The Cure are recognised as one of the most significant bands to have emerged over the past four decades. Usually associated with frontman Robert Smith’s trademark big hair and smeared lipstick, they have long been the alt-pop colossus it’s OK to like; wowing fans and critics alike with multi-million selling LPs such as 1989’s Disintegration and spawning countless imitators along the way.<\/p>\n
Back in their earliest incarnation in the late 70s, however, The Cure were just one of thousands of naive young bands to spring up in the wake of punk. Yet from the start, guitarist\/vocalist Robert Smith, bassist Michael Dempsey and drummer Laurence ‘Lol’ Tolhurst knew they were going to embrace the ongoing DIY revolution on their own terms.<\/p>\n
“We could acknowledge the irritant capacity of The Clash and Sex Pistols, but we didn’t particularly want to sound like them,” says Michael Dempsey. “For me, the early Cure sound was pure nihilism. We belligerently stripped away everything we loathed in music and found we weren’t left with much: minimal bass and drums, economical guitar and, for our age, reasonably oblique lyrics.”<\/p>\n
The Cure’s first phase began in earnest after they signed to Polydor offshoot Fiction in the autumn of 1978. They quickly issued classic debut 45 Killing An Arab and their flawed but underrated debut LP, Three Imaginary Boys in May 1979, before Simon Gallup replaced Michael Dempsey on bass late that same year. Across 1980-82, The Cure recorded Seventeen Seconds, Faith and Pornography; three astonishing but relentlessly bleak LPs which for many long-term fans still define the band’s oeuvre to this day.<\/p>\n
For a band who would create music of such soul-baring intensity, however, The Cure’s first steps were innocent enough. Long before punk, and still barely into their teens, Smith, Dempsey and Tolhurst first played together as Obelisk while attending Notre Dame Middle School in their home town, Crawley, West Sussex in 1972.<\/p>\n
“As I remember it, Obelisk was a loose collective of Robert, Lol, myself and others in middle school,” Michael Dempsey recalls. “We were united by the fact that Robert and I both had electric guitars and the desire to escape the rain-swept playground. We were allowed in the music room to rehearse and went unmolested by pupils or teachers, the latter mercifully uninterested in what would now be a highly-praised co-curriculum activity.”<\/p>\n
“We were listening to T.Rex at this time,”Lol Tolhurst chips in. “I recall Robert had a copy of Electric Warrior, but we all liked lots of stuff. Michael was fond of Leo Kottke. Robert and I both liked Jimi Hendrix. In fact, in my early teenage years, I slept under a lifesize poster of Jimi on my bedroom wall.”<\/p>\n
Stumbling around in search of their own sound, the boys formed a more serious band, Malice, when they later attended St Wilfrid’s Comprehensive in Crawley. In addition to Smith, Dempsey and Tolhurst, Malice featured two very different guitarists, Marc Ceccagno (who quickly departed to play jazz-rock) and Porl Thompson.<\/p>\n
“Porl was the local guitar hero and he was the brother of the girl I was going out with,” Lol Tolhurst remembers. “We convinced him to join us and we did a few shows, one with a guy called Martin Creasey, a journalist from the local paper, as the singer. It was awful, though I did get to wear my studded black catsuit just the once. It was 1976, after all!”<\/p>\n
Stuck out near Gatwick airport, Crawley may have been away from the action, but it was close enough to London for Malice (now renamed Easy Cure) to realise that things were changing dramatically in 1977.<\/p>\n
“I think up until the punk thing we wanted to play, but there was no real model for what we were doing, because the mid-70s was mostly still prog-rock and disco,” Lol Tolhurst muses.<\/p>\n
“In January 1977, though, we were rehearsing in Robert’s parents’ annexe three times a week and I remember reading Melody Maker and seeing an advert for The Stranglers playing at the Red Deer in Croydon, so we got in the band van and went to see them. I remember Robert and myself dancing wildly to them up at the front, fuelled by much lager. It changed everything, because we could now sense a way forward. After that, we saw The Stranglers fairly regularly at the local college, then the sports centre and other exciting bands at the same venues, including The Jam and The Clash.”<\/p>\n
Encouraged by the new punk attitude, Easy Cure continued, but their line-up fluctuated during 1977, with vocalists coming and going until Robert Smith took over as permanent frontman late that same year.<\/p>\n
“We had quite a few who tried out, most memorably a school friend called Peter O’Toole,” says Michael Dempsey. “As we worked our way through the small pool of singers in Crawley, though, it became obvious nobody was suitable. At this point, Robert volunteered to sing as well as play guitar. His reasoning was entirely just: he felt he could be no worse! Along with Lol, he was also writing the lyrics to the early songs, so he felt he could communicate them better than anyone else.”<\/p>\n
