Rock and Hard Places

by Andrew Mueller

  IN TORONTO, THE Cure are playing the Skydome. The Skydome is a vast concrete barn that can be configured to hold 80,000 fans for a Blue Jays home game, or 25,000 for a Cure gig. When weather permits, Skydome’s roof can be opened to the heavens. The fact that the heavens above this gaping slit are dominated by the endlessly upright form of the CN Tower must make Toronto something of a must for holidaying Freudians.

  Backstage tonight, after a performance that was perhaps more competent but rarely as passionate as the one in Chicago, the mood, appropriately, is more subdued and, not to put too fine a point on it, sober. Members of The Cure and the support band, Cranes, sit quietly waiting for the tour buses, lost in Skydome’s labrynthine tunnels, to find them. Assorted press, record company types and examples of that breed who always end up backstage without anyone knowing quite how, or why, or who they are, mill aimlessly about. Thanks to the increasing road fever being experienced by The Cure’s tour manager, the backstage passes these people have affixed to their jackets don’t read “Guest” or “VIP” but “Freeloader,” “Blagger” and “No Idea.” Mine says “Poser.” Porl and Simon are playing with Porl’s new toy, a sort of cross between a Polaroid camera and a fax machine that instantly prints out blurred, grainy, black and white images of whatever has just been photographed.

  “See?” says Porl, pointing at a hopelessly blotched and smudged sheet of thermal paper. “It’s you and Gallup.”

  After being hit by a tank, possibly. What’s it for?

  “For?” asks Porl. “Well, it’s for . . . for rich idiots with more money than sense.”

  He goes off in search of a more appreciative subject. Smith appears with two handfuls of beer bottles and apologises, definitely more out of politeness than remorse, for the carryings-on in Chicago. “It was just a good show,” he says, “and everyone was just in a good mood, and that can tend to get out of hand.”

  Smith suggests that we should go and sit somewhere quiet and talk about stuff before the buses find us. At no point does he put his fingers in his mouth. I forget to ask about the socks.

  “It’s a funny tour, this,” he begins. “Everyone’s been in such a good mood the whole time. Staggering! There’s only been one violent row in twelve weeks, and that was really early on, when we were all still settling in.”

  As I saw in Chicago, The Cure kidding around and unwinding backstage could be mistaken for a Wild West all-in. An actual violent row must be something to see.

  “Yeah . . . the arguments, when they happen, do get pretty intense. I mean, one-on-one, we’ve had few set-tos, but there’s only been one big group row, which was very easily sorted out. I think it just comes from a constant reappraisal of what we’re doing. The first couple of weeks were quite intense. We had a lot of MTV and record company bollocks which we went along with, which was a bit dumb of us, really. We used our days off very badly. Since then, we’ve used them wisely.”

  What do you do?

  “Do? We don’t do anything.”

  Smith, as he points out himself, is more constrained than most people in his position in terms of going outside for a bit of a walk, or trying to see the sights. He . . . there’s no other way to put it. He really does look like Robert Smith. This isn’t as fatuous a statement as it sounds: a lot of famous people, in the cold light of reality, look nothing like they do on television, or at least can get away with not looking quite like they do in magazines. The hair alone ensures that Robert Smith is unmistakeable. Robert Smith, possibly uniquely, has a famous shadow.

  “Last time we were here,” he says, “we were also playing stadiums, but somehow people still didn’t know who the fuck we were. People in, like, Reno didn’t know who The Cure were, but this time they do, and it’s quite strange confronting that.”

  It has its points. Having previously fronted American customs to tell them that I’d come to interview bands called Violent Femmes or Hole, it was nice to be able to say something that impressed them.

  “Exactly. And it’s the first time that’s happened. And because of that, it’s still quite funny. Like, playing the Rose Bowl still just feels like . . . like a mistake, like it shouldn’t be us playing there.”

  THAT AFTERNOON, ON CNN’s Entertainment News, a reporter at the Chicago show accosted one of the legions of Smith lookalikes on hand and attempted to gain some sort of insight into The Cure’s success. “They’re great,” replied the Smithette. “Really alternative.”

