The Glove

History

Smith and Severin founded the Glove during a period when they were under heavy stress in their respective bands, the Cure and Siouxsie and the Banshees.

In June 1982, Smith was on the verge of a breakdown, drained from the production of the Cure's bleakest album, Pornography and its tour, substance abuse, and band infighting that led to the departure of bassist Simon Gallup.

In October 1982, guitarist John McGeoch left Siouxsie and the Banshees due to illness, shortly before the start of an important European tour. Smith was asked to fill in and officially became a member of Siouxsie and the Banshees in November 1982. He had previously played live with the band in 1979 on their Join Hands tour, when he replaced guitarist John McKay, who had walked out at the start of the tour. The Cure were the support band for the whole tour, and Smith therefore played two sets per night.

In January 1983, two months after Smith rejoined Siouxsie and the Banshees, Siouxsie and drummer Budgie left England to record an album on their own as the Creatures.

Meanwhile, Severin and Smith both started to work on a project called the Glove. The band's name referred to the enormous flying glove in the Beatles' 1968 animated movie Yellow Submarine. Their album's title, Blue Sunshine, referred to the horror film Blue Sunshine, in which people who took the fictional "Blue Sunshine" variety of LSD became psychotic murderers 10 years later.

Since Smith was contractually prohibited from singing with another band (one of the reasons he cited for the 2001 split from the Cure's longtime label), former Zoo dancer Jeanette Landray (a former girlfriend of Severin's bandmate Budgie) was recruited as the lead singer. Smith sang on two of the songs, "Mr. Alphabet Says" and "Perfect Murder".

In 2005, Severin proposed re-releasing Blue Sunshine. Smith, who had been gradually reissuing editions of the Cure's back catalogue, agreed, and the Glove remaster was released as a 2-CD set on 8 August 2006 alongside three Cure re-releases. On the second disc, a dozen unreleased demo versions sung by Smith appeared for the first time.

Personnel

Studio albums

Singles