being a HUGE MBV fan this is just too cool...

the SECOND time i found out about one of smithy's
favorites being mine as well...first it was the jimi
hendrix thing, now this

pv


> Robert Smith discusses some of his favourite records ...
>
>
http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/homeentertainment/story/0,12830,966257,00.htm
> l
>
> Pop cure-alls
>
> Robert Smith
>
> Will Hodgkinson
> Friday May 30, 2003
> The Guardian
>
>
> Close to him: Robert Smith and his favourite CDs. Photo: Pete Millson
>
> Along with leading the Cure, one of the most influential bands of all
time,
> Robert Smith appears to have unlocked the secret of freezing time. For a
few
> years in the 80s you could go to any town in England and find at least one
> sullen youth with spiky black hair wearing a black mohair jumper,
oversized
> trainers, eyeliner and a dash of lipstick.
> Those boys have since grown up, thinned out on top and filled out in the
> middle, but the man who inspired them still looks exactly the same. The
> hair, makeup, black clothes and big trainers are all there, and Robert
Smith
> doesn't even look any older. Bognor, where Smith lives, is one English
town
> that still has its own spiky-haired youth.
>
> The Cure are going strong, too. In November 2002 the band played three of
> their most acclaimed albums - Pornography (1982), Disintegration (1989),
and
> Bloodflowers (2000) - in their entirety at the Berlin Tempodrom, and the
> film of that concert is now being released on DVD.
>
> "Pornography and Disintegration are always the fans' top two albums, and
> mine as well," says Smith. "I wanted Bloodflowers to be the third part of
a
> trilogy. The first two records had something that was there by virtue of
the
> intensity we put into the studio, and they both resulted in putting me
into
> a delayed state of shock. With Bloodflowers, because of my age, I can't
> recreate that intensity, but I think it has a lyricism that makes it
compare
> favourably to the other two."
>
> Pornography, the darkest of all Cure albums, was intended as a swansong.
"My
> attitude was: it's all rubbish, we're rubbish, so let's go out with a
bang,"
> says Smith. "I wrote all the songs in a windmill over one weekend. We
slept
> very little during the recording, there was a lot of drugs involved, and
the
> stage shows that followed were just brawls between us and the audience.
It's
> strange because that's not my nature at all, and it wasn't even fun. In
fact
> it was really, really awful."
>
> Smith has aimed for the intensity that all his favourite music has. The
> first record that touched him was Help! by the Beatles, which came out
when
> he was five. "My sister used to play it in her bedroom, and I would sit on
> the stairs, listening to it through the door," he says. "It made me
realise
> that there was another world going on beyond my immediate environment. The
> melodies on these tunes are so fantastic, and the imagination that goes
into
> these songs is just unreal. It's so perfect it makes me weep. I listen to
> Help! and I'm filled with hope that the world could be a better place."
>
> Smith's original idea for the Cure was to play perfect three-minute pop
> songs, despite coming out of the aggression and chaos of punk. "I was
> enamoured by the melody of the Buzzcocks and Elvis Costello, not the
anarchy
> of the Sex Pistols," he says. "Living in Crawley, you really didn't have
to
> go out of your way to get beaten up so I couldn't see the point in putting
a
> safety pin through my nose. But Costello always seemed that bit cleverer.
I
> bought my first guitar, a Jazz Master, just because he looked so cool with
> his. Ever since then I've bought guitars based on what they look like."
>
> The Jimi Hendrix Experience's Are You Experienced? is Smith's favourite
> hippy-era album. "Hendrix was the first person I had come across who
seemed
> completely free, and when you're nine or 10, your life is entirely
dominated
> by adults. So he represented this thing that I wanted to be. Hendrix was
the
> first person who made me think it might be good to be a singer and a
> guitarist - before that I wanted to be a footballer."
>
> While Hendrix had planted the seed, Smith recognised Bowie as his first
> kindred spirit pop star. "I felt that his records had been made with me in
> mind," he says. "He was blatantly different, and everyone of my age
> remembers the time he played Starman on Top of the Pops. The school was
> divided between those who thought he was a queer and those who thought he
> was a genius. Immediately, I thought: this is it. This is the man I've
been
> waiting for. He showed that you could do things on your own terms; that
you
> could define your own genre and not worry about what anyone else is doing,
> which is I think the definition of a true artist."
>
> The only problem with Bowie was that his total difference made him a very
> distant ideal, while Alex Harvey's brand of pop stardom offered up a much
> more attainable dream. "Alex Harvey was the physical manifestation of what
I
> thought I could be. I was 14 when I first went to see him, and then I
> followed him around to all the shows. He never really got anywhere, even
> though he had something so magical when he performed - he had the persona
of
> a victim, and you just sided with him against all that was going wrong. I
> would have died to have had Alex Harvey as an uncle."
>
> For most of the 1980s, Smith avoided listening to his contemporaries. "I
> would be more familiar with Janet Jackson than I was with the Teardrop
> Explodes or Joy Division, because I didn't want to listen to my
competitors
> for fear of nicking ideas off them," he says. "On the tour bus, it would
> either be disco, or Irish bands like the Dubliners."
>
> A change came when Smith heard My Bloody Valentine for the first time. "It
> was the first band I heard who quite clearly pissed all over us, and their
> album Loveless is certainly one of my all-time three favourite records.
It's
> the sound of someone [guitarist/leader Kevin Shields] who is so driven
that
> they're demented. And the fact that they spent so much time and money on
it
> is so excellent."
>
>

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