AS A BRAND NEW ALBUM AND SECOND BOOK HIT THE SHELVES, THE CURE’S FORMER DRUMMER TAKES TIME OUT OF HIS PACKED SCHEDULE TO TALK TO CLASSIC POP
DAN BIGGANE
The Cure’s founding member Lol Tolhurst has teamed up with Siouxsie & The Banshees drummer Budgie and celebrated producer Jacknife Lee for a new collaborative album entitled Los Angeles. The 13-track LP is a wild trip into the dark heart of contemporary La La Land with guest appearances from the likes of LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy, Primal Scream frontman Bobby Gillespie, Civil Rights avant-gardist Lonnie Holley, Idles’ Mark Bowen and The Edge from U2.
Also, seven years since the publication of his memoir, Cured: The Tale Of Two Imaginary Boys, Tolhurst has found time to deliver a deep dive into the dark romanticism of Goth music with his second book, Goth: A History.
“Things are very busy,” he says, “but that’s the way the music business seems to work. You have years where nothing happens and then suddenly everything happens at once.”
How did the idea of working together with Budgie come about and what did Jacknife Lee bring to the studio?
Budgie was in L.A. on tour with John Grant in 2018 and we met up. We got talking over coffee about how we should work on something and it all developed from there. Initially we did a whole other album with our friend [Bauhaus drummer] Kevin Haskins and Danny Lohner from Nine Inch Nails. It sounded exactly how you would expect it to sound: a bit like The Banshees, a bit like The Cure and a bit like Bauhaus. But it wasn’t really what we were after because we didn’t want this to be a ‘legacy’ thing.
I happened to mention to Jacknife that we had made some recordings but weren’t sure where we were going with it. After taking a listen, he suggested we just ripped it up and start again. What’s good about the way the record turned out is that it’s totally organic. People will not expect what they’re going to get, but I think if you like The Banshees or The Cure, you’ll hear elements of those bands. People will make connections and understand why it’s part of the rich tapestry of where we come from.
You have some notable guests. Is it right they contribute their own lyrics?
We originally thought it should be an instrumental album but decided to share it with a few people like James Murphy and Bobby Gillespie. Bobby asked if we had lyrics and
