Interview "Kisses from the Cure" TV, Belgium - May 1987


Robert : Always before, I tended to write pieces or snatches of music and the others said what they liked and think we should do. From that point on we've become like a group and we reinterpreted what I've initially written. But this time I thought that would be much more interesting for me to write words particulary and also for people listening to what we do, if there was like a diversity at the very start of the process. I asked the others... I mean, I had to force the others to give me some cassettes of what they were doing 'cause I know they can write things. It's just they're very lazy and very reluctant to give me things. Because they thought, well, we'd do a good album anyway 'cause we always have. It's the easy way out.

We just sat down and listened and gave each marks, we obviously knew ours but at the time I didn't know which were mine. And then it evolved all the way through or devolved until we had about 35 songs which we demo'ed. And that went down, we recorded 25 songs for real. I actually sang them, we mixed them. And the 18 songs that are on the album are my choice. The others wouldn't choose the same 18 songs. It's not really the best 18 songs, it's just the 18 songs which I feel work best together. The others don't agree with me.


- Have you thought of releasing two single albums or do you consider Kiss Me as an entire piece of music ?

Robert : We'd have to either reduce it down to 10 or 8 songs and release one single album. We couldn't have release them over a period of time because already I start to think about what we're gonna do next. And we haven't even played most of these songs live. The idea of the record in one way.. When we started to record it, I found it was almost becoming like a resume of everything the Cure had done up until now. Like all the best bits I think that we've done over the years, we've taken elements of them and worked them into songs so there's about... half of the album is looking back and half is looking forward to things, areas where we've never worked in before. And it just stops like 10 years of the Cure.

It means whatever we do next, we can do anything really. We can choose any style even ones we've never used before. So it would have make more sense financially for us to release two single albums. Because we'd get paid twice by the record company but artistically which is the way that we work, it may as well all go out or not go out at all.


Robert : We had a selection of studios through Europe. I actually ended up mixing the album with Dirk [Dave Allen] in ICP, in Brussels, which is a brilliant studio. We would have actually recorded in ICP, we would have done the whole album there but we wanted a studio that would be far away from the city. We didn't want to get up in the morning, have to get a cab or drive somewhere and then record. At Miraval we had like a vineyard, we lived actually in the studio or around the studio. So it meant if we felt like recording at three or four o'clock in the morning, we could turn the lights on and just start to record. That's the best way to record. We haven't done that since The Lovecats. That's the last time we did that. It was really really good fun.


Robert : This line-up is over two years, which is almost the longest line up that the Cure has ever had. Even though we only ever had... There's been nine people in the Cure from the very start. Five of us still in the group, four of us still in the group and Boris is like the newcomer of two years. But it's much more important than anything else that we get on with each other. We hear all the stories with people mixed in other groups and how they all dislike each other... We go on holiday together. It's really funny. I found a really good balance of personalities with the other four. I'm sure they all feel the same about me. Although they probably don't actually. It's tough.


- Is Boris now a definitive member of the band ? Or could you imagine another really good drummer ?

Robert : Andy was a really good drummer but personality-wise never quite fitted in. There was always a difficult... It's mainly just to do with how you approach what you do within the group. And also how you've been brought up, a lot of it. It's really to do with the way you think about a lot of things that aren't to do with music, like your hopes or cultural upbringing and Andy was very very different to us. There was no kind of friction but after a while he wanted other things. And it was fine. There was not a real problem there. And with Boris... We've all have the same kind of outlook on important things like politics and stuff. We all have the same kind of upbringing. So I mean, that helps. We're united in a sort of mental... a spiritual way as well as a musical way.


- Last year, there were amazing, very surprising pictures of you with a short haircut. That new haircut wasn't really innocent as you decided to cut your hair a few days before you left for America. Could you explain the story ?

Robert : My sort of prime reason was because it was going to be very hot in America 'cause it was the summer, late last summer. And I didn't want to be bothered trying to have my hair stick out all the time. I just wanted to forget about my haircut, that lead on to the second point which I suppose is the real reason. I had grown very weary of the emphasis that's being placed in the group's image and particulary my haircut. It doesn't really exist in Europe. In America it got to ludicrous proportions : "isn't he cuddly ? Would you like to take him home ?". I just wanted to make myself look even uglier really.