  “THE FANS . . . I dunno. Things started bothering me on the last American tour. We’d reached a certain level, and people knew where we were staying, and they’d check into the same hotels, so I’d have people camping in the hall outside my room, not just one or two but lots, sitting in the corridor and listening through the door, and it made me very . . . uncomfortable.”

  Smith sounds almost as if he thinks he’s being unreasonable.

  “But at the same time, I couldn’t really go out and tell them to fuck off, because really I should be pleased. But I wasn’t. So I’d just lie there and agonise over it, and it was driving me mad. So this time we’re all checked in under ridiculous assumed names, our hotels aren’t listed in the itinerary, so only we know where we’re staying, stuff like that.”

  It still must be bloody strange looking out at an arena full of people all trying their damnedest to look like you. A bit Life Of Brian, I’d have thought. You know: “Yes! We’re all individuals!”

  “Well, we went to this funny little diner a couple of weeks ago, somewhere between Denver and St Louis, or wherever. Anyway, horrible little town, full of people who aren’t particularly friendly to people who look like us. Anyway, we went in, and what must have been the only two Cure fans for miles around arrived just as we were finishing our meal—someone must have phoned them and tipped them off. And they were all dressed up, and made up, and wearing black, you know.

  “I mean, I don’t know why they did it, but at the same time . . . when they walked in, everybody in the place went, ‘Oooh,’ like they were obviously the local weirdos. But when those people put two and two together, they had a kind of newfound respect, like, ‘Oh, we know this band, and these people are fans of this band.’ So I think people do it for that reason, to step outside the norm. And in some of the places we’re going, that must take a lot of courage. I think, really, it’s just like warpaint, or tribal feathers or a . . . I dunno, a kilt, or something.”

  On Wish, there’s a song called “End,” which contains the repeated line “Please stop loving me / I am none of these things,” which . . .

  “Yeah, in part. But it’s mainly directed at me. The bit about ‘All the things you say / And all the things you write’ is me talking to myself. There’s an irony there when I’m up on stage doing it, but I realised that there would be. I do feel quite self-conscious that people are taking it as if it’s directed at them, though.”

  People come over roughly every five seconds to tell Robert that the bus is on its way, or about to arrive, or here now, but he doesn’t seem in any hurry—it’s not like they’re going to go anywhere without him. He carries on talking about the tour, musing on the irony that when The Cure came out to America a few years ago to tour the epic doom-fest Disintegration, crowds threw flowers and teddy bears onto the stage, “Whereas this time, when we’ve come out with a much more upbeat record, you know, ‘Friday I’m In Love’ and all that, we’ve been getting a lot of phials of people’s blood and Baudelaire books.” He bites quickly when I try to bracket The Cure alongside Simple Minds and U2 in a peer group of post-punk bands that have gone megaplatinum—Smith dismisses both, with a theatrical snort, as “Competitors for the title of most foolish-looking-into-the-middle-distance band in the world.”

  He’s also entertainingly indiscreet about his former bandmate and pending legal adversary Lol Tolhurst, gleefully reciting choice excerpts from the universally appalling reviews garnered by Tolhurst’s post-Cure band, Presence (“I can’t fucking wait for the court case”). In the piles of stuff bei
ng stacked onto the bus is a gift that has given to Robert by an associate of the band: a Lol Tolhurst dartboard.

  “The thing to keep remembering,” says Smith, finally, “is that we’re a very foolish band. And we always have been.”

  AS SWEET MADE his way into the photo pit in Chicago, he was approached by a couple of local kids, who wanted to know if he’d be meeting the band. When Sweet said yeah, they gave him a passport-sized photograph and asked if Sweet could get Robert to sign it. It was, they explained, a picture of a friend of theirs, a huge Cure fan. She’d been killed six months ago in a car-surfing mishap. Sweet took the photo, and the kids’ addresses.

