For The Cure, 1986 would prove to be a memorable year. Having scored UK Top 30 hits in 1985 with singles In Between Days and Close To Me, Robert Smith's band were selected, alongside Psychedelic Furs and Level 42, to headline 1986's Glastonbury Festival: tickets for the weekender, which also featured The Pogues, Madness, The Waterboys and Simply Red were priced at £17, incidentally.
That August, in acknowledgement of their growing popularity in mainland Europe, the group also filmed a 23-song performance across three nights at the 8,000-capacity Théâtre antique d'Orange, a first century Roman amphitheatre in the French countryside, for release as the 1987 concert film The Cure in Orange.
Before that, however, the quintet - Smith, guitarist/keyboardist/saxophonist Porl Thompson, bassist Simon Gallup, keyboard player Lol Tolhurst, and drummer Boris Williams - were booked to play a one-off show in Verona, Italy on May 22. Not having had a proper break in 18 months, the group decided to treat the booking as a mini-holiday, and rather than clambering aboard a tour bus with hairy-arsed roadies, they elected to travel to the show in a rather more elegant fashion, with their glamorous gothic girlfriends in tow, on the world-famous Orient Express. Joining them for the journey too was Mark Ellen, the former Smash Hits magazine editor-turned presenter of BBC music show Whistle Test presenter, who seemed rather tickled that a rock band should choose to travel in such a refined manner.
