The Cure, "A Forest" Live at Werchter Festival in Belgium, 1981.

The video here is THE CURE playing Werchter Festival in Belgium, a concert infamous for the band's Robert Palmer-baiting version of A FOREST (1981). A late running concert saw festival organizers trying to hurry The Cure along to make way for the next act, Robert Palmer. Taking exception to this, Robert Smith informed the crowd what was happening and retaliated by leading the band through an epic version of A Forest, all 9 minutes of it. "We'd only been on for about a half an hour and everything was running late so Robert Palmer's road crew started motioning to us to stop,” said Smith. “This bloke ran on and said 'If you don't stop playing, we're gonna pull the plug' …and we started playing a really slow version of 'A Forest' which lasted about 15 minutes.” “It was f****** brilliant. Unfortunately, when we finished, they threw all our stuff off the back of the stage ..." At the end of the number, Simon Gallup shouted, “F*** Robert Palmer! F*** rock'n'roll!” The video here is this ominous, tenser-than-usual take of A FOREST.