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For my brimful of Asha

Contents

Information Page

Prologue: Los Angeles Forum, July 27,1986

Never Enough: The Story Of The Cure

Postscript

Source Notes/Bibliography

Team Cure Who Played What & When

Discography/Videography/Websites

Prologue

Los Angeles ForumJuly 27, 1986

Jonathan Moreland did not belonghere. Surrounded by teens and20somethings, their faces paintedghostly white, their lipstick appliedhaphazardly in a cosmetic tributeto Robert Smith, their new Anglopop hero, Moreland decked outin cowboy boots and matching hatwas a living, breathing anachron-ism. It seemed as though hedtaken a wrong turn at Nashvilleand never quite found his way

back home. The Cure definitelydidnt seem like his kind of band.

But music was the last thing onMorelands mind as he shoulderedhis way through the crowd, findinghis seat inside the LA Forum,which was filled to its 18,000 ca-pacity. The Forum definitely wasnta Jonathan Moreland kind of place,either. A hideous beige in colourand shaped like an upturned bowl,this venue had played host to mostof the worlds biggest rocknrollacts, especially in the heady Seven-ties. You could see such stars asLed Zeppelin, Neil Young, TheFaces and The Rolling Stones, oftenfor less than 10 bucks, with a con-tact high guaranteed as part of theadmission price the pot smokethat hung in the air was almostthick enough to carve. (If youre

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from LA, one knowledgeable localinformed me about the Forum, itspart of your rocknroll heritage.)It was also a venue where showsgenerated a huge amount ofbootlegs in the pre-downloadworld they usually came with theguarantee: Bore Em in theForum.

Rocknroll history, however,wasnt on Jonathan Morelandsmind as he found his seat. He wasin an even darker mood than someof The Cures funereal dirges. Re-jected by a woman called Andrea,whom he thought was the love ofhis life, hed arrived at the last dateof the current Cure tour, their finalUS show for almost 12 months,with one goal: to make a lastingimpression. To (literally) drivehome his point, hed managed to

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smuggle a seven-inch hunting knifepast the venues security guards.While The Cures hairdryers cooledbackstage, and the band added a fi-nal flourish to their industrialstrength hair gel and make-up,Moreland reached for his knife asthe house lights dimmed.

The Cure may have threatened toimplode almost every day of thepast eight years, but 1986 had ac-tually been a very good year. Thesigns were all positive: the Britishquintet, led by Robert Smith, mopepops very own Charlie Chaplin,had finally settled on a line-up thatdidnt feel the need to throttle eachother after each show. That wasntthe case four years earlier, duringthe seemingly endless tour in sup-port of their fourth album, the

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terminally bleak Pornography. Dur-ing those shows, Smith and bassistSimon Gallup had even turned onthe faithful, sometimes jumpingheadfirst into the crowd to silencethose whod made clear their ob-jections to The Cures new musicaldirection (and obsessions). Strangedays, indeed.

But it was now 1986 and Smithseemed as content as his contrite,restless nature would allow. Hedeven eased up on his boozing,while his Olympian drug-takinghad now been modified to moreacceptable recreational standards.At its peak, he and buddy SteveSeverin, of Siouxsie & The Ban-shees, had once recorded an indul-gence piece called Blue Sunshinewhile gobbling acid tabs as if theywere boiled lollies. Then theyd

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retire to Severins London flat forall-night binges, while taking in hisseemingly endless stash of goryhorror videos. This became knownas Smiths chemical vacation.Around the same time, Smith wasalso working on new Cure materialand a new Banshees album, which,not surprisingly, led to the worst ofhis many emotionally unstableperiods. But that was now inSmiths past.

And having worked their waythrough several US labels, in aseemingly futile effort to replicatetheir slowly building UK success, itseemed as though The Curesfourth and latest American home,Elektra, actually had the bandsbest interests at heart. RobertSmith, like so many others beforeand after him, had learned early on

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that music is a business where los-ing control (both creative and com-mercial) can be disastrous. Hed al-lowed the artwork of their debutalbum, 1979s Three ImaginaryBoys, to represent the trio as alampshade, a refrigerator and a va-cuum cleaner and had been livingit down ever since. But even beforethen, when the then Easy Cure wassigned by German label Ariola/Hansa in 1977 (when the trio werestill teenagers), theyd been in-structed to record an assortment ofrock chestnuts and greatest hits,rather than their own material,which led to one of the quickestterminations of contract this sideof a Britney Spears marriage vow.Robert Smith truly had learned byexperience. Now their first best-ofcollection, Standing On A Beach:

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The Singles, was on the fast track toUS chart success. And MTV hadtaken to the eccentric Tim Pope-directed clip for Inbetween Days,which featured dancing fluorosocks, like some long-lost sibling.

Their biggest-ever Stateside tourhad opened three weeks earlier,when the good ship Cure docked atthe Great Woods Center for thePerforming Arts in Mansfield, Mas-sachusetts. OK, it wasnt MadisonSquare Garden, but the cult of TheCure which would soon reachfrantic, sometimes frighteninglevels of adoration was clearlybuilding. Fans rushed the stagewhen the band appeared, even try-ing to work their way past securityfor a personal audience withSmith, their new pop idol. Thisconcert and those that followed

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wasnt so much a rock show as agathering, a fact that wasnt lost onthe Maiden Evening News. The localrag observed the serious devotionthat Cure lovers felt towards theirobject of desire, noting howteenie-bopper girls dressed inblack and white with punky hair-dos risked their lives trying to getpast a group of gruff security mon-sters to give Smith a kiss.

Over the ensuing weeks, suchhigh-profile rags as Rolling Stoneturned their spotlight on The Cureand, in particular, their seductivelyodd frontman. Smith waschristened the male Kate Bush,the thinking teens pin-up, thesecurity blanket of the bedsit set even a dark version of Boy Ge-orge while The Cure caravanrolled on through New York,

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Philadelphia, Detroit, Chicago, Dal-las and San Francisco, playing toincreasingly larger and ever morefervent crowds. It wasnt Beatle-mania, sure, but it was a clear signthat The Cure were destined forbigger things than their stop-startsuccess so far suggested. Hell, theymight even make it home withoutbeating the stuffing out of eachother.

By the night of July 27, as theband (and bandwagon) rolled intoLos Angeles for their farewell head-liner at the Forum, Smith whodjust hacked off most of his trade-mark birds-nest of hair, simply forshock value was warming to boththe tour and his bandmates. Thiswas a significant development for aman whod threatened to kill offThe Cure virtually every time they

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took a forward step. In fact, hedalmost brought his contrary plan tofruition in 1982. After the punish-ing, depressing Pornography tour,hed shelved the band for monthsand hidden away in his bedroom athis parents home in Crawley, Sus-sex. Hed then turned his back onThe Cure, defecting to the Ban-shees camp, craving the near-an-onymity of being just another guyin the band, rather than life as thecreative force and focal point ofThe Cure.

Smith had to be persuaded backto Cureworld by long-time man-ager Chris Parry, and even thenonly under the proviso that hecould release the seeminglythrowaway Lets Go To Bed. Itwas a song that was actually de-signed by Smith to either kill off

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the band forever or at least alien-ate every young mopeful whodlikened The Cures gloomy mood-scapes to those of Joy Division andthe doomed Ian Curtis. Much toSmiths bewilderment, the veryunCure-like Lets Go To Bed be-came an accidental hit, while itssequel, the equally disposable atleast to Smiths ears TheLovecats, went even larger, be-coming their biggest UK single.What was a confused 23-year-oldRobert Smith to do? When he real-ised that The Cure were the bandthat refused to die, he chose simplyto let it be. Now here he was inAmerica receiving the full startreatment.

Cure co-founder (and occasionalwhipping boy) Laurence Lol Tol-hurst took the time to sum up

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neatly the buoyant mood insideCamp Cure. I think this is TheCure that youll see until it stopsbeing The Cure, he told a report-er. I cant see anybody else com-ing into the band. Its really alwaysbeen a band made up of friendsmore than anything else. But Idont think we have any friendsleft who can play anything.Robert Smith agreed. He told theAquarian Weekly that this versionof The Cure was built to last maybe. Unless something reallydrastic happens on the Americantour, like if someone flips out com-pletely, I know that this line-upwill make the next record. Smithdidnt realise the tragic prescienceof his comments.

Back inside the LA Forum, TheCures crew checked their watches,

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as Smith prepared to lead the 1986version of the band Smith, oldfriends Tolhurst, Simon Gallup andPorl Thompson, plus the recentlyrecruited Boris Williams out ofthe backstage darkness and ontothe stage. It was then that Jonath-an Moreland made his move, at theexact moment when the crowdsCure-fever was almost tangible.Leaping out of his seat, Morelandremoved his hunting knife andbegan to stab himself furiously inthe chest and stomach, splatteringblood over anyone unfortunateenough to be seated near him. Justbefore the onset of shock, or therealisation of just how deep anddangerous his wounds were, More-land stood on his chair, strippedoff his shirt and continued toplunge the blade into his tattooed

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chest. The crowd around him wereboth bloody and confused. Think-ing that this must be part of theperformance of a band renownedfor their obsession with dark musicand even darker themes, some ofthe crowd cheered Moreland on ashis blood loss increased to a dan-gerous level. But when police andsecurity enveloped Moreland, thetruth sank in: this was no act, thiswas a real suicide attempt. Asword leaked backstage of More-lands grisly self-mutilation, RobertSmith started to wonder whetherThe Cure was cursed: for every bitof forward momentum, there wasanother bizarre incident, orwalkout, or breakdown.

Perry Bamonte, then Cure roadieand later a member of the band,was on stage when the stabbing

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took place. I saw the commotion,he told me in 2005, and heardscreaming and the crowd clearingas the guy jumped onto his seatand began plunging a knife into hisgut. It was surreal and disturbing.[Then] a cop fired a tazer [stungun] at him and he went down.