  In Toronto, when Sweet gives Smith the photo and explains the story, Robert looks utterly at a loss. After staring at it, shaking his head silently for a few seconds, he borrows a pen from someone.

  “What,” he scrawls across the top of it, “can I possibly write?”

  And he signs his name to the bottom.

  7

  APATHY IN THE UK

  On book tour in Britain

  AUGUST 2008

  THERE IS NO aspect of the rock’n’roll life more mythologised than touring, and I should know. Having given rock’n’roll the proverbial best years of my life, writing about music for Melody Maker, then assorted others, I did my little bit towards furthering the idea of touring as a splendid and enviable mobile Saturnalia. Which is to say that I lied. Not lied as in related palpable untruths, but lied in failing to pass onto readers the whole truth, which is this: tours are only fun when they’re someone else’s tour, in which case they’re about the most fun you can have. When they’re your own tour—as most people who undertake such things will confide, after a few drinks—they’re an excruciating, dignity-destroying process which will steadily cause you to loathe, in this order, your most recent work, your audience, yourself, everyone, everything. I once interviewed Harry Shearer, now best known as the voice of much of The Simpsons, but a genuine rock’n’roll immortal due to his portrayal of bass player Derek Smalls in This Is Spinal Tap, the purest essence of the touring experience ever distilled. While wrangling my tape recorder, I remarked that I’d first seen the film as a teenager, and thought it amusing satire.

  “Well, thanks,” said Shearer.

  And then, I continued, I became a rock journalist.

  “And now,” grinned Shearer, “you know better, right?”

  I embarked on my own tour, therefore, with some trepidation. In order to interest the British reading public in the UK edition of my book, I Wouldn’t Start From Here—an account of one peripatetic hack’s bewildered stumbling around the political, philosophical and actual front lines of the 21st century—my British publisher, Portobello, arranged for me a series of manifestations in bookshops and associated establishments. Naturally, I became gripped with visions of Artie Fufkin, the hapless press officer from Polymer records, penitently inviting Spinal Tap to “kick this ass for a man” after organising an in-store appearance at which even the two men and a dog of fable have failed to show.

  Nevertheless, I agreed, largely out of curiosity—always the best and the worst reason to agree to anything.

  IN FAIRNESS TO all concerned, it starts well. At London’s Frontline club—a haven for foreign correspondents, and similar—I do an onstage interview with my good friend James Brabazon, a reading and a Q&A session. A decent crowd show up, some of whom I don’t know. James is a kind and thoughtful interrogator, despite the patent truth that he’s survived any number of adventures much more interesting and alarming than anything I’d even attempt. During the readings, one about Gaza and one about Albania, people laugh when I hope they will, the questions from the floor are smart and pointed, and we sell all the books we brought along, and there’s no point in even trying to be smart or glib or self-deprecating about the feeling of people asking you to sign a book you wrote: it’s just brilliant. The following night, I appear at the Corner Club in Oxford, and contrary to all expectation—this is, after all, a university town in August—a reasonable gathering awaits, which is to say less than twenty, but more than a dozen, which is enough that reading aloud and fielding questions doesn’t just seem weird for everybody.

  Nevertheless, I reflect, on the way back to London, the economics of it are insane. If I sold half a dozen books tonight—the most optimistic of estimates—that’s a gross return of about fifty quid, of which about a fiver goes towards defraying my advance (although the Corner Club did throw in dinner, which was very good). The outlay to accomplish same was £19 in rail fares, and about that again on magzines and newspapers to read on the train, and coffee. I understand that it’s about generating word of mouth, building an audience, and all that, and I don’t mind doing it—again, it’s fantastic that people turn up, and listen, and ask questions, and stick around for a drink afterwards. But a jolt of perspective is provided within forty-eight hours, with the broadcast of the episode of BBC Radio 4’s Excess Baggage in which I’m interviewed about the book (again, vexingly, by someone who’d regard the hair-raisingest moments in it as a rest cure—in this case, the explorer Benedict Allen): within minutes of the programme airing, I Wouldn’t Start From Here is tenth on amazon.co.uk’s travel chart.

