The Cult to Perform ‘Love’ Album on World Tour

To the Cult's Ian Astbury, the age of albums is over.

"I think albums are finished, to be honest with you," Astbury said during an interview with Noisecreep. "Albums are redundant--unless you're a really prolific artist and really have a burning desire to make a record or make an album. Certainly where I'm at, I'd rather record songs that we're excited about. Get one really good one that we really, really like and put it out. It's fresh as well. Who wants to wait a year and a half for another album? Certainly as a music fan, I'd much rather have less product of a higher quality over a short period of time, than loads more product that's kind of crap dumped all at once."

But that isn't stopping Astbury and Cult cohort Billy Duffy from celebrating the seminal 1985 album 'Love' by playing it from start to finish during a world tour that kicks off Aug. 19.

"We're going to perform the 'Love' album for the first time in its entirety as the quintessential post-modern album," Astbury said. "That's our tag. I think there's several of those who could claim that tag, but we might as well throw our hat in the circle."

He said he never really celebrated the fact that 'Love's' "She Sells Sanctuary" won a CMJ Award in 1985. Astbury chalks that up to his stereotypical English modesty.

"Now I want to come out and say, 'We actually did a few things that we're very proud of and we want to celebrate ourselves' without coming out and saying, 'It's the anniversary of'--without all that nonsense. I hate all that," Astbury explained.

"It's really an organic thing. If I felt I was going to get up there and just knock it out, I couldn't do it. I physically could not do that. I physically can't do it. It's impossible for me to do that. I mean Billy will tell you that I cannot be coerced into doing things I don't believe in. This is just an organic body of work."

Astbury said the music he was hearing around the 'Love' recording sessions has a lot in common with what he is listening to now--Joy Division, Led Zeppelin, The Doors and The Stooges. (Astbury formerly fronted The Doors "reunion" group The Doors of the 21st Century, which was renamed Riders on the Storm.)

"The 'Love' album was very important, I guess, politically in the United States in terms of being a post-modern record because we were one of the first bands that were like punk rockers that came on and said, 'It's okay to be into punk and Led Zeppelin," Astbury said.

"In Seattle, 'She Sells Sanctuary' was on a Top 40 radio station. We sold out the Capitol Theater in Seattle. I remember Andrew Wood from Mother Love Bone, who later became Pearl Jam, telling me how influential it was in '85 and the fact that it kind of gave them a touchstone to kind of go, 'Wow these English kids are doing it. Why can't we do it?' He said it was a great influence in what he was doing, and what Pearl Jam ended up doing, and Soundgarden, and blah blah blah."