Stunned, the local police ser-geant, Norman Brewer, spoke withMoreland as he was being hauledaway to an ambulance. Morelandhad told him that The Cure faithfulencouraged him in his bloodlust.As the crowd grew louder, Brew-er stated, he stabbed himselfdeeper and harder. As he wasrushed to hospital, the criticallyinjured More-land moaned a con-fession. I did it because I wontever be able to have the woman Ilove. He died soon after.

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Somehow, the show went on andThe Cure reached the end of boththeir set and the tour. But Smithsuncharacteristically upbeat moodhad soured considerably. By thetime they returned to London, aspokesman for Fiction Records the label headed by Chris Parry, aman whod taken a chance in 1978on a four-track Easy Cure cassettethat had been lobbed into his post-box issued a statement. Theycould not believe anyone would dothat at one of their gigs, the state-ment read. It was a bitter endingfor them because it happened onthe last night of what has been asuccessful US tour.

But the Forum disaster was yetanother bump in the road for TheCure. Even by 1986, their careerhad run an incredibly haphazard

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course sometimes caused by theband, other times by forces outsideof their control ever since Smithand Tolhurst had started fumblingwith guitar and drums at the NotreDame Middle School in 1972. Forevery high such as Boys Dont Cryor a headlining show, there wasanother spate of band infighting, anew Smith meltdown or a sacking or something as perverse asMorelands suicide. For theerstwhile Three Imaginary Boys, itwas a reminder of how unpredict-able and sometimes downrightdangerous the pop life could be.

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Chapter One

Crawley is grey and uninspiring with anundercurrent of violence. Its like apimple on the side of Croydon.

Robert Smith

IT may be located halfway betweenLondon 35 miles away to the north and Brighton on the south coast,but Crawley is hardly the kind of townwhere the seeds of musical revolutionare grown. According to one writer,Crawley was the doormat you wipeyour feet on before leaving the coun-tryside for London. When the Smithfamily relocated there from Blackpoolin 1966, the clubs of London such asThe Marquee, where in the mid-SixtiesThe Who promised (and delivered)

Maximum R&B, and The Bag ONails,where Jimi Hendrix began his super-nova rise might as well have been loc-ated on another planet. It was not verylikely that youd see Carnaby Streetsdedicated followers of fashion strollinglike peacocks up and down the HighStreet. Mind you, in the late 20th cen-tury, Crawley would house some un-usual residents, including RobinGoodridge, the drummer for Nirvanaclones Bush, and Adam Carr, a manwhose claim to fame was being votedHomosexual Author of the Year by TheGay Times (twice, no less).

But in the main, middle-class Craw-ley in Sussex was sensible, solid andunchanging. As Robert Smith once ob-served of his home, some 30-odd yearsand 30 million record sales since heand band co-founder Laurence LolTolhurst first exchanged glances on a

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school bus on the way to primaryschool in 1964: Crawley is grey anduninspiring with an undercurrent of vi-olence. Its right on the edge of a greenbelt, next to Gatwick Airport. Its adreadful place. Theres nothing there.My dad work[ed] for Upjohns pharma-ceutical company. He had to movedown to Sussex for his job. Theyrebased in Croydon. All my schoolingtook place around Crawley. Its like apimple on the side of Croydon.

Driving Smiths point home just thatlittle bit further, a recent examinationof all things Crawley noted: There isloads to do in Crawley provided youonly want to get drunk or fit, both atconsiderable expense. Today, at least14 pubs line the High Street, whichkeep well-known tippler Robert Smithpleasantly occupied on the occasionswhen he returns from his home in

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Bognor to check in on his parents, Alexand Rita, who still call Crawley home.

Mind you, Crawley was a town witha plan. It was officially designated aNew Town on January 9, 1947, notlong after the end of the Second WorldWar, with a design capacity built intothe planned infrastructure for 50,000residents. (Today, around 85,000 livein Crawley.) During its post-war growthspurt, the small local villages of Ifieldto the west, Worth to the east, PeasePottage to the south and LowfieldHeath to the north were gradually en-gulfed by this New Town. It was ex-panding quickly.

As characterless as this town of of-fices and engineering firms appears, therecorded history of this New Town though hardly the stuff of famousbattles or daring discovery does date

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back over 1,000 years. In fact, the firstdevelopment in the area is thought tohave occurred as far back in time as500 BC. Some 400 years later, the firstsimple furnaces began to be used in thearea. The roots of a long-held traditionin the Sussex area were thus sown, asdocumented by the name of one ofCrawleys neighbourhoods, the rhaps-odically titled Furnace Green. By AD100, those utilitarian Romans hadsettled in the area and begun to extendand improve the furnaces. By the ninthcentury, Worth Church was erected; itsnow situated in the west of the NewTown area and is thought to be one ofthe oldest buildings of its kind in theUK. Its believed that the fleeing armiesof King Harold may have taken refugethere, after being defeated at Hastingsin 1066. But in keeping with the areasuninspiring history, they were just

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passing through on their wayelsewhere.

And so the relatively mundane devel-opment of the town (and thistravelogue) progressed through theages. Twenty years after King Haroldtook that fateful arrow in his eye atHastings, the Doomsday Records failedto mention the hamlet (althoughnearby Ifield and Worth rated an entry,being valued by King Williams record-ers at a princely 20 shillings apiece).Then, in 1203, the Manor of Crawleywas awarded a licence to hold a weeklymarket in the High Street; one Michaelde Poyninges is recorded as having giv-en King John a Norwegian goshawkthere during the very same year. Lessthan 50 years later, the Church of StMargaret was established in Ifield; itstill stands in the Ifield Village Conser-vation Area. It was only in 1316 that

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records first showed Crawley under itsSaxon-derived current name. It wasformerly known as Crawleah andCrauleia. And the etymology? Crawmeaning crow and leah meaningpasture. Not so glamorous.

By 1450, the George Hotel was estab-lished in the High Street, offeringstables and room for carriages to allowhorsemen and their passengers anovernight stay on the way to some-where more exciting. (Several centurieslater, the George would be used by in-famous Crawley local, John GeorgeHaigh, the so-called Acid Bath Murder-er, to pick up at least one of his vic-tims.) Crawley was still very much atransit point, little more than a villagein a forest clearing. The horse-drawncarriages, when not stopping overnightat the George Hotel, were charged atoll to travel along the road the

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original Toll House once stood in thenorth of the town. Some of the oldtimber-framed coaching houses fromthe period can still be found in theHigh Street (albeit in a renovated state,occupied by thoroughly modernbusinesses).

The importance of iron works in thearea increased dramatically during the17th century, but it wasnt until the ex-tension of the railway line from Londonto Brighton, in 1848, that some life wasbreathed into this town and the popula-tion duly increased. But for many,Crawley was still a name seen on a signfrom the window of a passing train, asyou hurtled towards London or rattleddown to the coast at Brighton. Thetowns population did continue to in-crease, though, especially when nearbyGatwick Aerodrome was opened in1938. During World War II, Crawley

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suffered some damage, much like anytown of its size, when 24 homes weredestroyed by aerial bombing. Once therubble had been cleared and Englandstarted to regain its post-war bearings,MP Lewis Silkin announced that thearea around Crawley, Three Bridgesand Ifield had been chosen as one ofthe aforementioned New Towns.

Fifteen years later, Robert Smith andhis family his father James AlexanderSmith, mother Rita Mary (ne Emmott)and siblings Richard, Margaret andbaby Janet moved from Smiths birth-place of Blackpool, Lancashire, to thisgreen and uninspiring town. Theysettled first in Horley in December1962, at a house in Vicarage Lanewhere their next-door neighbour wasthe grandmother of Roberts futureCure partner Lol Tolhurst (who at thetime lived two streets away, in

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Southlands Avenue). They then shiftedto Crawley in March 1966, so that AlexSmith could be closer to the base of hisemployer, Upjohns. By then, the popu-lation of the area was around 50,000, arapid increase from the 9,000 who hadlived there at the turn of the century. Inthe same year that the Smiths had comesouth, 1962, the additional neighbour-hood of Furnace Green had been addedto this so-called New Town. It was arich irony that Alex Smith worked forpharmaceutical firm Upjohns, given hissons Olympian drug consumption inthe Eighties. Earlier, hed served in theRAF, completing his training in Canada.

Born on April 21, 1959, RobertJames Smith was the third Smith off-spring, preceded by his sister Margaret,who was born on February 27, 1950,and his brother Richard, who was bornon July 12, 1946. Smiths second sister,

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Janet, was born some 18 months afterRobert, establishing a hefty gap in agesbetween the two elder and two youngerSmith children. Smith insists that hewas an unplanned child and that Janetwas conceived primarily for his com-pany. My mum wasnt supposed tohave me, he said in 1989. Thats whytheres such a big age gap between us.And once they got me, they didnt likethe idea of having an only child, sothey had my sister. Which is great, be-cause I would have hated not having ayounger sister. Smith took full advant-age of his new-found role as olderbrother, even discouraging Janet fromspeaking so he could act as interpreter.I would say, Oh, she wants ice cream,when in fact she was desperate to go tothe toilet.

Speaking in 2000, Smith admits thatwhile he only lived in the north for

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three years, it took him some time toshake off his Blackpool brogue, whichled to the usual winding-up in the play-ground sometimes worse. I was bornin Blackpool, he recalled, and thefirst few years of my life were spent upthere. When I came down south, I actu-ally had a broad northern accent andthe piss was taken out of me merci-lessly at school. That probably didnthelp me integrate.

