Gloom With A View

Cameron Adams

July 26, 2007 12:00am

DESPITE his long-standing reputation as the most miserable man in rock, it doesn't take much to make the Cure's Robert Smith laugh.

Persistent rumours he was working with pop starlet Ashlee Simpson gave Mr Gloomy a hearty chuckle a few months ago.

"I got this flurry of emails saying, 'Oh my God, is this true?' " Smith says, laughing.

"People were talking about the concept like it was the end of everything. I thought, if only we could get this much publicity about our record!

"So I'm loath to quash the rumour. It's actually started me thinking about what other idiot rumours I could start to draw attention to the fact we're bringing out an album."

The Ashlee-does-the-Cure rumour, reportedly part of her steering somewhere towards credibility, is just a rumour.

However, Smith, frontman of the Cure, author of arguably the bleakest album of the '80s in Pornography, the man who has made millions out of misery, is an unlikely Ashlee Simpson fan.

Uncle Robert took his nieces and nephews, big Ashlee fans, to see her when she performed in Chicago on London's West End last year.

"She was really, really good," Smith says. "She's a really good singer. I didn't know anything about her, I'd never heard her music, so I had no preconceptions.

"I know she got some flak because she mimed on some TV show, didn't she (Saturday Night Live)? She was obviously told to do that by some idiot who looked after her. She's a better singer than most people I've heard sing in public. A lot of those people who criticise her, I'd like to see them get on stage and sing in a musical. It's hard work."

Smith insists the pair have not recorded together. Yet.

"Have I worked with her? No. Am I going to? I wouldn't rule anything out. I'm sure she should be the one to stop the rumours. I quite enjoy them!"

Smith, it must be noted, is in a chipper mood. He's putting the finishing touches to the Cure's 13th studio album. It was supposed to be completed before the band's Asian and Australian tour, which starts next month.

It's not.

"Cure albums sell over a very long period of time," Smith says. "The record company should be happy they do. Anything else is a bonus as far as I'm concerned. It won't be ready until it's ready."

Smith has a vision -- an extended one. He wants the new, as yet untitled record to be available as both a single and double album.

The Cure have form for double albums -- such as 1987's Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me.

"Back then we were the band," Smith says. "If we'd said we wanted to put out a quadruple album back then, no one would have minded."

However, in the iTunes-friendly world of 2007, double albums have become the dinosaur of the music industry.

"I'm not stupid," Smith says. "I know commercially it's not a very attractive proposition to release a double album by the Cure. But I got the record company down to listen to it, to listen to what I'm trying to do, and they went away a lot wiser and happier.

"What we're doing isn't aimed at selling shedloads of albums on the back of a hit single. There's more to it."

Smith's vision is for a 13-track single album (to mark their 13th album) and a 26-track double album that contains several instrumentals. The double will feature different versions of songs on the single and he's hoping to use a different mixer for each record to create different moods.

Or it might not come out at all, if Smith isn't happy with his double vision.

"I'm not stamping my feet saying it has to be a double. If it doesn't work, I'll know. But I'm buggered if I'm going to get this far down the line and at least not try to make it work.

"I've always been our harshest critic. I don't need anyone else to tell me it's not good enough. We have 33 pieces of music, 20 of which have turned into songs. Six are great instrumentals. If it's put together in the right way, it'll work. If it doesn't, it's a f---ing great single album anyway."

SMITH is so passionate about the project he's halved his royalty rates so the double album can be sold at the same price as the single, circumventing any bleating from the record company.

"The cost of making a single album and a double album are the same. A disc costs about 10 cents. If you put a double album and a single album on the shelf, Cure fans will buy the double album. It's a no-brainer.

"But they think, rightly, that stockists in the big chain stores in America will look at a double album and go, 'Why?' and put the single album on the shelf. We'll see. If we do manage to get the double out it'll be an interesting experiment. I'm on a good bet with them the double outsells the single. I win something."

Smith is coy about what exactly is his prize.

"I'm not saying. But it's a good enough incentive for me to get our myspace site up and pumping out 'Buy the double!' "

Smith is not motivated by money. As the Cure's manager as well as their creative spine, a lot of offers come his way. He refuses most.

The latest was a mobile-phone company sponsorship for looming concert dates in Singapore. A swift personal email to the head of the Cure's record company in Singapore shut them down.

"They're saying, 'This is how we do it in Singapore' and I'm saying, 'But the Cure don't do it that way and we're the Cure!' " Smith says.

