Some nice photos of The Cure live at the Muziekcentrum Vredenburg in Utrecht 31 May 1984 and at Pinkpop 1986. Here are the links:
On this Sisters of Mercy fanpage there are lots of other rare live photos, like from Siouxsie & the Banshees at the Seaside Festival (Belgium) ’85 and at the Jaap Edenhal in Amsterdam on 23 April 1986.
Thanks to My Dominion NL for putting his impressive live archive online!
The Cure at the Thialf IJsstadion in Heerenveen, on 6 May 1989, was the only Dutch date on The Prayer Tour. I think it was announced in the newspapers sometime in March 1989. Special guests were The Mission and support act Shelleyan Orphan. The latter selected by Robert Smith himself for the whole tour.
Thialf, an indoor ice stadium which had been opened in 1986, was quite an unusual venue for a pop concert. According to an interview published in music magazine Oor at the time, The Cure wanted to play at a different location than the previous ones they were booked at in the Netherlands. They weren’t happy with the last show at the Rotterdam Ahoy’ Sportpaleis on the Kissing Tour ’87. Robert said there were too many occasional visitors who spoiled the atmosphere. I don’t recall that – I thought the second date in Rotterdam ’87 was fantastic, but okay, it was the first gig I ever went to. They wanted real fans who were willing to travel to see them. Heerenveen is located in a ‘rural’ area in the North of the Netherlands and could easily be combined with two other stops on the Prayer Tour, the cities of Hamburg and Bremen in Germany. The Cure’s show at Thialf was the first ever concert there. Maybe The Mission was also on the bill to attract more people to this far away and relatively big (capacity about 18.000) venue.
The Cure played four times in the Netherlands during The Top Tour in 1984. Three shows in May: on 30 May 1984 at an ‘Eindexamen’ Festival (celebrating high school graduation), held at the Maaspoort in Den Bosch and two concerts the next day at the Muziekcentrum Vredenburg in Utrecht. Here they played two shows on one day, at 4:30 pm and at 10 pm. At the end of August (30th) The Cure returned to Holland for a one-off date at the Jaap Edenhal in Amsterdam.
Recently some very cool (and to me unknown) pictures from The Top Tour in Holland were published online. They are from Utrecht and Amsterdam.
Update January 2015: if you scroll down you can also find some photos from The Cure’s show at the Ahoy’ Sportpaleis in Rotterdam on 27 November 1985.
Thanks to the person(s) who took/posted these photos!
In July 1981 the Dutch pop magazine Muziek Expres published an interview with The Cure, which was probably taken sometime in April or May 1981. The Cure were on a flying visit to Holland to record a mime TV performance for the new single Primary. I guess this has to be the Star Club performance, which was on YouTube for some years. The interview focuses on the upcoming tour, which was going to be the famous circus tent tour (exclusively for the Netherlands) during the last ten days of June 1981.
Below is the literal English translation of the original Dutch text written by Erik Timmerman.
[Contents]
The experiment of The Cure
If it is up to The Cure, the group will become the Toni Boltini of the pop music. The upcoming European tour is going to take place in a circus tent. The highly honoured audience reads the ins and outs on page…60
On Saturday 14 December 2013, Dutch national TV broadcasted a documentary about Jan Smeets, ‘Mr. Pinkpop’. He is one of the founders of the festival. Jan has been organizing it since 1970. In this documentary Jan and others, including Leon Ramakers of Mojo Concerts, were being interviewed about the Pinkpop 1986 story.
After the badly attended editions of 1984 and 1985, Jan engaged the services of Mojo Concerts, booker for The Cure in the Netherlands. It was Mojo who came up with the ideas for a later curfew, a bigger stage and The Cure to headline the festival. So it seems the credits for the successful 1986 edition have to go to them as well.
The documentary (YouTube link) shows the original footage of the opening song Shake Dog Shake (at approximately 52 minutes), which has not been broadcasted since 1986. As they use exactly the same imagery as has aired back then, it seems that no other footage has been preserved. Which of course is a pity.
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.
Continue reading “Hitkrant August 1980”
The European leg of the Pornography Tour started in Rotterdam on 5 May 1982. From 5 to 10 May The Cure played six dates in six cities in the Netherlands, before proceeding to Belgium, Germany and France. For a change, most of the Dutch shows were booked at rather large classical music venues, like De Doelen in Rotterdam and De Vereeniging in Nijmegen. The last concert in Holland, on 10 May 1982, was at a classical concert hall as well, the Muziekcentrum Vredenburg in Utrecht.
For many Cure fans, Pornography is their favourite album. But the tour promoting that album wasn’t that successful at all.
The Cure’s performance at the Pinkpop 1986 festival has to be one of the best concerts they ever played in Holland. The timing couldn’t be better to headline this legendary open air festival in Geleen, in the south of the Netherlands. New Wave-subculture was huge in Holland. The year before The Cure had released The Head On The Door album, which produced two Top 40 hits Inbetween Days and Close To Me. The LP had peaked at number 3 of the Dutch album charts and stayed in there for 25 weeks. Then, in May 1986, The Cure released the singles compilation Standing On A Beach, preceded by a re-release of the single Boys Don’t Cry, which both also did very well.