Tuesday, April 21, 2020

lol tolhurst's cured

A lot of people have asked me what I think of Lol Tolhurst's memoir Cured, which was published, I guess, three or so years ago and which I scored for not much money a couple of weeks ago in one of those cheap book pop up shops in town I shouldn't go into because of coronavirus.

Well, I'll tell you. Like a lot of books, I could have really fixed this one up, and made it a lot less cliched and a lot more interesting, but maybe that would have been less than true to its author. The first thing that bugs me is Tolhurst's constant sniping at the British new towns - The Cure are (is?) from Crawley, and he doesn't miss a chance to slag off Crawley for boringness. Jesus man you were living in Britain in the 70s, that's a beyond-boring situation. Don't blame Crawley and in any case, Crawley (and your alcoholic father and your indulgent mother and your creative friends, etc) made you and from what I can tell you may not be a multimillionaire but it seems likely you don't have to work, you just work for pleasure (I haven't heard any of LT's post-Cure work but I kind of want to).* 

I would also like to say that LT does not give himself any easy passes in detailing his alcoholism and plainly he can see it kind of ruined his life for a few decades there (unless, like Crawley, shrugging it off made him the man he is today). 

He doesn't go into intricate detail about his court case against the Cure, probably because it's too painful (he certainly has a lot to say about how bad he feels about it). 

Alright I'm not writing a formal review or anything, I didn't take notes while I was reading, and also, I have started drinking a bit of whisky so I am finding it hard to type, so that might do it. I think ultimately not a bad light read, some funny bits, some sad bits, good insights into the band (such as it is - i.e. let's be fair it hasn't really been a real band for a long time, if you know what I mean) and he seems like a decent enough guy but lay off Crawley ffs. 

*Understand that in dealing with me, you are dealing with someone who recently bought the only Echo and the Bunnymen album to not feature Ian McCulloch. 

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