It was a little over a year ago when I first heard that Lol Tolhurst was writing his memoir from his wife Cindy Levin, as the three of us were having lunch in a cafe near their hometown of Venice. To then hold the book, “Cured – The Tale of Two Imaginary Boys,” with it’s purple and black artwork, and picture of Lol and his childhood friend, Robert Smith, felt like Christmas. Like finding a secret treasure, especially for Cure fans, but also for those who enjoy reading one person’s journey though life. The highs and the lows. Captivating tales to break heartstrings or to laugh out loud while reading alone in a cafe (with people looking at you sideways).
“People don’t expect us to have any levity. They expected us to be super serious,” Lol said during his appearance and interview with Lyndsey Parker at The Grammy Museum in Los Angeles. “The thing is, what you have to understand is, we were always serious about what we did. We took what we did very seriously, but we never took ourselves that seriously.”
That sense of humor and sarcasm comes through so poignantly, even and especially when describing some of the grimmer aspect of growing up in the gray, English town of Crawley where Lol grew up and first met his friend Robert at the age of 5. Or having Lol describe the school he attended with Robert, the Crawley College of Technology, “whose dull, unimaginative campus could have been dreamed up by Joseph Stalin.” With the light and the dark, Lol is brutally honest about his lonely family upbringing, distant and painful relationship with his father, and the disease of alcoholism he shares with millions around the world.
Little tidbits of Cure history are of course sprinkled all about, like the cymbal that clashes with such a signature sound on “Killing an Arab” was one that Lol had stolen from school when he was first learning to play drums. Or how the album artwork for Seventeen Seconds was the first time he, Robert, and the band felt that the visuals and the music within the album truly represented their intent; The Cure’s true identity.
The band itself has been associated with a number of genres. When Lydsey asked Lol whether he ever associated The Cure with Goth music, which many of their fans had done, Lol replied, “From time to time it’s nice to call myself ‘The Gothfather’,” and the audience erupted in laughter.
Lol Tolhurst has been on the road for his “Cured” book tour, in somewhat similar fashion to what he was accustomed to many years ago as a co-founding member of the tour, but without having to bribe border guards, doing load in and load out, and all the other antics and exercises that go with a traveling rock band. He began in his country of origin in the UK and has been making his way across his adopted country here in the US.
Tonight, November 10, he appears in Ft. Collins at The Music District. Friday Lol is in Denver at the Tattered Cover / Twist and Shout, and Saturday, November 12 he’s at Boulder Book Store.
Full Book Tour dates, plus a link to his Pledge page for VIP tickets, go to: http://www.loltolhurst.com/
Buy the book at: http://amzn.to/2achT7N
Buy the audio book at: http://amzn.to/2bcpTX8
Read my 2004 interview with Lol Tolhurst and Cindy Levin during SXSW, during their tour with Levinhurst.
