The Cure
He chews his occult desires carefully with make up eyes black, red lipstick and hair hispid. He plays guitar
since the six years old. He thinks the love should not be taken seriously. His favorite drug is 'to be happy'...He
don't considered himself as a broken-hearted professional. The other people - especially the english press -
consider him as a crazy sleepwalker.
Robert Smith is the creator of the idea/band, appeared at a Sussex villa, in England. In the beginning, the great
Robert objective was not to have to work. When the band signed with Fiction Records, in 78, and it reliased its first
disc, "Killing An Arab", in 79, he was forced to change the idea. The Cure - for the indiscriminate illness of meat
and spirit - broke out as a black plague, advancing typical fertilizations of the best sound of the eighties...
No, he was not just a moonstruck one talented in the pos-punk. He soon molded the sound absolutely deviant of
the plague/cure. In the beginning, the simple and no effect sound of the guitar, bass and battery in Three
Imaginary Boys. But with Seventeen Seconds, a torture climate begins, aided by a cold synthesize. Pornography
(that was preceded by Faith) it is a victory of the terminal aesthetics: vudu smileof Siamese Twins, sung by
Smith with funereal beats. That are the two schizophrenic Robert Smith faces: a calm and cool citizen, a leisure
and a sex lover person, and the delirious dreamer induced by the drug. Pornography made the supreme pornography of
describing 'heavy' deliriums. Faced by the moralists as an Joana D'Arc apology. It until were prohibited in England.
But Robert didn't worry so much, because was interested more in the intermittent appearances with Banshees
as special guitarist - supplying the appropriate dramatic counterpoint to the ironic artistic collages of Siouxsie.
Japanese Whispers, compilation of the end of 82 to the end of 83, is the plague/cure for the masses, a type of
host with a Robert softer face...
From Banshee in stage to Banshee in vinyl. The guitars in the version of Siouxsie for "Dear Prudence" are Robert
guitars. He and Steve Severin also form The Glove, a true psychedelic nightmare. They recorded the LP Blue
Sunshine, based on a film of the seventies about contaminated psychotic victims of LSD. Resulted is to horrify
the neurons of any Syd Barret fan. During the recordings, Smith and Steve were nights watching to horror films
and psychopaths, tends hallucinated dreams. The images - from the films and dreams - print the rhythm of the
disc, under orgy themes, punishment, murder and ecstasy.
With Cure and Banshee, Robert Smith traveled to several parts of the world and when he came back, it threw the
most probable masterpiece of The Cure, that almost gathers the whole ambiguous thematic and instrumental
wealth of its history: The Top. We have the hallucinating rush of heroine in "Give Me It" and psychedelic in "Shake
Dog Shake". We still have the Christian intimations in "Piggy In The Mirror" and the medieval nightmare came
from the main song, "The Top". The climate is a terrifying Edgar Allan Poe history. But all this is not more than an
adventure in Robert Smith imagination.
Concert is just a competent live album, and first LP of The Cure to be released in Brazil (a supreme shame).
In August of this year, Robert Smith and his friends reliased The Head On The Door... It is a bomb. A new
imaginary meeting of key-themes: Spain, Arabia and India are among the ethnias. And is still sadomasochists
relationships, punishment, films images, blood, birds, and the sexual intercourse love/death...
In the future, when remembering of that time, Robert Smith and some few ones more, will continue 'on the top' as
one of the great bands always.
(Pepe Escobar)