— David Hepworth
Forty years and counting, numerous hit singles, million selling albums, a consistently popular concert attraction, a still-devoted worldwide fanbase, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame: David Hepworth foresees a bright future for The Cure but he couldn't possibly imagine what was to come for Robert Smith and his band with an ever changing lineup. In truth, it would have been much easier at the time to imagine groups like Squeeze and XTC enjoying that type of career arc instead. A Surrey-based three-piece fronted by some young bloke who yawns rather than sings? Give over!
Hepworth's forward-thinking praise is as much a credit to the critic as it is to the band. The trio had just two British singles and an album up to this point so there wasn't much to indicate that there were "many classics" in their future. Sure, they were already getting a fair share of acclaim (Red Starr considered them to be a "cross between The Police and The Banshees" while making debut LP Three Imaginary Boys his 'Almost Pick of the Fortnight') but they could just as easily have been a post-punk flash in the pan like The Adverts. Buzzcocks had been killing it as the finest English singles band since T-Rex and they had already just about dried up. So what made The Cure so special?
One could tell as early as 1978's "Killing an Arab" that there was something to this group. The Fall may have named themselves after a Camus novel but you'd never know it listening to their music; to base a song around the French author's extraordinary book The Stranger was an entirely different proposition. The punks may not have been universally moronic but they all played up to it and weren't about to go name dropping a book. The song's title would eventually come back to haunt them but that says as much about pop's lack of literary awareness as anything else. Being able to quote a book is one of many assets that Smith brought: his often overlooked guitar playing and distinctive voice being but two others.
With positive reviews and the fact that "Boys Don't Cry" is one of their signature numbers, you might wonder what Hepworth means about "Jumping Someone Else's Train" being their first record to sound "finished". I don't know if I completely agree with him but it's understandable. Plenty undoubtedly love "Killing an Arab" for its rawness but others may be turned off for sounding like it was recorded on a cheap tape recorder in a musty old loft. "Boys Don't Cry" is a much more professionally made record but it gets a bit repetitive after a while and could do with a chord change and/or some lyrics that elaborate on its theme. "Train" has the ideas of the latter with the polish of the former which indeed makes it a fully-realised Cure effort. (This ignores many of the tracks on Three Imaginary Boys, which Hepworth may not have been entirely familiar with)
"Jumping Someone Else's Train" may have been a turning point for The Cure but it doesn't have quite the wow factor anymore. They would go on to cut far better singles, including follow up "A Forest" a few months later. Nevertheless, it's a fascinating piece that puts their early work into perspective. Their most punk-like number, the amphetamine rhythm section of Michael Dempsey and Lol Tolhurst is allowed a share of the spotlight, something that Smith's various subordinates over the years would often be denied. The Cure would soon expand to a quartet and would eventually become a five-piece as they entered their most popular period in the late eighties but this trio in 1979 may have been their most powerful unit. One would be tempted to ponder what they would have been like had they carried on in their Smith-Dempsey-Tolhurst iteration if not for the fact that lineup flux is a vital part of the Cure story.
The 'see also' section of the song's Wikipedia page has a link for 'List of train songs'. The locomotive is there in the title — as well as giving its POV of a journey from London's Victoria Station to Brighton in its promo — but it's not a train song the way "Homeward Bound" by Simon & Garfunkel or "Driver 8" by R.E.M. are. It's really about bandwagon hopping and following trends while neglecting one's own path. Few in pop have steadfastly gone their own way like Robert Smith, as he would show throughout the eighties and far beyond.
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Also Reviewed This Fortnight
Dave Edmunds: "Crawling from the Wreckage"
"This man should be elevated to a peerage," Hepworth concludes. His nibs seems to be as fond of "Crawling from the Wreckage" as he is with "Jumping Someone Else's Train" and with good reason. The third single from album Repeat When Necessary, it has a tougher sound than predecessors "Girls Talk" and "Queen of Hearts" and Edmunds' sometimes weak voice seems to be filled out and sped up not unlike Elvis Costello or Nick Lowe. He was a good five to ten years older than most of his circle of British pub rock/new wavers (which, in addition to Costello and Lowe, also included Graham Parker, this song's composer) and was incapable of writing his own material but he could give them all tips on how to take command of a record. Far better than "I Hear You Knocking" (seriously, six weeks at number one?), it fully deserved to be a hit in its own right. It failed, as did that campaign for a peerage — at least so far.
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