That’s right! My first non-fiction book is finally out and you can grab your own copy this very minute! (It’s available through Booktopia, Sanity, QBD, Abbey’s, Rocking Horse Records, The Nile, WH Smith, Amazon, and many more places, though be careful… some outlets insist it’s not available until July or August for some reason.) Keep reading for the story behind the book, plus a piece that didn’t make it into the final version.

On Track… The Cure: Every Album, Every Song was a real labour of love for me. The story began in October 2021, when I came across a Kate Bush book at one of my local libraries; after reading it, I noticed a section at the end advertising for writers. I checked the Sonicbond Publishing site and saw they didn’t have a book about The Cure, so I sent an email pitch with a link to a previous short piece I’d written about the band. While I waited, I amused myself by listing all the albums and songs and putting them in the same format I’d seen in the Bush book, as though my approach was a foregone conclusion! I got the nod in November, signed the contract, and went straight to work. I dived deep into the sea of information about The Cure and fished out a school of flashy facts and trivia, spending long days and nights swimming in this fascinating world. The first draft was wrapped up by January 2022, with a submission date of March 31 for a May release. Easy!

Only… that was when Robert Smith starting talking about the imminent arrival of at least one new record. I discussed the situation with Stephen Lambe, head of Sonicbond, and we both felt it would be best to hold off on publishing until the new music was out. Otherwise, we ran the risk of an LP dropping immediately after the book’s release, which would immediately render it out of date — and my completist nature wouldn’t countenance the thought of anything else! So we sat on it for a while, and I went back to the manuscript every so often to tighten the nuts and bolts and add any new information I’d stumbled across in my long-winded, extensive research. Now and then, Robert would offer an update that contradicted the previous announcements, and eventually, Stephen startled making noises about putting the book out anyway. I’d already exceeded the standard word count as it was, and adding a whole new record might push things well over. But we hung in there… and then, finally, Songs of a Lost World dropped on November 1, 2024, and I got to work on the final section of my book.

That still wasn’t the end of the story, of course. After submitting my final draft (#10, if I recall correctly!) in December, I received the MS back to go over edits and such, and I still had to select photographs for the glossy colour section in the middle of the book. All that was a headfuck in itself — I had to put my new novel on hold, as I was only managing to keep to my plan of writing it every day by crapping out a line or two at the end of the night between editing the Cure book and going to bed — and I will note that the final product is not 100% the way I wanted it (I hope you’re reading this, Strunk and White), but the long process is over now and the book is here and it looks good and all the weird, wonderful details are in there and it’s clearly a passionate work by an obsessive fan who’s also objective enough not to slaver over every move the band ever made nor jaded enough to insist that everything after their favourite career point is crap…

Ahem. I’ve read many other titles in this range, and whilst they’re generally very good, some of the books get by on enthusiasm alone as they were written by people who are neither musicians nor authors. I am both to a notable degree, and therefore I know whereof I speak. Not only can I talk about these songs with authority, I can play many of them on bass and guitar and keys and even drums, and I have performed two of them live: “This is a Lie” with me on acoustic lead and vocals and Marc Swensson on acoustic rhythm — it’s lurking somewhere on YouTube, but I was twenty and it’s pretty ropy, so my lips and links are sealed! — and “If Only Tonight We Could Sleep” at the launch of my book by the same title, with me on vocals and 5-string acoustic bass, Owen Gillett on guitar, Brody Green on drums, and Lande Marie on accordion.

Like a good nerd, I also managed to squeeze in references to many of my other favourite things, such as Doctor Who, Ramsey Campbell, Converge, Idris Elba, Jesu, and Pink Floyd. It was both exhausting and satisfying going so deep into this hole — I honestly thought there was basically nothing you could tell me about The Cure that I didn’t already know, and I was so wrong! With a career as long and heavily documented as theirs, the amount of media to sift through was absolutely daunting. Sonicbond imposed a limit of 65,000 words for this book, which was already an extension of their usual cap, but I could easily have done 80,000 or more.

Would I ever do this again? I’m not sure. I do have a shortlist of other acts I could write about for Sonicbond — and I already pitched one book to them that they’re not convinced would be commercially viable — but none of them have made quite the same mark on my heart as The Cure. So for now, that’s a maybe. But while we’re here, how about some of that exclusive content I mentioned? (Oh, yeah, I know how to work that marketing lingo! Synergise, baby!) I wrote an introduction for the book and then ditched it for being a load of wank that I figured I wouldn’t have room for anyway; prior to publication, I was asked to supply a foreword and heavily reworked it. That piece ended up being replaced with an entirely new one at the last minute — so here, for the first time, I present to you the unseen (except by Meg) original introduction for On Track… The Cure: Every Album, Every Song. Cue the Boris Williams drum roll:

The Perfect Boy: Introduction

The story of The Cure is the story of a boy.

   It’s a long and winding tale, and not always a happy one. There are shadows and flames, ice and tears, bitter betrayal and sugar-sweet blood and sour black ink; people lose themselves in delusions and desperation, in drama, drugs, and death — and the whole tale is not yet told. But for now, at the far boundary of the book you hold, there is a happy ending… or, at least, as much of one as any of us gets. Doors close along the way, as they must, but many more are opened, and they show us wonders. For all the misery that life lays upon our shoulders, the world offers joyful recompense, and these extremes are not opposed but inextricably intertwined. Our boy knows this well, and his gift to the world is the ability to sing these extremes into some sort of sense, or at least solace, his throat and fingers directed by a heart that understands the contrary nature of existence.

