Amid a stunning new album and a short-but-sweet return to the stage with The Cure, Robert Smith’s stock couldn’t be much higher as the new year beckons. But his career as a singing guitarist got off to a cacophonous start as he drunkenly butchered a Jimi Hendrix classic.
“I was horrified when I ended up as the singer,” he tells The Charlatans’ Tim Burgess on his Absolute Radio show.
At the start of his career, Smith loathed center stage, preferring to simply strum his electric guitar away from the spotlight – or avoid the stage entirely.
“At school, I never did anything on stage, I was always doing wardrobe stuff,” he relays. “Even when we did our first shows, I sang one song at our first show, just to see what it felt like, and I sang the wrong song.
“I sang and played Suffragette City and everyone else was doing Foxy Lady. I was so drunk I didn’t even know!”
That calamitous gig did his confidence no good. He believed he was destined for a career well away from microphones.
“I never felt like I was cut out to be a singer, I kind of just grew into it because I fell out with everyone else who occupied that position until I became the de facto singer,” Smith extends.
That’s why, he says, his voice is so low in the mix on the band’s early records, explaining: “I didn’t think anyone would like what I sounded like. I didn’t!”
And yet the gothic songsmith has had a glittering career – despite the decidedly un-glittery sound of The Cure’s music. New album Songs of a Lost World, their first in 16 years, has received rave reviews, while Smith’s current live rig has turned heads.
Featuring discontinued plastic pedalboards and outdated modeling combo amps, it’s a setup that flies in the face of modern guitar culture. In truth, though, it’s fitting for a musician who has never followed or bucked to trends. It stands as a totem for doing it your own way.
“For whatever reason, when I sing, people connect with it,” he concludes. “I have no idea why, and I don’t think any signer does.”
Even though he felt his vocals were sub-par, he still pushed on, chasing art over perfection. The Cure were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2019, which is quite the turnaround from butchering Hendrix via a mashup no one wanted, but a small unsuspecting crowd got.
