The Cure‘s Robert Smith has shared the band’s plans for a full world tour in 2025, likely stretching into their upcoming 50th anniversary as a band.
READ MORE: The Cure – ‘Songs Of A Lost World’ review: a masterful reflection on loss
To mark the release of long-awaited 14th album ‘Songs Of A Lost World‘, the alt-rock icons are set to play two London shows – one for BBC Radio 2 on October 30 and another intimate album release show at Troxy on November 1 – but have no further tour dates in the diary. Now, in a new and long-ranging interview filmed by the band for fans in conversation with Matt Everitt (shared via unlocking their ‘Songs Of A Lost World’ website), Smith has shared when fans can see them on stage after that.
The same interview saw Smith reveal that The Cure have another new album that’s “virtually finished” – with a third new record also on the way. Speaking about the band’s plans for a full world tour, the frontman said he’d be aiming to complete one of the LPs before hitting the road again in 2025.
“We’ll start up again next year,” said Smith. “Seriously, I have to finish the second album. We were going to play festivals next year, but then I decided that we weren’t going to play anything next summer. The next time we go out on stage will be autumn next year.
“But then we’ll probably be playing quite regularly through until the next anniversary – the 2028 anniversary! It’s looming on the horizon. The 2018 one, I started to think about in late 2016, thinking, ‘I’ve got a year and a half, it’s easy!’ And yet I still didn’t manage to get there in time. Now, I’m starting to think, ‘2028, I must get things in order’; so [that’s] the documentary film and things like that.”
Smith continued: “I’m 70 in 2029, and that’s the 50th anniversary of the first Cure album. That’s it, that really is it. If I make it that far, that’s it. In the intervening time, I’d like us to include playing concerts as part of the overall plan of what we’re going to do. I’ve loved it; the last 10 years of playing shows have been the best 10 years of being in the band. It pisses all over the other 30 years! It’s been great.
“Not having a new album for all that period of time, we’ve played 130 or 150 different songs because we’ve turned into a live band that draws on the catalogue. We can go out and play shows, and we can play two hours of 30 songs and completely different songs each night. There’s a freedom to that.”
READ MORE: On the cover: Robert Smith tells us about 40 years of The Cure
The band celebrated the 40th anniversaries of their formation and first albums throughout 2018 and 2019 – including playing to over 65,000 fans at Hyde Park before their stately headline set at Glastonbury and a special run at London’s Meltdown Festival, which Smith also curated.
The Hyde Park and Meltdown shows were captured and released on the double DVD, THE CURE 40 LIVE – CURÆTION-25 + ANNIVERSARY – with the Hyde Park film directed by long-time collaborator Tim Pope (who made 37 of their iconic music videos as well as the now legendary The Cure In Orange live film). Smith and Pope have long been working on a definitive documentary about the band. Speaking to NME in 2019, Smith said the project was still a work in progress and wanted to wait to “incorporate what we do next into the story of The Cure.”
“That will definitely happen; that’s an ongoing thing,” said Smith in the new interview. “It’s the preliminary stuff; all the digitising. Once we do it, it will be done really quick. Essentially, it’s my perspective on everything that I’ve done with the band. I’ve been hanging fire, really. While everyone else makes their version of events public, I’ve just waited.
“If I do make it to the 50th anniversary, that will be the summing up of essentially what I’ve done with my life: things I don’t normally talk about, footage, recordings and things that wouldn’t normally see the light of day. If you’re interested in the band, it will be interesting. It’s a historical piece. It won’t be salacious in any way, but it will be revealing.”
Smith went on to compare the film that of The Beatles’ mammoth Peter Jackson-directed Get Back documentary, adding: “I wish it could have been another 10 hours long!”
“The thing I’m doing with Tim is more like that,” said Smith. “It’s more of an overview from me of what it was like to be in the band, and this is what it meant.”
The Cure’s Robert Smith, 2024. Credit: Sam Rockman.
On the subject matter of the documentary, Smith told NME in 2019: There are so many misconceptions about the band. They’re misconceptions from my point of view, and I suppose that’s what I’m getting at. When we do it, it will be The Cure from my perspective. It will be what I think the band has been, what we’ve done, what my role has been in it, how I’ve done it and why I’ve done it.”
“There is no such thing as a ‘definitive’ history of a band. There are facts and figures, but each one of us has completely different memories just about what’s happened this summer alone. We were talking about a show from last week and each one of us had a completely different version of events. None of them are invalid.
“Obviously to me, there’s only one true story and that’s mine but I’m taking it that it will be a perspective. But, I don’t want to look back on something until I’ve finished doing it and I don’t quite feel ready to do that yet.”
The latest comments comes after Smith also recently explained the long wait for ‘Songs Of A Lost World‘ and meanings behind recent singles ‘Alone‘ and ‘A Fragile Thing‘, as well as revealing how he intended for The Cure to come to an end at one point in 2018, and how he thought dynamic ticket pricing was “a scam” and “driven by greed“.
In a five-star review of ‘Songs Of A Lost World’, NME concluded: “Merciless? Yes, but there’s always enough heart in the darkness and opulence in the sound to hold you and place these songs alongside The Cure’s finest. The frontman suggested that another two records may be arriving at some point, but ‘Songs Of A Lost World’ feels sufficient enough for the wait we’ve endured, just for being arguably the most personal album of Smith’s career. Mortality may loom, but there’s colour in the black and flowers on the grave.”
The Cure release ‘Songs Of A Lost World’ on November 1.
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