In another, even earlier discussion ofhis childhood, Smith recalled that bothhis parents had held onto their north-ern intonation. I used to have a north-ern accent because my mum and dadused to talk like that at home, he said.It always stuck out at school, which Inever realised at the time. I thoughteveryone was saying grass incorrectly.But I toned it down on purpose when Igot into my teens. By then I think it

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might have been a bit pretentious tohave affected a northern accent.

Smith clung to some strong memoriesof his time in Blackpool, which he feltexplained his lifelong attraction for theseaside. Im sure that spending thefirst few years of your life by the seameans that you harbour a great love forthe sea, he once said. Every time Ihave a holiday I always go to the sea.Smith and his wife Mary, the first andonly true love of his life, now reside inBognor, which fulfils his long-helddream of living by the water. Smith fig-ures his seaside life is simply an exten-sion of his very early childhood incoastal Blackpool. I wanted to wakeup and hear the sea, he admitted. Itsbound to my childhood, to pure happi-ness, to innocence. I love the music andthe perfume of the sea.

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Smiths recollections of Blackpool areso powerfully connected to the inno-cence of his childhood that hes sincefound it almost impossible to return. Hejust doesnt want the illusion shattered.I have such strong memories of it: thepromenade, the beach, the smell, its amagical memory, that evocative time ofinnocence and wonder. My earliestmemories are sitting on the beach atBlackpool and I know if I went back, itwould be horrible. I know what Black-pools like its nothing like I imaginedit as a child.

Smiths father Alex owned a Super-8camera and even before the Smithswent south, he would film his family,especially baby Robert, fooling abouton the beach. In a 2001 interview,Smith would reveal to Placebo singer(and major Cure fan) Brian Molko an-other of his earliest memories. There

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are a lot of films where I can be seenrunning like a crazy man, with somedonkeys in the background. I rememberseeing my sister eat worms and to behonest, I dug them up and she atethem. I was about three and she wastwo. And my mother punished me. Itmust be one of the few times I was hit.I also remember the smell of thedonkeys.

Invention, myth-making and straight-out piss-taking on the part of RobertSmith often due to the repetitivenature of endless interviews has resul-ted in a particularly murky rendering ofhis pre-Cure life story. He has variouslyreferred to there being a history ofdrunkenness in the Smith family, a traithes done his best to uphold over thepast 30 years. Smith has even partlyblamed the up-all-night approach of hisparents who still occasionally tour

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with the band and are usually the lastpair standing for his well-documentedfondness of a toxic lifestyle. Hes oftenreferred to an Uncle Robert (one of theinspirations for The Cures 1989 hit,Lullaby), who appeared to have all thedirty-old-man qualities of Uncle Ernie,so creepily portrayed by Keith Moon inKen Russells film Tommy.

Smith was raised in a staunchly Ro-man Catholic environment, which res-ulted in his questioning of God and ex-istence in 1981s intensely dour Faithalbum. Smith insists that he and hismother once took a trek to the VaticanCity, where he met the Pope: Not thepresent one, about three Popes ago, hesaid. I was in St Peters and there wasa Mass and he was carried in on a chairand I grabbed hold of his hand. As re-cently as 2003, he told a French televi-sion audience that being raised in a

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Catholic family is a good recipe for be-ing turned into furniture the rest ofyour life. However, Smith continued toattend Sunday services in the Friary, inCrawley, with his partner Mary, as lateas 1980 and possibly beyond only theblue ribbons in his spiked hair separat-ing him from the other worshippers.(This, of course, he would deny, insist-ing that the last time I was taken tochurch was when I was about eight.)

In keeping with their faith, Sundaywas regarded as a special day in theSmith home and its a tradition he hascontinued to maintain, more out ofhabit than devotion to all things Cath-olic. The sense of Sunday being a spe-cial day, and the tradition of having thefamily around, has always remainedwith me, he said in 2004. But Smithsrecollections of the Sundays of hisyouth are, he admits, quite dismal.

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There was certain music on the radio,the same dinner, a huge argumentbetween my brother, who was intenselycommunist, and my father, who hadjust been bumped up into the hierarchy[of the firm Upjohns]

The Smith household might havebeen lively but it wasnt violent: ac-cording to Smith, his father only onceraised a hand in anger in his direction.At the age of 12, I told my parents Iwouldnt be having any kids, Smith re-vealed. That was the only time myfather slapped me. Interestingly, Smithhas stuck to his 1971 vow of no chil-dren, despite having been married since1988.

Generally, life at home for RobertSmith was as good if not better thanmost of his Crawley peers and pals. Hisparents were relatively lenient; his

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brother Richard (aka The Guru)smoked pot and his sisters lovedrocknroll: what more could he want?I was always treated as an equal bymy family, Smith once said. I had areally good family life. School almostseemed to be the opposite. I couldntunderstand how the rigidity of school isdesigned to put you off reading andwanting to know anything. So I gotvery bitter in my teens.

Smith maintained this cynicism anduncertainty about lifes real meaning,which has permeated much of the dark-er side of The Cures music. Again, attimes, he has indirectly blamed parts ofhis upbringing especially his Catholicschool education for his questioning,restless nature. I do not have faith inanything except for what I can see withmy own eyes and lay my fingers on,he has said. But I know that some

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people have a very strong faith and Ienvy them. In the back of my mind Iwould love to have such faith. But thenI wonder if they arent just foolingthemselves?

I got into quite a lot of trouble [atschool] through wanting to changethings. I was on this crusade. And I gotfrequently suspended [only once, actu-ally], which I thought was ludicrous. Iwould always conduct my arguments ina very civilised manner and the re-course teachers saw was to put me onsuspension.

At the age of 11, Smith had taken anentrance exam to a public boys school,but threatened to run away from homeif his parents forced him to attend. Mydad thought it would be good for myeducation, but my mum appreciatedthat I actually wanted to mix with girls.

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She thought that growing up in a housewhere Ive got two sisters, it would beabnormal to suddenly send me to anall-male environment.

What is known of Smith and his pre-Cure obsessions many being the typic-al domain of any middle-class Englishchild growing up in the Sixties wouldhelp explain many of his later musicaland creative themes, hang-ups andobsessions.

As depicted so graphically by direct-or Tim Pope in the bands 1989 videofor Lullaby, spiders are not RobertSmiths favourite insects. Theyve beenfreaking him out since he was a child.Spiders are one of the phobias Ive notbeen able to overcome, he confessedyears down the line. When I wasyoung, I was really scared of spiders and they always used to be in my bed.

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They werent actually there, but I ima-gined they were. Fat spiders with thin,long legs that look like theyre going toburst make me go really weird.

Smith spent much of his childhood ina home that was not exactly tastefullydecorated. The house was adornedwith what he would remember asweird-patterned wallpaper and weird-patterned carpet that didnt match.Smith would stare intensely at thesepatterns, inducing an almost hallucinat-ory state of mind. Id always see facescoming out of the patterns, he oncesaid, like ghosts emerging from thecarpet and wallpaper. A very youngSmith would go to bed with a dim lightnearby; as he tried to drift off to sleep,hed imagine shapes and images. Th-ings would come out of the wall. Someof them were friendly shapes but some-times Id see a light at the corner of the

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wardrobe and I was sure there wassomething behind it. Except once.There was a funny-looking man in amackintosh whispering in Polish. Thatmight have been a dream, come tothink of it.

In 1964, aged five, Smiths out-of-control imagination led him to believethat the family home had an unwel-come visitor who was visible only tohim. He was convinced there wassomeone living in the house in a secretroom. I knew they were there, but Ialso knew I wouldnt be able to seethem, even if I found the room. Id hearcreaking and think it was a person onthe stairs. Id rush out of the bedroomto catch them and there would be noone there. They were too fast for me.

Even before then, aged three in 1962,Smiths illusions of Santa Claus were

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forever shattered when he spotted SaintNick rolling down the street on theback of a lorry. I was crushed. Therewas no way Father Christmas would besitting in that stupid fucking lorry. Inever recovered from that. Smith, in-stead, would mark Christmas by watch-ing Mary Poppins, a tradition he main-tained into adulthood. He would al-ways be reduced to a blubbery mess byfilms end. I remember being taken tosee it by my mum and I came out think-ing it was completely real. I was think-ing, Fucking hell, why havent I metanyone like Mary Poppins? Why cantmy mum slide up banisters? Smithsmother eventually had to break thenews to him that it was a fantasy,which, Smith says, crushed him almostas much as the sight of Santa on alorry.

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Robert Smith immersed himself inthe type of early heroes and heroineswho were the stuff of standard child-hood reading. His cartoon heroes in-cluded Dennis the Menace, obviously ahuge influence on me. Smith had beenreading the Beano comics and bookssince he was three years old. (Eventoday, his mother continues to buySmith The Beano Book every year.) Theattraction of someone billed as TheWorlds Wildest Boy obviously had anirresistible pull for someone like Smithwith trouble in mind. He admitted toenvying the Menace for having his petcat Gnasher because, as a child, Smithwas never fortunate enough to own acat or dog that was blindly devoted tome. Smith once attended a fancy-dressparty as Dennis the Menace, decked outin a red and black-striped jumper knit-ted by his mother Rita. I found this cat

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on the way, he recalled, and I walkedin with the cat, pretending it wasGnasher.* Nobody believed me. In fact,everyone thought I was fucking stupid.Smith responded by throwing the catout of a nearby window. The startledanimal landed on its back, thereby ru-ining Smiths belief that cats land ontheir feet all the time.

Such characters as Noddy were bigfavourites with a very young RobertSmith. Noddy fuzzy-felts hung abovethe head of his bed, alongside picturesof Catwoman and Queens Park RangersStan Bowles. I sort of liked Noddy,Smith said. He seemed to have a bril-liant life. He would jump in his stupidred motorcar with his friend, Big Ears,and something weird would alwayshappen. The ideal life, in a way, saidSmith, a man also not averse to running

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away from his problems, especially inthe early days of The Cure.

