Lol Tolhurst: The Goth Optimist
In 1976, in a Crawley schoolyard, Lol Tolhurst and his friend Robert Smith started the band that became The Cure. He played drums, then keyboards, through Three Imaginary Boys, Seventeen Seconds, Faith, Pornography, The Head on the Door and Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me. In 2019 he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with the band.
Fifty years on, his instrument is the story. He has written two books, Cured: The Tale of Two Imaginary Boys and Goth: A History, co-hosted the Curious Creatures podcast with Budgie of Siouxsie and the Banshees, and built a touring life out of talking to rooms full of people who grew up on his records. On September 19 he brings that to the Tally Ho Theatre in Leesburg, Virginia, for the Crossroads Music Festival: an intimate conversation about the music and stories behind The Cure, questions from the floor, and a book signing. He is not playing a set.
News From This Interview
Adam got several things on tape that have not been reported anywhere else.
- The third book has a title: The Goth Optimist. Provisional, he says, but he thinks it will stay. Out early next year. He describes it as “self help for goths,” and it closes a trilogy: Cured was how the band started, Goth: A History was where it all came from, and this one asks what you are supposed to do with everything you learned. He plans to talk about it at Crossroads.
- Curious Creatures is on hiatus at around 100 episodes. Budgie is doing musical theater in Berlin. A new podcast is coming, built around the new book.
- He wrote a play. Two years of work with two friends, one from the concert world and one from theater. A dark, immersive comedy that does not need a theater to stage. A preview may happen soon. First play of his life.
- New music from Sausalito. The owner of 2200 Studios, the old Record Plant where Fleetwood Mac recorded, turned up at his Santa Cruz event and invited him in. He wrote a couple of songs with his son Gray and went and cut them.
- He is touring England and France this year as a trio with Gray on guitar and vocals and Ollie Shearer on bass, playing early Cure material, after a European run with Miki Berenyi of Lush.
Episode Highlights
- Why he said yes to Crossroads. Music and children’s charities. He already works with a charity that buys instruments for kids who cannot afford a drum kit or a guitar, on the theory that you are funding the next generation of musicians. “I’m a father, and having a child nowadays is a complicated process. I’d like to help parents out.”
- Legends Live and Local, the mentorship program he launched in Santa Cruz in February 2026, pairing artists of his generation with working local bands. His own son has two bands and a full time job, and Lol has watched how much harder the math has gotten.
- What The Cure had that no band gets now. Four or five gigs a week for months on end, enough to pay for gas, a place to sleep and food. An advance they spent on paying themselves a weekly wage instead of fast cars. “Half the battle is getting the space to be able to do it.”
- The internet is a blessing and a curse. Before it, you had to turn up in someone’s town. The band became “the local band” in places 5,000 miles from home, and he still meets those people, along with their kids, at every event.
- Drums to keyboards and back again. His sister commandeered the family piano and became a music teacher, so he got the drums. He has three kits at home now, plus a fully electronic kit for the road that sounds so much like the acoustic one he sometimes switches it off to prove to himself it is not.
- Seeing The Clash at sixteen. He and Robert Smith went when the band played their hometown with Suicide on the bill. Watching them, he thought: I can do that. Five years earlier, watching Emerson, Lake and Palmer, he had thought the opposite. “Punk really was our blues.”
- Skateboarders. The biggest surprise of four years of podcasting. Pro skaters in their early twenties skate to The Cure, and told him it is the rhythms. He had never made the connection, and ended up making a video with Mason Silva.
- The father and son rehearsal. Before committing Gray to the tour, Lol booked a small studio in San Francisco just to find out whether the two of them could read each other on stage. An hour in, he started to smile.
- On a friend who blew one note on opening night. “Nobody except me and you noticed that. The audience loved it. But you have to hold yourself to a higher standard, because if you don’t, it’s not going to work.”
- On the stage at 67. “If I step on stage, I think my heart rate goes down a little bit.”
Crossroads Music Festival 2026
Friday September 18 and Saturday September 19, 5 PM to 10 PM, downtown Leesburg, Virginia. Sister Hazel headlines, with Grammy winning saxophonist Lil’ Maceo and more than 30 local and regional acts across multiple venues. Lol Tolhurst is at the Tally Ho Theatre on Saturday the 19th.
The festival is produced by BENEFIT, a 501(c)(3) coalition of musicians and community leaders in Loudoun County. Every dollar goes to five Loudoun County children’s charities: the Northern Virginia Diaper Bank through A Hand Up NOVA, Dulles South Food Pantry, Loudoun Education Foundation, Loudoun Youth Inc., and The Salvation Army of Loudoun County.
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