The Cure’s landmark gothic rock album, Pornography, closes with perhaps the group’s most harrowing and difficult track to date. It opens with a cacophony of voices whose words are near-impossible to make out, creating a claustrophobic atmosphere that mirrors Robert Smith’s drug-induced schizophrenia...
[Sample 1: Robin Whitting - reversed]
Well, in just a moment, we finally put BBC 2 to bed, but, a reminder that there's a treat in store for opera lovers starting tomorrow evening with a sparkling performance from the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden of one of the world's best-loved Romantic operas: Pavarotti [?] Puccini at five-past-eight tomorrow. Well now there's the last look at the clock this eve, and the time's just winding its way round to eight minutes to one. If you're still up and about and want a bit more entertainment, a reminder that our colleagues over at BBC Radio are still on the airwaves. On Radio 2 in eight minutes Sheila Tracey - that's Radio 2's "Tiger Tim" - takes over with the Truckers' Hour, and then at 2 o'clock You and the Night and the Music with Tim Gudgin through 'til five. But for now, on behalf of everyone here on BBC 2, this is Robin Whitting-
[Sample 2]
Yeah, a green sedan. No, the licence plates were covered with mud. They took tyres and gas. (Tell him they took all the cash.) They robbed the cash register too. I got word that the police had them bottled up... but they slipped through again. (I wonder if the baby is born yet.) Poor Joan. They're being blamed for every crime committed in the country
[Sample 3: Germaine Greer and Graham Chapman]
[Incomprehensible]
[Verse 1]
A hand in my mouth, a life spills into the flowers
We all look so perfect as we all fall down
In an electric glare, the old man cracks with age
She found his last picture in the ashes of the fire
[Verse 2]
An image of the queen echoes round the sweating bed
Sour yellow sounds inside my head
In books and films and in life and in heaven
The sound of slaughter as your body turns
[Refrain]
But it's too late
But it's too late
[Verse 3]
One more day like today and I'll kill you
A desire for flesh and real blood
And I'll watch you drown in the shower
Pushing my life through your open eyes
[Outro]
I must fight this sickness
Find a cure
I must fight this sickness
Pornography was written by Simon Gallup & Lol Tolhurst & Robert Smith.
Pornography was produced by The Cure & Phil Thornalley.
The Cure released Pornography on Tue May 04 1982.
Robert Smith revealed in a 1989 fanzine that the background noises in the song are:
Various television voices of people who happened to be on and annoying during that period of recording – Germaine greer is the only one I can remember by name.
Robert Smith shared in a fanzine:
The last song, and in fact the last song I wrote for a while, is fueled by the same self-mockery, self-hate, that burned in “One Hundred Years”, but it is, if only very slightly, a little more hopeful than the others… I am escaping (I escaped) by blaming someone el...