Lol Tolhurst interview: The Cure founder on The Music That Made Me (inc David Bowie, Pink Floyd)

Lol Tolhurst was just five years old when he met classmate Robert Smith at Catholic primary school in Crawley. Soon fast friends, they first played on stage together aged 14 at a school end-of-year show. Just a few years later, the pair (along with Martin Creasy) would release their first single as The Cure.

Intellectual and emotional, as adept at heartrending, rain-swept guitar epics as perfectly fizzing (yet deceptively deep) pop bangers, few bands have had greater influence on the musicians who came after. Their beautiful darkness would spearhead goth (though, traditionally, no goth worth their salt accepts the label) and transform alternative rock. On drums and then keyboards through The Cure’s rise to global significance, Tolhurst shaped their distinctive sound until his departure during 1989’s Disintegration.

But it all started in Smith’s parents’ suburban home. “Music, for us, was a social thing more than anything,” remembers Tolhurst. “We would go around to Robert’s house, and just rehearse for three days a week, but a lot of time we were having a laugh, just talking. Also, it was a way to avoid going to the pub with all the skinheads.”

Now 64, Tolhurst has returned to those early ways for his new record, made with fellow goth drumming royalty Budgie (of Siouxsie and the Banshees) and Irish producer Jacknife Lee. The result – Los Angeles, featuring guest spots from James Murphy, The Edge, Bobby Gillespie and Modest Mouse’s Isaac Brock – is the exciting and pleasing sound of elder statesmen who remain open to the world.

The author of one of the truly great rock autobiographies (Cured: The Tale of Two Imaginary Boys) and an insider’s guide to the genre he helped invent (this year’s Goth: A History), as well as the host of a podcast examining the legacy of punk (Curious Creatures), Tolhurst has thought more than most about where his sound came from.

“A friend of mine, James Murphy from LCD Sound System, says when you start making music, you listen to the bands that you like and you try to write a song like them. And because you’re not them, you always get it wrong,” Tolhurst says of his influences. “The way you get it wrong, is what becomes your sound.” Here, then, are the ingredients that formed The Cure, the music that made Lol Tolhurst.

00:00 Lol Tolhurst: The Music That Made Me
01:19 David Bowie singles out a new Starman
03:21 Secret psychedelics
04:23 The Cure's best record, falling apart… and getting back together
06:31 A playlist for my demise
08:05 Colin Blunstone and the power of vulnerability