Thursday, November 16, 2017

James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem loves 'Pornography', The Cure, and Lol's drumming


From Noisey:

I've heard you care a lot about the drumming of Lol Tolhurst of The Cure.
 
One of my all time favourite albums is Pornography by The Cure. What a terrifying album, and I'm a massive nerd about his drumming [goes into long but precise description of The Cure's early drum sound is achieved]. When he left the group I was broken-hearted. During a specific era of my life, The Cure and The Smiths held two very different but very important polar feelings for me.

You're clearly an Anglophile. How far back can you trace this?
 
Between the age of 13 and 16 I liked The Clash, Bowie, Echo And The Bunnymen, The Cure, The Smiths, Sisters Of Mercy, Joy Division and New Order. Between 1983 and 1986 most of these bands were big in Britain but were still very, very underground in the US so would play smaller venues. And that overlapped really densely with some of the most important years of my life. Then when I was 16 I had a school trip to England. I fully expected to get off the plane and step into punk rock heaven, where everyone was going to be wearing long trench coats and have crazy hair. I didn't know anything about lad culture or how intensely conservative Britain was at that time. When I got here I was like… "WHOA… OK, now I get it. The Smiths and The Cure were born from how they looked totally not being OK in mainstream British culture." It was a great trip—very important—but it was also a real wake up call.