Twenty years fatigued
by Christoph Lindemann

Two decades of darkness gnaw at the strength. Robert Smith has got dark sacks under the eyes, the strongest
Cure-album in ten years in his pocket and moves with ME/Sounds through Hamburg on a monday night at 3am.

There grows brush out of Robert Smith´s skull. This man has tortured his hair with passion and love, with care and
obsession for two decades. He learned to appreciate the "ritual aspects" of this mercyless hair torture, he says. He
gardens his wild running growth evening after evening in his dressing-room. There isn´t that much damage if you
look at it superficially. But the deeper you thrust forward to the skin, the more radical the landscape changes: knots
and chignons press out of the pores, dried cords fight for light where is none. It seems at least plausible to meet
para-intelligent life down here. Nevertheless: "My hair is healthier today than ever", Robert Smith says with
hesitating care. Well, maybe he knows this sentence from an advertisement. Still he has become more cautious.
If there isn´t a photographer or an audience in sight, he doesn´t use anything for his hair. No comb, no wax, no
spray, not even a cut. "If I go out on a drink, I don´t try to curry down my hair on purpose to be as inconspicious as
possible. But I neither try to brush it up to be more striking. I jut look like I do", he explains and bites his nails a
bit.

It is a cold and above all silent night in Hamburg. Most people in Hamburg sleep on a tuesday at 3am. Robert
shuffles along the dark asphalt with a stoic calm. At the moment he is content. With a lot of patience, he persuaded
his manager Daryl Bamonte, promoter Simone, the ME/Sounds-messenger and two other journalists to move
around Hamburg at this unchristian time. The first destination is the the bar of the Atlantic Hotel, a considerable
walk. We turn around one corner after the other, cross hardly lighten streets, while Roberts returns to the hairy
topic again. "I had a haircut, you know" he says seriuosly and significantly, "one of my nephews becomes a
hairdresser and he practised with my head a few months ago. It was fantastic, quite thin, the hair didn´t stick out at
all. But, well, I didn´t have the courage to expect this from my wife, you know." He hesitates, takes a breath once
again, but keeps quiet at last. We move on silently until it blurts out: "Pardon!? Your wife?" "My wife hates me
with short hair. She decides exactly about it´s length. It really isn´t a creative, artistic or image driven decision to
wear my hair like this. Believe me it´s just because this way I have a happier private life - I´d be pretty fuckin´
stupid to cut my hair" he says and laughs. Not loud, not relaxed. It´s just his diaphragm cramping a bit by speaking
out the words "pretty fuckin´ stu-u-upid". Nothing changes in his bearing. Smith isn´t a friend of theatrical gestures.
The warmly lightened entry of the Atlantic appears. Robert moves around and crosses the street in front of us. He
slides actually. He moves his feet only millimetres over the ground. His arms are hanging lifeless next to his body,
the left shoulder pulling up a bit. He definetely created the famous backsight-image on the Cure-shirt according to
his likeness.

