Robert Smith (musician)

Robert James Smith (born 21 April 1959) is an English musician, singer, songwriter, and record producer.

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 told Smash Hits that, from about 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".

However, 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".

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, "[Janet] was a piano prodigy, so sibling rivalry made me take up guitar because she couldn't get her fingers around the neck."

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 anywayso 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 notorious Woolworths "Top 20" guitar that was later used on many of the Cure's earliest recordings.

The Obelisk featured Smith (still playing piano at this point) alongside Marc Ceccagno (lead guitar), Michael Dempsey (guitar), Alan Hill (bass), and Laurence "Lol" Tolhurst (percussion) and, according to the Cure's official biography Ten Imaginary Years, gave their only performance at a school function in April 1972.

During the latter part of 1972, the nucleus of Smith, Ceccagno, Dempsey and Tolhurst had gone on to secondary school together at St Wilfrid's Comprehensive, where they and their friends continued playing music together.

Smith said that they were known simply as "The Group" "because it was the only one at school so we didn't need a name."

Dempsey, who eventually moved from guitar to bassist for the Group, said that another name they toyed with was the Brat's Club – a reference to Evelyn Waugh's A Handful of Dust.

Smith said that "the group" eventually became Malice, "sort of a sub-metal punk group -with Michael Dempsey, Laurence and two other blokes."

Jeff Apter, however, dates the performance to April 1973, which is at variance with Smith and his bandmates having already left Notre Dame Middle School by this time.

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.

Smith has said that he was expelled from St Wilfrid's as an "undesirable influence" after his band Malice's second live performance shortly before Christmas in 1976, which took place at the school and allegedly caused a riot: "I got taken back [in 1977] but they never acknowledged that I was there [...] I did three A levelsfailed biology miserably, scraped through French, and got a 'B' in English. Then I spent eight or nine months on social security until they stopped my money, so I thought, 'Now's the time to make a demo and see what people think.'" According to Cure biographers Dave Bowler and Bryan Dray, the school expelled ex-Malice co-founder Marc Ceccagno along with Smith, whose new band Amulet played the December school show.

Smith has given conflicting accounts of his alleged expulsion, elsewhere saying that he was merely suspended and that it was because he did not get along with the school headmaster, and on another occasion saying he was suspended because his "attitude towards religion was considered wrong".

Smith has said that his first band when he was 14 consisted of himself, his brother Richard, their younger sister Janet, and some of Richard's friends.

He remarked, "It was called the Crawley Goat Band – brilliant!"

However, while the Crawley Goat Band may have been Smith's first regular group, he would have been just 13 when he and his Notre Dame schoolmates gave their first one-off performance together as the Obelisk, an early incarnation of what would eventually become the Cure.

According to the band's Ten Imaginary Years biography, between January and December 1976, the shifting line-up for Malice featured several "other blokes", with founding guitarist Marc Ceccagno being replaced by Porl Thompson, an early drummer known only as "Graham" replaced by Lol Tolhurst, and "Graham's brother" replaced by vocalist Martin Creasy.

He is best known for his work as the co-founder, lead vocalist, guitarist, primary songwriter, and only continuous member of the rock band the Cure since 1978.

Smith was quoted in several earlier sources as saying 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.

His unique guitar-playing style, distinctive singing voice, and fashion sensealmost always sporting a pale complexion, smeared red lipstick, black eye-liner, unkempt wiry black hair, and all-black clotheswere highly influential on the goth subculture that rose to prominence in the 1980s.

Smith's other work includes playing the lead guitar for Siouxsie and the Banshees from 1982 to 1984 and being a member 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.