The ‘Hitkrant’ is a Dutch pop music magazine, which already exists as of 1977. It is targeted at teenagers between 12 and 16 years old.
In August 1980, Hitkrant published a small article about The Cure. As far as I know, it is the first publication about the band in this magazine. Since then, several articles followed, not all of them being very serious.
The reliability of the contents of the August 1980 article can be questioned as well. Below is the literal English translation of the Dutch text.
THE CURE doesn’t join in the game – The ideas of Robert Smith
The Cure from England is being celebrated by a select group of loyal fans. The group creates smart music, which is often hard to get through, and therefore the ‘New Wave’-label, attached by press and marketing people, doesn’t stick. When Johnny Rotten gave up the battle with himself, new music was being made by bands who got their inspiration from the music of the sixties. Robert Smith of The Cure doesn’t join in that game. He creates music, that’s a fact, but he has distinctive ideas about it.
We seem to live in an era in which technology more and more predominates. It won’t last long until a simple press on a button will enable the producer to add a perfect third voice, without Patty of Luv’ being around [Luv’ was a very famous girl pop trio in Holland at the time. One of their singers, Patty, had an argument with the other two when this magazine came out. Hence the reference, which actually has absolutely nothing to do with The Cure, LF]. The Cure already protects itself against this development by making music which cannot be copied. Music with a very complex structure, by which (and that’s very special) songs with hit potential, as witness the single ‘A FOREST‘, are not being overlooked.
Scared
It begins in 1976, when Robert Smith establishes the four-piece band ‘EASY CURE‘, that rehearses so long until the complicated songs are ‘drummed into their heads’. Scared of being not understood by the audience, on stage Easy Cure varies the songs of Robert with hits of DAVID BOWIE and JIMI HENDRIX. The audience has to grow slowly with the band, you cannot throw them in at the deep end like that.
Robert: ‘Bowie and Hendrix have never been an influence on me. I cannot even think of a group that has meant anything. I work like this: I listen to a record and play it fifty times in a row. In the end you don’t hear anything anymore, you just feel literally a cacaphony coming over you. That’s the way my music has to sound, but then even after one play of the record.’
Offer
Influenced by the classical music composer KHATCHATURIAN, The Cure releases the LP ‘Seventeen Seconds’ at the end of ’79. Before that, already two records that flopped had been released on the self established label Fiction Records. Robert: ‘We had been given a nice offer from the record company Hansa, but before we could go into the studio they wanted to discuss with us the strategy we should follow first.’
‘You can’t do that to me’, I told them. ‘At this moment I make this kind of music, but the next day I can suddenly be interested in Walt Disney-film music. I mean, for God’s sake, how can I be creative when I’m being confined in a straitjacket?’
(original Dutch text by Mick Boskamp)