Never Enough: The Story of The Cure by Jeff Apter

Author:Jeff Apter [Apter, Jeff]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780857120243
Publisher: Music Sales Corp.
Published: 2008-05-07T12:00:00+00:00

Phil Thornalley believes that Lol Tolhurst has been harshly treated in the documented history of both Pornography and the band itself. According to Robert Smith, Tolhurst the drummer was about as useful as trying to clap with one hand tied behind your back. Smith insisted that Tolhurst needed the help of his bandmates just to get through the Pornography sessions.

“I don’t want to be slanderous,” Smith said at a 2003 press conference, before doing just that, “but Lol had, at times, a very limited range.”

Smith has also stated that during the Pornography sessions he and Gallup chose to stand on either side of Tolhurst, sticks in their hands, drumming with him “because he was physically too weak to do it – and we wanted a big, booming sound”. And Smith has repeatedly said that Tolhurst’s key role in The Cure was that of band mascot-cum-whipping boy, the willing and frequent target of his and Gallup’s scorn. It would seem that his musical role was minimal, almost non-existent. (Smith’s views of his fellow Cure founder, admittedly, have been clouded by the court case Tolhurst would later bring against him and the band. It’s hard to give a balanced opinion of an obviously pissed-off former confidant when he’s dragged you through the courts.)

Thornalley disagrees with Smith’s low estimation of Tolhurst’s creative worth. Thornalley felt that Tolhurst was a rock-steady drummer, whose solid time-keeping formed the core of Pornography’s grim wall of sound (what NME’s David Quantick would refer to as “Phil Spector in hell”). “I think Lol was a good drummer; he wasn’t a great drummer but he was really, really steady,” Thornalley said. And the producer was a reliable witness; he’d been amazed by the sheer number of diabolical drummers in punk and post-punk bands with major record deals who’d recorded at RAK. Most of these so-called timekeepers had trouble staying awake, let alone staying in time. “It was so hard getting good drum sounds because they couldn’t play. But Lol could play; he could stay in time and that’s the basis of that record, the mantra of the drums. They start off on one pattern and stay there. He was solid; he kept up that two-bar riff.”

“Lol was limited but that doesn’t mean someone’s not good,” continued Thornalley. “It’s a shame. His work on those earlier albums is unique and that’s kind of what you want to be when you’re a musician.”

Engineer Nocito agreed with this take on Tolhurst. “Everybody knew Lol wasn’t a great drummer, but he was great for The Cure. If Boris [Williams, future Cure drummer] had played on Pornography, the record wouldn’t have been anything.” (Post Pornography, when Nocito saw the band on tour – he even recorded a Glasgow show on the RAK mobile recording unit – he would continue to be in awe of Tolhurst’s fists-of-iron. “I remember being so impressed by Lol, because you kept wondering if the thing was going to fall apart, yet somehow he kept it all together.”)

Tolhurst told me that his so-called “mantra of the drums” was, in part, the result of buying new gear.

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