Formed in 1976 by school friends Robert Smith, Lol Tolhurst and Michael Dempsey, The Cure was one of the first post-punk bands to inject pure pop back into post-Pistols rock. Throughout a career filled with paradox and evolution, endless personnel changes, and side-projects including stints with Siouxsie and the Banshees and The Glove, iconic frontman Robert Smith has remained alive to changes in the music scene. Now, in their third decade, they remain relevant and connected, when many of their contemporaries are reduced to nostalgia packages and worse. This full-length, extensively researched biography of the band, and of Smith - one of rock's most enduring figures - is the most up-to-date telling of a never-ending story; it also analyses in depth the 'goth' subculture and its relationship with The Cure.

Robert Smith

Biographies & Memoirs

Richard Carman

Arts & Literature

Independent Music Press

<p>The Smiths were the best British band since The Beatles. Their shimmering, muscular, guitar-driven pop remains the barometer for everyone who looks back at the 1980s with affection. In a decade that arguably produced more poor pop music than any other since the 1950s. The Smiths shone like a beacon and inspired a generation of indie guitar bands, and their influence continues undiminished to this day. Musically, The Smiths were a league ahead and guitarist Johnny Marr was the driving force behind their revolutionary sound. Manchester-born Marr proved to be a craftsman and explorer without equal, a guitarist who rode the longest highways to find the most perfect sounds and who built the gilt-edged frames in which the word-pictures of co-writer Morrissey sat so perfectly. After The Smiths, Marr continued to inject beautiful, sophisticated guitar into some of the best music of the period: The Pretenders, Kirsty McColl, Billy Bragg, and Talking Heads all benefited from his incendiary input. More recently with his band Johnny Marr and The Healers, and the critically acclaimed album "Boomslang", Johnny remains as influential and important as ever - a true guitar hero.</p>

Johnny Marr

Arts & Photography

Music

Blake Publishing

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Books by Richard Carman