Rotterdam Harbour Documentary 1981

This may not be common knowledge, but The Cure once officially contributed music to a documentary about the port of Rotterdam. It could very well be that the band themselves have forgotten about this. The story goes that two Dutchmen working on the film took a boat to England, probably in the winter of 1980/81, and had a meeting at The Cure’s Fiction label offices in London to discuss music for the documentary. For a fair price they bought a tape of new music by The Cure to use.

At that time the band were working on the Faith album. It turned out that the tape for the documentary included songs that later ended up on that album. It is not easy to hear, but my guess is that these are advanced (instrumental) demos. Possibly almost final backing tracks. The songs in question are The Funeral Party (at approx. 5:30), The Drowning Man (at approx. 14:15) and All Cats Are Grey (at approx. 19:00 and 21:20 throughout the end credits). The Drowning Man seems to be in a different key or tempo. But that may have been done by the filmmakers.

As for the documentary itself, it is a kind of promotional film for Rotterdam’s harbour. People in various positions at the port talk about their work. With today’s eyes, it may seem a little strange how this particular music could be relevant to the subject of the documentary. But I think it fits the era well. The documentary was broadcast on Dutch public television. You can watch it (or at least part of it) here.

 

Rotterdam Ahoy 1992

The Wish Tour ran from mid-April to early December 1992, during which The Cure performed 111 concerts. I think it was the biggest tour the band ever did dedicated to one album.

When they arrived in Europe in the autumn, The Cure had already performed 65 shows across the UK, North America, Australia and New Zealand that year. Not surprising if tour fatigue had set in a bit by then. It seems like you can kind of see that on videos of these shows. Bassist Simon Gallup would drop out of the European leg for a couple of weeks due to illness. Shelleyan Orphan bassist Roberto Soave would temporarily replace him. But in Rotterdam Gallup was still there. However, the band would play slightly shorter shows by Cure standards, at least in the Netherlands. Just over two hours, with fewer songs in the encores.

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Rotterdam Ahoy 12 October 1996

On Saturday 12 October 1996, The Cure opened the European leg of their Swing Tour at the Ahoy’ Sportpaleis in Rotterdam. It was almost exactly four years after their last visit to the Netherlands. Quite a long hiatus for a band, especially in those days. A lot had changed in between, including the musical landscape. Some thought The Cure were the wrong band at the wrong time in 1996 (not me of course).

The changes also became apparent during the Swing Tour. Some shows were cancelled or moved to a smaller venue. Actually, I think Rotterdam was the first date on the tour only because of the cancellation of other shows (Budapest, Munich, Strasbourg?).

The only Dutch Swing Tour concert was far from sold out, while on the previous Wish Tour the band played two packed shows at the same venue (capacity approximately 10.000). This time around they covered the upper stands of the Ahoy with curtains. While the ticket mentioned otherwise, there was no support act.

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Rotterdam 5 November 1987

When I started this lazy blog one of the ideas was to write down the memories of my first ever Cure concert. Naturally this became a long-term plan. Now that it is already 30 years ago (the gig), I thought I should actually do it before things get even blurrier. So below is how I remember it or at least an attempt to reconstruct this life-changing event 😉

August 1987. It was summer holiday when I read an announcement that The Cure would be visiting the Netherlands on their upcoming European tour. They would be performing two shows at the Rotterdam Ahoy’ Sportpaleis: on Wednesday 4th and Thursday 5th of November. The article said that in case of sufficient interest there would be an extra show on November 6th, which by the way didn’t happen.

It was also the first mentioning and picture I saw of keyboard player Roger O’Donnell, who had just joined the band.

There was no doubt – I had to go there! I hadn’t been able to attend the Pinkpop festival the year before, because I was way too young. I was still young. But I was not going to miss The Cure another time. Actually, it would also be my first concert ever by any band…
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Circus Tour 1981

Tent2Probably the most exceptional tour The Cure did in the Netherlands, if not ever, is the Circus Tour 1981. Exclusively for the Dutch leg of the Picture Tour promoting the Faith album, The Cure chose a radical alternative to clubs or other concert venues. The band travelled zig-zag through the Netherlands performing their show under a circus tent with a capacity of about 2.000 people. During ten days the tent was being broken down after each gig, driven by trucks to the next town at night and then built up again to be in time for the show the following evening. There has been quite some (local) media attention for this short tour. I thought it would be nice to gather this information to create a sort of tour diary. Below is an attempt to do this. Of course I’m happy to add things if you have more stories, memories, pictures, clippings, anything to share…
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Hal 4 Utopia Rotterdam 1980

Rotterdam WatertorenOn 2 November 1980, The Cure played the final date of their tour across Western Europe, for the second time around that year. It was in Rotterdam at the Hal 4 Utopia.

Not much is known about this gig. There is no recording circulating and, as far as I know, no pictures ever popped up somewhere. No other information to be found than a scan of the advert. But last December, Dutch online music magazine Muzine.nl published a ‘listening test’ with two members of the Dutch alternative rock band Spasmodique. They were being confronted with a couple of songs and were asked to give their comments. One song was The Cure’s Jumping Someone Else’s Train.

Singer Mark Ritsema commented: ‘The Cure has been more or less the most important influence on our first band Torpedos, the precursor of Spasmodique. With Torpedos we were once support act for The Cure at Hal 4 in Rotterdam. Robert Smith did the lights for us then. I still remember that we were quite impressed by their second album Seventeen Seconds.’

Guitarist Arjo Hijmans: ‘This is weird. Now that we’re talking about it, I even remember the date of that performance at Hal 4. It was 2 November 1980. And I remember that Reinier (Rietveld, the drummer)’s mum drove us with our complete backline in her Tin Snail….hahahaha.’

Thanks to Hans for the link.