Robert Smith

Lore & Background

Smith did not intend to become the lead vocalist of the Cure. As the Group gradually became Malice and began regular rehearsals in January 1976, Smith was still one of several floating members. By December 1976, vocalist Martin Creasy, a journalist with The Crawley Observer, had a brief tenure that was a live débâcle. By January 1977 Malice had changed their name to Easy Cure. During March 1977, a vocalist named Gary X came and went, replaced by Peter O'Toole, who remained Easy Cure's steady front man for several months. However, by the time Easy Cure entered London's Sound And Vision Studio to record for Hansa in October 1977, O'Toole had left to work on a Kibbutz in Israel. Smith then fell into the vocalist role by default, since no better replacement appeared. He told Musician magazine in 1989: 'When we started, and were playing in pubs, I wasn't the singer ... I was the drunk rhythm guitarist who wrote all these weird songs. We went through about five different singers – they were fucking useless, basically. I always ended up thinking, "I could do better than this." ... I mean, I hated my voice, but I didn't hate it more than I hated everyone else's voice ... So I thought, "If I can get away with that, I can be the singer." I've worked on that basis ever since.'

Reader's Guide

Smith began taking classical guitar lessons from the age of nine with a student of guitarist John Williams, whom he called a 'really excellent guitarist'. He said, 'I learned a lot, but got to the point where I was losing the sense of fun. I wish I'd stuck with it.' He gave up formal tuition and began teaching himself to play by ear, listening to his older brother's record collection. He was 13 or 14 when he became more serious about rock music and 'started to play and learn frenetically'. Up until December 1972, he did not have a guitar of his own and had been borrowing his brother's, so his brother gave him the guitar for Christmas. Rock biographer Jeff Apter maintains that the guitar Smith received for Christmas of 1972 was from his parents, and equates this item with Smith's Woolworths 'Top 20' guitar that was later used on many of the Cure's earliest recordings. Smith has given differing accounts of the instrument's origin, at times stating in interviews that he purchased the guitar himself for £20 in 1978.

Did You Know?

• Smith was born in Blackpool on 21 April 1959, the third of four children of Rita Mary (née Emmott) and James Alexander Smith.
• He was raised as a Catholic but later became an atheist.
• On one occasion at Notre Dame Middle School, he wore a black velvet dress to school and kept it on all day; 'four other kids' beat him up after school.
• Smith has said that he was expelled from St Wilfrid's as an 'undesirable influence' after his band Malice's second live performance shortly before Christmas in 1976, which allegedly caused a riot.
• He and his younger sister Janet received piano lessons as children; he later quipped, '[Janet] was a piano prodigy, so sibling rivalry made me take up guitar because she couldn't get her fingers around the neck.'

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