Skullwise Cat

FINDING A
Book Review by ALISON ROSS
The music of The Cure has haunted my dreams and nightmares since 1985, when I
discovered it a bit fortuitously at a record store in a Texas college town, where I grew up.
Up until that point, I had been enamored of arena rock, mainly, and so The Cure's mad
hatter sensibilities were a revelation to me. Once The Cure infiltrated my existence, my
persona morphed into something altogether more cerebral, and yet whimsical: I began to
inhabit that pesky, precious paradox that The Cure practically invented.
Laurence (Lol) Tolhurst was a founding member of my beloved band, and while he no
longer plays in The Cure - having been kicked out in 1989 - he has written a brave and
beautiful book drawing on his experiences in the group, and his life beyond. And what a
tumultuous life he has had, both in the band and out, navigating alcoholism, failed
marriages, the death of a daughter, and the fracturing of friendships.
In the end, of course, he finds redemption and his life takes on the shimmering tones of a
sunrise in California, his adopted home.
Of course, the story starts in the 70s amid the suffocating fog of the lead-grey town of
Crawley, a dreary London suburb. The post-war milieu is oppressively dull, seemingly
deliberately designed to stultify the masses.
But feisty teenagers Lol, Robert Smith and Michael Dempsey were having none of it.
They sought refuge in music and proceeded to work on sculpting a new sound from the
still-smoldering ashes of punk, one that was as much a reaction against their environment
as punk and yet that had an airier, less aggressive vibe. (Granted, The Cure "signature"
sound later evolved into a melange of styles, but suffice it to say that The Cure's early
work was very much responsible for molding the post-punk template.)