from the book 'Cured - The Tale of Two Imaginary Boys' (Lol Tolhurst)
One of the first gigs he got us was supporting Wire at Kent University in the campus dining hall. We figured that we would need a better vehicle to get as far as Canterbury, so we enlisted one of my brother's friends, the strangely named Jim Crow. He was the only one of my brother's acquaintances that my mother had banned from our house, because he insisted on wearing a white uncured cowhide jacket, which stank to high heaven. Anyway, Jim had a truck, and he was willing to drive us to the Wire gig and
back for a few pounds. We figured it would be fine.
We arrived at Kent University, and as we were walking backstage I encountered Lewis, Wire's bass player, in the hallway. The thing that struck me immediately was that he had a very, very normal short haircut until you saw the back of his head, which had one long rattail hanging down the back. That freaked me out: the appearance of normality subtly subverted. I never forgot what it said to me about challenging people's perceptions about what's normal or not.
The Wire gig was a revelation to all of us in many respects. They seemed so much further along the path of their creativity than we were feeling. That point wasn't lost on Robert. I feel that day was when the germ for the minimal sound that came to fruition over the next few years was planted in our psyches. Not as a slavish copycat sound, but rather just the idea that we could deviate from the straight-ahead rock-and-roll standards and utilize a different set of rules to describe our musical journey. That definitely interested us. After all, wasn't that what punk was about-a call to revolution, a changing of the old guard?
I remember watching Wire play, all monochromatic attire with Colin Newman, Wire's vocalist, holding a black Synare synth drum in his hand and occasionally hitting it with a single drumstick. They had just released their second album, Chairs Missing, which was a lusher version of their debut, Pink Flag. The simplistic arrangements with the icy-sounding synthesizer were very enticing. We took note. Our performance was strong, but we knew now there was more to do. It was a revelation to us, especially Robert and myself.
As incredible as the gig had been, we nearly didn't get home alive that night. Jim had decided to put the truck's very large spare tire unsecured on a little shelf above the passenger compartment. A sharp turn on the way home dislodged the tire and, but for the grace of the universe, The Cure story might have ended that night. The huge lump of rubber missed our necks by inches.