Andy Pandy was another of Smithschildhood pals. His favourite of theAndy Pandy stories was Watch WithMother. Smith was impressed that noth-ing could really go wrong in this vividmake-believe world. Andy Pandy wasalways going to go to sleep in his bas-ket with Teddy and the world was ahappy place. While Smith thoughtAndy Pandys companion Teddy to begodlike, he wasnt so sure about ragdoll Looby Loo. She never did any-thing. Weird.

A more direct childhood influence onSmiths later songwriting, strange as itmay seem, was Peter Pan, the kid whorefused to grow up. Before Smith de-veloped a serious thing for Betty Boop the perfect woman he was deeply

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enamoured of the fairy Tinker Bell. Ikept wishing Tinker Bell would comealive and rescue me, he said. But moreimportantly, Smith was smitten withNever-Never Land, a permanent escapefrom the real world. The idea ofNever-Never Land is awful because itsthe best idea in the world, he said in1989. At least half the songs Ive writ-ten are about Never-Never Land. Yearsafter this childhood obsession, Smithremained so fond of the story that heconsidered playing You Can Fly at theend of concerts, as he and the bandwandered off backstage.

Another youthful obsession wasLewis Carrolls timeless Alice In Wonder-land, a story tailor-made for a man whospent much of his working life tappinginto his incredibly colourful (and some-times deeply morbid) imagination. Ilove the idea of a little girl having these

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strange adventures in the realms of theimagination. Smith who would go onto describe his role in The Cure as thatof a benign dictator was also drawnto Alice In Wonderlands Queen ofHearts, mainly because she was sopowerful. The power to havesomeones head chopped off is bril-liant, he has admitted.

Smiths father Alex had dreams of hisyoungest son becoming a writer. Therewas little or no television-watching inthe Smith house; Smith has said that hisprincipal entertainment while growingup was reading and records. WhenRobert was three, his father insistedthat he read the newspaper and becomeacquainted with the world. Smith,however, preferred to lose himself insuch books as C.S. Lewis Narnia Chron-icles hugely popular in the UnitedKingdom a seven-volume series with

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deeply allegorical allusions to the Bibleand the life of Jesus Christ that his fath-er would read to him as bedtimestories.

I adored running away in thosetales, said Smith, it was my only reas-suring moment. I was just discoveringthe incredible power of literature: itprovided consolation and evasion.

Another childhood moment thatSmith would revisit regularly as TheCures worth increased was a strangelyeerie occurrence in the Smith familyhallway when he was six years old, notlong after the family moved into theirhome at Crawley. There was an old,really horrible (Smiths words) mirrorlocated in the hallway, which Smith didhis best to avoid. He was convincedthat hed caught an unfamiliar reflec-tion in the mirror. I used to hate that

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mirror. Every time I came downstairs Iused to avoid looking at it. (Even laterin his life, Smiths home was noticeablyshort on mirrors. Some things stayedwith him, clearly.)

Smith insists that his nickname atschool he first attended St FrancisPrimary School, then St Francis JuniorSchool, where he was enrolled between1966 and 1969 was Sooty, because Inever spoke. But before football andthen music grabbed his attention, Smithdisplayed a notable theatrical flair, tak-ing the role of Nanki-Poo in a juniorschool production of Gilbert & Sulli-vans Mikado that is still rememberedby senior staff at St Francis almost 40years on.

While Robert Smith and his school-mates were coming to grips with thedelicate nuances of wailing we are

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gentlemen from Japan in a Crawleyassembly hall, a different kind of mu-sical revolution was happening else-where in England. In 1968, the first Isleof Wight Festival was held. This was abare-bones type of festival: the stagewas perched precariously on the backof two lorries, the stars were San Fran-ciscans The Jefferson Airplane, and thecrowd numbered around 10,000. In1969, however, the festival grew sub-stantially when Bob Dylan, emergingfrom self-imposed seclusion, agreed toclose the show. Decked out in preacher-man white and helped along by hismid-Sixties backing combo, The Band(themselves reluctant stars), the so-called British Woodstock pulled anestimated 150,000 punters. The follow-ing year, Robert Smiths brother,Richard, then 24, insisted that his11-year-old sibling accompany him to

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the next Isle of Wight Festival, whichran between August 26 and 30.

While the opening few days show-cased local acts, soloists and second-di-vision hopefuls, including Procol Har-um, Supertramp and Tony Joe White,the festivals final two days (and nights)blazed brightly, thanks to stellar per-formances from pyro-progs, Emerson,Lake & Palmer (making their debut, thesupergroup very nearly succeeded inburning down the stage 30-odd yearslater, Keith Emerson is a Santa Monicanneighbour of Lol Tolhurst), along withWoodstock survivors John Sebastian,Ten Years After, The Who and Sly &The Family Stone. Electric gypsy JimiHendrix, the man whom the 11-year-old Robert Smith and much of thebumper crowd had come to see, sharedthe Sunday bill with an eclectic bunch:cosmic folkie Donovan, raggedy-voiced

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poet Leonard Cohen, Richie Havens,space ritualists Hawkwind, The MoodyBlues, Brit folkies Pentangle, RalphMcTell, protest queen Joan Baez andsoon to be prog superstars Jethro Tull.

As the organisers had discovered theprevious year, art and commerce wereuncomfortable bedfellows at the 1970festival. A small community of ticket-less hippies took over a nearby hill andthe inevitable occurrence of fuckingand various other bodily functions, fre-quently in full and shocking view,scared the hell out of the conservativelocals. One of the events organisers,Ron Turner Smith, had to call theHealth Department to have the hillsidearea Desolation Row disinfectedbecause of the stench of human waste.A resident, meanwhile, reported that astark naked man jumped out anddanced in front of her car, while there

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were numerous reports of nude bathingat nearby Compton Beach.

Robert Smiths number one guitarhero, Jimi Hendrix, eventually took thestage on the Sunday night, August 30,working his way through a set that in-cluded Dylans All Along TheWatchtower, The Beatles Sgt PeppersLonely Hearts Club Band, his ownMachine Gun and, as a tip of hisFender to the British crowd and atwist on his standard psychedelic re-working of The Star-Spangled Banner he tore through God Save TheQueen. But as the final soaring strainsof In From The Storm rained over thecrowd, young Robert Smith wasnowhere to be seen. When RichardSmith had gotten lucky with a femalefestival-goer, he zipped Robert intotheir shared tent, thereby denying himthe chance to check out what was to be

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Hendrixs final UK performance. Eight-een days later Hendrix was found deadin a London flat, having choked on hisvomit in his sleep.

My brother took me, Smith said in2004, but I wouldnt say that I wasaware that I was at a concert. I was 11at the time. Jimi Hendrix played and Istayed in the tent. I just remember twodays of orange tent and dope smoke.Smith would be a tad more forthrightin an interview with a Spanish newspa-per, when he spoke of his Isle of Wightexperience. My brother left me lockedin the tent while he left to fuck or getstoned. I have not forgiven him since.(As compensation, his brother tookRobert to see Kubricks 2001: A SpaceOdyssey. Smith was hooked, seeing thefilm 11 times in a fortnight. That gaveme a bit of brain damage as well.)

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Robert Smith still has a faded photoof himself at the Isle of Wight Festival,standing outside his orange tent, witha glazed expression on my face.

Smiths youthful interest in Hendrixwas more than just a passing fascina-tion: Hendrixs image and music repres-ented a completely different way of lifefor the kid from comfortable, predict-able Crawley. To Smith, Hendrix wasan alien. Theyd not live like us, speaklike us, eat like us. Hendrix was thefirst person I had come across whoseemed completely free, and whenyoure nine or 10 your life is entirelydominated by adults, Smith admitted.Understandably, Hendrix made Smithbelieve that there may be more to lifethan a stint as centre forward for QPR.Hendrix was the first person whomade me think it might be good to be a

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singer and a guitarist before that Iwanted to be a footballer.

The first Hendrix song to whichSmith was exposed was Purple Haze;his brother Richard had played it tohim when Robert was eight, in 1967.His response was both swift and imme-diate he simply wouldnt stop playingthe record until hed worn a completelynew groove in the vinyl. I was justawestruck by it, Smith said. I musthave played it 20 times a day; I droveeveryone in the house mad. Smithwent as far as to memorise the song,but not with a plan of emulatingHendrixs peerless guitar moves. In-stead he learned the song inside out bysinging it. I learned to sing all thedrum parts, the bass, the guitar solo Iwas just obsessed by it.

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It was Smiths brother Richard ahippie whod backpacked through Asia,returning from India with, as Smithwould relate, lots of pictures of wo-men with eight arms to stick on mybedroom wall whod have a big im-pact on his impressionable sibling, aswell as his schoolyard buddy Lol Tol-hurst. Smiths rebellious brother wouldsmoke pot in the family house, in fullview of his parents. But his elder sisterMargaret also introduced Smith to akey musical influence: The Beatles.When Smith was six, the melodic chimeof The Beatles album Help! a plea forhelp from John Lennon, as it turned out would blare, repeatedly, from the oth-er side of Margarets bedroom door. Shewas also a serious Stones fan. Smithwas hooked. I would sit on the stairs,listening through the door, he recalledalmost 40 years later. It made me

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realise there was another world goingon beyond my immediate environment.The melodies on these tunes are sofantastic and the imagination that goesinto these songs is just unreal. Whilethe very young Smith was moved totears by the music, it would continue tohave the same effect on him as a44-year-old. Its so perfect it makes meweep, he said in 2003. I listen toHelp! and Im filled with hope that theworld could be a better place.