  It doesn’t last. By day’s end, not that I’m checking every hour or anything, I Wouldn’t Start From Here is clinging grimly to the Top 100 travel books, digging in its nails while Charley Boorman’s Race To Dakar stamps on its fingers, and so the road beckons. After we’d recorded Excess Baggage, Benedict Allen remarked that he’d just done a reading in Bristol, in the same shop I’m due at. I asked what sort of crowed he’d pulled. “Eight,” he’d beamed. I can’t wait.

  SINCE I WOULDN’T Start From Here was published in my Antipodean homeland in 2007, I’ve received a flattering, if bemusing, number of emails from folk younger than myself soliciting advice. I have been unsure what to offer by way of reply, as the only utterly infallible contribution I’ve ever felt I can confidently make to the sum of human wisdom is this: if you go home with a woman for the first time, and discover, in your exploratory survey of her CD shelves, that she possesses more than one album by Joni Mitchell, climb out of a bathroom window at the earliest opportunity, and run like the fucking wind.

  To that pearl, I can now add this: don’t invite your friends to your book signings. This because that when you do invite your friends to your book signing, and no other bugger shows up, you forfeit the consolation of subsequently lying to said friends that the event was a riotous outpouring of adulation next to which Barack Obama’s Berlin speech looked like Gary Glitter’s homecoming parade.

  Which is to say that the spectre of Artie Fufkin looms forbiddingly at Borders on London’s Charing Cross Road, and he’s about the only one who does. I’m parked by the till, next to a cardboard marquee bearing my name and the book’s cover, and a stack of volumes awaiting purchase and signature. It’s a set-up that might well work were I a much-garlanded literary titan, or a gormless, ghostwritten halfwit who plays football, or is otherwise on television occasionally. But I am none of these things. I am a semi-retired rock journalist who has written a strange book about screwed-up places, and I have neither admirers nor fans, just an agent and a bunch of mates making helpful morale-boosting comments, like for example “Do you want a hand brushing off the cobwebs?” and “How much longer before you pack it in, Mueller? We’re getting thirsty.” Eventually, though, three honest-to-goodness members of the book-buying public appear. In the circumstances, attempting any sort of reading would just seem odd, so we have a chat, instead. They seem nice, and afterwards I stomp into Soho with my friends, attempting to make my improvised soliloquy about the advantages of quality over quantity audible over their sniggering.

  The Brighton leg of the tour was supposed to be the basis for a proper old-school, wacky Summer Holiday-variety travelogue. My publicist at Portobello, Hannah Marshall, owns a bright orange Zastava 750—a more or less automotive relic of Yugoslav communism. We had intended to drive to
Brighton and back in it. However, it is raining on the day we are due to head to the seaside, and because the car is—as I understand it—constructed largely from papier-mâché, straw and turnip peel, she doesn’t fancy our chances. We take the train. I spend the trip half-heartedly inventing prima donna rider demands—bowls of blue M&Ms backstage, a polar bear cub to stroke during the reading and so forth. Hannah spends the trip ignoring me.

  After the Charing Cross experience, I pitch up at Brighton’s Borders store willing to regard anything north of total humiliation as a result. A pleasant surprise awaits. The manager, Neil, a grinning, shaggy-haired sort in a Nirvana t-shirt, gives every impression of being someone motivated to work in bookselling by a fizzing zest for books, and he’s made an effort. There are signs, posters and displays touting my tome and my appearance, and though the dozen or so people who fill the seats seem a meagre return for Neil’s heroic labours, it’s a dozen or so more than I was expecting. I give a short talk explaining myself and the book, and read from the chapters about Albania and Gaza. The latter—in which I do, I fear, imply that the state of Israel is in some respects imperfect and fallible—provokes a brief irruption of controversy. “Nazi!” snorts one punter—the one who seems to be storing a considerable percentage of his worldly chattels in the plastic carrier bags he is clutching to his chest—and shambles off; another satisfied customer.