Robert Smith initially turned down Rolling Stones collaboration: “I went up there expecting just to get drunk”
The Cure frontman Robert Smith has revealed that he initially turned down the opportunity to appear on The Rolling Stones’ new album.
Last week, The Stones continued to tease their forthcoming record, Foreign Tongues, which is set to arrive on July 10th, by sharing ‘Divine Intervention’ that features Smith on guitar. It arrived as a double-A side alongside ‘Jealous Lover’.
Remarkably, before working together on ‘Divine Intervention’, Smith had never met The Rolling Stones before they teamed up for the track, and The Cure frontman did not expect for the legendary rock band to recruit his services.
In an upcoming episode of the new Rolling Stones podcast, Speaking in Tongues, Smith explained how producer Andrew Watt “got in touch” and was integral to the collaboration.
He recalled of his conversation with Watt (via NME), “When it got nearer to the end of the session, was I interested in coming up and finally grabbing that cold beer with him?,” before adding, “He said that they’d pretty much done all the tracking and Mick was just left to pick up some vocal stuff.”
With the promise of a cold beer, Smith headed his way to Metropolis Studios in Chiswick, even though he did have his trepidations about being an unwelcomed visitor, admitting, “I know what it’s like being in the studio, particularly when you’re singing. The last thing you want is guests.”
While Smith “said I’d wait in the bar until they’d be done”, he was then informed that Jagger was “happy for [him] to come down” to the studio, so he “walked into the control room and through the glass, there was Mick Jagger singing, which [I] was not was expecting at all”.
From there, the pair conversed, and Smith was made to feel “very, very welcome” while “availing myself of the refreshments and my tongue was loosening, and my suggestions were getting more and more absurd, I suspect, as they often do”.
Much to his surprise, he recalled, “Out of nowhere [Jagger] said, ‘Do you fancy doing something on the album?’ And I was like, Whoa, hang on! And he said, ‘Oh, play a bit of guitar…’ And I was like, Well… I wasn’t really prepared for it.”
For many artists, working with The Stones is at the top of their bucket list, yet Smith responded, “Much to everyone’s astonishment, I said, ‘No, no thanks, I can’t do that.’ I went up there expecting just to get drunk, really. And I wasn’t expecting to play on the Rolling Stones album.”
Then, once Jagger had gone home, Smith, likely with more liquid confidence inside of him, changed his tune, sharing, “I said to Andrew, ‘Oh, come on then’. Let’s plug a guitar in and I’ll have a go at some of the songs. So I just started playing and, yeah, one thing led to another.”
Previously, Jagger gave his side of the story, recalling, “I turned up one day to do my vocals in London and there’s this bloke standing there with his back to me with his long gown on, and when he turned around he was covered in lipstick.”
The Rolling Stones frontman then claimed to have taken it upon himself to make the first move, which he duly did in a way that only Jagger could, adding, “I’ve never met him before, and I said, ‘You are Robert Smith of The Cure.’ And he said, he said, ‘Yeah, we’ve never met.’”
He added, “And then I said, ‘Well, while you’re here then you’d better go and do something.’ That’s how collaborations work sometimes. Go out and sing the backing vocal.”
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