Robert Smith has been threatening to disband The Cure ever since "Three
Imaginary Boys" 11 years ago,but the band keeps soldiering on and Smith
keeps reinventing himself and his music.In the second part of his
interview,Jonh Wilde discovers why it could all end with their new album
"Disintegration" and how the singer has moved from playful pop to desolate
reality.


 "You're asking if I'm going to end up like some kind of George Melly
figure," Robert laughs."Well,I have no intention of lugging on at 60.I
can't really see myself doing it at 31.I never thought I'd be doing this
at 30.That was my limit.So I've broken a promise to myself."

 "Tim Pope has said that I will finish The Cure just to punish myself.I
think that's the only are where Pope doesn't have a grasp on what we do.
The Cure will stop because it takes too much effort to keep it going.That
balance between wanting to do something and having to keep reaffirming our
own existence,all the effort that involves.I keep coming back to the idea
that The Cure is there for me because it's good fun.If it wasn't fun,
it wouldn't be there." 

 "I don't use it the way Jim Kerr seems to need Simple Minds,to reach the
intangible or something.If I'm doing an interview with a French paper,I
can do my Jim Kerr bit for an hour or so.But that's pretending.I don't
need that at all.You know why we're such a good group?Because we don't
try.It's all happened despite ourselves a lot of the time.Most people I
see look as though they would do anything to expand their fame.It's a
horrible thing to be.I can look like a complete bastard and I can look
completely absurd,but there's still something else there.People who like
The Cure seem to appreciate that.If that ever went,it would be dreadful."

It's seven years since my first meeting with Robert Smith and there's a
pervading sense of deja vu in the air.Back in 1982,he was crawling from
the wreckage of "Pornography",sick and exhausted,wearily announcing that
The Cure had reached the end."I don't want us to carry on like this," he
told me."I don't want The Cure to become a relic.I don't see any way on
after a record like this."

 This time,there's no sickness and little exhaustion in evidence but,once
again,Smith is explaining that his group are about to call a halt.This
time I don't believe him.This time,it seems as though he's simply testing
himself,thoughtfully playing around with the scope of his own resistance.
Smith is scribbling his promises in the sand,knowing that the tide is
coming in.Once the promise is erased,he'll be free to play again.This is
Robert Smith's hiding game.He relishes the self-deception.He forces the
role and momentarily,is caught in it.Until the next time he needs to prod
The Cure into action.

 We're supping a beer on the roof of the BBC studio in White City where
The Cure have spent most of the day preparing for a "Top of the Pops"
appearance.They find themselves sandwiched between Diana Ross and Debbie
Gibson.We keep bumping into Diana in the BBC corridors and a curious
relationship is built up.Everytime we pass,Simon Gallup greets her with a
hearty bark.The way one would greet a newspaper vendor on the way to work
in the morning.Diana is obviously bemused and finally wonders who these
odd people are."We are The Cure," Simon announces with authority,as though
he's part of an eccentric English tribe.Diana smiles,as though she'd
already decided as much.

 It proves to be a trying day for The Cure.After all the waiting,the
endless rehearsals,they are ready to do the business.As they stroll into
the studio,the BBC producer decides that Robert's slurred make-up is too
much for the nation's pop kids to bear.Refusing to compromise,they march
back to their dressing room.Five minutes later,an apologetic Beeb official
saunters in to tell them that it will be all right after all.

 Later,once his anger has subsided,Robert is attempting to see the positive
side of the situation."At least we still threaten people," he laughs."That
has to be a good thing."

  The Cure have been absent for two years.After the polychromatic "Kiss Me
Kiss Me Kiss Me" album,a pause was inevitable.Just as inevitable was some
inward shift in the group.Perhaps surprisingly,it was Laurence Tolhurst,a
close friend of Robert's since 1972,who evaporised this time.

