MOJO The Collectors’ Series: The Cure

 

In the baking hot summer of 1976, a group of teenagers began rehearsing at a suburban family home in Crawley, just a few miles from Gatwick Airport. By all accounts the music they made left much to be desired but, as the first story in this new special edition reveals, after multiple line-up changes and several disastrous local appearances they emerged in 1978 as The Cure, who together with Siouxsie And The Banshees, Joy Division, PiL and Wire would transform the landscape of post-punk music.

 

Challenging their audience – and being unswervingly single-minded about their often desolate sound – was something The Cure never shied away from, but the band’s leader Robert Smith could also write killer, off-beat pop songs, as early singles like Killing An Arab, A Forest, Let’s Go To Bed and The Love Cats proved. And, throughout a career lasting nearly 50 years, The Cure have kept fans transfixed with albums of both exquisite, wintry bleakness (Faith, Pornography, Disintegration) and giddy pop joy (Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me, Wish), with their latest studio album, 2024’s Songs Of A Lost World, hailed as a stunning addition to their illustrious canon.

 

Of course, The Cure have become a by-word for goth, with the image of Smith and the band with enormous backcombed hair, dark eyeliner and smudged lipstick firmly embedded in the public’s imagination. But, as the in-depth features and deep-dive interviews in this deluxe special emphasise, the group has gone through many iterations over the years, shedding members and exploring new sounds against an extraordinary backdrop of sackings, punch-ups, pharmaceutical misadventures, on-the-road meltdowns and, yes, dizzy highs too.

 

Illustrated throughout with dozens of rare and iconic photographs, this sumptuous bookazine is an indispensable purchase for all Cure fans, post-punks, goths, pop lovers and music connoisseurs.