The three guitarists that shaped Robert Smith: “Hendrix set the tone”
Sometimes, with music, simplicity is key.
Some of the greatest songs in history, and ones I enjoy more than any, hang off a relatively rudimentary structure that doesn’t break any ground but instead cuts straight to the heart with its straightforward approach. While The Cure didn’t exclusively abide by that approach, there was one song that certainly did.
As the reverberated chord progression of ‘Just Like Heaven’ spills out during the introduction, a stirring sense of goddamn foreboding arises. There’s no mistaking that whatever is coming next in the song will be rousing, but it’s hard to tell just how transfixing and masterful it may be. To the listener’s delight, The Cure subverts that expectation and delivers a truly fucking memorable, albeit simple guitar line.
Descending and ascending the A major scale primarily on the B string, either Pearl Thompson or Robert Smith tap into something both euphoric and melancholic at the same time, perfectly matching this dreamscape melody they’ve created in the song. It is, despite all its simplicity, one of the most memorable riffs of all time.
While it was technically something that anybody could have written, it was played with such a unique sense of style that it helped forge the band their own artistic identity. They were a band who, like many greats before them, could now write something that the entire music universe would instantly recognise as The Cure. Fundamentally, that was a key feature of the guitarists who came before Robert Smith, which helped forge the path of influence he would soon follow.
“I like guitarists that have a very distinctive style. I think Bowie is an underrated guitarist. I loved the rhythm guitar on early Bowie albums like Hunky Dory. When I was really, really young, I listened to The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, and I liked the rhythm guitar on their early 1960s singles,” he once explained, sharing where his influence came from.
But then, like all great guitarists, Smith stumbled on the works of someone who took the humble guitar to an entirely new level. But while many were transfixed by the outrageous virtuoso-like skill of this player, Smith tapped into something different, something more human.
He added, “Then my older brother played Hendrix for me when I was eight or nine years old, and he became my favourite. The other kids at school were always learning Hendrix’s solos, but I was much more interested in learning the way he put chords together. I thought the way he left notes ringing was really weird and sounded really good. Hendrix set the tone for everything I do.”
It’s no surprise that the gem of influence Smith took from Hendrix’s innovative approach was the chords. Because while bending guitar lines and solos are indeed a marvelling part of guitar music, it is in the chords where most of the emotion is kept. As Smith developed his own sound with The Cure, alongside Thompson, the emotion of a well-thought-out chord sequence was at the very heart of it.
