GOTH

A founding member of The Cure offers his take on the relationship of goth culture to the punk-rock revolution.

Tolhurst remembers The Cure, the band he formed in 1976 with Robert Smith and Michael Dempsey, as a fiercely individualistic unit that was “against the idea of following anything or anybody.” He continues, “We were very serious young men and leery of being pigeonholed by our many critics who didn’t care for our dark music.” He also notes that in the mid-1980s, the band came to symbolize the elusive goth subculture that the 1970s punk movement actively nurtured. He traces the origins of British goth to the mid-18th-century Gothic arts movement and saw periodic revivals during periods of crisis and uncertainty. In particular, the nihilism of the punk music recorded by the Sex Pistols and other bands—along with edgy modernist literature by Camus and Sartre—served as “the initial spark” that inspired The Cure's moody, often melancholy work. Within this musical and cultural framework, Tolhurst interweaves personal recollections that include stories from his life growing up in the small town of Crawley alongside fellow outsider Smith. Like the author, Smith was Catholic and privy to the “dark theatrical symbolism and guilt” of Catholicism, “a very intense religion,” that would also influence later Cure music. Tolhurst also pays tribute to other musical artists—whom he calls goth “prototypes”—such as horror aesthete Alice Cooper and goth “godparent” David Bowie, while remembering interactions with other fellow “architects of darkness” like Joy Division, Bauhaus, and Siouxsie and the Banshees. Interspersed throughout with black-and-white photos of punk/goth-era people, places, and memorabilia, this thoughtful, highly readable memoir and music-history book will appeal to Cure fans as well as anyone interested in the history of Anglo-American punk and goth culture.

Lively, intelligent reading for discriminating late-20th-century dark music fans.