“We were only learning how to write songs,” he continues. “Early on some camefrom extended instrumentals or arrive more fully-formed. I seem to remember we all felt we’d created something special with Boys Don’t Cry. That came around the time of the Queen’s Silver Jubilee in 1977 and was first played live on a golf course in Earlswood in Surrey.”<\/p>\n
Just before Easy Cure became The Cure, the fledgling band had their first run-in with the business end of the music industry. This was initiated by an advert published on the back page of Melody Maker.<\/p>\n
“(German label) Hansa had delivered Boney M to a grateful public, so I guess they needed to capitalise on this unexpected success,” says Michael Dempsey wryly. “They ran this advert – girls on a motorbike, as I recall – with the copy ‘Do you want to be a rock star?’ Well, I suppose we did, so we sent them a demo – which they ignored. Then they saw a photo of us and we were immediately summoned to Morgan Studios in Willesden, north-west London (ironically where Three Imaginary Boys was later recorded) and ordered to play before the camera.”<\/p>\n
“At our audition, they seemed much more interested in the way we looked than how our songs sounded, which should have been a red flag,” adds Lol Tolhurst. “But what did we know? We were young and naive. We recorded some of our songs and some of their suggestions, like Bowie’s Rebel Rebel. They’d had some success with (manufactured popsters) Child and perhaps they thought we could be like them, but when they heard us they said, ‘Not even people in prison would like this!’ Thankfully, Robert was smart and asked if we could get the rights back to the songs we had recorded with them – including Killing An Arab and 10.15 Saturday Night – and they agreed, so we left with the rights to our songs intact. Thank goodness!”<\/p>\n
Changing their name to The Cure, the band continued minus flamboyant lead guitarist Porl Thompson, who left to attend art college. The new and significantly more minimal-sounding Smith, Dempsey and Tolhurst line-up quickly recorded a demo at Chestnut Studios in Haslemere, Surrey in May 1978, which eventually found its way to Polydor’s ambitious and energetic A&R man Chris Parry. Already respected for having signed The Jam, the New Zealand-born Parry was at this time setting up his own imprint (to be named Fiction) under the broader Polydor umbrella.<\/p>\n
“We didn’t have any other offers other than Fiction’s, as I recall,” admits Michael Dempsey. “I think Robert sent out tapes with a tea bag and digestive biscuit in the package. We were universally rejected or ignored elsewhere. I do remember Virgin turning us down by letter.”<\/p>\n
“After we had an initial meeting in London with Chris Parry, he came to a gig we had at The Lakers Hotel at Redhill, in Surrey,” Lol Tolhurst continues.<\/p>\n
“Afterwards, we went to The Home Cottage, the pub across the street, which had devastatingly strong cheap beer, so we thrashed out the start of a deal with him with much sloshing of best bitter. We thought Chris was quite smooth, but he didn’t take himself too seriously, which endeared him to us somewhat. The wonderful thing about our early relationship was that because there were more of us than him, we could usually argue our point until he acquiesced!”<\/p>\n
Due to distribution issues while Parry got Fiction up and running, the first 15,000 copies of The Cure’s haunting debut 45, Killing An Arab, actually appeared on Pete Stennett’s hip Small Wonder label in December 1978, before being reissued by Fiction in February 1979.<\/p>\n
Despite its controversial title (which dogged the band and later led the song to be erroneously cited as a racist anthem by several American DJs when The Cure’s Standing On The Beach singles collection was released in 1986), Killing An Arab’s subject matter actually related to Algerian-born existentialist writer Albert Camus’ 1942 novel The Outsider (L’Etranger).<\/p>\n
“Both Robert and I studied English Literature at school to A-level,” Michael Dempsey reveals. “I don’t clearly recall Camus being on the reading list, though it may have been. I know Evelyn Waugh’s A Handful Of Dust was and we briefly considered calling the band Bratt’s Club, from this book. If The Outsider wasn’t on the English list, it may have been on the French one (as L’Etranger), but it was one of those books we all read. Everyone likes to think of themselves as an outsider at that age, but Robert’s great skill was distilling his impression of the book and turning it into such a powerful song.”<\/p>\n
Summoned back to Morgan Studios, The Cure recorded their debut LP, Three Imaginary Boys, across the winter of 1978-79 with Chris Parry producing and the studio’s young resident engineer, Mike Hedges, behind the console.<\/p>\n
