A Love Song For Disintegration
Some movies bring back the fondest memories, if for oblique reasons. I was recently watching Disobedience, a movie starring the two Rachels (Rachel McAdams and Rachel Weisz, that is). It’s about star-crossed lovers, two women whose love for each other won’t be enough to keep them together.
But it wasn’t the plot that triggered my memories. I loved the movie and was curious to see who the director was. As the end credits started, I was pleasantly surprised to hear that the accompanying music was Lovesong by The Cure. I hadn’t heard Lovesong in ages, and as I heard it, I remembered the time, long, long ago, when I managed to get one of the best albums ever despite being flat broke.
It was the summer of 1989. That’s the year of the Tiananmen Square protests, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the release of Disintegration by The Cure. I was in what we call today middle school, but back then it was called “Junior High” and in Spanish, “secundaria.” My school was in the heart of Mexico City, close to the tourist district and the Hotel De Mexico, which would later change its name to World Trade Center.
We students would try to listen to some boring teacher’s lecture, but our eyes would drift to the window and the round top of the WTC. Public schools made you wear uniforms. The middle school version consisted of trousers with the “Prince of Wales” pattern, a white dress shirt, a forest-green sweater, and black shoes. But at age 15 we were all rebels and would try to flout the rules as much as possible. My trousers’ legs were supposed to be straight, but I manually stitched them and turned them into ridiculous-looking skinny jeans. The dress white shirt was substituted for a fashion corrugated shirt; as long as it had a collar, I could hide it under the sweater. And the sweater’s sleeves were always pulled up mid-arm. Hey, we had to look cool somehow.
The guy that sat in front of me in class — I forgot his name — had his own version of the cool uniform: pulled-up sleeves, skinny trousers, shiny black shoes. But he wore a regular, plain-looking white dress shirt.
Disintegration had come out earlier in the year. We didn’t have cable TV at home, but I, like most teenagers, loved watching music videos. In absence of access to MTV, I had to wait a whole week for the next episode of a broadcast TV music video show. One evening they played the premiere of the music video for Fascination Street, the first single from Disintegration. There, on a 19-inch tube screen, was lead singer Robert Smith, dressed in a trench coat, his black hair fluffed to a mess, his lips painted red, his face pale. He was playing guitar and dancing to this obscure, magnetic, absorbing music. The intro lasted for a while until he finally started singing,
Oh it’s opening time, down on Fascination Street, so let’s cut the conversation and get out for a bit
I was blown away. This was the coolest, moodiest, and um, most fascinating music ever. I couldn’t get enough of it. After watching the video (I can still recall it to this day as if I had seen it last night), I wanted to get Fascination Street, oh so bad. The album contained other great songs. Lovesong was the second single, released on radio. It was less obscure, more mainstream, but excellent nevertheless (that’s the song that played so many years later, and so aptly, in the end credits of Disobedience).
I had to get Disintegration, but there was a little problem: I was broke. Not being one to be deterred, I looked for ways to get the money to buy the album. Luckily for me, I had bought two corrugated collared shirts to substitute for my boring school dress shirt. I decided to sell the one that I hadn’t yet worn and still had tags.
The next day, at school, I mentioned to the guy sitting in front of me that I had a pretty cool shirt that he could wear instead of his plain white one. He immediately took interest. The next day I brought it to school and showed it to him. He paid me 15 thousand pesos on the spot. It wasn’t by accident that I sold it for that amount, because the cost of a new album, in those days, was 15 thousand pesos.
After school, I ran to the record store and found Disintegration, both the LP version and the cassette. I was tempted to buy the album, because when you have the album you get to see the artwork in all its glorious detail. But since I wanted to hear Fascination Street over and over, I opted for the cassette version, so that I could play it on my Walkman.
Disintegration is one of those albums which is perfect from beginning to end. I listened to it on Spotify after watching the two Rachels movie. It hasn’t aged a bit. Plainsong is a storm of sound, followed by the long and delightful Pictures of You. The rest of the album fits The Cure’s dark mood perfectly, even with the more upbeat Lovesong. The Cure used extensive intros throughout, atmospheric sounds, wind chimes, pianos, echoing guitar riffs, and Robert Smith’s sad, lonesome voice to give the album that mood that, when you listen to it in the dark, takes you places you’ve never seen.
My favorites are the 7 1/2 minute-long Pictures of You, and of course, Fascination Street. My least favorite is Lullaby, and even that track has hordes of fans.
The day after buying the cassette I brought it to school and showed it to my friend. He said, “You bought it with the money from the shirt, huh?” For some reason, I felt embarrassed, and gave a stupid answer like, “No, I already had it.”
It’s been over 30 years since Disintegration was released, and the music is as pristine as ever. I assumed that my original copy had been long-lost, but I found it three years ago in a cache of old tapes from the era. I had written the date on the inside when I bought it, in pencil. It reads, 25/8/89. August 25, 1989. That was so long ago, and at the same time, it happened just last night.
