Fact #167614
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Robert Smith (The Cure) : I think The Cure really started again at this point. There was a real sense of being in a band for the first time since Seventeen Seconds. It felt like being in The Beatles - and I wanted to make substantial Strawberry Fields-style pop music. I wanted everything to be really catchy.
Frank Beretta (Angel Studios engineer) : I’d been working with Robert Smith until October of the previous year when we did Siouxsie and The Banshees Hyaena album in here. That was a very different business than Head On The Door. That was wall to wall drugs. I remember we spent almost a whole day trying to do a bassline with Steve Severin and, for a variety of reasons, it just never got done.
Then, when Robert came back to do The Head On the Door, he declared the studios a drug-free zone. He’d decided to spend the money they would have spent on drugs on booze and toys instead. We were setting up on the second or third day of the sessions and a taxi arrived outside. When they opened the boot it was stuffed full, jam-packed with toys they’d been and bought at Hamleys.
The main thing was a huge Scalextric set which they set up in the studios and, after we’d finished, we’d play on that. When that got a bit too tame, they got some isopropyl alcohol and poured it on the cars, set them alight and had races with the cars on fire. Inevitably, some of them came off the tracks and burnt holes in the studio floor. I seem to recall a huge bill going off to the record company for that. I also seem to recall a remote control helicopter flying around in the studio as well.
I’ve done sessions, over the years, with hundreds of artists, and many of their, their egos go ahead of them. The Cure weren’t like that at all. As soon as they entered the studio you could see that Robert was a very genuine guy, passionate about his music, great fun to work with.
We used to have these little bright orange stickers which were for labelling tapes that had been made using the Dolby system. Well, one night, I’d been playing pool, and when I got back to the studio they taken about eighty to a hundred sheets of these stickers, and each sheet had maybe fifty stickers on it, and they’d plastered them on every surface in the studio. It looked like the inside of a beehive. Took me hours to peel all the stickers off.
Robert Smith : When we made Head On The Door I just knew instinctively that we were making what was going to be popular music. The sound was really vibrant, the band was really good. It was so easy, the recording sessions, everything happened first take, it was a joy to make the record and I thought, ‘This is going to start something.’
I wanted us to take a step up in visibility, I was looking for a bigger audience. It wasn’t to do with being well-known. I wanted more people to hear us. I thought we were in danger of disappearing a bit. I had been involved in lots of interesting things in the preceding twelve or eighteen months, things like Dear Prudence (by Siouxsie And The Banshees), which was a really big hit. I’d tasted that glamour, I suppose. I wanted to make an album that was vibrant, like an old Beatles record, that would just have to be listened to, would have to be played on the radio.
Robert Smith : Did your Mum and Dad ever do puppet shows like draw a face on their hands and go Waargh! from behind the sofa and really scare you? There's something about the way a puppet’s head will roll off ... so we were gonna call it The Head On The Pole and then I changed it.
Robert Smith : Lol never caught up with the technology. When we did The Head On The Door, we had to get someone in to work the Emulator. So Lol would just be sitting there getting pissed while someone else did his job.
Lol Tolhurst (keyboardist, The Cure) : I remember thinking, ‘I know there’s something going wrong here.’ But I wasn’t aware enough to decide what the problem was. I just thought, ‘Well, I’ll carry on drinking.’ I’d sit in the studio getting very upset at myself for not being able to play something or think of a good idea, which I’d always been able to do before. My mind was in such disarray because I couldn’t do that.
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Frank Beretta (Angel Studios engineer) : I’d been working with Robert Smith until October of the previous year when we did Siouxsie and The Banshees Hyaena album in here. That was a very different business than Head On The Door. That was wall to wall drugs. I remember we spent almost a whole day trying to do a bassline with Steve Severin and, for a variety of reasons, it just never got done.
Then, when Robert came back to do The Head On the Door, he declared the studios a drug-free zone. He’d decided to spend the money they would have spent on drugs on booze and toys instead. We were setting up on the second or third day of the sessions and a taxi arrived outside. When they opened the boot it was stuffed full, jam-packed with toys they’d been and bought at Hamleys.
The main thing was a huge Scalextric set which they set up in the studios and, after we’d finished, we’d play on that. When that got a bit too tame, they got some isopropyl alcohol and poured it on the cars, set them alight and had races with the cars on fire. Inevitably, some of them came off the tracks and burnt holes in the studio floor. I seem to recall a huge bill going off to the record company for that. I also seem to recall a remote control helicopter flying around in the studio as well.
I’ve done sessions, over the years, with hundreds of artists, and many of their, their egos go ahead of them. The Cure weren’t like that at all. As soon as they entered the studio you could see that Robert was a very genuine guy, passionate about his music, great fun to work with.
We used to have these little bright orange stickers which were for labelling tapes that had been made using the Dolby system. Well, one night, I’d been playing pool, and when I got back to the studio they taken about eighty to a hundred sheets of these stickers, and each sheet had maybe fifty stickers on it, and they’d plastered them on every surface in the studio. It looked like the inside of a beehive. Took me hours to peel all the stickers off.
Robert Smith : When we made Head On The Door I just knew instinctively that we were making what was going to be popular music. The sound was really vibrant, the band was really good. It was so easy, the recording sessions, everything happened first take, it was a joy to make the record and I thought, ‘This is going to start something.’
I wanted us to take a step up in visibility, I was looking for a bigger audience. It wasn’t to do with being well-known. I wanted more people to hear us. I thought we were in danger of disappearing a bit. I had been involved in lots of interesting things in the preceding twelve or eighteen months, things like Dear Prudence (by Siouxsie And The Banshees), which was a really big hit. I’d tasted that glamour, I suppose. I wanted to make an album that was vibrant, like an old Beatles record, that would just have to be listened to, would have to be played on the radio.
Robert Smith : Did your Mum and Dad ever do puppet shows like draw a face on their hands and go Waargh! from behind the sofa and really scare you? There's something about the way a puppet’s head will roll off ... so we were gonna call it The Head On The Pole and then I changed it.
Robert Smith : Lol never caught up with the technology. When we did The Head On The Door, we had to get someone in to work the Emulator. So Lol would just be sitting there getting pissed while someone else did his job.
Lol Tolhurst (keyboardist, The Cure) : I remember thinking, ‘I know there’s something going wrong here.’ But I wasn’t aware enough to decide what the problem was. I just thought, ‘Well, I’ll carry on drinking.’ I’d sit in the studio getting very upset at myself for not being able to play something or think of a good idea, which I’d always been able to do before. My mind was in such disarray because I couldn’t do that.