In retrospect, the record’s sparse, brittle new wave sound suits its best tracks, such as 10.15 Saturday Night, Fire In Cairo, the staccato, XTC-esque Grinding Halt and the atmospheric title song. But, at the time, The Cure weren’t happy with the results. Robert Smith has since frequently expressed his dissatisfaction, for one thing suggesting Chris Parry’s production radically altered the band’s sound.<\/p>\n
Michael Dempsey: “Three Imaginary Boys took about 10 days to record and mix, and it sounds the way it does because there was a clear hierarchy in recording then: producer, engineer, band – in that order.<\/p>\n
“Like many novice producers, Chris had a particular affection for the instrument he’d played himself (the drums, in this case), so a lot of the recording process seemed to be spent on drum sounds. We also had rather rudimentary equipment: HH amplification, Robert’s Woolworth’s Top Twenty guitar and a Guild bass. Chris made us change amps to Roland, which of course changed the sound we were familiar with and had made a virtue of live and in previous sessions.<\/p>\n
“We did Peel sessions which perhaps captured better the spirit of the times,” he continues. “Yet when I listen to Three Imaginary Boys now, it seems strangely right, at least in the context of what was to come. To its credit, it does have a lot of space and it feels well engineered and balanced. It represents The Cure before Robert was fully able to assert his vision, at a time when we had no control at all. This is evident even in the record sleeve featuring the infamous fridge, vacuum cleaner and standard lamp. Polydor used their in-house designer Bill Smith to assemble something. Every part of the design was beyond our control, apart from a few credits we were permitted on the sleeve.”<\/p>\n
The Cure had little time to protest, though. Even before Three Imaginary Boys was released in May 1979, they were touring heavily and would rarely come off the road for the next three years.<\/p>\n
“We were playing gigs in and around the UK all week and, also, every Sunday during March 1979 we had a residency, A Dose Of Sundays, at The Marquee in London,” says Tolhurst. “We picked all the bands that supported us because we liked them. Joy Division were one of them, but I think that happened also because Chris Parry was friendly with [Joy Division manager] Rob Gretton. We liked Joy Division but The Marquee was a very small space and the dressing room even more so and it was hard to get a view of anything. I do recall that by the fourth Sunday the place was full to overflowing. In the space of a month we’d conquered London… Or so it felt to me!”<\/p>\n
Despite mixed reviews, Three Imaginary Boys climbed to a respectable No 44 in the charts. The Cure’s original line-up also recorded two more 45s: the accomplished pop classicism of June ’79’s Boys Don’t Cry and November’s Jumping Someone Else’s Train: a well-observed commentary on the nascent mod revival The Cure had stumbled upon first-hand when they played on a mismatched bill with The Merton Parkas at Surrey’s Carshalton Park in June ’79.<\/p>\n
The band also signed up for a lengthy UK trek across the autumn of ’79, supporting Siouxsie & The Banshees on their Join Hands tour. Events took a dramatic turn when Banshees’ drummer Kenny Morris and guitarist John McKay walked out of the band in Aberdeen only two nights into the jaunt. After emergency discussions, the remaining dates went ahead with Robert Smith playing two sets a night: firstly fronting The Cure and then playing guitar in a new-look Banshees line-up also featuring the rapidly-installed new drummer, Budgie.<\/p>\n
Smith’s involvement with the Banshees had a lasting effect on The Cure’s future. The band underwent an important personnel reshuffle after completing the Banshees tour, which contributed to the radically different sound they would unveil on their second LP, Seventeen Seconds. New bassist Simon Gallup replaced Michael Dempsey, who immediately joined new Fiction labelmates The Associates, led by the mercurial Billy McKenzie.<\/p>\n
“We all knew Simon because his brother Ric worked in the local record store that we used to hang out in on Saturdays as teenagers,” Lol Tolhurst explains. “Simon’s first band, Lockjaw, had the first punk single in our town on Raw Records [1977’s highly collectable Radio Call Sign] and we liked that! Robert and I especially were hanging out with Simon a lot at that time, going to see him play (with his then current band, The Magazine Spies) and going to the pub together when we weren’t on the road.”<\/p>\n
Michael Dempsey recalls the events leading up to his own departure from The Cure: “We went from having socialised almost continuously in the early days to seeing much less of Robert once he started playing guitar with the Banshees.<\/p>\n