The friendly doorkeeper at the Atlantic Hotel doesn´t know a Robert Smith. "Sorry our bar is already closed", he
says with a slight bow and we´re standing on the cold street once again. Promoter Simone actually wants to go home
soon, but she knows Hamburg inside out. She translates Robert her idea of trying out a higher bar at the banks of
the Alster. He nods, keeps quitely in the background, waits until everything is organized and then follows the
instructions well. When we arrive at CIU´S, the barkeeper just wants to lock the door, but hurries to change the
locking direction as he notices a famous, shaggy rockstar coming. We sit down at the long, empty bar and Robert is
finally able to order a round of White Russians (his favourite drink since "The Big Lebowski"). "I just can´t believe
it" he says to his manager Daryl. They already talked about their american business colleagues at the record
company in the cab. "I recently met this woman who is responible for me in the USA. She really thinks that I´ll soon
be "old enough" to do radio music. She didn´t understand anything, really not a single thing. She thinks I´m growing
out of my "teenband" The Cure, so I can produce Adult Contemporary", he says, shaking his head. Robert is 40
and with the seriousness of a mature artist he completed a powerful Cure album during the last months - which
demanded a lot from him. "If I tell the brutal truth, then "Disintegration" was the last good Cure-album. I wanted to
have this power again and for this reason the band had to listen to "Pornography" and "Disintegration" over and
over. And it worked, "Bloodflowers", the new album, is a fucking good one. I´m proud of it but it also took a lot of
energy", Smith confesses and expects legitimately some respect for it. Adult Contemporary is still an invective for
Robert. "Bloodflowers" is gloomy, patient, old and - a horror for Smith´s employers - contains no pleasing airplay
concessions like "The 13th" or "Friday I´m In Love". The ladies and gentlemen at Polygram Records in London
doesn´t mince matters: To Roberts amusement they mark "Bloodflowers" as "commercial suicide", a forecast
which already missed the mark eleven years ago with "Disintegration". "They say the same things as then: This
album is the worst I could´ve ever done", Robert tells disappointedly. The artist doesn´t agree with them. Of course
he thinks, that it would be completely wrong to orient on the mainstream: "The people who like "Friday I´m In
Love" aren´t actually fans of The Cure. They´re not the ones who buy my records. This is a totally different start.
Those like Sting and Phil Collins because they think "Hey, that could be me". Those fans who like David Bowie or
me think "I wish I could be him"", Smith analyzes immodestly. The glass is empty. Robert will order the third round
soon. Everyone except him will soon start to stammer. Robert is accustomed to several things. You´ll hardly
observe anything in him. His border of tolerance is extremely high. He just boozes that much at home - if he´s
alone. And then often drowns in selfpity. Sounds sad. But Robert Smith grins while telling this.

After "Bloodflowers" the Brit has finally shot all his ammunition as a bandleader of The Cure. He pursued a
gloomy conception for more than twenty years, he set his nightmares and depressions humorless and masked in
music. Make up, hairstyle and tone hadn´t to be changed hardly for twelve albums. The messiah of angst carried
the cross absent-minded and monotone, he undertook the hurts of a host of blackclothed followers. Song after song,
album after album sounded the died away guitars, whimpered Smith´s fragile voice in sad waves over dragging
arrangements. He guided his band with shuffled steps, who had a worldwide cellar-relevance during the 80´s. They
reached their biggest successes nearly unnoticed in the last decade: the honor for "Best British Group" at the Brit
Awards in 1991, "Wish" as the most successful album in their career in 1992, and they played as headliners at the
biggest Glastonbury festival so far in 1995.

Robert Smith has given everything for "Bloodflowers", he reared laboriously and with his last strength he created a
masterpiece. It shall be the last Cure album and this makes sense. "There´s nothing left to burn / I´ve run right out
of thoughts and I´ve run right out of words ... I used to feed the fire / but the fire´s almost out", Smith whimpers in
"39", inspired paradoxically by his lack of inspiration. The drearyness of everyday is a central theme on
"Bloodflowers", the extinction of passion, the missing artistic pressure. Contemplated matter-of-factly, the overall
work of art The Cure is finished. "How far?" Robert asks and watches attentively from his little awake eyes. From
1979 to 1999 music with lots of masquerade and tons of selfpity. That´s really enough, isn´t it? Maybe the new
millennium simply hasn´t got any space for The Cure. Robert looks at his boots. "If I had to choose instead of the
record company, I would have released "Bloodflowers" last year. We´re at the beginning of a new age now but with
this album we´re looking back. Contemplated artistically, it is an album full of nostalgia. I don´t know if it fits in
2000. I don´t think that I fit in 2000", Robert considers and smiles. And he changed indeed, this Robert Smith.

