Robert Smith

Robert James Smith (born 21 April 1959) is an English musician who is the co-founder, lead vocalist, guitarist, primary songwriter, and only continuous member of the Cure, a post-punk band formed in 1976. His guitar-playing style (including his use of the Fender Bass VI), and distinctive singing voice shaped the sounding identity of the Cure. His fashion sense (often sporting a pale complexion, smeared red lipstick, black eye-liner, unkempt wiry black hair and all-black clothes) were highly influential on the goth subculture that rose to prominence in the 1980s.

Smith's other work includes playing the lead guitar as a member of Siouxsie and the Banshees from 1982 to 1984 and being the co-founder of the short-lived band the Glove in 1983. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Cure in 2019, and Rolling Stone magazine ranked him as the 157th greatest singer of all time in 2023.

Robert James Smith was born in Blackpool on 21 April 1959, the third of four children of Rita Mary (née Emmott) and James Alexander Smith. He came from a musical family, as his father sang and his mother played the piano. Raised as a Catholic, he later became an atheist. When he was three years old, his family moved to Horley, where he attended St Francis' Primary School. When he was six, his family moved to Crawley, where he attended St. Francis' Junior School. He later attended Notre Dame Middle School from 1970 to 1972, and St Wilfrid's Comprehensive School from 1972 to 1977. He and his younger sister Janet received piano lessons as children. He later quipped, " was a piano prodigy, so sibling rivalry made me take up guitar because she couldn't get her fingers around the neck." He told Smash Hits that in 1966, when he turned seven years old, his older brother Richard taught him "a few basic chords" on guitar.

Smith began taking classical guitar lessons from the age of nine with a student of guitarist John Williams, whom he called a "really excellent guitarist". He said, "I learned a lot, but got to the point where I was losing the sense of fun. I wish I'd stuck with it." He has said his guitar tutor was "horrified" by his playing. He gave up formal tuition and began teaching himself to play by ear, listening to his older brother's record collection. He was 13 or 14 when he became more serious about rock music and "started to play and learn frenetically". Up until December 1972, he did not have a guitar of his own and had been borrowing his brother's, so his brother gave him the guitar for Christmas. Smith said of this gift, "I'd commandeered it anyway—so whether he was officially giving it to me at Christmas or not, I was going to have it!" Rock biographer Jeff Apter maintains that the guitar Smith received for Christmas of 1972 was from his parents, and equates this item with Smith's Woolworths "Top 20" guitar that was later used on many of the Cure's earliest recordings. Smith has given differing accounts of the instrument’s origin, at times stating in interviews that he purchased the guitar himself for £20 in 1978.

Smith described Notre Dame Middle School as "a very free-thinking establishment" with an experimental approach, a freedom he claims to have abused. On one occasion, he said that he wore a black velvet dress to school and kept it on all day: "The teachers just thought, 'Oh, it's a phase he's going through, he's got some personality crisis, let's help him through it.'" He said "four other kids" beat him up after school, although Apter notes that Smith has given several conflicting versions of the story. Apter also reports that Smith put in just enough effort at Notre Dame to pass tests, and quotes Smith as saying, "If you were crafty enough, you could convince the teachers you were special; I did virtually nothing for three years." St Wilfrid's was reportedly stricter than Notre Dame. In the summer of 1975, Smith and his school bandmates took their O Levels, but only he and Michael Dempsey stayed on to attend sixth form at St Wilfrid's from 1976 to 1977.

Biography summary from English Wikipedia, photograph via Wikimedia Commons.