Page "The Cure" Paragraph 8

In 1982, The Cure recorded and released Pornography, the third and final album of an " oppressively dispirited " trio that cemented the Cure's stature as purveyors of the emerging gothic rock genre.

Smith has said that during the recording of Pornography he was " undergoing a lot of mental stress.

But it had nothing to do with the group, it just had to do with what I was like, my age and things.

I think I got to my worst round about Pornography.

Looking back and getting other people's opinions of what went on, I was a pretty monstrous sort of person at that time ".

Gallup described the album by saying, " Nihilism took over.

We sang ' It doesn't matter if we all die ' and that is exactly what we thought at the time.

" Parry was concerned that the album did not have a hit song for radio play and instructed Smith and producer Phil Thornalley to polish the track " The Hanging Garden " for release as a single.

Despite the concerns about the album's uncommercial sound, Pornography became the band's first UK Top 10 album, charting at number eight.

The release of Pornography was followed by the Fourteen Explicit Moments tour, where the band finally dropped the anti-image angle and first adopted their signature look of big, towering hair and smeared lipstick on their faces.

The tour also saw a series of incidents that prompted Simon Gallup to leave The Cure at the tour's conclusion.

Gallup and Smith did not talk to each other for eighteen months following his departure.