In the mid-Sixties, there was noavoiding The Beatles or the Stones, sothe youthful Smith chose to divestraight in. My older sister and olderbrother had all their records and in-stead of listening to childish littlethings, I was listening to rock, saidSmith. By the time he was seven, Smithinsisted that he knew the complete

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repertoire of Jagger & Richards andLennon & McCartney.

It was also during the formativeyears of his life that Smith first heardthe mysterious, ill-fated singer/song-writer Nick Drake, whose downbeatmoodscapes would have a significantand quite tangible impact on Smithsearly work with The Cure. Smith was10 when he first listened to Drakes1969 album Five Leaves Left, courtesy,again, of his brother Richard. Just likeHendrix and Purple Haze, Smiths con-version was quick and absolute, al-though Smith realised that Drake wason the other side of the coin to JimiHendrix he was very quiet and with-drawn. As his musical career ad-vanced, Smith would aspire to emulateDrakes understated songwriting andsinging. But at the age of 10, it wasmore Drakes heartfelt style that

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swayed Robert Smith. To Smith,Drakes depth of feeling felt convin-cingly real. [He] wasnt worried aboutwhat people thought of him. He wasntworried about being famous. I thinkalso that because he had an untimelydeath like Jimi Hendrix, he was neverable to compromise his early work. Itsa morbid romanticism [somethingSmith and The Cure could definitely re-late to] but there is something attract-ive about it.

Smiths parents, both of whom weremusically inclined (his father sang, hismother played the piano), had no ob-jections to their sons love of rock infact, they encouraged it, while at thesame time gently steering young Robertin a more formal musical direction.While all the time encouraging theirchildren to discuss their favourite re-cords Smith would remember

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staggering talks about Slade and GaryGlitter Alex and Rita Smith also in-troduced them to classical music, in anattempt to, in Smiths words, enableme to have a larger vision of rock.

Another of Smiths early music her-oes was David Bowie. He and hislifelong partner, Mary Poole, wouldshare their first dance to the accom-paniment of Bowies Life On Mars.Smith first laid eyes on the man whofell to earth on Top Of The Pops on July6, 1972. Bowie was decked out in hisjumpsuit of many colours and crooningStarman while draped suggestivelyover his sidekick and guitar man MickRonson. Bowies grandstanding per-formance introduced what would soonbecome known as glam rock to themainstream. It was a pivotal moment inpop history in the UK and was as farremoved from the previous weeks Top

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Of The Pops, when urchin piano manGilbert OSullivan crooned Ohh-Wakka-Doo-Wakka-Day, as was hu-manly possible. A generational changehad happened, all in the space of sevendays.

Smith insisted that everyone his ageremembered the event. Its likeKennedy being shot, [but] for anothergeneration. You just remember thatnight watching David Bowie on TV. Itwas really a formative, seminal experi-ence. And Smith wasnt alone anoth-er onlooker was Echo & The Bunny-mens Ian McCulloch. As soon as Iheard Starman and saw him on Top OfThe Pops I was hooked, McCullochwould state. In 1972, Id get girls onthe bus saying to me, Eh la, have yougot lippy on? or Are you a boy or agirl? Until he turned up it was a night-mare. All my other mates at school

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would say, Did you see that bloke onTop Of The Pops? Hes a right faggot,him! And I remember thinking, Youpillocks, as theyd all be buying theirElton John albums, and Yessongs and allthat crap. It made me feel cooler.

Gary Kemp, future songwriter forSpandau Ballet, also looked andlearned. I watched it at a friendscouncil flat, he recalled. My realitywas so far removed from this guysplace, that my journey from that mo-ment on was to get there, and I thinkthe same applies to most of mygeneration.

Robert Smiths love of all things glamwas swift and absolute. He would boastof his affection for Sweet, Slade, MarcBolan and T. Rex (who I secretly lovedbecause my brother considered that tobe music for women). Roxy Music was

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another Smith favourite; hed first seenthem perform Pajamarama on TV ataround the same time as witnessingBowie camp up Starman. The attrac-tion was as physical as it was musical:Smith was a big fan of Ferrys quiff andhis pink leopard jacket.

But Bowie was the deepest kick of allfor Robert Smith. By this time Bowiehad been through more makeovers thanJoan Collins; pop crooner, earnestfolkie, spaced oddity, Ziggy Stardust he was exactly the kind of popchameleon that appealed to the lateral-thinking Robert Smith. Within weeks ofhis star turn on Top Of The Pops, Bowiehad made his second assault on the UKTop 20; along with fellow glamsters T.Rex and Mott The Hoople (riding highon their Bowie-penned All The YoungDudes, no less), he was sharing chartspace with such peculiar bedfellows as

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Cliff Richard, David Cassidy and DonnyOsmond. And Bowies thing for rein-vention wasnt lost on Robert Smith:over The Cures four decades, Smithwouldnt just reinvent the band music-ally, but his public image was in a con-stant state of evolution, from the seri-ous young insect of Faith and Porno-graphy to the lipstick-smudged Lovecatand beyond.

Smith would ponder the fine art ofreinvention during a 1989 interview,where he freely admitted that the ideaof disappearing for a time and then re-turning in a new skin had its appeal.In fact, it appeals to me so much, I doit every couple of years. I think I enjoyThe Cure because I do come back as adifferent person every time.*

I felt that his records had been madewith me in mind, recalled Smith. In

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fact, Smith was so inspired by BowiesTop Of The Pops performance that hecounted his pocket money and boughtBowies epochal The Rise And Fall OfZiggy Stardust And The Spiders FromMars, which had been released a monthearlier. It was Smiths first and mostprized LP purchase. He was blatantlydifferent, said Smith.

Bowies androgynous appeal and un-certain sexual persuasion would lead toa division amongst the students at StWilfrids Catholic ComprehensiveSchool (as it would at thousands of oth-er schools across the UK): Smith will-ingly stood on the side of the cross-dressing Starman. Smith recalled howthe school was divided between thosewho thought he was a queer and thosewho thought he was a genius.

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Immediately, I thought: this is it.This is the man Ive been waiting for.He showed that you could do things onyour own terms; that you could defineyour own genre and not worry aboutwhat anyone else is doing, which Ithink is the definition of a true artist.

While Hendrix and Bowie seemednatural-born heroes for a musicallycurious kid such as Robert Smith, AlexHarvey was a much less obvious choiceas a musical role model. Born in Scot-land, Harvey was a rocknroll journey-man whod worked his way through theUK skiffle boom of the Fifties, eventu-ally forming The Alex Harvey Big SoulBand in 1959. Just like The Beatles,Harvey crossed the Channel to Ham-burg, Germany, in the early Sixties; itwas there that he cut his first album,1963s Alex Harvey And His Soul Band,which, perversely, didnt actually

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feature his band. Unlike the Fab Four,however, Hamburg wasnt the start of asupernova career for Harvey quite theopposite. He dissolved the Big SoulBand in 1965, heading home for a peri-od until he moved to London, where hefell under the spell of psychedelia,forming the short-lived Giant Moth. Butneither a spell in the pit band of a pro-duction of Hair, or a solo album (1969sRoman Wall Blues) did much for Har-veys profile. It wasnt until the earlySeventies, when he recruited the Scot-tish band Tear Gas guitarist ZalCleminson (a particular favourite ofSmiths), Chris Glen, Hugh McKenna,and Ted McKenna and renamed themThe Sensational Alex Harvey Band, thatHarvey finally worked his way out ofthe musical ghetto, if only briefly. Thebands third album, 1974s ImpossibleDream, became Harveys first UK chart

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record; it even briefly dented the UScharts in March of the following year.Commercial success ensued with hisspring 1975 release, Tomorrow BelongsTo Me; both the album and his flamboy-ant take on Tom Jones Delilahreached the UK Top 10. On the back ofthis, Harveys 1973 album, Next, re-turned to the hit parade, while inSeptember 1975, the obligatory live setalso reached the UK Top 20 and the USTop 100.

By this time, 16-year-old RobertSmith, whod first seen Harvey playtwo years earlier in 1973, was a truebeliever. Smith and girlfriend MaryPoole followed Harvey to virtually allof his shows in the south of England.People talk about Iggy Pop as the ori-ginal punk, Smith said in 1993, butcertainly in Britain the forerunner ofthe punk movement was Alex Harvey.

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His whole stage show, with the graffiti-covered brick walls it was like veryaggressive Glaswegian street theatre.

It was Harveys every-bloke appealthat had Smith spellbound. He was theanti-David Bowie; a far more tangible and attainable ideal than the enigmat-ic Ziggy. Smith explained that Harveywas the physical manifestation of whatI thought I could be. He never reallygot anywhere, even though he hadsomething so magic when he performed he had the persona of a victim andyou just sided with him against all thatwas going wrong. I would have died tohave had Alex Harvey as an uncle. AlexHarvey was the closest I ever came toidolising anyone. Smith proudly worea striped black-and-white shirtwherever he went a Harvey signature which hed compare to a gang uni-form. People look a certain way so if

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they see someone else dressed that waythey can talk to them. The only thingabout Harvey that Smith didnt con-sider worth emulating was his looks: hefound the guy much too old and ugly.

For two years, Smith was as commit-ted an Alex Harvey fan as you werelikely to find. Harvey offered a musicalrespite from some of the seriously ques-tionable outfits being played to death atthe time. As Smith realised, Withouthim Id have been into Supertramp,those sort of horrible groups. If Ithought we [The Cure] had the sameimpact on people as The SensationalAlex Harvey Band had on me, Id be here Smith found himself lost forwords he was the only person whomade me think, it must be fucking bril-liant to be Alex Harvey. It was like be-lieving in a creature, a myth that waspresented to you on stage.

