Interview Robert (28-10-08)

[TOBERR]

The Cure's Robert Smith interview - Part One
Today 11:45

The hair is bird's-nest perfect. The lipstick scrawled on with impeccable inaccuracy. The outfit a bleak cornucopia of black jogging top, jet granddad shirt, pitch baggy trousers and chunky boots of deepest ebony. He shuffles around the misty, Tim Burton-style cardboard forest NME has erected in his studio's live room with practised awkwardness, wringing his hands and pretending to shiver like an overgrown 10-year-old playing the lead in a school production of Edward Scissorhands.

It's definitely a Robert Smith alright. But is it the Robert Smith?

As our evening at Parkgate Studio in the wilds of East Sussex draws on, we find more and more reasons to believe The Cure have mischievously sent along one of Smith's many adoring clones to conduct their first interview in years.


The Robert Smith, legend claims, is painfully timid, deeply morose and prone to explosive, egocentric, band-sacking tantrums. This Robert Smith, however, couldn't be more accommodating.

He's keen to make sure we've all the beer and nibbles we desire, apologises when Interpol come on the studio iPod because, "I know you don't like them; is this painful for you?", and happily poses for over two hours of spooky snapshots with the modest proviso, "Is it OK if I wear black?"

The day before the interview he'd emailed to ask what sort of tipple we'd like and our reply of "red wine, preferably Spanish" has led to the entire night having a Hispanic theme; all wines are Rioja, all beers San Miguel and dinner is paella.

What's more, when we sit Smith down in the studio's front lounge for his only interview of 2008 we find him effusive, boisterous and constantly on the verge of a choking fit of giggles. He seems, well, really rather happy.

Anyone would think doom-rock's erstwhile Pope Of Mope was excited at the impending release of '4:13 Dream', The Cure's 13th studio album and easily their best since 1992's 'Wish'. But we know better.

Congratulations, Robert Smith! The Cure are set to be crowned next year's NME Godlike Geniuses!

"It's very nice of NME to offer it to us," says the man affectionately known as Uncle Bob, in a Crawley twang strangely reminiscent of an even chirpier Noel Fielding.

"It came a bit out of the blue. Some of the people who have won it. I've got a list of the people and some of them are well deserving of that honour and some, perhaps, in my opinion, not so. Does it devalue the award? Not necessarily. Do I think we're deserving of it? Yes, probably, if anyone else is. Over the course of 30 years I've probably done enough to warrant getting an award."

Not arf, Bobster. Indeed, it's difficult to imagine a band more worthy of the accolade. Not only were The Cure (alongside Joy Division, Sonic Youth and The Smiths) the original architects of everything we now know as 'indie', from its jittering heartbeat to its chiming maelstrom guitars to its slapdash way with a mascara stick, but they did it all while being the UK's best pop band disguised as glowery freakazoid zombie clowns with permanently priapic hairdos.

They're the enduring '80s icons who provided emotional succour for the desolate and dislocated with majestically moody masterpieces such as 'Pornography' and 'Disintegration' and jumped around whooping whopping great pop tunes such as 'The Lovecats', 'Close To Me', and 'Friday I'm In Love' dressed as bears for everybody else.

They were cool enough to invent goth and then disown it in time to invent every emotional rock band from Cocteau Twins to Arcade Fire instead. And if The Cure hadn't wrestled the big, blustery synths from the new romantics and beaten them bloody with deviant razorwire guitars back in the early-'80s, rock music today would be nothing but weedy, reedy janglebottoms ripping off The La's and The Killers would sound like Starsailor. FACT.

"Do I ever feel Godlike?" Smith ponders. "Rarely. I used to, occasionally. I think the job that I do and attaining a certain level of success, it often brings you feelings of omnipotence, hand-in-hand with taking vast amounts of drugs, but it's not a bad thing as long as you don't wake up in the morning still believing you are that person.

"We've been talking about what we're going to do at the awards, about trying to segue every hit. If we can put them all in the same key and just run through, it would be really cool to do a six-minute piece that took in everything. It would be a big arse though, because if anyone forgets just one of them, you're fucked."

Ambition, drunkenness, drama, opulence, jubilation, drug mania, suicide and despair. And playing acid tennis with himself, snorting five-foot lines of speed with Lemmy and being the only member of Siouxie And The Banshees in pyjamas. Why are The Cure next year's Godlike Geniuses? Show me, show me, show me.

Check out part two of the interview where Robert Smith discusses The legacy, the pop in their pomp, growing old gracefully and what it’s like still being relevant after all these years.

http://www.femalefirst.co.uk/celebrity_interviews/Robert+Smith-59118.html

The Cure's Robert Smith interview - Part Two
Today 11:43


THE LEGACY

The sumptuous soundscapes of Mogwai or Godspeed You! Black Emperor. The acrobatic vocal yelps of The Rapture or !!!. The synth seductions of 'Mr Brightside' and 'All These Things That I've Done'.

