Three Imaginary Boys

INFO

On 11 May 1979, The Cure released their debut album Three Imaginary Boys.

COMMENTS

Three Imaginary Boys featuring the set the band had been building live since its inception. Robert's favourites were Accuracy - "the most perfect of songs, few words, little music" and Grinding Halt written by Lol and shortened by Robert so it only comprised the start of each sentence about apathy and decay. Another Day was "purely about boredom and repetition", ostensibly about Robert at home and Object was a fake horror, a black joke, Robert's attempt to appear "unwholesome. A pastiche of a sexist song". Subway Song was a story, a typical Smith fantasy: "I had this habit of telling people I knew someone who'd been murdered in a subway. It wasn't true at all."
Meathook was one of the first songs The Cure ever wrote "and probably the worst too. It's an in-joke of sorts, arising from an incident during the Hansa days when an old producer kept complaining that one song had no hooklines". Fire In Cairo was a vivid word painting, and Foxy Lady was a typically irreverent and minimal assault on the Hendrix classic of which Adam Sweeting in Sound International wrote: "Imagine Hendrix without the guitar flash, phasing and stereo trickery and you're left with a sparce, twitching skeleton... You lose the dream and get, instead, an uncomfortable necessity". The title track was the first of many songs based on Robert's dreams.
But, amid all this eclecticism, So What stood out for its sheer-deliberate mundanity. Robert, drunk, couldn't come up with any lyrics so he read the special offer for a decorative cake-icing set off the back of a sugar packet. "I like the music but not the lyrics. Funny - it seemed a good idea at the time." Ten Imaginary Years (1988)