Written by: Chris Morley

Most couples surely have at least one shared band and for my wife and I, it’s The Cure.

One of the most vivid musical memories I’ll ever have is of Robert Smith, middle aged and alone with his guitar as the sun went down over the Reading Festival site, launching into a droning take on A Forest as I stood with the girl I’d found with no such peril.

Perhaps it was fate, but after slipping in the trenches around the stage, she hauled me up, an act which convinced some of our fellow revelers that this was a proposal. Whether our first date really was on a Friday I have no recollection, but seven years hasn’t brought with it an itch–amidst the often dull weekday routine centering around doing the mundane but necessary to provide, it seems most often what gets me through is the thought the week will end and I can soon forget all about Monday, Wednesday, Thursday too….

It’s this sense of trying to find a little magic amid the mundane that is so often overlooked.

Yes, he may (by his own admission), mostly write while depressed (if you haven’t already, look up the Mary Whitehouse Experience with Rob Newman as Smith putting stereotypically Cure-ish spins on the likes of The Laughing Policeman).While accurate to an extent, as the saying goes, it isn’t all doom and gloom. Unless, of course, you happen to be listening to Pornography, which is entirely reflective of one of his blacker periods.

Ironically given that that follows Faith, it would seem he had none, saying in an interview once: “I had two choices at the time, which were either completely giving in [committing suicide] or making a record of it and getting it out of me.” Luckily he chose a sort of music therapy, as many no doubt had before him and continue to do now. Having felt at close quarters the alienation of having nobody to love when all around me everyone else seemed to find it easy (particularly during senior school/college/university), the opening salvo of The Head On The Door retrospectively summed it up perfectly:

Go on, go on,

Just walk away

Go on, go on,

Your choice is made

Go on, go on,

And disappear

Go on, go on,

Away from here

I would wonder whether I was destined to get so old I too would want to cry more out of loneliness than concern for anything else. Even the “normal” way of trying to meet that special someone floundered, so with some trepidation the decision was taken to venture online. After initial attempts quickly proved failures I met Kathy, shared interests and a few dates, proving enough to convince her to ask me out properly, nerves and the absolute conviction that I’d be met with a firm “no thanks” preventing me from taking the lead.

In the intervening years we’ve been through a lot, but the ups and downs take absolutely nothing away from the fact that, much as old Bob was convinced that Pornography would be it for himself and his band but was proved wrong, time has proved me happily incorrect. However cynical age has rendered me there is at least one person who can convince me that whenever they’re alone with me they make me feel like I am fun again.

And if she’s reading this, in hope that music really be the food of love:

“However far away

I will always love you

However long I stay

I will always love you

Whatever words I say

I will always love you

I will always love you”

On which note may you and your dear one always land hand in hand.