A Forest

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"A Forest"

Single by The Cure
from the album Seventeen Seconds
Released	April 8, 1980 UK
Format	7", 12"
Genre	Gothic Rock, Post-punk
Length	4:55
Label	Fiction Records
Producer(s)	Mike Hedges Robert Smith
Chart positions
#31 (UK)
The Cure singles chronology
"Jumping Someone Else's Train" (1979)	"A Forest" (1980)	"Primary" (1981)

A Forest is a song by British rock band The Cure. It was released as a single on April 8, 1980, and was the only single from their second album Seventeen Seconds.
The popular song, "Dead Disco" by the Canadian rock group, Metric borrows heavily from the song. Many have said this is in reference to the group and the genre.

1 History
2 Track listing
3 Personnel
4 Audio sample
5 External links

[edit] History

The lyrics tell a vague story about a man looking for a girl in a forest. He hears her calling for him, and as he chases her, he suddenly stops and realizes that he is lost and that the girl is not there. The song is fairly upbeat compared to the other material on the album, and Lol Tolhurst's machine-like steady beat together with Simon Gallup's minimalistic bassline gives this nervous chase more depth and keeps the song on the edge of a frantic groove until the end.

Though not their biggest hit, it is regarded by many fans and critics as the best example of The Cure's sound. Also notable for securing the band its first slot on BBC's "Top of the Pops". Today, this song is a concert favourite, known to be stretched out of proportions. In fact, there are versions that have lasted up to 20 minutes.

However, the most notorious performance of this song is the so-called "Robert Palmer"-version, performed at the Werchter Festival in Belgium, July 5, 1981. Everything was late at the festival, and the crowd was mostly there to see artists that were at the time bigger than The Cure, like Dire Straits and Robert Palmer, of whom the latter happened to be the next on stage after The Cure. After twelve songs, Palmer's roadies said that if The Cure didn't stop playing soon, they would pull the plug. They reached a compromise that they would play one song before they left, opting for "A Forest", which they decided to play a lot longer than what was normal at the time, with Robert Smith adding some lyrics improvised on the spot (including the words: "Such a long end" repeated several times). When the band finally finished, bass player Simon Gallup yelled into the microphone: "Fuck Robert Palmer, and fuck rock 'n' roll!"

The track has been re-recorded a number of times by The Cure. In 1990 the track was re-recorded and remixed as the "Tree mix" on the band's "Mixed Up" album. It was redone for the second time on the "Join the Dots" box set this time remixed by Mark Plati and featuring Earl Slick on guitar. Robert Smith supplied vocals for a Blank & Jones cover version in 2003. The song has also been covered by Nouvelle Vague on their first album Nouvelle Vague