The Cure – Boys Don't Cry (Staff Pick Rare!)

Title: The Cure - Boys Don't Cry
Year/Genre/Sub-Genre/City: 1980, Alternative, Post-Punk New Wave, Crawley, England 8/26
Condition: New (BC) | Members: Robert S (59' - ), Michael D (58' - ), Lol T (59' - ) | Producer: Chris Parry
Cultural Facts:

1. Childhood Friends: Robert Smith and Lol Tolhurst met as children at school in Crawley, years before either imagined making records. Their first bands grew from the same circle of teenage friends, meaning The Cure began less as a professionally assembled group than as kids who had known each other since childhood trying to figure out music together.

2. Emergency Guitarist: During a 1979 tour with Siouxsie and the Banshees, guitarist John McKay suddenly quit the Banshees mid-tour. Robert Smith volunteered to play guitar for both bands every night, performing The Cure's set and then returning to the stage with Siouxsie. Smith later said the experience opened his ears to a darker, more experimental way of making music and profoundly affected The Cure's direction.

3. Album Lore: Boys Don't Cry was created primarily for the American market by reshaping The Cure's 1979 debut Three Imaginary Boys, changing the track list and adding early singles such as “Boys Don't Cry.” The title song turned the simple childhood command that boys should hide emotion into one of Robert Smith's recurring themes, vulnerability from a singer who would eventually become an unlikely icon for generations of outsiders.