Robert Smith Quotes

Robert Smith quotes. Smith (1959 - ) is a songwriter, musician and lead singer of The Cure, a long running new wave band. His best known songs include "Boys Don't Cry," "The Love Cats" and "Just Like Heaven." On a completely objective note, "Just Like Heaven" is one of the best songs ever.

Smith might be more famous for his hairstyle than his songwriting; many young 1980s goths imitated him by dying and backcombing their hair until it looked like they'd just spent an hour or two petting a Tesla coil.

But really, I'm being completely objective about "Just Like Heaven." You want proof? Here is proof:

Adulthood

I can literally walk out the front door now and not come back. I don't have anything to tie me down. In that sense mentally, I don't lead a kind of adult life.

The disappointment of dreams made real.
––on the song "Close to Me"

The Creative Process

A fan said to me, "I wish I could be you." In the song I turned that around.
––about "Why Can't I Be You?"

[Just Like Heaven] is my favourite song on the "Kiss Me" LP. It takes two incidents from real life: the main one happened where it was filmed, on Beachy Head, 15 years earlier. The song's about hyperventilating - kissing and fainting to the floor. Mary dances with me in the video because she was the girl on Beachy Head, so it had to be her. In the song she goes over the edge and disappears: poetic license. The idea is that one night like that is worth a thousand hours of drudgery.

Anyone who thinks they're creating art for consumption has no idea of its worth. I've had this argument most notably with David Bowie actually. When I very first met him to do an interview with XFM the conversation turned around to art and its meaning culturally, and he believed that art was solely determined by the consumer and in fact anything could be art. It was a very modern art approach to art. This was way back in '94 or something like that. I was drinking and I was enraged by this idea. I still think it's totally wrong. As an artist you invest the meaning into your work. Whether anyone else gets it is fucking immaterial.

Evolution

Each generation influences the following one and as a consequence brings it back to the past.

It was an interesting debate we had in the studio, the idea of changing as a person, developing with experience, which I think that essentially you have to believe that you can change. We were debating at what point you become fundamentally yourself, you hold the views that you have about justice, or right or wrong, truth, goodness, all the important subjects in life. Or are you able to completely evolve and change your opinions about fundamental beliefs and if so how are you still you. An endless kind of discussion, obviously something that millions and millions of people have though about, throughout all the time man has been thinking about such things. But it kind of struck a chord in me because this very slight book had a huge impact, it coalesced a lot of the feelings I was having, heading towards my mid-40's. I'd always assumed that the aspirations to know yourself are just there, you don't really question it, but I started to think, I didn't really have any idea of who I was. And I thought… its paradoxical, its one of those songs I was sitting there writing, and who's writing, but at the same time, its not me only, the philosophical conceit, like "who cares, lets go and watch the football" sort of thing. It is a fundamental problem and you can't help from time to time think about it. And it worried me, and so I put it into song.

I think all evangelicals are nutcases.

See also: Style and Evolution

Imitation

Nobody notices me. Nobody thinks I'm me. But then I look less like me than most of the people coming to our concerts.

I wouldn't want to think people doted on us, hung on every word, or wanted to look like us.

Back in England they're saying, "You're out of step with what's going on." Well, we're always out of step with what's going on. I can imagine the jibes if we tried to be modern––the Cure goes jungle or something. That's completely absurd.

Performance

When we [The Cure] go on stage there a lot of thought goes into how we're presenting what we're doing. So we try to retain a kind of subtlety to what we do.

When The Cure play now we often play up to three hours and we play pretty much everything. We're throwing in songs and you don't know whether they’re gonna like it or not, but it doesn't really matter because there's another 27 songs to follow so it's not crucial to the way the show is going to go.

Style

I started growing my hair long and wearing make-up and stuff because I was at school and I wasn't allowed to...But the dress is just an outward manifestation of a rebellion against authority, and it's a lifelong rebellion against authority.

Ross [Robinson, record producer], when he first met me, was surprised at how unaware I am of the world around me. And on a very practical level, it's because I'm short-sighted. I don't wear glasses because I've found it's a very good defence mechanism. If I'm in public, I don't know if people are looking at me. But I can't actually see very well, I'm out of focus beyond my arm. And he thought I'd taken it too far, that I wasn't noticing the leaves on the trees. So I've started wearing glasses a lot more since I met him.

I married somebody who likes the way I look. If I changed my hair every year, and I reinvented myself in time-honored pop fashion, I think understandably the person I'm married to would grow slightly sick of me.

I get a much more extreme reaction when I have my hair really short. I look thuggish when I shave my head and wear big boots. I walk into a newsagent and people think I'm going to jump the counter. It's a much more extreme reaction.

I hide behind what I look like with the make-up and the hair. I know I do, I'm self-aware enough to know why I'm still doing it. It's uncomfortable on the very few forays into real life that I have, getting petrol and shopping, but I've had it my entire life. I'm with a girl who likes the way I look and when I don't look like I look she doesn't like me as much, it's that simple.

I wouldn’t feel in the right frame of mind if I went on stage in bare feet and no makeup. It’s part of the ritual of going on stage and performing for people, which is in essence what reviewers have missed––you’re actually performing for people.

When we started to get well-known I was saying that if I looked like Ronald McDonald that would be the goth look. I imagine an alternate reality where Ronald McDonald was the goth icon.

When I joined Siouxsie And The Banshees I was aware that I was stepping into a goth band, in that Siouxie was a goth icon. I became a de facto goth icon around that time. When I was with the Banshees I made the point of wearing pyjamas––I wore a blue stripey pyjama top. I wanted to make a point I was not part of this world. I used to go drinking with [Banshees songwriter Steve] Severin in the [legendary Soho venue] Batcave around that time and there's nothing more gothic than drinking in the Batcave in 1983 with Steve Severin. But I would be wearing pyjamas.

I don't want to be known for the way I look. When we started out I refused to have a picture anywhere. We didn't have our pictures taken in the early days, it was a reaction against even the punk thing, which was supposedly against anything else, they were still generating iconic figures. I thought "It's fucked, the whole thing." I don't want to be anyone.

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