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Harveys time in the spotlight was re-latively short: although 1976 was an-other banner year for him and hisSensational Band, as Boston Tea Partymade the singles chart and PenthouseTapes became a Top 20 hit, the inevit-able slide set in and the band dissolved.Rock Drill was their swansong. Harveydied on tour in Belgium in 1982, from aheart attack brought on by heavy booz-ing, just before reaching his 47th birth-day, while Smith and The Cure werereadying possibly the most disturbing and disturbed album of their lives,Pornography. Twenty years later,however, Smith and The Cure wouldperform a very public eulogy for Har-vey, covering The Faith Healer at ahuge Hyde Park show.

While his idols outside of rocknroll Spike Milligan, Tommy Cooper, foot-baller Rodney Marsh were more

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typical, mainstream obsessions, Smithsyouthful heroes, such as Bowie,Hendrix and Alex Harvey, were allfringe-dwellers. Bowie was an alienbeamed in from another planet;Hendrix was an African-American whobrought the psychedelic blues to Eng-lish audiences; Harvey was a regularbloke shouting to be heard above thelipstick and bell-bottoms of glam rock.And they all helped to contribute to theoutsider status that Smith would em-brace so willingly during his teens inCrawley and in the nascent stages ofThe Cures career. Nevertheless, Smithdid have other, more mainstream en-thusiasms, such as twin-guitar fanciersThin Lizzy They were fabulous, I sawthem probably 10 times in two years;the actual sound of them live was justso overpowering, it was better thandrinking and Irish axeslinger Rory

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Gallagher I thought his guitar play-ing was fabulous.

By the time he was 14, in 1973, Smithwas talking up his (non) ambitions: heintended never to be a slave to a regu-lar job; his life goal was to sit on topof a mountain and just die. He did,however, have at least one job outsideof The Cure. He was a postman oneChristmas; theyd always hire extra,Lol Tolhurst said to me. That lastedabout a week or two until he ditchedhis mailsack in a river somewhere andtold them he wasnt coming back andthat was it. I dont remember him hav-ing any other full-time job. The Curesfirst bassist, Michael Dempsey, does re-call that Smith also held down agardening job but only for a fewweeks.

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So The Cure was born out of indol-ence, apparently, not burning ambition.When The Cure had become one ofplanet pops most unlikely superstars inthe late Eighties, Smith still insistedthat he didnt form The Cure for eithersex or drugs. Instead, it was just thebest way to avoid getting up in themorning.

In his own way, Lol Tolhurst agreedwith Smith. We didnt have a masterplan; we didnt really have one untilthe mid-Eighties, he replied when Iasked him about the evolution of TheCure. We were pretty young; we didnthave any idea of what was going tohappen. In some ways that was our sav-ing grace. Some bands today do it as acareer move; to us it was justsomething we felt like doing.

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Some of the early shows were justan excuse to have a party; wed book alocal church hall, charge a smallamount to come in, wed buy some beerand have a party. It was more for thesake of something to do than anythingelse.

None of us had a really strong visionof being superstars, figured MichaelDempsey.

Both Smith and Tolhurst had olderbrothers schoolmates, as it turned out whod taken the everyday route ofschool, higher education and anormal life of wife and children and ahouse in the suburbs. Smith and Tol-hurst werent so thrilled by what theysaw. Both of our brothers had takenthat path, but we thought, Heres whatlife could be, comfortable but ulti-mately tedious, or we could do

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something different, said Tolhurst.Thats what drove us.

Much later in his life, Smith wouldagree that his rebellious outlook waspretty standard teenage moodiness,even if it meant life and death to him atthe time. In 2003, he came clean. Itsnormal, as a teenager, to love this ideaof being a victim the whole world isagainst me, no one understands me.

Yet Smith would build much of TheCures early career on this cult of theoutsider. His morbid fascination withboth death and the French existential-ists, notably Jean-Paul Sartre and Al-bert Camus, seemed a natural progres-sion from his typically dour, normal-life-sucks teenage hang-ups.

But Smiths education was not alldoom, gloom and heated playgrounddebate about that poofter David

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Bowie. Between 1970 and 1972 he at-tended Notre Dame Middle School,which was experimenting with open-plan classrooms and in the process ac-tually encouraging freethinking in itspupils.* So liberal was Notre Dame,Smith would insist, that he turned upfor classes in 1970, at the age of 11,wearing a modified black velvet dress.I really dont know why, hepondered. I thought I looked good. Myteachers were so liberal they tried hardnot to notice. Smith survived the dayat school, but as he walked home hewas jumped and beaten up by a pack offour not-so-open-minded fellow NotreDamians.

Lol Tolhurst was there, looking on.Robert went to a jumble sale and got ablack velvet dress, really long and tightfitting, he told me. His mother cut itdown the middle and made it into a

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pair of trousers. Which was fine untilyou saw him on the playground withhis legs together, so it looked like hewas wearing a dress. As Tolhurst readit, this was simply an attempt onSmiths part to see how flexible theschools few rules really were. Ourthing was to operate just within the let-ter of the law. Some of the teachersknew what we were up to and tried topin something on us.

Smith agreed, saying that he worethe dress for a dare, as a way of test-ing how far he could push his teacherscasual approach to authority. Id wornit all day because the teachers justthought, Oh, its a phase hes goingthrough, hes got some kind of person-ality crisis, lets help him through it.

On another occasion, Smith decidedto experiment with his sisters

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cosmetics before attending school. Ilocked myself in the bathroom andwent to school wearing make-up. Thistime around, however, Smiths teacherswerent as tolerant. I got sent backhome immediately, he said. And theresponse of Smiths parents? Theywere quite patient with me, Smithsaid. They hoped I would simply stopit one day.

Every bit the storyteller, more thanonce Smith has said that his first exper-iment with make-up coincided with hisfirst attempt at cross-dressing. Eitherway, he was beaten up on the wayhome from school, which he didnt con-sider a very fair reward for his ef-forts. Not that it put him off, of course.

As for Notre Dame, its so-calledmiddle school experiment had beenintroduced into some British schools in

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the early Seventies; it was designed tobridge the gap and soften the trans-ition between junior and senior school.It was supposed to be very liberal,Smith stated in 1989. You had openclass; if you had a class you didnt like,you could move to another. Youd ad-dress the teachers by their Christiannames that sort of set-up.

Lol Tolhurst, one of Smiths NotreDame classmates and future Cure co-founder, was equally surprised by NotreDames freewheeling approach to edu-cation. Looking back, it was strange. Inow send my [teenage] son [Gray] to asimilar school, Tolhurst said to me.But that was the Seventies. At onepoint I remember we didnt have anyset lessons; we were given projects todo and asked to report back at the endof the week to tell what we had done

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with them. We werent reallysupervised.

Speaking in Ten Imaginary Years, thebands first official biography, pub-lished in 1988, Smith admitted to em-bracing the revolutionary teachingmethods. He also discovered that it wasan easy system to abuse. If you werecrafty enough, he said, you couldconvince the teachers you were special:I did nothing for virtually three years.But it was at heart a Catholic school, sothere was still a certain amount of reli-gious education.

Smith sleepwalked through his stud-ies, only putting in the effort requiredto achieve a pass mark. English was theone subject that managed to maintainhis interest and enthusiasm. Whenasked, Smith recalled that his school re-ports stated: Something in the order

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of, I was doing less than I could. Thatwas pretty accurate because at the timeI was consciously trying to do as littleas possible.

Another positive aspect of Smithsmiddle school years especially for ayouth whose goal was to avoid thenine-to-five grind that he witnessedevery day of the working week inCrawley was that he met LaurenceLol Tolhurst and Michael Dempsey.

Born and raised in Horley, Surrey, onFebruary 3, 1959, Tolhurst, like Smith,had siblings with vast age differences.One of six children, his oldest sibling,his brother Roger, had been born in1942 (followed by Nigel in 1946, whodied two months later; John, who wasborn in 1947 and Jane, who was bornin 1951). And again like Smith, Tol-hurst had a sister, Barbara, who was

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born in 1960. Tolhursts father Williamhad served in the Navy for 15 years; 10years in China prior to World War IIand then another five in Europe and theMiddle East during the war. Both Smithand Tolhurst had attended St FrancisPrimary and Junior Schools; Smith re-called meeting Tolhurst on the schoolbus on his first day of primary school.

He lived in the next street and wewent to school on the same coach,Smith said. But he made no impressionon me whatsoever. He remembers me,though not very favourably.

The Tolhursts were a strongly music-al family: Lols father William playedthe piano, while his younger sister Bar-bara would eventually opt for a careeras a music teacher. And his motherDaphne was incredibly supportivewhen one of her sons showed a certain

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musical aptitude. My mother was al-ways very interested in music and arts,Tolhurst said, when we spoke in early2005. She gave me my love of allthose things. Its only in hindsight that Irealise that not a lot of parents do that.She was always encouraging me inthose areas. When we started the band,she was very supportive. I went fromhaving a secure job to this very unse-cure [sic] thing and about half themoney I formerly had. I was still livingat home and she didnt bat an eyelid.

Michael Dempsey, the future Curebassist, was born on November 29,1958, in what was then known as Salis-bury, Rhodesia (now Harare, Zimbab-we). One of four Dempsey children, Mi-chael and his family had shifted toSalfords in Surrey in 1961. Before en-rolling at Notre Dame in 1970, whichDempsey now remembers as requiring a

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horrible train commute from Salfords,Dempsey had attended Salfords CountySchool. Dempsey insists that his familywere emphatically not musical, al-though his mother Nancy played pianoand sang in the local Catholic churchchoir. Just like Smith (and Tolhurst),Dempsey acquired a handy musicaleducation from a sibling, his sisterAnne, who was five years his senior.Anne had the record collection,Dempsey told me in early 2005. It wasa weird assortment: the soundtrack toLawrence Of Arabia, [prog rockers]Gong, early T. Rex, when they wereTyrannosaurus Rex. It was an eclecticmix. And just like Smith, Dempsey wasinspired by Bowies star turn on Top OfThe Pops. It was rare to see anythingextreme, he said. And it was also coolto like the thing that shocked your par-ents most.