“For very sensible logistical reasons, he travelled with them and Lol and I would make or own way to the shows. So Robert seemed to become a little more enigmatic to all of us; he was, after all, now in two bands and Lol’s sympathetic good nature adapted to this better than I did. At this stage, radical and experienced middle-aged men might have convened a meeting and discussed the future. We were none of these, so we didn’t.<\/p>\n
“Also, for me, there was the lure of The Associates. After I joined them, we supported The Cure at London’s Notre Dame Hall and I remember Robert being very positive about our set. I had been on good terms with Simon [Gallup] before he joined The Cure and the over-riding feeling was that as both the new Cure and Associates were very good bands, we had all benefited in the long run.”<\/p>\n
Three unimaginably good albums<\/strong><\/p>\n The Cure’s original drummer Lol Tolhurst tells RC about the making of The Cure’s influential post-punk gloom trilogy Seventeen Seconds, Faith and Pornography and reuniting with the band in 2011. <\/strong><\/p>\n RC: <\/strong>Just before he officially joined The Cure, Simon Gallup appeared on one-off side-project Cult Hero’s amusing, ska-tinged I’m A Cult Hero 7” with Robert, Michael and yourself. It’s very different from The Cure, but it’s also very collectable (worth around £50). Who is the mysterious Frank Bell who sang on the record?<\/p>\n Lol Tolhurst:<\/strong> <\/em>Frank was one of the original Cure crew who championed us locally when we first started. Together with his friend, Sandy, now sadly deceased, Frank was at all the early shows. So when he expressed a desire to record, we happily obliged. We even played a show at The Marquee as Cult Hero!”<\/p>\n When Simon joined The Cure (with fellow Magazine Spies keyboard player Matthieu Hartley) you immediately toured Europe and started recording The Cure’s second LP, Seventeen Seconds, at Morgan in January 1980. Did Robert write on the road or bring in songs he’d written\/demoed at home?<\/strong><\/p>\n Robert had an old organ at home with a very simple drum machine in it and a cassette recorder. He would use that to demo all kinds of stuff both with and without the band. It was very simple and minimal and it worked great as a sketchpad for ideas. You might say it was the punk precursor to the ubiquitous laptop everyone has nowadays.<\/p>\n It was a very exciting time. We had a new band and new songs and we were more certain of the direction we wanted to go in. Robert would perhaps present an idea he had been working on at home, so we would then expand something like A Forest in rehearsals and work out all the parts. Robert would sing what he had ready at the time in a live show and maybe improvise a bit. When we recorded with Mike Hedges, the final lyrics were put in place. The words were nearly always the last thing.<\/p>\n I think I’m right in saying that this was the last time until Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me in 1987 that we were able to play new or rough versions of songs live before we recorded them. After that time, The Cure basically wrote an album, went out and toured it and then came home and did the next one.<\/p>\n Seventeen Seconds is a radical stylistic departure after Three Imaginary Boys. Mike Hedges described the LP as “morose and atmospheric”, which seems pretty accurate as a soundbite. Was it Robert and Hedges’ co-production that shaped the way the record sounded?<\/strong><\/p>\n Seventeen Seconds is as much the result of who wasn’t there. We didn’t let Chris Parry in the studio very often, for one thing. Chris had produced The Jam’s In The City and saw The Cure in the same way – as a “power trio”, which wasn’t how we saw ourselves. So now there were four of us, it was a signal we were going to change the sound too. Also, Robert told him he might leave bleeding if he came in too much, so he left us to it!<\/p>\n Ultimately, Robert had a vision for the sound he wanted for The Cure: a spacious, but very beautiful sound; stripped back and with a big empty space in the middle. He certainly felt more comfortable handling production with Mike Hedges without Parry steering it away from his idea of The Cure. In that sense, Mike was ideal for us: he had enough old-school engineering skills to get the sounds that we wanted, but was also young and modern enough to want to help us experiment with new sounds and ideas. <\/p>\n Released in April 1980, Seventeen Seconds nudged its way into the Top 20. It contains one of the band’s definitive songs (the haunting A Forest) as well as other live favourites: Play For Today, M and In Your House. It’s a pivotal record in the band’s career, yet critically it’s quite unsung. How do you feel it stacks up in The Cure’s canon?