Musical Questions Robert Smith
Details Magazine
June 1996
- Why can't I be you?
- I actually feel like I'm becoming another person myself. I've got
a battle going on in my head between someone who's just wildly
hysterical and someone who's just mildly hysterical.
- What's been going on?
- Very Briefly: The Wish tour in '92. Then in '93 I edited the Show film
and mixed the Show album, did the Paris album, had a court case[ Lol
Tolhurst, Smith's schoolfriend and cofounder of the Cure, sued him
for additional back royalties in 1994], won it, was very bitter about
having six months hacked out of my life, and then it seemed that
everyone decided to leave the group in the same week. At one point
it was just Perry [Bamonte] and me. We found a drummer to replace
Boris [Williams] in the beginning of '95, recorded about twenty-five
songs, and then scrapped everything because it wasn't working. We're
only wrapping up the whole album project now. Originally it was
called Bare, but's it's mutated quite rapidally through the last year.
To reflect that, I thought Wild Mood Swings was a much better title.
- Have you never been mellow?
- Yeah, endlessly mellow over the last year. That's one reason why the
record hass taken so long to finish.
- What can a poor boy do except to sing for a rock 'n' roll band?
- When I hit forty in the year 2000, I'll have a bit of a review,
because I do run the risk of spending my entire adult life doing the
same job. But I don't feel like part of an old group-there's been
six or seven versions of the Cure, so I don't feel like I've been in
the same group, or even making the same music.
- Some people wanna fill the world with silly love songs, and what's
wrong with that?
- Nothing, unless you're pinned down in a chair and you have to listen
to them. Most love songs are just calculated attempts at commercial
exploitation-they're not really anything to do with love as I
understand it.
- Could you believe in love at first sight?
- Yes. I live with my love at first sight
- All the lonely people, where do they all come from?
- Dear me. An awful lot of people gravitate toward the group because
there's something in the lyrics which resonates, and there is a small
percentage of people who.....who look like me, I suppose. They're very
easy to spot: "Oh, it's a Cure fan." But now 90 percent of our
audience don't look like Cure fans! I don't think the ones who are
making this statement about how much they like the group are worth
more or worth less. It's kind of snobbery. I like a whole range of
music and I don't consider myself any more or less of a fan than
anyone else because of how I look and how old I am. Music should
trascend all that.
- Where did you sleep last night?
- In Jane Seymour's bed. The band have all been living together for the
past year, renting her house while we record the album. The bed's
great, apart from the grit in the bottom, which you just can't get rid
of, no matter how many times you change the sheets.
- Do you act like you?
- I have no choice, unfortunately.
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