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While Notre Dames more laissez faireapproach to learning had been tootempting for Smith not to abuse, it didimbue him with a certain anythinggoes attitude. This would be the per-fect manifesto for a band such as TheObelisk (as The Cure were first known),and the many other hopefuls whoemerged in the post-punk period. ButSmith, Tolhurst and Dempsey first hadsome chops to learn.

Unlike another of his childhood fa-vourites, Pinocchio, Smith admits thathe had no problem with attendingschool I actually enjoyed it while Iwas there but that his questioningoutlook towards religion led to him be-ing deemed unsuitable. He was even-tually suspended from St Wilfrids Com-prehensive School, which he attendedbetween 1972 and 1977. I was suspen-ded from school, he recalled, when I

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was supposed to be doing exams be-cause my attitude towards religion wasconsidered wrong. I thought that wasincredible.

Describing itself as a thriving andcaring Catholic comprehensive school,St Wilfrids was established in 1953.Their mission statement we prideourselves on being committed to thewhole person and the whole com-munity; we are conscious each childhas been created in the image and like-ness of God and pursue not only aca-demic excellence but also spiritualgrowth based on Gospel values wasinevitably going to cause some unrestfor those pupils acclimatised to NotreDames more easy-going approach. ButSmith wasnt alone; Lol Tolhurst wasalso feeling the pain, especially at thehands of one particular teacher.

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He was a wizened old man, a chain-smoker, Tolhurst told me, whod writ-ten all these books. He lectured us onall kinds of things. On the first day hegrabbed me and said, Tolhurst, I knowyour brother: what are you going to be a first-class student or a bee in mybonnet? It was a lot different to NotreDame.

Smith described St Wilfrids as themost fascist school Id ever been to.You couldnt do anything. Theyd re-in-troduced school uniforms, the wholething it was an entire process ofclamping down. And that bred a lot ofresentment amongst people of my age.We felt like we were used as guineapigs.

Tolhurst was also shocked by the dif-ference between Notre Dame and StWilfrids. It took him all of one day to

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discover the difference in approach. Iremember feeling very anxious aboutgoing there, because I had long hair,Tolhurst admitted. I wondered whatthey were going to say about that.There was one teacher who was fearedby all, a Mrs Slater, who grabbed me onmy first day there and picked on meabout something. Many years later Iwas sitting in a club in Sydney [Aus-tralia] and this voice said, Mrs Slaterwants to see you in her office, boy. Itwas her son. It was very strange. It stillput the fear of God in me.

Michael Dempsey, however, actuallypreferred St Wilfrids to Notre Dame,although he wasnt thrilled by eitherschool. Ive seen Robert say that NotreDame was radical, he said to me, butI dont think it was that alternative. Itwas just a mix of the religious and

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more secular schooling. But they wereoutside the mainstream.

What St Wilfrids did instil in RobertSmith, and Lol Tolhurst, was a realisa-tion that their daydream about not hav-ing a regular job should be pursuedwith extreme prejudice. Which ledthem, inevitably, to music.

Smith and Tolhurst had been tinker-ing with musical instruments whenthey were students at Notre Dame; theirbond had strengthened when they dis-covered that they were both membersof the British league of the JimiHendrix fan club. (Smiths relationshipwith Dempsey began when they real-ised that they both owned electric gui-tars.) But even earlier, Smith had beentaking piano lessons, in part to keep upwith the musical progress of his piano-playing sister, Janet, whom Smith

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would insist was the familys musicalgenius. But frustrated by his lack ofprogress (and prowess) and determinedto find an instrument that Janetcouldnt master, Smith started playingguitar, because her hands were toosmall to get around the guitar neck andI thought, She cant beat me at this.Smith figured he was six or sevenwhen he first fondled a six-string,[but] I wasnt very good. Smith re-membered his one and only guitarteacher as the gayest bloke I ever met He was horrified by my playing.

So instead, Smiths brother Richardtalked him through a few basic chords,while he also learned by ear, mimickingthe playing he heard in his brotherstop-shelf record collection.

It was Christmas 1972 when Smithreceived his first proper guitar, a

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present from his parents. The guitarwas a Woolworths cheapie, christenedthe Top 20. As basic as it was, itwould remain Smiths number one axefor some time, much to the horror ofhis bandmates, record producers andFiction Records boss Chris Parry.* In1973, Smith formed his first band withJanet, his hippie brother Richard andsome friends. They named themselves,for reasons that remain unclear to thisday, The Crawley Goat Band.

Next was a group named The Group,mainly because it was the only schoolband in existence, so we didnt need aname.

Lol Tolhurst, just like Smith, had hisolder brother to thank for his nascentmusical career. When Lol was 13, Ro-ger Tolhurst told his family that he wasrelocating to Tasmania, Australia.

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Before departing to the other side ofthe planet, he asked his much youngerbrother if hed like some kind offarewell gift: Tolhurst asked for somedrumsticks and a how-to book ondrumming. He was on his way.

Smiths initial musical education hadtaken place at home in Crawley, wherehe learned the good book according toJagger & Richards and Lennon &McCartney, and then saw the lightwhen Bowie shocked the Top Of ThePops audience. But his more practicaleducation began in the music room atNotre Dame Middle School. While skip-ping lessons, Smith, Tolhurst, Dempseyand several others started tinkeringwith whatever instruments they couldlay their hands on. A new sound wasborn.

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Wed go to the music room and pullout their instruments and bash outsongs on them, Tolhurst told me. I re-member some of the first songs weplayed: we got some sheet music fromthe local music store and playedWhiter Shade Of Pale which is verystrange because its a keyboard songand all we had was guitar and drums Heart Of Gold by Neil Young, andsome Paul Simon song. It was a ques-tion of us trying to learn something.They were very strange choices but thatwas the only sheet music they had fromthe last century in the store.

Tolhurst was also a dab hand withthe wheels of steel; hed spent most ofhis time at Notre Dame spinning discsat lunchtime discos. I was the DJ. I re-member playing all these Black Sabbathrecords and the nuns would be noddingaway.

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Dempsey, every bit the pragmatist,was drawn to the music room for otherreasons. It was warm, he told me.

Soon after, in April 1973, Smith,Dempsey and Tolhurst were ready tomake their public debut. According toSmith, they played a piece to the class,featuring Smith on piano, Tolhurst ondrums, Dempsey and Marc Ceccagnoplaying guitars and Alan Hill on bass.We called ourselves The Obelisk andthe whole thing was horrible! But stillmuch better than studying. GivenSmiths response to their one-off per-formance, its possibly a good thingthat no one can quite recall what songthey massacred. Lol Tolhurst still hasno idea. It was a complete nightmarebut quite interesting, he recalled in2005.

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Dempsey still has strong memories ofCeccagno, the only black pupil at StWilfrids. He was quite mysterious,very sharp, very funny. He was alsoquite influential he was possibly thefirst nihilist amongst us. His nihilisticoutlook clearly rubbed off on bothSmith and Dempsey, if not the moreeasy-going Tolhurst, particularly whencombined with their sixth-form readinglist: Albert Camus The Outsider,Shakespeares Othello, Miltons ParadiseLost. We were good readers and ithelped reinforce your sense of isola-tion, Dempsey figured, reasonablyenough. Another book he and Smithboth savoured was Evelyn Waughs AHandful Of Dust theyd even thoughtabout calling the band Brats Club, as anod to the book.

It was around the same time asObelisks indifferent debut that Smith

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would lose his virginity with MaryPoole, the nicest girl in school, whomhed first encountered in Drama Class atSt Wilfrids. I went out with her be-cause everyone else wanted to, Smithadmitted. Typically, their first sexualencounter wasnt quite Mills & Boon-worthy. We were at someones party, afancy dress party, he recalled. I wentas a surgeon. I remember because Ipoured all this tomato ketchup downme. At the time I thought it was areally good idea, but after an hour itreally began to stink. Every time Imoved I was completely overpoweredby the sweet sickly smell of tomatoketchup.

While Smiths ideas about lovemak-ing and romance hadnt developed inquite the way hed hoped, music wasbecoming an increasingly useful outletfor him, especially now that he was

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making the difficult transition from themore relaxed Notre Dame MiddleSchool to the fascist St WilfridsComprehensive.

As The Obelisk morphed into a bandcalled Malice, it seemed as thoughRobert Smith the teenager who washell-bent on doing everything he couldin order to do nothing at all mightjust have found his calling.* Gnasher was actually a dog! Smith has remained a serious QPR fanthroughout his life and was a well-regardedschool footballer.* Years later, Smith would help Bowie, the mas-ter of reinvention, celebrate his 50th birthdayin front of a full house at New Yorks MadisonSquare Garden, fulfilling his teenage dream ofsinging alongside the Thin White Duke.* It didnt last: Notre Dames original site isnow a housing development.

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* Even when he could afford better gear, Smithhad the pick-ups from his Top 20 axe fitted tohis brand new Fender Jazzmaster, to theamazement of everybody, according toTolhurst.

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Chapter Two

We dont like your songs. Not evenpeople in prison would like this.