<\/strong><\/p>\n It’s very underrated. For me, it’s the beginning of the true Cure, the time when we finally felt confident and free enough to put our true expression down on record. Robert and I had just turned 21 when it came out and certainly my life was changing rapidly in both good and bad ways. I was doing what I wanted to do and it was a very creative period for the band, but my mother was about to pass away so, with that loss, The Cure became my complete family: I lived and breathed the band.<\/p>\n first time, in March 1980. How was that?<\/strong><\/p>\n It felt very institutionalised in that typically British way. They wanted us there at some ungodly early hour to go through multiple tedious rehearsals. Then there’s a lot more waiting around until the show proper shoots. We were housed in a very drab, old classroom-type building and it felt like going to a government office. The high point of the day was when the BBC bar opened at about 5pm and everybody raced upstairs to drink as much as they could before performing. If you ever wondered why every band looks half-cut on Top Of The Pops, it’s because of the BBC bar!<\/p>\n Keyboardist Matthieu Hartley departed after the world tour in support of Seventeen Seconds, citing a dislike of the sombre new songs the band were working up. Again stripped back to a trio, The Cure recorded their last LP with Mike Hedges, Faith, which was released by Fiction in April 1981. Overall, Faith feels like an extension of Seventeen Seconds; relentlessly gloomy and dominated by – admittedly inspired – dirges such as The Funeral Party and the sparse, trance-like seven-minute title track. Is it fair to say that the grief the band felt from the deaths of Robert’s grandparents and the imminent death of your mother spilled over into the contents of the record?<\/strong><\/p>\n That’s a fair conclusion. There was definitely enough of life’s saddest moments around at that time and you have to remember we were all still very young, only 21, 22, but we certainly felt battered emotionally at the time. It’s not all personal, though: songs like The Drowning Man again draw their influence from literature, in the case of that one, from Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast trilogy.<\/p>\n subsequent European tour in support of the LP included dates with The Cure performing in a circus marquee. How did that come about?<\/strong><\/p>\n We had an imaginative promoter, Fred Zylstra, who found a circus troupe willing to put up a huge tent every day and take it on tour with us in Holland, with us playing inside it every night. This was actually one of the most poignant times of my life. I heard my mother was on her deathbed one night during the tour and flew home straight after the Amsterdam show. She died as I was coming home, but I elected to come straight back and finish the tour, even though Robert and Simon both said they’d cancel if I wanted. I felt my mother would have wanted me to complete the tour, so I did. The last shows of the tour felt surreal.<\/p>\n Robert especially got deeply absorbed in the Faith songs when you played them live and it’s well documented he even ended some shows in tears. Things would only get darker when you made Pornography; how were inter-band relations during this time?<\/strong><\/p>\n Despite the deaths in our families and the negativity, our relationships were actually pretty solid. It was just the three of us and we spent a lot of time together on long drives across Europe. I think our bonds as adults were formed during this period.<\/p>\n The Cure made one more single (Charlotte Sometimes) with Mike Hedges in the autumn of 1981 and toured the UK again, before making Pornography early in 1982. Aside from its reputation as one of rock’s darkest LPs, the stories surrounding the substance and alcohol ingestion involved are equally notorious.<\/strong><\/p>\n Well, it’s true we made a beer sculpture as we kept every can and bottle we consumed. Studio cleaners were given strict instructions not to touch it. We knew we were going to be there for a while, so we had an arrangement with the off-license across the street. They brought us what we fancied that night and we paid our (rather enormous) bill once a week.<\/p>\n What did new producer (and later Cure bassist) Phil Thornalley make of all this?<\/strong><\/p>\n At first he was horrified, but he adapted quickly. Mickie Most, who owned the studio [RAK], was the same. Everyone else started recording at 10am and left at 6pm, whereas we started recording at 6pm and finished at 6am the next day and staggered outside looking completely crazed. Kim Wilde was recording next door and one morning, after a late night, I tried to engage her in conversation. Poor girl looked aghast at this lunatic, though, to be fair, she did join us down the pub later.