"I'm marked for Life"...

My first encounter with The Cure was in 1980, when my father brought 17 Seconds at home, I was very young (5 years old), but my parents have always listened to music, and my father had some very strange tastes. Other albums too found their way home, but I was too young to appreciate them. I heard them from my parents...

One week-end, Sunday lunch time, we watched TV (a programm called "L'echo des Savanes" starring famous rock bands) and they a introduced a group who had some success in France, The Cure...It was in 1982, at the end of spring, it was nearly the end of school, that's why I remember the day...The Cure came on stage, they played tracks from Pornography, I don't remember how many, but A Strange Day was very impressive for a 7-year-old boy.

For the following years, there was always Cure music at home, along with magazines with pictures and interviewes of Robert and co....Others albums followed Pornography, then came the year 1985 in France, and suddenly everybody got to know The Cure; Robert became huge and was everywhere on TV and other media. Some older friends (I was 10 years old) told me that their brothers liked The Cure, so they listened to them too...When I told them that I already knew that band, I almost became a God to their eyes, you know what children and teenagers are like...

My father and I went to see them during the Kissing tour '87 in Bordeaux. I was 12, and my father wanted to protect me because he was afraid of the crowd (in France, The Cure always had a bad reputation because of the audience, they have reputation as junkies alkies. Back then, a lot of adults didn't like them because of the picture painted by the press and jealous French rock bands...). I only remenber the video "Tea Time" and the sound very loud for my 12-year-old ears...

Then came publicity for Disintegration on TV, the sound of a clock ticking and the days left for the album release. It was the first album I bought with my own money. I earned it by taking empty bottles from a restaurant to a glass container... I bought on tape; CDs had just appeared and were VERY expensive. For my birthday, a schoolfriend, his parents and his brother offered me a ticket to see the band in Bordeaux (again) during the Prayer Tour. We went there by car and took our seats to see the gig (again, the parents were afraid of the crowd). I was 14, and I remember the lights, and the tracks from Disintegration (oh, the chimes from Plainsong).

The years passed, I started to work, and the Wish tour stormed the planet. For the first time, I went to a Cure gig all alone with friend...I still remember a lot of things, even 16 years on, I was at the front row, very hot (yet again in Bordeaux), excited, the lights, the arrival of the band on stage, etc... Due to excitement, I didn't sleep for two nights...Then, I started to listen to other bands, but always connected to The Cure, my English improved, and magazines turned up at my house, in both French and English. The Cure always stayed like a toy we'd played with for a long time and that we left for others, but I always returned to it whenever memorable events in my life occurred...

Then came Wild Mood Swings, and the great deception, but having a new Cure album out, it spurred me on to dig up all the others, again and again. At that time, I started to have a good collection of items (discs, interviewes, collectors albums, bootlegs, some very, too, expensive...).

Bloodflowers came out, and I told myself, well, a new album, not a masterpiece, but a good one. I went and see them in Grenoble, I was working very hard, the show was disappointing, but seeing them on stage is always a grateful experience. The Cure came out in 2004, and I told myself, that at last, the group found his sound with this new line-up. I met my wife-to-be, I remember one of her first sentences "If we get married, I know that I'll wed a little part of The Cure as well". I thought "pffff, that's real, 18 years of listening, reading, and seeing The Cure, I'm marked for Life".

We saw them in St-Malo in Summer 2005, I remember of seing the return of Porl, but the gig wasn't really fantastic...Then started the long wait of the new album. During our wedding ceremony, I asked my wife to play Lovesong in the church, and Doing the Unstuck when we left (for the lyrics...). Some friends told me that it had always been my dream to have some Cure tracks played in a church and it's true. But I keep Faith for some funerals...

The 4Tour started, and I became excited, I wanted to see them in Paris at least one time in my life (The Cure in Paris, it's an old lovesong), my wife got hold of the tickets, and offered me mine at Christmas. I cried for the second time in my adult life (the first was at the City Hall when we married). We went and saw them with a close friend who was my bestman at my wedding... This show, that was a childhood dream, and I wasn't disappointed, 3h 30mins of live music; my wife with me, and there's nothing more I can say...The singles arrived, and, deep inside me, I'm disappointed. They sound like the 1987-1992 era, which for me is the real sound of The Cure...Nevertheless, the new singles don't convince me. Like with the last few albums, I'm a bit scared of what will be on the new one. When I hear "Freakshow", I think The Cure are very bad when they try to make bad U2 stuff...