 "The last album was too easy to make," Robert explains."We could have
made three albums this year.After 'Kiss Me',I wondered what we could
possibly do next.For six months after that record,we were involved in all
kinds of promotional stuff--like going to Japan for 10 days to talk to
complete idiots.I couldn't go through all that again.I knew that,by the
next time I kicked it into life again,there would be none of that.I knew
that I needed to feel more urgent about things.I just realised how
cossetted I was.I knew I could be looked after.It's difficult for me to
feel uncomfortable about things.But I would never feel comfortable if I
started to grow up in the group.The main thing that the 'Kiss Me' album
achieved was that people were at last forced to acknowledge us.It meant
that the records which were ignored the first time around would finally be
listened to,It takes a long time but it makes things even more worthwhile."

 He points out that this was happening a lot in America."The Head on the
Door" had stayed in the US charts for 38 weeks,but it was "Kiss Me" that
made them something more than a big cult act over there.Having discovered
The Cure at this point,a large number of new fans suddenly realised the
group had a sizeable back catalogue and felt compelled to investigate,
finding a rather different group to the one they had stumbled across.But
back they went.To the nervous,hesitant beginnings of "Three Imaginary Boys",
a record which offered precious little evidence of the imaginative flair to
come.It seems rather ironic now that Robert Smith started out life in The
Cure as a lampstand.
 "I still hate that album," he seethes."It's just cack.I couldn't see how
anyone wanted it."
 
 H has always insisted that 1980's "Seventeen Seconds" is The Cure's most
important ,if not their finest,album.It suggested that The Cure was not
going to be a ritual gesture,that it was always going to be shuddering to
a halt before starting up again in unexpected ways.

 "It broke the group away from any stranglehold that Chris Parry of Fiction
might have had over it," he now says about "Seventeen Seconds". "It
actually gave me the self-confidence to do what I wanted."
 "You see,the linear thing dissolves with the longevity of the group.I
actually have to pay less attention to what we've done,the more we do.
I was very aware of our last record whereas I can't possibly be aware of
our our last 10 records.It's a kind of truism.It's true that I don't
think of The Cure as a single group.The group that made 'Seventeen Seconds'
wasn't the group that made 'Three Imaginary Boys',even at that early stage.
I realised that the people involved and my attitude to those people
affected what I was doing as much as anything."

 By 1981,The Cure had won themselves the reputation of being the gloomiest
band around."Faith was a tremendously solemn album and made one wonder how
much further the group could go along this road.1982's "Pornography would
take them to the limit.They suffocated on their own despair and self-
loathing and emerged a new Cure,disentangled and enlightened.
 "I'd reached a spiritual lowpoint around that time," Smith recalls.
"Inevitably there followed a physical decline.I couldn't be bothered
anymore.It took quite a few different things to bring me out again.Mary
was the biggest motivating force.There's a great advantage in knowing
someone for so long,being the same age and from the same background.You
know what the other person means and what they're going through.The
disadvantage is that they can't offer much comfort.They can't tell you
that everything is going to be all right because you both know,deep down,
that it probably won't be all right.At the same time,it was good having
someone I didn't have to pretend to.I had no reason to be anything other
than what I was."
 "But that album will always stand out.After 'Pornography'.it didn't
bother me.I let it all go.I knew we could do it and I knew how much trouble
it would cause."

 He does not recall "Let's Go To Bed" or "The Walk" with any fondness and
admits that this was the only time when he contrived to make the group
popular.By 1983,with "The Love Cats",they had mastered the art of the
memorable pop single,launching a series that would include "The
Caterpillar","Inbetween Days",Close To Me and "Why Can't I Be You",some of
the most brilliantly playful pop records of the eighties.
 "The Top" was a muddled disappointment,largely compromised,Smith explains,
by the savage physical deterioration that was still taking place inside him.
 "That album is all in the wrong tempo," he smiles."It makes me laugh when
I listen to it now.It might have been a weird transition,but I didn't
have much choice.I didn't have the mental strength to communicate what I
wanted to anyone else.I couldn't be bothered to tell anyone what key a
song was in or what bassline to play.So I did it on my own.I was ill for
months between 'Pornography' and 'The Top',but it didn't bother me at all.
I didn't feel sorry for myself.That's what I wanted to feel like.I wanted
to feel completely useless.It was an escape-route at the time.It was the
easy way out."

