Lol Tolhurst

Sobre

Drummer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Lol Tolhurst has had a lasting impact on the currents of punk, alternative, and independent music, first as a founding member of the Cure, and then by remaining active with subsequent projects like Presence, Levinhurst, collaborations with other artists and work released under his own name. Tolhurst first played drums, then keyboards in the Cure between the band's 1976 inception and when he left the band in 1989. After various projects in the decades that followed, Tolhurst worked with Budgie and producer Garret "Jacknife" Lee on an album entitled Los Angeles, which included guest spots from U2's The Edge, harpist Mary Lattimore, LCD Soundsystem's James Murphy, and many others. Los Angeles was released in 2023.Tolhurst was born in Horley, England in 1959 and met his future bandmate Robert Smith when he was just five years old. The two became friends and played in various amateur bands together throughout their young adulthood, eventually landing as the Cure in 1976, after first going by Easy Cure, after a song written by Tolhurst. He acted as the drummer on the band's first four albums, moving from post-punk edginess on their earliest work like 1979's Three Imaginary Boys into the foundational goth shadow worlds of albums like 1981's Faith and 1982's Pornography. In this time Tolhurst sometimes played keyboards on select tracks, but following Pornography, his role in the Cure shifted from drummer to full-time keyboardist, with those duties diminishing throughout the '80s as his struggles with drugs and alcohol got in the way of his creative life. He left the band in 1989 following limited contributions to the sessions that resulted in the band's landmark album Disintegration. In the '90s Tolhurst briefly played in a band called Presence and in the 2000s he formed new band Levinhurst with his wife Cindy Levinson, while also dabbling in soundtrack work. Levinhurst released multiple albums and toured throughout the decade, and in 2011, Tolhurst reunited with the Cure to play several concerts where the band ran through their earliest albums front-to-back. In 2016, Tolhurst's memoir Cured: The Tale of Two Imaginary Boys was published, recounting his time in the Cure. In the 2020s, he and former Slits/Siouxsie and the Banshees drummer Budgie began a podcast focused on post-punk's ongoing evolution. This venture led to musical collaboration as well, with the two working with a host of guest musicians on 2023 album Los Angeles. The original songs were produced and mixed with Jacknife Lee, and different tracks included contributions from Arrow de Wilde, Isaac Brock, the Edge, and other guest vocalists and musicians. ~ Fred Thomas