The Cure's Close To Me has a harrowing back-story

31 October 2024, 15:00

Robert Smith has explained the rather creepy story behind the classic 1985 single… and how the song has a sinister theme that doesn't reflect its upbeat sound...

Close To Me is one of The Cure's most famous hits, but did you know it was inspired by Robert Smith's childhood bout of chicken pox?

The singer added the lyrics to the 1985 track at the "last minute" as he wasn't sure the band had produced anything musically that would pair with the words he'd written. “Originally it was a much more upbeat song,” he recalled.

He told Q magazine: “The words were actually about this sense of impending doom that I used to get"

The Cure - Close To Me

“I had chicken pox when I was really young and it started there.

"I used to get these horrible, nightmarish visions of this head that used to hover in a chink of light that used to come when the bedroom lights were turned off and the door was just ajar."

"The shaft of light that came from the hallway used to illuminate this patch of wallpaper and it would come to life and prophesise doom to me through the night whenever I put my eyes in that general direction.”

This vision gave The Cure’s Head On The Door album its title, which was recorded after a hectic period in which Smith was also the guitarist in Siouxsie And The Banshees… and had recorded an LP with his own side project The Glove.

“It came back to me when I was writing the album. I was running myself into the ground a little bit and I started to suffer. I suddenly also started to get the same hallucinations, which was very odd.”

The Head On The Door also included the hit In Between Days.

The Cure - In Between Days

"The song was essentially about those two things, but at the last minute I tried singing them over this jaunty bassline and drum pattern and it just clicked."

Smith has also claimed that the title Close To Me came from the idea that the song was being sung as the protagonist was getting into bed at the end of a bad day: “I never thought tonight could ever be this close to me.”

Video director Tim Pope famously interpreted this idea by having the five-piece band packed into a tiny wardrbobe… which was perched perilously on the edge of a clifftop. The wardrobe inevitably tips over and falls into the sea below.

The video was followed up with a look at what happens next when the song was remixed in 1990:

The Cure - Close To Me (1990 Version)