Heady times: From left, bassist Jamie Stewart, guitarist Billy Duffy, drummer Nigel Preston and Astbury
To be young and in ‘Love’
The Cult’s lead singer on revisiting the legendary album he made in his 20s
Song sanctuary
So if the band is not in it for the stroll down memory lane, and they’re only kind of in it for the money, what’s next? A new album?
“It’s a dead format; we don’t have the attention span for albums,” he says. “The idea of going into a studio and spending a year-and-a-half creating a body of work which you put out as a body of work is pointless. By the time you put it out, it’s already been leaked. … It’s a year-and-a-half worth’s of work down the f—ing tubes. We need to put out bite-sized chunks.”
For someone who is performing an album in its entirety that his band made almost 25 years ago, Ian Astbury is adamant that the Cult’s “‘Love’ Live” tour not be seen as a remember-when show.
“I f—ing hate nostalgia,” says the singer. “It f—ing makes me sick.”
So what is he getting out of playing a group of songs from 1985 that bridged psychedelia, hard rock and the first re-awakenings of the ’60s?
“These songs were written in a very earnest way, and the music I listen to now really reminds me of myself when I was 23,” he says. “You have to go away from yourself to discover yourself.”
As the conversation winds on, and Astbury talks about his current self (a persona who has lately been spending a lot of time on humanitarian causes and working in film), we reach the broader subject of bands performing albums in their entirety in the down economy and whether the two correlate.
“Absolutely,” he says. “We’re at the point in our career where we have this body of work, a legacy that we can exploit, in a way. We’re kind of between the old world and the new world in the sense that the music industry is dead, while we’re finding our feet, and we still want to move forward and we still want to be out here performing.”
The Cult initially performed “Love” in full at a show in London last year as a one-off.
“Once we mentioned that we were doing the show, people started throwing their hats in the ring, saying, ‘We’d love to have you here,’ and we thought, ‘OK, why not?’”
Plus that connection to his 23-year-old self has been somewhat of a revelation for him.
“The performances have been pretty intense,” he says. “It’s been a very positive experience.”
The Cult Saturday, 8 p.m.
The House of Blues
36 Lansdowne St., Boston
MBTA: Green Line to Kenmore
$29-$39, 888-693-2583 www.hob.com
Friday, 7 p.m.
Terminal 5
610 W 56th St.
Between 11th and 12th Avenues, New York
$30, 212-260-4700 www.ticketmaster.com