 1985's "The Head on the Door" romped through the emptiness of Smith's
imaginary spaces,infatuated with dreams,lies and love.The infamous Mad Bob
phase where he too seemed to feel the need to reinvent himself.It made for
great theatre,but Smith emerged bruised and confused.Once again,he was
trapped within his own dramas.
 "I became like a kind of freak show.But the only way out of something like
that is to live it.I know that having this sense of longevity allows me to
smile.Smash Hits will say,'Robert Smith is back and he's no saner!' But
there's nothing in there to say why I'm odd anyway.It's just a convenient
term.It's tired and old now.Eventually,it will drop off me like another skin.
At the time it was fucking awful.The only time I think of myself as weird
is when I'm having my photo taken and I think of myself writing a song like
'The Same Deep Water As You' six months before.One of them has to be true.
I know there's nothing real or true about having my photo taken.The singing
part is true.I play along with the other part as much as anyone does,but I
despise people who don't realise they're playing."
 "In 1985,the actual decision for me to go and meet Simon and ask him to
rejoin the group was the most positive thing I'd done for ages with regards
to The Cure.Once he'd agreed,I knew I could pick up where I'd left off with
'Pornography'.I could then use what was in the group to uplift people,
rather than just moaning about things.The things that forced me to make an
album like 'Pornography' are still there.I could still write 'Pornography'.
There are songs on 'Disintegration' that are trying to deal with the same
things,even if they're not  a direct continuation.These things just won't
go away..."

 "Disintegration" is the record The Cure might have after "Pornography" if
they had not completely degenerated and dissolved.When I mention to Cure
mentor,Chris "Bill" Parry,that the new album is remarkably subdued,he
argues that it is ultimately rejoicing.Parry,who has conveniently replaced
Tolhurst as the group's scapegoat and fall-guy,explains that The Cure have
more experience to draw on now.That they can go down while managing to
uplift the listener.
 After the quixotic "The Head on the Door" and the awesome stretch of "Kiss
Me',the new album might,on first hearing,suggest a backward turn,to the
drowsy angst of "Faith",where Smith was up to his knotted forehead in the
temporality of love,desire and life,spread out on the torture-rack,
considering the centre of his own failure.
 With "Disintegration",Smith has immersed himself once more in the spectacle
of his own suffering.You need not go searching for a line like,"hand in
hand is the only way to land", or,"I should feel like a polar bear".If the
songs of the last four years have been snatched from his dreams and
imaginings,"Disintegration" moves back into the real world of loneliness,
isolation,uncertainty,regret,failing love,faithlessness and the memory of
bliss.Only on "Love Song" does Smith sound as though he has reason to cheer.
Surely,there's nothing as hopeless as "The Funeral Party" or "The Drowning
Man",but "Prayers for Rain" and "The Same Deep Water As You" come perilously
close.
 Even by Cure standards,it's an extremely unlikely turn.
 "It's got a lot more in it than a record like 'Faith'," Smith decides."With
'Faith',it was like one song  divided up into eight different songs.I
suppose songs like 'Closedown'' and 'Untitled' take up that thread,going back
to the old things about age,sadness and disintegration itself.They give the
record a bleaker mood overall.I think it's the kind of record you'd want
to listen to on your own."
 "I know why the songs are like this.It's got a lot to do with just turning
30,getting married last summer,things that have nothing to do with anyone
else really.I guess 'Kiss Me' was a summing up for the group,while this
record is a personal summing up for me.I think it's as far as I can go.I'm
aware of repeating myself,going over familiar ground.I'll have to find
another medium for myself.Boxing perhaps..."
 Though he argues it would have been too easy to have made another three
albums like "Kiss Me" this year,isn't it also too easy to make a record
like this?
 "Well,it's not actually.It's not easy at all.For me to sing songs like
this is extremely difficult.But it's not an ethic or anything.It's how
I felt when I wrote these songs last year.I didn't feel particularly,um,
good,at the time.The same things bother me and they always will.They are
intrinsically tied to my own deterioration and they get more acute as I
get older.They don't deaden.When I was young,I could think about things
that bothered me in an abstract way.Now I don't.They're too real."
 "I've spent a lot of time and energy trying to get this record right because
my sense perfectionism has increased as I've got older.It took ages for me
to believe this record was right.If this is going to be the last Cure
record,then it has to be the one that's best.I have to think like that.If I
have taken these songs and made them as good as they can be,then how can
I possibly think about what's next?You just become pulp if you think like
that."
 "It's a real shock to come to 'Top of the Pops',thinking that I'm going to
be facing people again.I wonder why I'm doing it.Horrible.I genuinely feel
like that.I find it quite frustrating that I'm sometimes so easy-going
about this group and that I sometimes let it slip.But at least I let it
slip upwards."

