How hopeless the first lines of the song are: “It doesn’t matter if we all die,” sings Robert Smith in “One Hundred Years,” the song about 100 years of war and genocide. The Cure were now considered the “forerunners of gothic rock”, they were considered pure horror. Three people on the album cover of “Pornography”, shadowy, smeared make-up. Instruments, guitar, bass, synthesizers, drum machines that sounded more equal than anything before or after. There was space on the album for many seconds in which only the military-like beat of the machine can be heard. On no other Cure work are there so many pauses, so many attempts, so many solo attempts by the instruments.
Like many influential albums, “Pornography” was considered a failure after its release in May 1982. LSD-tested Robert Smith, 23, was considered finished. Drummer Lol Tolhurst said: “We wanted to make the ultimate intense album. I don’t remember exactly how, but we succeeded.” As a lyricist, Robert Smith, who always somewhat dismissively dismissed his own lyrics as fantasies, was extremely imaginative but also specific in the eight songs.
The Blind Man
“I Can Never Say No To Anyone But You,” goes “The Figurehead,” a song about his addictions. “In The Hanging Garden Wearing Furs and Masks” is so simply worded and yet sounds as hard as the beginning of an EA Poe story. “A Strange Day” deals with Smith’s often-used fear of meeting branded people who drive him crazy: “Give Me Your Eyes That I Might See / The Blind Man Kissing My Hands”.
Of course, “One Hundred Years” remains a highlight. An associatively written poem that doesn’t want to decide between sterile and bloody: “Just a Piece Of New Meat In A Clean Room / The Soldiers Close In Under A Yellow Moon” or “Meet My Mother / But The Fear Takes Hold”. It’s ironic that with “One Hundred Years” on Pornography, the album about his personal hell, Smith released one of the greatest, perhaps the only Cure statements on war politics.
Find the cure
This could be admired on the last tour in 2016: the beat of “One Hundred Years” started and there were recordings of soldier marches and rocket tests on the video screen. “Pornography” has long since broken away from its creator and become a commentary.
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The record was less death-wishing than it seemed. Maybe life-affirming. The last words on the album are “I Must Fight This Sickness, Find A Cure.” Rethinking the band, The Cure.
Just six months after “Pornography,” Robert Smith released his first real pop single, “Let’s Go To Bed.”