9/1/1985 Record Mirror (9-12-85 London, England Show Review)
Live: The Cure, Wembley Arena
"This is cozy," says Robert Smith as he peers out into the vast arena. It's become the biggest bore in the biz recently as journalists and musicians have mooned, "The Cure at Wembley - my God, who do they think they are?" and so on. The answer is simple. The Cure think they're popular - and they're right. Wembley Arena is packed to its lofty rafters with Robert lookalikes and pop fans and the band aren't about to let their surroundings put a dampener on the proceedings as they launch into 'The Baby Screams'.
The sound is excellent, though to see anything more than Simon Gallup's outrageous hairstyle, those of us on the arena floor are forced to stand on tiptoe on our seats. Through 'Primary' to Robert's own favorite, the languid and rather beautiful 'Kyoto Song' and on to the wildly acoustic 'The Blood', the band seems determined to play everything you could possibly imagine (excepting 'The Top') and all's going fine with Robert resembling a cuddly Smith rag doll.
Someone pulls his strings and he bounces and bops this way and that. "That should have been number one," he says after 'Charlotte Sometimes'. "And so should this one, it's called 'Inbetween Days'." By now, they're bopping the curious hybrid 'Morrisey meets the twist' Cure dance, right across the arena, and even when someone cocks up 'The Walk' and things begin to sound decidedly shaky it doesn't seem to matter too much (all of those hours in the pub instead of rehearsing - eh Bob?).
Through 'One Hundred Years' and the obligatory 'A Forest' and it's all over. But only of a minute or two, then the Motown claps of 'Close To Me', suffering from a lack of brass, herald the band's return. They go into the 'greatest hits' section of the show with 'Boys Don't Cry', sounding incredibly fresh, '10.15 Saturday Night' and 'Killing An Arab'. A cacophony of noise ends the show and it's all grins and back into the dressing room to name names on the cock-ups.
The Cure have proved that if you've got the songs and the following, you can come out winners in this aircraft hangar of a venue. You don't need to rely on stadium bullshit. Now, who's for Wembley Stadium next year?