Having longer hair softens your features... It makes you look in a certain way. If you have a very skinhead haircut, people get off the way. It's a much more aggressive kind of image which translates over into what you're doing. People suddenly stepped back and thought : oh they don't really care what they look like. Which is all I wanted to do. I don't want the group to become like a glossy sort of picture group. I think it's really dumb.


- The ultimate Cure cliché is the black colour which in fact you do not like...

Robert : That's why I took my jacket off (laughs). At the moment we're all wearing black and white I've noticed. We haven't sort of decided, but I think I like just the contrast of black and white. I've never worn black really, I've always prefered to wear white onto black. We used to wear black for a very short period in the group's history. Around the time of Pornography and Faith, because we toured like hundred of days a year and we were always going somewhere else. We could never have time to wash our clothes. That's a horrible reason but that's why we used to wear black. That was the best colour to hide out the dirt.


- But black is also the colour of an hopeless romantism. Do you accept this image of a romantic Robert Smith ? Or is it a Cure cliché ?

Robert : That's only true in Western culture. I mean, in a lot of Eastern cultures, white is mourning. Everyone wears white when someone dies. And black is actually the eternal joy. I don't know... I've always prefered getting up late and using the evening as my day time. I don't think it's through any kind of want of mystery. You know... black and the owls... that sort of gothic cak. I don't really think there's that much to it. I despise people who use such trite ideas to express something that should be more important. The music that we play has in the past been described as black which I can understand. But I never walk hooded in black going "aarrrrhhh".


Robert : I see me on magazine covers as like a third person. When people stand outside going "aaaaahh", I don't think they're doing that for me. They're not. They're doing it for an image of someone called Robert Smith who's the singer in a group called the Cure. After this amount of time and all that we've done, and every record that we've made and they're less and less ignored as the years go by, I'm glad that we're now at a point where people listen to us and we're able to be played on the radio.

But at the same time I'm not so bitter about places where we're not popular. When we go to America, if we play in the West Coast, we can play three nights in Los Angeles in a 20 000 seats auditorium. We can go to Phoenix or New Orleans and play if we're lucky to 1200 people. All around the world, there's different pockets of people that think that the Cure are their favorite group or have never even heard of you. The most important is that if I step outside the group and I look at us and still want to be me and I still want to be Robert Smith the singer in the group called the Cure... That's the only thing that has ever been important.


Robert : Brussels is really good. I'm surprised, every time we've come to Brussels over the years, we've always had a lot of troubles : we'd been here for one night and would go to a club and have gone into a fight... Since I've been here to mix the album I actually spent some time here. It's nicer than Paris. I think it's really good to actually go out. It's not as pretty as Paris but with the things to do, it's really good.


- Is it possible to talk about the concerts and the tour next Autumn ?

Robert : We haven't really tried yet. It's quite an elaborate exercise. It's got a lot of visual effects, it's got a lot of slides and we're making a film, Porl and Undy who have done the artwork for the past six or seven records have made a film which is like an animated album cover. It's got my mouth, my eyes, it's reminiscent of like an old surrealist film. And we're using that and slides and it's gonna go through the concerts so the whole concert lasts quite a long time. We're hoping to find a support group that would complement the whole thing so there's actually about a 3-hour show from beginning to end. We're expanding to a six-piece for the next lot of concerts as well. So, the whole thing will be very different to anything we've done before.


WCIBY video.

Robert : We don't dance like 5-star, is that what you're saying ? It's strange but whenever we do a video with Pap (I'll refer to him as "Pap", I can't change, otherwise I keep saying, 'Tim Pope', it doesn't sound like the same man)... Ever since Let's Go To Bed, the reason why we get on with him is because he always comes and says "what do you want to do with the next song ?". And we say something and he goes "aaahh, that's exactly what I thought !". On this one, we said we should be dancing. We actually wanted to make it look like Singing In The Rain, really classy dance steps. And he said : "No, I see it more like 5-star, I see it". Somewhere along the line, we introduced us dressing up... The whole thing making videos with him is that we just get horribly drunk. We work all that beforehand, we all have on a piece of paper what we're supposed to be doing then we get horribly drunk then he just films until we fall over. But it was good fun. I think it's a particulary stupid video.


- If you were to meet the young Robert Smith as you were ten years ago, would you sign him on Fiction and produce his record ?

Robert : I'd tell him to go home and start to write books as it would be much more fun. Yeah, I'd sign him. More importantly, if I was the young Robert Smith and I met me now, would the young Robert Smith spit on my face ? I don't think he would. I don't think I've changed that much.