Cured: The Tale of Two Imaginary Boys

England’s most celebrated goth group, The Cure, was initially formed by Robert Smith and Lol Tolhurst, two starry-eyed teens drunk on spirits and the music sweeping Britain in the late seventies. Tolhurst served as the band’s drummer and keyboardist in its formative years and contributed lyrics along with chief songwriter/visionary Smith. In Cured, a biography of his life and his relationship with Smith, Tolhurst divulges his heartbreaking, near-fatal struggle with alcoholism. As a young man, Tolhurst watched the dramatic means for isolation that alcohol provided for his own father before innocently experimenting, then falling from social to extreme drinking. Because of his alcoholism, he was removed from the band at the height of its international success, which was followed by unsuccessfully levying a poorly executed lawsuit against his former bandmates. The real victory in Tolhurst’s story—his being able to salvage a life after hitting rock bottom several times—has little to do with money and fame, but rather the power of a lifelong friendship and its immeasurable effect on healing.