My wife is expecting a baby, I told her that I'll play Plainsong when he is here, just for the chimes... And when I die, I asked her to play Faith at the funerals, the live version of Turin in 1989...I only hope that my son (or daughter) will have a good taste in music, like that of his (or her) father.

(From: Stanislas, Chateugay, France)

Berlin

I grew up in East Berlin. Rias broadcasted Lullaby and Lovesong in 1989. Time was very exciting, because the "revolution" was taking place, I was 13 and was very into music, especially the soundtrack of Dirty Dancing. I loved those two songs. when the wall came down and I attended school in West Berlin, my new friend Rebecca posessed tapes of the cure, because her uncle had been a big fan. We exchanged the tapes. I listened to them on and on, during the breaks, on the way to and from school, in the evening, alone or with Rebecca. The highlight was their concert in 1992. I cried almost the whole time. I had a little break when Wild Moon Swings was released but from the Berlin concert 2000 on, I grew bigger and bigger fan.

(From: Yvonne Chadde', East Berlin, Germany)

Good Times Bad Times

It was 1989 and I was in 6th grade (10 years old) living in Guadalajara Mexico. The song Lovesong was being played on the radio a lot so there is no way you could have missed them during that time. I loved that song so a friend of mine let me borrow the album (Disintegration). I immediately fell in love with the entire album. I would fall asleep playing the album, lights off, stereo next to my bed, beautiful music. My friends and I then started finding out more about them, I bought the Kiss Me album after that and then Starting at the sea. I remember watching The Cure specials on TV where they showed their videos. They were just big when Disintegration came out. I became a BIG fan of the cure during that time. When Wish came out it made my passion for them even stronger. I had all their albums at that point.

Then something happened to them during the Wild Mood Swings era. I wasn't really excited about it and I didn't even bought the album. I still loved them for everything else they had done before but their new songs weren't that great for my taste. I can say that I was a little dissapointed. By the time the The Cure album came out I had forgotten a little about them but that album sounded more like The Cure and it felt like they were back. I liked it a lot and reinforced my passion for them. To finish up, I want to say that I have loved The Cure from the moment they came into my life, during the good times, and the bad times, so for this reason, I consider myself a BIG fan, because no matter what, I'm still here, anxious to hear new songs and see them live.

(From: Ernesto, Houston TX, USA)

"Inspiration"

I was 13 years old when i discovered The Cure in the summer of 1996. At the time I was listening to Britpop trite like Blur and cookie-cutter acts like The Prodigy, i was young and didn't know any better. But one morning I saw the video for Lovesong and I was stunned. The music was like nothing i had ever heard, poppy but with an extremely dark twist. The image of Robert Smith, with his teased out hair, black eyes and smeared red lips just blew me away. I knew straight away that this was a band worth investigating, so I went out and bought every Cure album that HMV had in stock and listened to them religously throughout the summer weeks. I even phoned my local radio station and told them it was my birthday just so they would play Friday I'm In Love!

I will never forget the experience of hearing the Disintegration album that first time in my bedroom at home. I felt the same as any Bowie-head felt the first time they heard Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars - elated, euphoric, emotional. I have never felt such a rush listening to an album before or since Disintegration. It is, in my opinion, the greatest album ever made. However, 1996 was not an ideal year in which to be a Cure fan. They had returned that year after a three year absence with an album called, Wild Mood Swings. This was an album that i liked (if not loved) very much, but it was mauled by the critics and sank without trace within two or three weeks of its release, rendering the band completely obsolete in their native England. You see, this was the year of Oasis, 60s-style guitar rock with a thuggish swagger. Good old-fashioned sex, drugs and rock'n'roll and idiotic phrases like "Mad For It!" were all the rage in both the UK and Ireland.

A young, Irish teenager, walking the streets of Cork in a Cure T-shirt and brandishing a doomed-out facial expression was bound to raise a few eyebrows! Cure fans delve a lot deeper than your average rock fan, the Cure's music influenced us to ponder about unattainable love and the harsh realities of life. Because of this i never stood much of a chance in school, i was always that "strange kid" in the corner.

