“It was totally surreal, explaining Camus to a sea of utterly bemused faces.” Or the time that he interviewed David Bowie for Xfm and arrived so drunk that he proceeded to talk over his hero for two hours. Like the time, during the first Gulf war, when he held a press conference to explain that the Cure’s 1979 debut single Killing an Arab was a reference to L’Etranger and not, as some US radio DJs thought, an Islamophobic anthem. I thought, ‘I’ve made a terrible mistake.’” He clasps his hands over his face, just like he does in photographs.įor someone who once sang “It doesn’t matter if we all die”, Smith has an endearing relish for the bathetic comedy of life. “I was asked to leave, for no reason other than I wasn’t welcome. In 1989, at the height of his fame, he moved to the quiet south-coast village where he still lives with his wife, Mary, and gamely attended a meeting in the village hall. He looks like the Cure sound.Įven without the warpaint, Smith finds it hard to blend in. Since 1983, the sooty eyeliner, blood-smear lipstick and cobwebbed forest of hair have made him a human logo, transmuted, through the work of people such as Tim Burton and Neil Gaiman, into visual shorthand for the morbidly romantic. To be honest, I would be disappointed if he wasn’t wearing it, along with his regulation baggy black clothes and silver jewellery.

He hasn’t worn it since his last concert with the Cure, in December 2016, but he has a photoshoot today at the Royal Festival Hall and thinks his features are too indistinct without it. T he first thing Robert Smith does is apologise for the makeup.

Robert smith without mackup singer