The Cure frontman Robert Smith has always discussed his guiding influences and musical inspirations. In his early days with The Cure, he would regularly cite the likes of David Bowie, Nick Drake, and Jimi Hendrix as key inspirations for how he wrote his songs.
As the band were bolstering their discography when they first got going in the 1970s, they would play covers of their favourite 1960s and early ‘70s rock icons and even included a cover of ‘Foxy Lady’, a tricky track to finger on the fret by any measure, on their debut LP Three Imaginary Boys.
Adding to this Smith’s tribute to David Bowie at the latter’s notorious birthday bonanza, you have a singer who is not afraid to heap praise on those who came before him, and put music’s past under the microscope like any old muso in the pub.
Smith would even later claim Bowie to be the only person who ever made him feel starstruck. “Only once,” he said, “Which was when David Bowie asked me to play at his birthday party concert in Madison Square Garden. When I walked on to rehearse ‘Quicksand’ with him, it felt like I was dreaming. When he started playing guitar, I thought, ‘This guy’s been my hero since my early teens and it’s just the two of us on this huge, big stage. How the fuck did that happen?’”
But it wasn’t just the icons of the past that shaped Smith’s sound. Smith would later admit that they had been greatly inspired by The Psychedelic Furs when The Cure were tirelessly working on their 1982 masterpiece of darkness, Pornography, and wanted to make an album that was instrumentally similar to their eponymous debut album.
The Cure built upon their trademark post-punk sound throughout the 1980s and brought the genre to the masses with Smith’s accessible and catchy compositions. All the while, Smith was a sponge of sorts, soaking in influences from all corners of the musical landscape. By the late 1980s, a new genre characterised by the heavy use of distortion pedals, shoegaze, had become increasingly popular. A noted lover of musical evolution, Smith became intoxicated with the new sonic atmospheres being created.
As champions of the same dour and gloomy alternative music, shoegaze groups seem to have received a fair share of attention and respect from their post-punk forefathers. In the early 1990s, Smith met the members of Ride when the Oxford outfit supported The Cure at the Great British Weekend event in 1991.
While they may have appeared on different ends of a musical spectrum, they found a kinship in one another. The two groups became close and admired each other’s work greatly. The Cure had been a key influence on Ride’s short musical journey, but it seems they also had quite the impact on Smith, too, over the 1990s and beyond.
The track that drew Smith to Ride the most was ‘Vapour Trail’ from their 1990 seminal debut album Nowhere. The track has become one of the guiding lights in shoegaze music and a classic anthem of ’90s alternative music.
Smith expressed his particular admiration for the song in the 2014 shoegaze documentary Beautiful Noise, which looked at the ongoing influence of the sneaker-staring genre, including legends such as Cocteau Twins, The Jesus and Mary Chain, and My Bloody Valentine. Smith said of the track, “‘Vapour Trail’, it’s one of the best fifteen-second intros of all time.”
Beginning with a distant Cure-like riff that feels like a summer from years ago, the track wastes no time establishing an atmosphere. Then, a beat before you expect it, the vocals glide over the top, feeling much more present in the mix, creating a gorgeous juxtaposition. Immediately, it has an effect on you, and a powerful one at that. It changes the room you’re in within two seconds.
Smith was such a fan of the track that he contributed two remixed versions of ‘Vapour Trail’, entitled ‘Vapour Mix’ and ‘Trail Mix’, in 2015 to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Nowhere. Shoegaze as a genre has clearly had a huge impact on some of The Cure’s later work, but seemingly no bands more so than Ride. ‘The Hungry Ghost’, appearing on The Cure’s 2008 album 4:13 Dream, has a particularly familiar intro.
They may not be direct copies, but when listening to ‘The Hungry Ghost’ by The Cure and Ride’s ‘Vapour Trail’ side by side, it does become easier to hear the likeness.