If there was ever a moment when it seemed certain that the Cure belonged whole-heartedly to their legion of hardcore fans and completely seperate from the general, music-loving public, it was in June 1997, when they "headlined" a KROQ festival in Irvine, California "ahead" of both Oasis and Radiohead. Both the NME and the Melody Maker managed to review this one-off festival show and praised the Gallaghers and Radiohead to the hilt, whilst not even mentioning the headliner, what a bunch of snobs. As the years went on, the Cure drifted even further into obscurity, no longer an integral part of the music world, it was hard not to feel as if i had missed the boat so to speak. It was during this time that the band released what i believe was their last "great" album, 2000's Bloodflowers. It was the last CD that i remember listening to with that great sense of anticipation and almost tearful euphoria. Fast forward to the summer of 2004, i'm 21 years old, i have a full-time job where i have to abandon my black-clad wardrobe for the shirt and tie, i have grown, but I am still hurt and confused much the same way as during my adolesence. I still need my life soundtrack, i still need the Cure. Or so I thought.

That summer, I saw the Cure play live for the first time since falling for the band in '96. The venue was Ireland's very own "Oxegen Festival" in Co. Kildare. For the first time, i was literally surrounded by Cureheads, people in their late 30s and early 40s who had followed them since the early 1980s and of course, all those EMO kids that had found the band the previous year! Robert Smith and co. hit the stage late that night and what was supposed to be a vindication of my lonesome and often loathsome teenage years, ended up being nothing more than a routine festival appearance by a band that looked and sounded bored, worn-out and ultimately out of touch. When Hot Press reviewed the performance a week later and slated it, it was the first time I ever agreed with a bad Cure review.

I was bitterly disappointed upon leaving the venue that night in 2004, my love affair with the band was over. For the first time, i did not care for their next move, the next chapter in their story, i wasn't bothered. Funnily enough, in a complete turn-around of events, The Cure had found themselves back in fashion in 2004. Everyone wanted a piece of them from the NME to MTV who filmed an "Icon" show in their honour. They even released a self-titled album that year on which they sounded absolutely nothing like themselvles and sold 2 million. I was no longer their biggest supporter. To make matters worse, I ended up spending much of 2005 attending all those Cure fan conventions in the UK and parts of Europe, where i tried to rekindle my passion for the band, but to my horror, I found being in the company of hardcore Cureheads a tad overbearing. These guys, some of them in their early to mid-40s, still teasing out their hair and applying Smith's trademark smeared red lipstick, did my head in over the course of these trips.

It was hard not to get the impression that most of these guys were more into the band's image and the process of trying to outdo one another's look than an actual sincere love of the band's music. I did however form lasting friendships with much more laid-black and individual Cure fans that year, people that were and still are trying to be creative and make a name for themselves and not waking up everyday just to worship the band. With these charming new friends i would see the Cure perform three more times, Berlin and twice in London. By then, only nostalgia would draw me back each time.

To sum up, the Cure is not just a memory, lost in the confines of a long-gone adolesence, but a major part of my life growing up. Whenever I hear In Between Days, Lovesong or even lesser-known songs like 2 Late, i still know where i was and how i felt when i first heard them. No other band has had that kind of impact on my life. I am still deeply affected by their old music, but the difference now , is that their existance in 2008 and beyond matters very little to me. Quite naturally, i grew out of it all, i started to think for myself. What can i do? What can i create? Who can i touch with my music? Bands like the Cure don't exist just to be adored and worshipped by fans, they exist in order to inspire much younger people to create a niche of their own. Otherwise what was the point of this?

(From: Paul Jeremiah O' Connor, Cork, Ireland)

"Passion and sadness"

The Cure got into my life about 14 years ago, when I heard on a record shop the song Boy's Don't Cry. Something amazing and melancolic trapped me. Later on (I think just in the same week) I heard on the radio Friday I'm in Love. But I was short of money then to buy the records so it wasnt' until I was on College when I begin to buy The Cure record.

I was just surpirsed just how can Robert write a song such as Lovesong and also a song like One Hundred Years. The passion and sadness mixed together, the voice, the music. Ever since The Cure album and the night at The Cure concert in Mexico City back in 2004, I've been a loyal Cure fan. Over the years, my attitude has really changed, because The Cure has been a eternal companion for many stages of my life (love, tragedies, depression, joy) and right now, I'm a devotee of their music and their live shows.

(From: Ernesto, age 25; Mexico City, Mexico)