“A complete prat”: The band so infuriating they made Robert Smith break his wife’s rule
The Cure frontman Robert Smith might be a goth icon and one of the most influential songwriters the post-punk era produced, bringing introspection to the genre, but he also looked firmly around at the scene surrounding him.
Besides spellbinding music, The Cure offered narcotic drama, big hair, smutty lipstick, and one of rock’s more outspoken voices. They might offer a sweet and mystical sound, but Smith ensured, with his cutting quips, that they could never be deemed wishy-washy. After all, he even went after one of the most popular bands in history in the form of Queen. But it was another group, a few rungs down on the best-selling ladder, that got under his skin the most.
This biting nature is a strange paradox, given that traditionally, goths are meant to be a quiet, unassuming bunch and an ice-cool counterpoint to the sloganeering, high-trousered pseudo-political theorists comprising the mother genre.
Long thought to be well-read introverts happy taking sanctuary with like-minded lovers of Victorian literature, the occult, a particular 20-square-foot of a given town centre, and Peter Murphy, Smith does away with this stereotype. He stands as a singular entity in the varied gothic landscape.
While this is evidently to do with his biological nature, the fact that The Cure emerged as a post-punk outfit reacting to the state of music and society in the late 1970s says a lot about the frontman’s motivations. He’s always craved something that defined a sense of personal identity.
As he once recalled, “When punk came along, I found my generation’s music. I grew up listening to the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd, ’cause that was what got played in the house. But when I first saw the Stranglers, I thought, ‘This is it.’”
In the beginning, even The Cure had more of a caustic sound. Only after they got going artistically and toured with Siouxsie and the Banshees in 1979 did they dive into a chillingly atmospheric realm with a uniquely intoxicating throughline. For example, their 1979 debut, Three Imaginary Boys, is more like a straight-up proto-indie album, with ensuing efforts, such as Seventeen Seconds, Faith, and Pornography, at the onset of the 1980s, much darker, actually gothic efforts.
Still, given the creepy, fantastical character of this trio of albums, you wouldn’t necessarily expect The Cure’s frontman to be so outspoken, but he is, with the punk spirit remaining within him. Channelling the likes of punk pioneer Johnny Rotten, he has always been bold in discussing what he deems the pitfalls and pretence of other ‘big’ acts, despite his group’s status and affected style. This has drawn criticism from everyone from Morrissey to Paul Weller. The latter took things down a markedly personal route, labelling Smith a “fucking fat cunt”.
It must be noted that Smith has also turned this inherently critical nature on himself and has openly outlined his pitfalls as a songwriter. However, his stinging takes on other prominent acts stand out due to their vitriolic temperament and that, despite earning himself a string of detractors, The Cure leader has remained undeterred in being such a loudmouth.
Although they are both global commercial powerhouses and have several similarities, one band that Smith has made it clear he hates is U2. Regardless of their punk origins, the quartet are largely antithetical to his worldview. He made this clear during a 1993 chat with SPIN, in which he dubbed the Irish band’s frontman Bono “a complete prat”.
He said: “I don’t dislike my peers because they’re still around and remind me of what I’m doing. I never liked them anyway. I never liked U2 [and] the things they’ve done over the years. Bono’s so totally absorbed in the idea of himself as almost messianic and then to turn and realise he looked a complete prat and say, ‘Oh, actually, it was irony’.”
He then appraised the music of the sunglasses sporting band by adding: “The single with the Edge intoning platitudes over a really tired backing: if we were to do something like that, it wouldn’t get past the demo stage. I’d think someone in the group was taking the piss!”
Smith revealed that his wife Mary, had told him not to be “horrible” about other groups in the press and that he sounded bitter, but Bono was so infuriating that he had to break this marital rule. While he maintained that he doesn’t do it viciously and that, most importantly, it doesn’t matter what he thinks. “It’s rubbish,” he said of the glitzy world of celebrities, of which he never wanted to be a part. But Bono only furthered that stance to a bitter extreme.
