It’s amazing how people can miss the obvious when it’s staring them in the face. Take Robert Smith’s bandmates in The Cure, for example. In the late-1980s they were busy recording their individual parts for the now-legendary Disintegration but, as keyboardist Roger O’Donnell admitted in a recent blog, “We had no idea really how great an album this was to become.”
That confession is remarkable because even today, as the album turns 21 years old, Disintegration sounds bigger and brighter and wider than just about any record you can imagine. It’s an ambitious collection of twelve extended mood pieces, soaked in layered guitars, booming basslines, intricate drum patterns and lavish keyboards.
And, suddenly, it’s just got even better. A new deluxe Disintegration is now in Australian shops to celebrate the anniversary. Singer Robert Smith has painstakingly gone through the original recordings and remastered the record (disc one), as well as polishing up a live performance from 1989 (disc two) and unearthing early studio demos (disc three).
But perhaps O’Donnell & Co could be forgiven for missing the enormity of what they were creating back in 1989. After all, in the recording studio they never even got to hear the vocals - Smith didn’t add these until all the instrumental tracks were done. Then he spent 14 days mixing the record before the musicians got a chance to hear a playback of the final album. In the deluxe edition sleevenotes Smith says that, after hearing the completed work for the first time, the band was left speechless: “They were entranced. It was one of those wonderful moments when everyone in the band just knew.”
Unfortunately, recalls Smith, the record label didn’t see it that way: “I was confident that, although the overall mood of the album was pretty downbeat, there was so much strong, immediate melody and interplay in songs like ‘Pictures of You’, ‘Lullaby’ and ‘Lovesong’ the record company couldn’t help but recognise Disintegration as a perfect Cure album."
"It was bit of a shock to find they didn’t.”
Smith stubbornly refused to change a single note of the album, and ‘the suits’ were forced to release the album as it was. He was proven correct in the most emphatic style: three million album sales and four hit singles followed as The Cure didn’t just ‘break’ the US market - they obliterated it. The world tour that followed saw the band perform more than 75 sold-out shows (including a night at LA’s Dodger Stadium where the crowd swelled to 50,000).
This achievement should not be underestimated. Disintegration was released at a time when Roxette, Jive Bunny and Richard Marx dominated the airwaves. Bands producing introspective art rock were marginalised or simply ignored. When The Cure muscled their way into the mainstream they cleared a path for others – such as Nirvana and Radiohead – to follow.
So how did The Cure pull off this audacious heist? What made Disintegration so different? Stuart Braithwaite, of Scottish post-rockers Mogwai, believes the album’s strength lies in its disregard for convention: “It has the feel that only a tiny amount of albums have, that it exists completely in its own universe, immune to context or fashion.”
And therein lies the secret of Disintegration’s mass appeal: Everyone, at some point in their life, has had their heart broken. The Cure articulated this experience in a compelling and sincere way, and people responded.
What’s even more astounding about Disintegration is that, lyrically, the album is deeply personal. Robert Smith wasn’t trying to speak for everyone. He was speaking for himself. Yet somehow, these private sentiments struck a universal chord. ‘Lovesong’, for example, was a song written by Smith for his childhood sweetheart, Mary, when they married in 1988. But when released as a single, it became The Cure’s biggest US hit, racing to number two on the US Billboard Top 100.
The album’s lyrics are rightly heralded as Smith’s finest to date. When read aloud, without music, songs such as ‘Last Dance’, ‘The Same Deep Water As You’ and the title track are pure poetry. During the recording sessions though, these words were almost lost forever.
A dodgy electrical socket in Smith’s bedroom sparked a fire while the band was eating dinner. The handwritten lyrics were in a bag in the room, and no photocopies had been made. By the time anyone noticed the smoke and raised the alarm, the upstairs room was in flames. “Only I knew where I’d put the bag”, Smith recalls in his sleevenotes, “So it had to be me going in to get it. The staff were hysterical: ‘You can’t go in there! You’ll burn up!’ They were insisting I wait for the fire brigade to arrive.”
Throwing caution to the wind, The Cure formed a human chain and, with wet towels wrapped around his head and shoulders, Smith fumbled about in the smoke-filled room until his fingers found the scorched bag. “I coughed up soot and smoke for days after. I was pretty sick... but I’d rescued the words!”
It’s a story which perfectly sums up The Cure 21 years ago. They were young, fearless and passionate. They were prepared to gamble everything for their art. And they had no idea just how incredibly that gamble would pay off.
Article by Andy McLean. Copyright held by author.
First published in The Brag, Sydney, 2010.
The 21st anniversary deluxe edition of Disintegration is out now through Polydor/Universal
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