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In memory of Perry Bamonte, who died at Christmas, ROLLING STONE looks back on his first German concert with The Cure – which many fans remember for various reasons.
In 1990, The Cure played their first concert in the GDR on the festival meadow at the Central Stadium in Leipzig – while it was still standing. The performance took place on August 4th, just two months before reunification (a day later Robert Smith and band performed at the Großer Garten Junge Garde open-air stage in Dresden).
Around 15,000 fans attended the long-awaited show in Leipzig. Perry Bamonte, 30 years old, was new to the band. The former guitar technician was promoted to live guitarist and live keyboardist, also because Lol Tolhurst, who was struggling with alcohol addiction, was finally fired and keyboardist Roger O’Donnell also had to be replaced.
First Cure concert in the GDR
This was Perry Bamonte’s first Cure appearance in Germany. Robert Smith knew about the tough fan base in the GDR. The concert was exceptionally long with 27 songs, Robert Smith paid tribute to his “black community” with special announcements (“this is the goth bit of the set,” he said before “Lament”), and in the GDR the concert was later broadcast on DFF2 – although not as a complete live broadcast, but excerpts with selected songs.
However, the “baseball bat years” don’t seem to have taken a break here either. “Skinheads lurked in the shadows of Cure” is the title of an article in the “Leipziger Volkszeitung” at the time, which appears on the page “cure-concerts.de” can be read.
The “LVZ” reviewer wasn’t all that enthusiastic (“Anyone who expected a pompous, mystical stage show had to be disappointed: the eccentric Brit was simpler than ever and put all his energy into his never-tiring, clear, distinctive voice. While the general mood at the Leipzig festival meadow initially seemed rather subdued, it briefly exploded in the one-hour encore to “A Forest.”)
Violence around the concert
Then the author reports on a violent clash between goths and skins. The bald guys wanted to ruin the party for the concert goers. “The Midsummer Night’s Dream turned into a nightmare for many fans in the run-up to the concert: skinheads lurked at the train station and tram stops to beat up anyone who looked like ‘goths’ to them.”
Finally the officers intervened. “According to the Leipzig People’s Police, a 17-year-old girl from the Federal Republic was injured. For 59 right-wing extremists, the evening ended in the police station. Three investigations were initiated.”
Police and organized attacks
There was another report on the events after the Cure concert “LVZ”. “The skinheads who provoked several clashes with visitors to The Cure’s concert in Leipzig last Saturday had probably prepared their actions for a long time. This is the assessment made by Leipzig’s deputy police chief Horst Böse.”
Apparently the neo-Nazis dutifully picked up the phone to officially announce their action. “As early as July 31st, the police had received an anonymous tip via the emergency number 110 that riots were to be expected at the concert. Accordingly, around 360 police officers were on duty on Saturday. They had to intervene twice before the concert began, when groups of skinheads tried to deny concert-goers access to the festival meadow.”
The concerted action therefore followed a tight schedule. “From around 7.30 p.m., skinhead groups were observed between Sachsenplatz, the main train station and the Natural History Museum. In some cases there were 70 to 80 people together. Shortly afterwards, the groups split up again. Apparently to keep the police on tenterhooks. The aim, according to Böse, was to ambush the concert-goers on their way back from the festival meadow to the main train station, especially so-called ‘goths’.”
From the quotation marks when mentioning the goths, you can tell that the “LVZ” wanted to carefully inform its readers that these darkly dressed people with teased hair also have their own name as a group.
Conclusion: Thanks to police measures, “the security forces brought in a total of 59 people. Some of them were fully equipped for the evening. The police confiscated, among other things, a blank pistol, a gas pistol with ammunition and folding knives. Among those arrested were 37 people from Leipzig and six people from the district.”
Attitude of The Cure
The fact that neo-Nazis are not Cure fans is nothing new. Robert Smith has always advocated tolerance and diversity. In his youth he got into fights with skinheads who naturally hated him, the musician guy with painted fingernails. It is not known whether Perry Bamonte or Smith found out about the massive brawls in Leipzig.