in January 1977. Smith and Dempsey had by this time been joined by Lol Tolhurst from The Obelisk on drums, and new lead guitarist Porl Thompson. Both Malice and Easy Cure also trialed several unsuccessful vocalists before Smith finally assumed the role of Easy Cure's frontman in September/October of 1977.

See also Malice and Easy Cure.

During the same year, The Easy Cure auditioned for Hansa Records and received a recording contract and prize money of £1000 that was spent on musical instruments. In March of 1978, however, following disagreements about the direction the group should take (see Easy Cure), the band's contract with Hansa was dissolved. In late April Porl Thompson was dropped from the group and the new trio (Smith/Tolhurst/Dempsey) re-emerged as The Cure for their first gig on May 18th 1978. Their first studio recordings as The Cure were recorded nine days later (May 27th) at Chestnut Studios in Sussex, and distributed as a demo tape to various major record labels. The Chestnut recordings have more recently been officially reissued on the 2004 Deluxe Edition of the band's debut album. On September 13th The Cure signed with former Polydor Records scout Chris Parry's new Fiction label (distributed by Polydor). However, as a stop-gap while Fiction finalised distribution arrangements with Polydor, on December 22nd 1978 The Cure released their debut single Killing an Arab on the Small Wonder label. Killing an Arab garnered both acclaim and controversy: while the single's provocative title led to accusations of racism, the song is actually based on French existentialist Albert Camus' story The Stranger. The band placed a sticker label that denied the racist connotations on the single's 1979 reissue on Fiction. The sticker was also featured on the 1986 compilation, Standing on a Beach, but the song was conspicuously absent from the 2004 Rhino "deluxe edition" of Three Imaginary Boys.

Read more at Wikipedia.org