The Cure has always been a consistently high-quality operation, and their run of great albums in the Thatcher years, starting with 1980’s Seventeen Seconds and ending with Disintegration, rivals the output of anyone during the same period. As the biggest-selling album the Cure ever put out as well as the first without significant contributions from Lol Tolhurst (album credits notwithstanding), Disintegration occupies a special place in the Cure pantheon. It’s the capstone of the Cure’s triumphant progress, one might say.
The success of Disintegration was surely in no small part due to the Cure’s extensive Prayer Tour. May, June, and most of July was devoted to Europe and Great Britain, then (after a month off) they jumped the ocean for a North American tour that started in Giants Stadium on August 20, 1989.
In this intriguing footage, which was excavated last summer, the Cure runs through sections of several key songs off of the Disintegration (“Plainsong,” “Pictures of You,” “Closedown,” “Last Dance,” “Fascination Street”) as well as “A Night Like This” off of 1985’s The Head on the Door at Bray Studios in Berkshire, England.
Press play and let the gothy goodness wash over you…...
Previously on Dangerous Minds:
‘I’m alive. I’m dead’: The Cure in Concert, 1984