   The story of The Cure is the story of Robert Smith.

   He is the boy who wore a dress to school because he didn’t see why he shouldn’t, the boy who flouted institutional learning because it bored his keen and inquisitive mind. He is the boy who had his senses blown open by Jimi Hendrix and David Bowie and Alex Harvey, the boy who picked up a guitar and found a compelling voice of his own. He is Peter Pan’s wistful dream of endless youth, the lingering grin of the Cheshire Cat, the empty bed that holds the cold echoes of Charlotte Makepeace’s womb-warm dreams.

   (He is the kind of person who inspires all sorts of slobbering devotion from those of us who labour in vain toward the kind of aching articulacy he achieves with a single note, a single sigh.)

   Robert is a mass of contradictions: an extroverted pop star and an introverted homebody; a football fan and a philosophy aficionado; the height of awkwardness and the epitome of cool. He’s up and he’s down, deadly serious and drily hilarious, utterly absurd and fully aware of it. He’s now in his sixties but he still wears his hair high and his lips red, even though it makes him look more like your mad lush of an aunt than anyone’s idea of an alternative sex symbol. He posts online in ALL CAPS like a nutty boomer espousing crackpot conspiracy theories, but he has always quietly stood for reason, reflection, intelligence, compassion, and most of all… love.

   Trite as it may sound, love is the reason we’re all here. It’s why we were born, why we strive for closeness and completion, why I wrote this book and you picked it up. It’s a subject that resonates deeply in Robert’s heart and hence, in his art. He fell in love with Mary Poole at the age of fifteen and has been with her ever since; like misery and joy, this boy and this girl are wound together too tightly to ever be parted. He would not be who he is without her, so his story is also hers — just as it is the story of everyone who has played in the band over the years, lending their hands and hearts to make magical music. And their tale, through the two hundred and eighty-eight songs discussed herein, is ours, too. For The Cure’s passion, integrity, and idiosyncratic individuality inspires a deep-seated devotion the world over, regardless of such arbitrary distinctions as age, race, gender, or sexuality. They are their own language — universal, timeless, beloved.

   Yes, this is a love story. One day it will end in tragedy, as all love stories must, but it will echo on forever — and this is how that tale begins:

If you think that’s a bit much, you should read the first draft! It’s even more florid and overblown. But hey, you ask a literary-minded author to write anything, it’s going to shade somewhat on the purple side…

Anyway, while we’re at it, I’d like to show you one of the pictures that didn’t make the cut for the middle section. I have no idea why it was dropped, unless it just didn’t work in the layout — notably, there are no portrait-oriented pictures in it — but I like that it’s a rarely seen image that I hadn’t even laid eyes on myself until a couple of months ago. Here, then, are Robert Smith and Mary Poole in 1982:

Another thing that pleases me about all this is that I was able to put Meg’s name and work on the back cover of a Cure book. (Imagine if you’d known that would happen when we met, dearest!) It’s dedicated to her, too, as such a work of love about a shared passion should be.

Well, that’s enough of that. Go and buy yourself a copy, there’s a good chap/chapette/chapx. Or don’t, I’m not telling you what to do. You might not even like The Cure. I understand, really. Some of my best friends don’t like The Cure, and I respect them just as much as anyone else. Ha ha!

In other news: I’ve had another reprint accepted for translation and publication in Polish; I’ve had three drabbles picked up for publication in a newsletter, acquired by an editor who told me about the very personal relationship she has with The Dark Matter of Natasha; I’ve had a short story accepted for a queer-themed Australian anthology (go, Team Ally!); and I’ve supplied a blurb for a great UK publisher who’s putting out a book by a friend. Also (more stuff added since I delayed this post a couple of weeks until the release date): I saw Frankenhooker on the big screen (a film I sampled extensively on some early four-track demos) as well as Pink Floyd at Pompeii and Army of Darkness with Meg, and gig-wise, I attended the superlative Chelsea Wolfe‘s latest Australian tour with Melbourne’s intriguing Aphir as support. Oh, and I met Lloyd Kaufman, legendary Troma figurehead, who startled me by namedropping “Effigy in Flagrante”!

(And just before I posted this, I learned that I was awarded Employee of the Month for my ongoing work in Ticketek box offices! Not bad, eh?)

Many more things in the pipeline, as always. Stay cool, folks, and keep it real. Real cool.

MRD

Listening:

Paegan Terrorism Tactics, Acid Bath — A Saucerful of Secrets, Pink Floyd — The Circle and the Blue Door, Purson — She Reaches Out to She Reaches Out to She, Chelsea Wolfe — Birth of a New Day, 2814

Reading:

Witchcraft for Wayward Girls, Grady Hendrix — The Golden Girls: A Cultural History, Bernadette Giacomazzo — Video Palace: In Search of the Eyeless Man, Nick Braccia & Michael Manello (editors) — Secret Dead Men, Duane Swierczynski — Never Flinch, Stephen King

Watching:

Doctor Who Series Fifteen — The Golden Girls — Pink Floyd at Pompeii MCMLXXII — Paddington in Peru — Army of Darkness