Hansa exec to The Easy Cure, 1977

IN many ways punk rock was the re-volution that never quite happened.Even in June 1977, when a snarling,spitting Johnny Rotten helped the barn-storming Sex Pistols gatecrash the UKTop 10 with their anti-anthem GodSave The Queen, the green-toothedformer John Lydon was still sharingchart space with such relentlessly main-stream acts as Rod Stewart (moaning IDont Want To Talk About It), BarbraStreisand (crooning Evergreen fromher 10-tissue weepie A Star Is Bom) andThe Jacksons. Even the unbearably cute

Muppets were in the same Top 10 asThe Sex Pistols. And during the heydayof punk, it wasnt as though the air-waves and charts were completely laidwaste as the purveyors of all thingspunk had planned: in the wake of thePistols, regular chart-toppers still in-cluded such lightweight easy-listenersas Brotherhood Of Man, Showaddy-waddy, Hot Chocolate and OliviaNewton-John. But as a young and im-pressionable Robert Smith was soon tounderstand, the concept of punk wasflawless you didnt have to be a note-perfect singer or a master craftsman toplay, as so many prog rock posers ofthe time would have you believe. Afuck-you attitude, a certain indefinablesense of alienation, a fine line in bond-age trousers and some strategicallyplaced safety pins were all you neededto form a punk band. And thousands of

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disenfranchised youngsters (mixed withthe usual bandwagon-jumpers, ofcourse) heeded the call to arms.

Robert Smith remembers punk from aslightly different perspective to mostpeople. He was no Joe Strummer, outto kick the establishment in the arse.For Smith, punk wasnt so much a so-cial movement as a chance for him andhis mates to go out and get drunk andjump about. To Smith, 1977 was thepeak of punk. It was just good fun.The summer of 1977 was like this pin-nacle. Everyone says, Oh, 1975. Itwasnt at all. In 1977, The Sex Pistolswere number one. And in the chartsthere was like The Stranglers, TheBuzzcocks. It was brilliant. Youthought, Ah, things are changing.

Lol Tolhurst had a similar punk-in-spired awakening. It was the end of

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the Seventies; to a lot of people whostarted at that time, the idea of being ina band and making records was kind oflike a pipe dream, he said. To us, wethought you had to be really, reallygood to do that and it seemed out ofour reach. But then all the punk stuffstarted happening and we realised,Hey, we can do this. Wed flickthrough the Melody Maker and go andsee The Stranglers and realise were nottremendously different to that. Up untilthat point, it all seemed too mysteriousto us, too complex.

As with many of the best revolutions,there were a couple of possible loca-tions for the epicentre of punk. Radicalson the English side of the Atlanticwould swear on a stack of Sniffin Gluemags that punk came to be in Sex, theChelsea boutique owned and operatedby Vivienne Westwood and her partner,

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Malcolm McLaren, the same man whodbeen savvy enough to manage The NewYork Dolls, briefly, in 1975, beforeturning his attention to The Sex Pistols.Americans, however, insist that the re-volution officially began in 1974 whenNew Yorker Hilly Kristal threw openthe doors of CBGBs (as in countrybluegrass blues, the type of music hedactually intended to put on display inhis club). The shoebox-sized sweatbox,located in bums paradise The Bowery,would soon welcome such acts as TheRamones and Johnny Thunder & TheHeartbreakers through its doors, as thepunk outbreak spread on both sides ofthe Atlantic.

While cultural historians still debateits origins some three decades later,what is known to be fact is this: by thesecond half of the Seventies, some trulypioneering acts The Ramones, The

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Sex Pistols, The Clash, Blondie, TheDamned, Australian outcasts The Saints had at the very least embraced thedo-it-yourself attitude of punk, if notthe back-to-basics, three-chords-one-too-many aggression that typified punkrocks sound. In LA, such clubs as TheFleetwood and The Masque dared toput The Weirdos and Black Flag ontheir bills, while at the same time Rod-ney Bingenheimer, the self-styled May-or of Sunset Strip, flogged the music ofThe Ramones, the Pistols and The Clashon his Rodney On The ROQ radio show.Meanwhile, in the UK, these very samereprobates were glaring from the pagesof New Musical Express, Melody Makerand elsewhere. Slash celebrated thescene in the USA. The mainstream me-dia, naturally, feared punk like theplague, especially when The Sex Pistolsmade their infamous appearance on

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Thames TVs Today show in December1976, Steve Jones daring to drop theword fucker on live television. After areporter witnessed the male-bondingritual that was slam dancing, the LATimes ran a paranoid banner headlinethat screamed: THE SLAM. Punks lureto the youth of many nations wasirresistible.

Suburban Crawley was several lightyears away from the dingy clubs ofLondon, New York and Los Angeles where the whiff of danger was as strongin the air as the pungent aroma of hair-spray but punks DIY spirit wasnt loston the young men of The Obelisk (orMalice, as they were soon to beknown). In fact, at least to Lol Tolhurst,being based in Crawley had its advant-ages. On reflection, I think it was apretty good atmosphere for what weended up doing, he said. On one hand

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we were close enough to the capital toknow what was going on, but we werefar enough removed from it to not feelpart of any scene. All those little towns,like Horley and Crawley, spawned a lotof unusual characters. That shaped ourattitude to most things. We werent cityboys and savvy with all that, but wehad our own quirky atmosphere thatwe grew up in.

And while punk would provideSmith, Tolhurst, Dempsey and the restof their floating line-up with an atti-tude, if not a specific sound, the waveof post-punk bands soon to emergewould directly influence their music(once Malice had outgrown their lim-ited repertoire of Hendrix, Alex Harveyand Thin Lizzy covers).

It didnt take a doctorate in logicalthinking to figure that post-punk was

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the next evolutionary step from punkrock. Many of the basic beliefs stayedin place: the underground spirit ruled,the notion of stardom was anathema,long-winded solos were a no-go zonepunishable by public humiliation, whilethe more austere the countenance, thebetter. Malice werent exactly the mostskilled band on the planet, so theseessential, self-imposed limitationssuited them perfectly.

Such acts as The Gang Of Four, Talk-ing Heads and Wire, who all took anart-school approach to punk, led thecharge of post-punk acts. InManchester, a writhing, twitching vo-calist by the name of Ian Curtis wasfronting Warsaw, who would soon be-come Joy Division. The groups begin-ning was flawless: theyd formed imme-diately after members Peter Hook andBernard Sumner had witnessed a crash-

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and-burn Sex Pistols gig in Manchesteron June 4, 1976. Curtis then respondedto a seeking singer ad in the local Vir-gin record store. All of these bandswould have a direct impact on the earlymusic and outlook of Robert Smith andco, especially Joy Division or morespecifically, their second coming asNew Order whod go as far as to ac-cuse The Cure of plagiarism. Theirclaim wasnt without some basis in fact,either, but that was some way off in thefuture.

It wasnt just Sumner and Hook whowould respond so powerfully to TheSex Pistols in that northern summer of1976. Robert Smith was at a party dur-ing his last year at school when he firstheard Anarchy In The UK. I remem-ber thinking This is it! You eitherloved it or hated it; it polarised an en-tire nation for that summer. You had to

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make a choice: you were either goingto be left behind or you were going toembrace the new movement.

A northern act that would have anequally tangible impact on the earlysongs and sounds of Robert Smith wereMancunians The Buzzcocks, whoformed in 1975. The four-piece, who intheir original formation comprisedHoward Devoto (the former HowardTrafford), Pete Shelley (aka PeterMcNeish), John Maher and SteveDiggle, aligned themselves more withthe burgeoning New Wave scene at thetime, although their buzzsaw guitar ar-senal was the envy of most punk andpost-punk hopefuls. But The Buzzcockswere fully aware of the past: such early,nervy outpourings as Orgasm Addictand What Do I Get? (and further downthe line, Have You Ever Fallen InLove) managed to combine the restless

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urgency and futility of punk with thebittersweet melodicism of The Beatlesand The Kinks. That was no smallachievement and it wasnt lost onCrawley dreamers Robert Smith and LolTolhurst.

In a 1999 discussion of The Curesroots, Smith would namecheck variouspunk and post-punk outfits, includingThe Buzzcocks. In the very early days,when we were just a three-piece, Iwanted to be like Wire or [Siouxsie &]The Banshees, said Smith. These werethe people I emulated on a very imme-diate level. They were the generationimmediately preceding me, literally bya year. They had a certain kind ofpower to them that transcended punk. Iwanted The Cure to be that, but wenever were. We actually sounded likeThe Buzzcocks in the early days, but Ithink thats because my songwriting

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was still in its very early stages. I thinkit was influenced by early Beatles [asbrought into Smiths world by his sisterMargaret] the sense of a three-minuteguitar-pop song.

The almost-anything-goes aspect ofpunk and post-punk wasnt wasted onSmith, whod quickly tired of his formalguitar lessons with the gayest bloke Iever met. Learning by experienceseemed much more natural to the free-thinking teenager. What inspired me[about punk], Smith said, echoing hisbandmate Tolhurst, was the notionthat you could do it yourself. It wasloud and fast and noisy and I was at theright age for that. Even in his earlyteens, Smith was smart enough to useand abuse the aspects of punk thatsuited him and it had nothing to dowith fashion accessories. Because ofnot living in London or other big punk

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centres, it wasnt a stylistic thing forme. If you walked around Crawley withsafety pins [or a black velvet dress, asSmith had already learned] youd getbeaten up. The risk involved didntseem to make sense, he continued, soluckily there arent any photos of me inbondage trousers. I thought punk wasmore a mental state.

Embracing a punk state of mind,however, was not at the forefront ofRobert Smiths world in the earlymonths of 1976. He had more immedi-ate concerns to deal with, such as hiscontempt for the regime at St Wilfrids.The teacher/pupil relationship had de-teriorated to the point where Smith wasbriefly suspended from school, al-though his fathers active role on theschool board ensured that it was a veryshort suspension. They said I was

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disruptive, but it was a personal thing I hated the headmaster, Smith said.

By this time, Smith had already d