 The forthcoming solo album is,of course,a convenient way for Smith to feel
comfortable with the idea that The Cure is at an end.For a while,he can
stop the tide from coming in to erase his promises.
 "Actually,the real reason I want to do a solo album is that Tom Sheehan
took a photograph of me three years ago,the perfect photo of me,and I'm
never going to use it unless I do a solo thing."
 "A lot of the words for 'Disintegration' were written for a record I was
going to make on my own.I took them to the rest of the group knowing that,
if they were resistant to the idea of going back to The Cure of eight years
ago,I would use them myself.I would have been quite happy to have made these
songs on my own,but,at the same time,I wanted to do something that had a
real depth of emotion to it.If the group hadn't thought it was right,that
would have been fine.The Cure would have been left on the shelf somewhere
until I'd got all this out of my system,so we could go back to something
everyone was happy with.Deep down,they know I'm going to railroad over them
anyway.I say that the solo album is a threat,but it's not really a threat
at all."
 "The songs on the solo album have been building up musically for a few
years--piano,cello and guitar pieces.Very simple,minimalistic songs.What
would our drummer,Boris be doing?To me,it would be an imposition to take
these pieces to the band.It wouldn't be The Cure then.What's the point of
saying to Boris,'There's no drums on this record but you're still in the
group'.I've sung what I wanted to sing on 'Disintegration'.It's a Cure
record and it's all the better for being a Cure record because there's no
other input on it.That's what went wrong on 'The Top',where there was no
outside criticism at all.I didn't even let anyone else into the studio.
Can I be trusted on my own?Well,not really.But I realised I had to do a
solo thing because there were all these bits that had been rejected by
various Cures over the last five or six years,and I wanted to use them."

 Perhaps the closest anyone has got to a definition of Robert Smith can
be found within the pages of Steve Sutherland's definitive "Ten Imaginary
Years" biography.When director Tim Pope was asked about Robert,he replied,
"Smith's a very paradoxical character.Everything he is,he isn't.He's
always black,yet he's white.The Cure are the stupidest band you could
ever work with,yet they're the brightest and most intelligent.They're the
noisiest,but they are the quietest.Robert says he's like a child,but he
isn't.He's too intelligent."

 "I don't know then,do I?" laughs Robert."I don't know what's occurring.
It's like...I know what In want more than I know what I don't want.I run
The Cure like a negative dictatorship.I know what people can't do and what
they can't be,but I'm open to what people want to do and what they want to
be."
 "Basically,I'm probably not the best judge of what we do.But I give my big
sister Cure tapes and she plays them for her children.Her youngest boy is
like the perfect Cure critic.He actually verbalises things that I feel
about what we're doing but can't put into words.When I'm on the cover of
magazines,he walks around with them.He thinks it's really fascinating that
I do what I do while I'm almost as old as his mum.But he can't figure the
two things out.This Robert Smith that makes a fool of himself on 'Top of
the Pops' and the one he knows.That's a bit like I feel really..."

 When the interview finally wraps itself up,it's one o' clock in the
morning.Robert insists on driving me home and dropping me at my door.We
stop off at Finsbury Park so he can grab a bag of chips.
 "I've felt closer to The Cure in the past than I do at the moment," he
tells me as we turn into my road."I thought it was over after 'Kiss Me'
when we had a very long lay-off.It gets to the point where it takes so
much effort to get it going again.It would be easier to stop now than to
keep it going."
 The car slams to a halt.This is the end.Until the next time.
 Thank you for the lift,Robert.