2. The CurePornography

I was at a big rural comprehensive school just outside Northampton that had a very wide catchment area around a lot of villages. There was a small group of outsiders that I was part of – we were anyone who was a goth, punk or a hippy, or who was fluid sexually. We’d hang out and listen to each other’s music choices. I was a boringly obsessive Smiths fan at the time, I was the full package – there are photos of me looking sad outside some place in Manchester. One of the bands I discovered from the group was The Cure. I chose ‘Cold’ from Pornography because that for me was always the heaviest and most intense album. Going from The Hollies to The Cure is two ends of the psychedelic experience, a celebration and then Pornography is a real psychotic breakdown album. I read that for ‘Cold’ Robert Smith wanted this bad trip drum sound, telling the engineer that he wanted it to sound horrible.