"We don't want corporate sponsorship on this tour. We don't need it. They take it for granted that you do. Everyone, apart from us it seems, wants more money. I realise I'm fighting a ludicrously naive fight against the commercial world."

Smith says he constantly turns down offers to use the Cure's music on TV ads.

"People think we're waiting for the right price and then the price keeps going up. I usually don't tell the rest of the band about the offers most of the time because the temptation would be too great. They'd probably lock me in a room for 24 hours while they said yes."

Smith has agreed to two ads using Cure songs to hawk computer software. The payoff wasn't a fat cheque; rather he retained control over the Cure's incredibly lucrative back catalogue, which he has been personally remastering and re-issuing over the past three years, raiding his own archive for fan-friendly rarities.

"It was painful," Smith says about agreeing to the ads.

"The compromise I managed to achieve was that they used non-vocal parts of the songs so no one knew it was us. This infuriated them. They were trying to sell a Cure greatest hits and you couldn't tell it was us on the ad. Perfect."

Most ad requests involve their 1983 hit The Lovecats being used to sell cat food.

"It's always the same handful of songs. I guess it's people who grew up listening to those '80s hits. Their kids have left home and they have a disposable income and need to buy a new car."

Smith admits managing the Cure has taken such a toll he's increased the breaks between the band's albums.

"Everything goes through me, right down to ticket prices. Everything. It's an absurd workload but it's not continual. There are long gaps nowadays between Cure projects. But I found it very hard to delegate anything to do with the Cure. I never wanted it to go wrong because someone else made the wrong decision. I wouldn't be able to cope with that.

"Some of it veers towards drudgery, setting up a tour and looking at endless pictures of what bus we want, but when it comes down to it, if someone else picks a chocolate brown bus with orange interior you think, why didn't I just pick a nice blue one?"

Smith's stroll through the Cure's back catalogue will end in 2009, the 30th anniversary of their debut album. He's been promised he can release a personal best-of -- "my pick of what the Cure have done".

THAT will also coincide with Smith's 50th birthday, but he has no plans to retire himself or the band.

"I don't feel it (48)," he says. "It's worrying. When I'm in the studio singing or on stage I don't feel any different from when I started. It'll probably hit me like a ton of bricks when it eventually happens. I'll wake up one morning and my skin will have fallen off."

He's also still promising lengthy Cure shows for their looming Australian tour.

His attention to detail is such that he's dug out setlists from their 2000 tour, working out which songs were played in which city to stop double ups. They've rehearsed 70 songs and only three new songs -- maximum -- should surface.

"Being honest, if I go to see a band I like, I want to hear the songs I like. We're not too bothered about working up the new songs. Plus the idea of them going straight up on the web is a little strange."

Australian fans should also prepare for the usual lengthy show.

"We aim for three hours," Smith says.

"Hopefully I'm not too tired. We're doing a festival in Japan first where we're strictly limited to 90 minutes. We're only just getting into our stride after 90 minutes. We'll just keep playing until people leave."

The Cure, Rod Laver Arena, Sunday Aug 12, 7.45pm. $99.90-$119.90, Ticketek 13 28 49.


CURE FOR NOSTALGIA

Cure fans will have to wait slightly longer for the next instalment of their re-issues. Next in the que are 1989's classic Disintegration, 1990's Mixed Up and 1992's Wish.
They won't surface until next year at the earliest.
"They're half-ready", Robert Smith says. "I gave up on compiling the extra disc".
However fans will be rewarded for their patience.
"The extra disc for Disintegration will be great", he says. "It's very atmospheric. There are some strange versions of some of the songs".
Meanwhile the remix album Mixed Up will come with a bonus disc of new remakes by "contemporary" remixes.

Smith has also discovered the missing tapes for the 80's live concert The Cure in Orange, which will be issued on DVD along with 1993's Show.
Rifling through old Cure tapes in his archive isn't only good for material for bonus discs.
Smith has uncovered 3 songs which he's reworking for the new Cure album.
"I was loath to put them on as extras; I'd thought they'd work well if they were played by this band", Smith says.
"One's really early, between Pornography and The Top, from 1983. The other are from the Kiss Me period, 1986-87. I'm sure I'll find more, we did loads of stuff that didn't get used on Disintegration".

Smith is also preparing a comprehensive DVD for The Cure's 30th anniversary in 2009.
"It's all the live footage that hasn't come out, lots of TV stuff I've got on video. That's the full stop. Once that's done, that's it for the re-issuing and remastering".  

(Thanks Bomber2007)