For this week’s installment of Vintage Video, we present a real treasure for fans of The Cure: about a half-hour’s worth of footage of the band rehearsing its Prayer Tour set at Bray Studios in Berkshire, England, in April of 1989, the month before Disintegration was released.
The rare footage, which surfaced last summer, shows Robert Smith and Co. running through then-new songs “Plainsong” (almost half of the footage is devoted to the album opener), “Pictures of You,” “Closedown,” “Last Dance” and “Fascination Street,” plus older track “A Night Like This.”
The Prayer Tour would keep The Cure on the road around the world for much of 1989, and saw the band playing arenas and even stadiums in the U.S., with Love and Rockets and the Pixies opening some of the larger concerts, as Disintegration became a hit in America.
Check out the rehearsal footage below via uploader Hungry-Ghost.
PREVIOUSLY ON SLICING UP EYEBALLS
- Vintage Video: Watch a 40-minute ‘Juju’-era Siouxsie and the Banshees set from 1981
- Vintage Video: Midnight Oil lights up Alan Thicke’s ‘Thicke of the Night’ in 1984
- Vintage Video: Minutemen throw down 37 songs in 73 minutes at this 1985 show
- Vintage Video: The House of Love plays an hour-long set at D.C.’s 9:30 Club in 1992
Cool lights.
Cool! It was my second Cure concert and I remember having only one day to listen to the album before the show in Stockholm early May 1989. Loved it nevertheless…
This line-up is untouchable.