The lush scree at the heart of Editors, Interpol, Bloc Party, Muse, A Place To Bury Strangers, Friendly Fires and any other band with agony in their souls and hearts as black as their trousers. The Cure's influence is as widespread and prevalent in alternative music as cyanide pills at the Halifax Christmas party; their sound has become a key link in indie rock's DNA.


"The tipping point was a few years ago," says Robert, "when suddenly bands were coming up who weren't afraid to namecheck The Cure. We were unfashionable pretty much everywhere post-'Bloodflowers', but suddenly there were lots of young bands who'd grown up listening to 'Disintegration', 'Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me', or 'Wish' and didn't know that you weren't supposed to like us. So we kind of knew it was happening, at some point there's going to be a generation of people who are going to go and form bands who are going to have seen The Cure.

I feel slightly paternal towards some of them, the Curiosa thing [a 2004 Cure-headlined US tour featuring Smith's selection of young bands including Interpol, Mogwai, The Rapture and Muse in support slots] was almost like me saying, 'Come here, my loves.' I felt fucking competitive on that tour, but in a really good way, like, 'Now I'll show you what I can do.'" Smith is rather less paternal, however, towards the stinking, snot-haired, still- a-virgin-at-32, you're-not-a-fucking-vampire-so-grow-up-you-twat bastard child of 'Pornography' that is goth.

"I'm not sure that it did [spring from The Cure's music]," he argues. "When I joined Siouxsie And The Banshees I was aware that I was stepping into a goth band, in that Siouxie was a goth icon. I became a de facto goth icon around that time.

"When I was with the Banshees I made the point of wearing pyjamas - I wore a blue stripey pyjama top. I wanted to make a point I was not part of this world. I used to go drinking with [Banshees songwriter Steve] Severin in the [legendary Soho venue] Batcave around that time and there's nothing more gothic than drinking in the Batcave in 1983 with Steve Severin. But I would be wearing pyjamas.

"When we did the 'Faith' album in 1981, goth hadn't been invented then, we were actually a raincoat band. We were inventing goth with that album and 'Pornography'. but we weren't, we were just playing emotional music. I was feeling a bit desperate at the time, the band as a whole was a bit despairing, we thought it was going to end with 'Pornography'.

The record label had given up on us and the crowds were pretty much non-existent. We went around the world and played to the same 500 people everywhere we went and we couldn't see how we were going to play to more. And we were taking vast amounts of very strong drugs and actually didn't really give a shit. And that, somehow, gave rise to goth."


THE POP IN THEIR POMP
For every 10 'The Drowning Man's, there's a 'Why Can't I Be You?'. For every album of dour 'Disintegration's there's a soothing 'Lovesong'. The Cure have carved their unique niche in modern rock by lacing their lengthy mood pieces with mighty throwaway pop smashes - as they proved by releasing proto-goth masterpiece 'Pornography' one year and 'The Lovecats' the next.

"The pop hits have allowed us to be successful," Smith agrees. "That was always our intention, I suppose, to draw people in and then smother them. There is a small part of what we do that is quite dark in contemporary music terms; it is quite desolate, there is no hope and I love that side of what we do, but I also realise that if that's all we did then we'd be fucking awful. I've always been aware enough to know you've got to sugar the pill a little bit, but not in a banal way.

"I mean, 'Friday, I'm In Love' is not a work of genius, it was almost a calculated song. It's a really good chord progression, I couldn't believe no-one else had used it and I asked so many people at the time - I was getting drug paranoia anyway - 'I must have stolen this from somewhere, I can't possibly have come up with this.' I asked everyone I knew, everyone.

I'd phone people up and sing it and go, 'Have you heard this before? What's it called?' They'd go, 'No, no, I've never heard it.' On the same album there were songs which I'd slaved over and I thought at the time were infinitely better, but 'Friday.' is probably the song off the 'Wish' album that's the song."


GROWING OLD DISGRACEFULLY
Ask anyone who's hung out with Robert Smith and they'll tell you the most amazing thing about him is that he goes to the pub like that. The hair might be laced with streaks of grey and the cheeks somewhat chubbier than in his 'Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me' prime, but Smith's iconic image - recreated everywhere from Camden's Devonshire Arms to South Park - has weathered the changing of many a fashion season.

"I hide behind what I look like with the make-up and the hair," Smith admits. "I know I do, I'm self-aware enough to know why I'm still doing it. It's uncomfortable on the very few forays into real life that I have, getting petrol and shopping, but I've had it my entire life. I'm with a girl who likes the way I look and when I don't look like I look she doesn't like me as much, it's that simple. When we started to get well-known I was saying that if I looked like Ronald McDonald that would be the goth look. I imagine an alternate reality where Ronald McDonald was the goth icon."


THE SECRET EXCESSES
While never being classed as a 'drug band', The Cure have managed to keep their inner Primal Scream reasonably well hidden over the past few decades. While ex-drummer/keyboard player Lol Tolhurst was famously pissed for most of the '80s (until they sacked him), Smith himself famously wrote 'Disintegration' on a pretty huge amount of LSD.

