"Lol Tolhurst has now spent more years outside of the Cure than within the band that he formed with Robert Smith when they both were still at school. He was that young 15-year-old boy who played drums while his buddy Robert was on the piano. Together they played their first gig ever at their school in Crawley at the end of the year. And he's also that very boy who grew up travelling the world, playing from the smallest venues to the biggest stadium audiences ever.
While some artists may fly too close to the sun and are brought down to the ground when success hits along with its collateral damages such as drugs, suicide, nervous breakdown, Lol survived it all, but drank all of his energy down the bottle, losing his own soul, then becoming nothing but the shadow of himself. If not killing him, alcohol took everything from the person he was at 15, leaving Robert Smith with no choice but to exclude him from the band in 1989, right after the release of "Disintegration", a record that he was barely involved in.
Twenty-seven years later, twenty-seven years without any alcohol at all, Lol is totally clean. Clean in his mind, in his life, in his own projects. He's saved. He escaped. Since his departure from The Cure, Lol has released an album under the Presence moniker back in 1993 (with a second album released in 2014), then three more albums with Levinhurst, the project he's been successfully leading with his wife Cindy Levinson since 2004. Lol gave himself a new life, both in human and artistic ways.
Nowadays, he states that he really wouldn’t mind rejoining The Cure, as the band has not only been a big part of his life but he himself is a genuine part of The Cure."
Read the interview at Premonition - English / French.
(Thanks Frank)
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Beautiful interview. I admire Lol For his strenght and For the incredible sense of friendship wich emerges from his words. I really hope For a reunion. He deserves it.
ReplyDeleteThey had a reunion a couple of years ago when he joined them on stage at a reflections (I think) show.
DeleteI Know. I was at rah for the reflections shows. With reunion I mean something definitive and not just for a bunch of gigs.
ReplyDeleteGet him back in the band. Nobody's exactly sure why but their output is better when he's in.
ReplyDeleteGreat interview. I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall (or perhaps an unobtrusive, random passenger within earshot) during the lengthy conversation between Lol and RS while they were heading to Sydney from London. I'd heard about Levinhurst years ago but never had a chance to check them out until recently. Their music is quite good, it appears to be very underrated. It reminds me of new age (a favorite genre) but edgier.
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