<\/p>\n Despite the band’s nihilistic mood, Pornography is now regarded as a protogothprotogoth masterpiece. Certainly, the dense, neopsychedelic A Strange Day and the weird, tribal-esque title song are among the most striking in The Cure’s catalogue. Then there’s the cavernous drum sound which is a big part of the record’s appeal…<\/strong><\/p>\n We met The Specials a lot around this time and became friendly. Their drummer, John Bradbury, had these two enormously deep military snares he was selling. I thought they’d be just right for the new sound we wanted. Together, with a very small but long bass drum, this helped define Pornography’s drum sound. Also, we removed all the acoustic dividers in RAK’s main studio room and recorded the drums in a huge space, which nobody did back then.<\/p>\n For the title track, we recorded a documentary about sex from the TV and used it as a backing track. It was way before samplers were de rigueur, and live we used a reel-to-reel to play the same part. It was ahead of its time. For me, Pornography is the first 100 per cent realised Cure LP. Of the three-piece Cure, it was definitely the best record we made.<\/p>\n It received very mixed reviews, yet for such a portentous, impenetrable-sounding LP, Pornography climbed to No 8 in the LP chart and even yielded a minor hit single with The Hanging Garden. The subsequent European leg of the Pornography tour, however, culminated with The Cure splitting up – temporarily, it turned out – when Robert and Simon came to blows after a show in Strasbourg. Had you already decided to split before the tour’s end?<\/strong><\/p>\n Making Pornography was intense and exhausting, it had to spill over. After the fight, Robert and Simon went home for a few days and then came back on tour. For the encore at the last show in Brussels, we swapped instruments and played our usual extended piece at the end, but (roadie) Gary Biddles started to sing “The Cure are dead!” and at the time it seemed so. It was really sad. I don’t recall any of us saying “That’s it… This is the end!” but we certainly felt it was.<\/p>\n Robert and Simon didn’t speak for about 18 months and immediately after the last show, I left England and went to live in Paris. I produced a couple of bands. It was a complete change of scene for me. I wasn’t sure what would happen, but one day, out of the blue, Robert rang and invited me to the studio to record [the next Cure single] Let’s Go To Bed. A new phase began – a little saner and simpler now with just Robert and myself… for a while anyway!<\/p>\n Your departure around the time of Disintegration was famously acrimonious and later, you were even involved in legal proceedings against Robert Smith and Chris Parry. You finally reunited with Robert and Simon Gallup in 2011, playing keyboards and percussion on The Cure’s Reflections tour, performing Three Imaginary Boys, Seventeen Seconds and Faith in their entirety. That must have been emotional.<\/strong><\/p>\n After Disintegration, I kind of fell down a rabbit hole. I didn’t have much experience of life outside The Cure. It had been my whole existence up to that point.<\/p>\n I eventually resurfaced in California and found liberation from my demons. I learnt to live again. Los Angeles saved my life. As the years passed, communication and friendship returned. The nonsense and pain I’d caused myself and others dissolved. I wrote to Robert and told him I had been playing some of the Three Imaginary Boys songs while touring with Levinhurst, my current project and as it was coming up to Faith’s 30th anniversary, I thought it’d be cool to play some of the old songs again.<\/p>\n When Robert emailed me back, he suggested we do the first three albums as Reflections, so I flew back for rehearsals early in 2011. The prodigal son returns! When we stepped on stage at the first show in Sydney in May 2011, it was one of the most beautiful experiences of my life. Simon says on stage you have no age and he’s right. To me, it felt as if we were in a timeless space and all the years of neglect and anger were washed away. <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Cure are recognised as one of the most significant bands to have emerged over the past four decades. Usually associated with frontman Robert Smith’s trademark big hair and smeared lipstick, they have long been the alt-pop colossus it’s OK to like; wowing fans and critics alike with multi-million selling LPs such as 1989’s Disi\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8023,"featured_media":182899,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"","apple_news_api_id":"","apple_news_api_modified_at":"","apple_news_api_revision":"","apple_news_api_share_url":"","apple_news_cover_media_provider":"image","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_cover_video_id":0,"apple_news_cover_video_url":"","apple_news_cover_embedwebvideo_url":"","apple_news_is_hidden":"","apple_news_is_paid":"","apple_news_is_preview":"","apple_news_is_sponsored":"","apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":[],"apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"issue":[10038],"class_list":["post-182877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles","issue-september-2014"],"apple_news_notices":[],"yoast_head":"\n