Fact #171014
When:
Short story:
The Cure enter the UK singles chart with The Love Cats which will give the group its biggest hit to date, peaking at No7.
Full article:
Robert Smith (The Cure) : I finished the words to The Love Cats the night before we went in the studio. We treated it completely seriously, and when we’d done it, Bill (manager Chris Parry) said, “What about some b-sides?” I said, “Well, I’ve got a couple of ideas,” which was Speak My Language and Mr Pink Eyes.
I sang the bassline for Speak My Language to Phil Thornalley, and Andy just did his thing on drums, and I just made up the piano part and the words as we went along – which isn’t hard to believe.
Lyrically, it’s about Lol. He would adopt this absurd Euro-language by speaking in English with a funny accent and assuming that French people would understand him. I had three lines written down but the rest of the lyric is just an outburst, the closest I’ve ever come to stream of consciousness singing.
I wasn’t convinced by it at the time but, looking back, I can see that it went to the core of what we were doing. I was looking for that spontanaeity in the band, that throw-away quality, which realistically was never going to happen with that line up, because Phil was so meticulous. He was a great co-producer. He made the Love Cats thing happen. He played the upright bass on it, then he went upstairs and he got the right sounds, like a fantastic version of a sleazy jazz band sound, in one hour. And Andy was a fabulous jazz drummer, he had exactly the right feel.
We also did Mr Pink Eyes that night, which is one of my favourite Cure b-sides because it is so stupidly demented. Mr Pink Eyes was me that night. I wrote the words in Studio Des Dames in Paris after I’d been for a piss and saw myself in the mirror. So Mr Pink Eyes is one of those self-hate names for that bleary pathetic version of myself…
Phil didn’t like it, because he thought it was out of time and out of tune, which it was, but that was what I wanted. It worked.
Lol was playing this humungous four octave set of vibes that were in the studio, and we had to keep telling him what to do. He had these two big mallets, he was hammered out of his brains and about to play on a b-side. Andy was choking with laughter, because he came from a background of proper musicians, and he couldn’t believe we operated this way.
We totally mixed him out on Speak My Language but we left him in on Mr Pink Eyes, hammering away, running up and down, hitting this thing at random. I liked it, but Phil thought it was terrible, totally unmusical. I just thought it was funny.
(Source : not known)
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I sang the bassline for Speak My Language to Phil Thornalley, and Andy just did his thing on drums, and I just made up the piano part and the words as we went along – which isn’t hard to believe.
Lyrically, it’s about Lol. He would adopt this absurd Euro-language by speaking in English with a funny accent and assuming that French people would understand him. I had three lines written down but the rest of the lyric is just an outburst, the closest I’ve ever come to stream of consciousness singing.
I wasn’t convinced by it at the time but, looking back, I can see that it went to the core of what we were doing. I was looking for that spontanaeity in the band, that throw-away quality, which realistically was never going to happen with that line up, because Phil was so meticulous. He was a great co-producer. He made the Love Cats thing happen. He played the upright bass on it, then he went upstairs and he got the right sounds, like a fantastic version of a sleazy jazz band sound, in one hour. And Andy was a fabulous jazz drummer, he had exactly the right feel.
We also did Mr Pink Eyes that night, which is one of my favourite Cure b-sides because it is so stupidly demented. Mr Pink Eyes was me that night. I wrote the words in Studio Des Dames in Paris after I’d been for a piss and saw myself in the mirror. So Mr Pink Eyes is one of those self-hate names for that bleary pathetic version of myself…
Phil didn’t like it, because he thought it was out of time and out of tune, which it was, but that was what I wanted. It worked.
Lol was playing this humungous four octave set of vibes that were in the studio, and we had to keep telling him what to do. He had these two big mallets, he was hammered out of his brains and about to play on a b-side. Andy was choking with laughter, because he came from a background of proper musicians, and he couldn’t believe we operated this way.
We totally mixed him out on Speak My Language but we left him in on Mr Pink Eyes, hammering away, running up and down, hitting this thing at random. I liked it, but Phil thought it was terrible, totally unmusical. I just thought it was funny.
(Source : not known)