LES ATTRAPES-COEURS DE ROBERT SMITH, THE CURE
interviewed by Emmanuel Tellier
What was the first record you ever had ?
RS : People are always surprised when I say this but I swear it’s
true : i’ve started listening to rock music when I
was 6. Of course, at that time, the two unavoidable bands were the
Beatles and the Stones, and I dived straight into
this music. My older sister and my older brother had all their records
and instead of listening to childish little songs,
I was listening to some rock. My brother was also crazy about Captain
Beefheart, Cream, Jimi Hendrix, so much so
that when I was 7 or 8, to the despair of my parents, I became some
kinda little devil fed on psychedelic rock (he
laughs)... Soon I started to buy records on my pocket money - the
first one was Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust . And the
first concert I attended was Hendrix on the Isle of Wight - I was
10 ; I used to know all the lyrics by heart, and to
sing them in my bed at night, without getting anything of what they
meant.
When one is 9 or 10, what do they know about rock music ?
RS : Not much, personally I was just excited about the sound volume
and the electricity. I used to approach music
very physically : I liked the melodies, the drums sound, the guitars
row. when you’re this age, you’re unable to have
an intellectual or romantic vision of rock things. When I was 6,
I didn’t even know where the USA was, how could I
have had a thoughtful vision of Captain Beefheart’s records ?! For
me, people like Hendrix were aliens. They’d not
live like us, speak like us, eat like us. I wasn’t allowed to try
to understand too much, to come too close to the
mystery or there could have been serious trouble (he laughs)...
Had you got any other passion ?
RS : I was already mad about football and those two passions were
for me an undivisible unity. George Best, John
Lennon, Mick Jagger were as sublime and mysterious to me. These
people weren’t like us : they were
superhumans. What actually is fabulous, is that the pop culture
of the late 60s was articulated on this kind of people
: it was a period with a wild class. It’s a pity that this dimension
of mystery has disappeared nowadays.
when did you start seeing the rockworld in a more realisitic way ?
RS : At about 13 or 14, I started to play and learn frenetically,
but that didn’t kill this innocent, totally immature
relation between me and my records. I’ve remained very naive, very
dreamy for a long time - i.e. refusing to admit
that the musicians I liked were paid to do recordings and play concerts.
Now, my nieces and nephews (who start to
become more and more interested in rock music) refuse to see me
as an adult or a professionnal : for them I’m a
big kid doing music for fun. Rock music is not a job for them. Exactly
the kind of perception I had when i was 14 or
15... The other day I took twenty children or so (all my nephews
and nieces) to Eurodisney Paris. I spent two
fantastic days where I fell back to childhood, while taking care
of the adminstration of our trip as well : I bought the
tickets, sandwiches, drinks, paid for the hotel and the train. And
at the end of the stay it struck me that the kids had
absolutely not realized that we had spent two days in some commercial
surroundings, completely controled by
marketing and publicity. They’ve visited Eurodisney in the same
way that I used to listen to the Stones at 10 years
old : without giving any interest to the scenery nor to the wings.
When you were 15, was your passion for rock music easy to share with ?
RS : With my family, definitely. My mum and dad, who were both playing
an instrument, were encouraging us to
talk the records we liked - I remember staggering talks about Slade
and Gary Glitter. And my parents were lending
us their stuff; my mum made me listen to a lot of classical music
to enable me to have a larger vision of music. At
school, I found a few mates who had the same tastes as I. As my
dad was making his own beer in the garage, we’d
steal five to six a week and sell them to old blokes of the area,
and with the money we’d buy records. I probably
bought about one hundred records like that, far enough to feed my
passion. For me the 70's weren’t at all the awful
period that is being described nowadays. I spent great moments thanks
to a lot of records of that time.
What place do books have in your life ?
RS: I’ve always been used to reading an awful lot. At home there
wasn’t any TV : the only entertainments, then,
were reading and records - which I never saw as something imposed
but always as a pleasure. Our house was filled
with books. I’ve read all the English classics and a good deal of
American ones too. I sometimes tried to write some
small stuff, some short stories. The other day I was tidying my
attic and I found some notebooks in which I had
written loads of poems about football, guitars, rock music.
And what about cinema ?
RS: It never really interested me - apart from 2001, space odyssey
, that I saw millions of times. I still am an
insatiable reader and I still listen to most of what is released
in rock, techno and I also am quite a fan of jungle, so
all this doesn’t leave me much time for cinema. The first time I
got money with the Cure - it was in 1980, a year
after Three Imaginary Boys - , I bought myself a video player and
tried to catch up by subscribing to a videoclub.
Up till now it still is my main way of consumming movies : I watch
them at home, at my own pace, usually 20 years
after their official release.