Lol Tolhurst, founding drummer of The Cure, has just published Goth: A History and is about to release a new album with Siouxsie and the Banshees drummer Budgie and music producer Jacknife Lee. In celebration of this creative burst, The Quietus asked Tolhurst to share his favorite records that inspired him. Here are a few of them:
The Jimi Hendrix Experience – Axis: Bold As Love
"It was the seed that started me on this path. Without hearing it, none of this would have happened. And that's the thing that connected me to Robert Smith, because he comes up to me in the library one day, and he says, 'Do you like Jimi Hendrix?' And I said, 'Yeah, I'm a member of the UK fan club,' and he said, 'Me too!' So he was the only other person I knew that that liked Hendrix."Can – Tago Mago
"With [Can drummer] Jaki Leibezeit, I always liked that he said that you have to learn how to play monotonously. What I always thought of with the drums was once the rhythm's there, there's this whole space inside of it that you can listen to and focus on with the push and pull. That's what I was always trying for. And you only get that by being minimalist, but precise with your minimalism."Cluster & Eno – Cluster & Eno
"…What I really like about it is that it's happy-sad. That's what I love. Because it's not just like, 'Oh, well, let's take this melody for a walk and we'll come back 10 minutes later.' They've really thought about how this kosmische music works."John Coltrane – A Love Supreme
"It took me a while to get into it, but the more I listen to A Love Supreme, I find there's other layers there. It's like Bowie's Low – there are still things that I'm discovering. In the end, it's like a book; there are some books I've read three or four times and I've learned something different every time. Because your mind changes and it gets different things in and can process it slightly differently every time… I often think to myself, that's the mark of something worthwhile."Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band – Trout Mask Replica
"I had it for a long time and I would approach it every so often. I would think, is my mind ready for this? Can I handle it? And then I'd go, 'Well, next month. Maybe I'll try next month.' Eventually, I got it, I think when I started playing drums because I started seeing how, from what on the outside seems totally chaotic and insane, was very carefully crafted music which was very carefully connected together. And, you know, once you can start to pick those things out in your mind, it becomes very beautiful."
Fertile Ground: Lol Tolhurst's Baker's Dozen (The Quietus)