Today the since 1988 childless married man has got rosebushes in his garden in the west of London.There he works
nearly every day on his beds. Robert did a apprenticeship as a gardener after school. Nevertheless today he swears
on garden-scientifically controversial techniques. Regular piddling on them stimulates the growing of the roses, he
tells us. Robert arises when he talks about his gardening successes and strange watering habits: "I only can
recommend that. Seven years ago I planted a bush and now the bloosoms are fantastically red as blood. You can
see one of the roses in the "Bloodflowers" booklet" Smith tells and tells and tells. After the third White Russian
the former inaccessible and introverted goth-musician talks without a break with an enthusiasm that opens to none
of his halfdrunk bar-colleagues. "When you´re weeding in the garden, it grows again within two weeks. You might
think, a garden, how fucking boring. But I´m fascinated by the idea that everything I do is meaningless in the
connection to nature", he philosophizes and lights a matchstick. "My garden reminds me...", Smith talks
significantly on, while the flame burns nearly down to his thumb and he doesn´t light the short "Gitane" between his
lips before the last moment, "... that all doings are a waste of time in the end. It sounds like a cliché, but it satifies
me very much. Besides I´m outdoors in the fresh air and smell the scent of the roses", the queerfished
cult-musician adds, climbs down the stool and goes for little rockstars.

The melancholic has become domestic. During the piddlebreak, manager Daryl tells me that Robert decided on
convenience to give his soccer heart to a second league club with a stadium next to his home instead of Manchester
United. That leaves you a bit helpless. Obviously Robert Smith changed three gears down. "If I hadn´t changed my
lifestyle, I would be dead by now. This isn´t a kind of dramatic talking around, but a matter of fact. I´d be lying dead
on the bathroom floor if I had carried on like I did in former times", Smith tells after rejoining the conversation. And
he´s right. Smith had a strange lust for experiments all along. Since his youth he is agonized by such an ineffable
thirst for borderline experiences that he stumbled with a dry mouth to his own borders of being. Thus, when he was
13 he stayed awake for three weeks in a row repeatedly "just to see what happens". After this he crawled to school,
he thought the result of this consequently applied madness was "...really interesting, I had a few
out-of-body-experiences. I´ve been floating through the classroom and saw myself standing at the blackboard". A
year after this he overtaxed the puberty-limited tolerance of his male schoolmates by showing up with the make up
of his mother in sports lessons, because of a bet and found himself being beaten up for this. He did think that this
was "not fair" for understandable reasons, but he was fascinated how easy it was to upset other people by deviating
from standards. "That simply strengthened my self-determination. From that day on I used to go to school wearing
ladies´ clothings and make up in regular distances. I wanted to make a statement against this idiotic mentality that
determines exactly what and who is accepted and what is not", the eccentric remembers whose life didn´t get easier
by such radical actions. Smith did run against walls unswervingly. He inquired into himself ruthlessly by every
possible means that were at his disposal - and even documented the whole thing from time to time. "When I went to
New Zealand with the band in 1982, I swallowed a very heavy LSD-trip for the first time and had an unbelievably
strange night. I´ve been standing in the bathroom in the morning and did a photo of mine in the mirror, because I´ve
been rest assured that I had changed". You can get consternately intimate insights into this time by listening to
"Pornography" and "Japanese Whispers". During the recordings of the last one, a sanitary shaken Robert Smith
had to pay sharply for his selftrials - he suffered a complete breakdown.

Looking back, it seems like a miracle that Smith survived his experiments without any lasting injures (aside from
the condition of his hair). He even asserts to have found a few answers in this selfprescribed darkness, which
otherwise would have stayed bar of him. Today he lives a comparatively normal life between wedlock-everyday,
rosebeds and his music. There´s no creative standstill in Smith´s place. There are just other things to be engaged in
than thinking about the umpteenth Cure album. "I set my aims in babysteps. I practise the jazzy guitar runs of
Django Reinhard very slowly and I´m already able to play scales on the cello. My sawing is the worst nightmare of
my neighbours. Besides I´m starting a soloproject with spoken words and contributions of other artists", Smith
reveals. Meanwhile it´s 5am and it gets increasingly difficult to elicit something ingenious from Mister Smith. After
a while he starts every sentence with the words: "Don´t you write this, fuck, do write it, I don´t give a shit". Then he
rants and raves about musicians who exploit a certain image. As if he had never. A comment Smith doesn´t want to
hear: "I´m not strange. I write songs. But I´m able to talk to everyone normally, okay?“ Yeah, for sure.

(Thanks Martin)