MEMORY TIME... PRESENCE Interview to Rob Steen by Emiliano Herrera.
With the launch of his album Closer (which had ended in 1994), we had the luxury of interviewing Rob Steen, guitarist, who also was responsible for the graphic designs of the band. How was your inclusion in Presence? What memories do you have of those years? I joined Presence in 1991 just after the release on the “In Wonder” single. I have great memories of my time in Presence and remain friends with all the members of the band. We had a lot of fun during the years we were together touring and recording. Gary was the one who would always make us all laugh. How was it working with Lol Tolhurst post Cure? Did he write all material or work together with the whole band? Lol was great to work with and remains one of my best friends to this day. While we were recording the first album the whole band lived together at Lol’s house in the country. It was an amazing time and we all got on really well, which is not usually the case with a lot of bands. Most of the songs on the first album “Inside” were written by Gary, Lol, and Chris, with Michael Dempsey contributing to a couple. On the second album “Closer” I co-wrote seven of the songs. What was your inspiration to work in graphics of Presence? You had that ideas or work on that with the rest of the band? I had studied graphic design at college, so when the original designer who had worked on cover for the first single was unable to do the next one Lol suggested I do it. I did the rest of the singles, album covers, and whatever ads or anything else we needed. It was a lot of fun and nice for us to have control of how everything looked. After I stopped playing
in bands I ended up going back to graphic design and illustration, mostly for children’s books and comics. What led you to decide to release Closer, 20 years after its conception? Why was not published in 1994? The departure of Gary has a relation with this desicion? The main reason for releasing “Closer” at this time was for Gary. It was something he had always hoped would happen and he wanted people to hear the music, we were both really proud of the album. Unfortunately, there were many reasons we were not able to do this over the years. I’m really pleased it is finally out now. I wish Gary was here to see it now, I miss him very much. What about the song ‘To Be Alone Again’? Personally, I consider it one of the prettiest songs of Presence, it was conceived for a third album? Does exists more demos or live recordings? There is only the one demo recording of “To Be Alone Again”. It would have been included on a third album if that had ever happened. We’d completely forgotten about the song until I found an old tape a couple of years ago and played it to Gary. I have found quite a few old tapes of demos that I would like to put together as an album for the future. There’s a few demos from the first album and six new songs that were never recorded. I also have five or six live recording of entire shows in the UK which I’ll post online this year.
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