"I used to play tennis with myself," he guffaws. " I used to take off my clothes and play tennis with myself at night in the dark. I'd hit the ball and then run to the other side of the court and play it back. Of course, there wasn't a ball; there was a racket though, it was very important that I was holding a tennis racket. Someone would always wander over when the sun was coming up and say, 'You all right?' 'Yeah, I'm fine, I'm two sets down and it's a love serve!'

"We've been fantastically excessive at certain times. There's a mentality when you go, 'Oh fuck, free beer?' It's your first Reading festival in 1978 and Lemmy's coming out of Motˆrhead's caravan going, 'Howwaarryeeerr?' We went, 'I think he's saying, "Come into our caravan"' and we went in and there was a line of amphetamine sulphate that went the entire length of the caravan. He went, 'Haaaavebitofthaaa.' We were like, 'What's he saying?' He was offering us this straw. 'I think this is like a five-foot line of speed and this straw means we're supposed to snort it.'"


STILL RELEVANT AFTER ALL THESE YEARS
Premiered in its entirety at a gig in Rome a few weeks ago, The Cure's new album '4:13 Dream' is a staggering return to form. Following on from 2000's dolorous 'Bloodflowers' (the climax to The Cure's emotionally bleak 'trilogy' that began with 'Pornography' and 'Disintegration') and the eclectic but patchy 'The Cure' from 2004, it's hawked as the 'light' half of a double album, with the 'dark' half to come in 2009 ("Universal didn't want a double album," Smith fumes) and is the most surprising, rejuvenated and tuneful Cure record since their early-'90s commercial peak. It takes in traditional Cure doomscapes ('Underneath The Stars'), brutal industrial eviscerations ('The Scream', which finds Smith howling like a Saw V victim), classic Cure-pop ('The Only One') and a jaunty shimmer of a song with lyrics taken from a real-life suicide note that Smith was sent in 1987 ('The Reasons Why' - "I knew the person who sent me the letter. It was a genuine suicide. They would be my age").

"I love the way this album goes through the first five songs," Robert enthuses, twitching excitedly in his seat, "because it goes from you thinking, 'Oh right, here we go, it's six minutes and it's really downbeat' and then it jumps into a classic Cure pop song and then suicide is in the first line of the next one and then it goes into 'Freakshow' which, for me, is the weirdest song on the album, and then into 'Sirensong', which is an acoustic waltz with slide guitar. Those five songs set you up so you don't actually know what's going to come next." As new album, so band. If the twists, squirms and wriggles in The Cure's career have proved anything besides their undoubted Godlike Genius it's that - pyjama-clad goth, upbeat Samaritan or nude Tim Henman - you never quite know which Robert Smith you're going to get next.
_________________

[SeatNumber]

MERCI Toberr

J'ai utilisé la traduc Google pour lire l'article ...ben finalement je comprends mieux l'artile en Anglais que traduit en Français par Google
_________________
Decalage-horaire@shuttle.Oscar

[Lostever]

Excellent le passage "I used to play tennis with myself,"
_________________
The further we go
And older we grow
The more we know
The less we show

[Cedrik]

très bonne interview!

[kami]

quelqu'un pourrait il traduire in french please

[sly]

Merci Toberr
_________________
Please come home

[minihead]

Bravo, même pas sur COF je l'ai vu l'interview
_________________
"The night is always young"

[SathMag]

Pas tout compris, mais c'est sympa.

[vivi]

J'ai enfin pris le temps de tout lire, sympa en effet.

J'aime bien la description du " personnage" au début.
_________________
Blonde à temps partiel


Moi ma préférée de Cure c'est TOUT ( © tony )

[Cryptx]

C'est trop long, j'ai la flemme.. mais merci quand meme

edit : dailleur si quelqu'un pouvait faire un resumé en deux ou trois phrases ce serait cool.

[headbanger]

j'ai pas tout compris, mais bon...

[Super Pato le basset fou]

Très sympa cette interview, merci.
_________________
With everything gone
And all still to come ? (...)
In each other's arms
So near and so far...

The Cure - Underneath the stars


www.myspace.com/novembertwelve

[YOKO ONO]

[CURE974]

Merci pour cette interview Toberr...

Vraiment sympa l'entretient.
_________________
From the edge... de l'ile de la REUNION

[Fabien G]

le passage le plus drôle pour moi ce sont les barbarismes de Lenny!

"We've been fantastically excessive at certain times. There's a mentality when you go, 'Oh fuck, free beer?' It's your first Reading festival in 1978 and Lemmy's coming out of Motorhead's caravan going, 'Howwaarryeeerr?' We went, 'I think he's saying, "Come into our caravan"' and we went in and there was a line of amphetamine sulphate that went the entire length of the caravan. He went, 'Haaaavebitofthaaa.' We were like, 'What's he saying?' He was offering us this straw. 'I think this is like a five-foot line of speed and this straw means we're supposed to snort it.'"

et à venir pour la remise des prix...

"We've been talking about what we're going to do at the awards, about trying to segue every hit. If we can put them all in the same key and just run through, it would be really cool to do a six-minute piece that took in everything. It would be a big arse though, because if anyone forgets just one of them, you're fucked."