Thursday, July 21, 2011

Peter Murphy on Robert & The Cure

From Spin:
You've been called the Godfather of Goth. What does that make Robert Smith?
Robert Smith is like my pale elder brother, with a no-image vibe when he was in the early Cure. They were an interesting early 4AD [Records] type with no ego, whereas we immediately [hit the scene] saying, "Fuck you -- this is the theater of Iggy and Bowie. We're here." We spurted. We ejaculated. And in the petit mort, the little death after ejaculation, we split up. Around then, the Cure were obviously losing their caché -- and suddenly I see pictures of Robert Smith with high black hair, lipstick, and badly applied eye makeup with black clothes. I'm thinking, Okay, all right, so he's now goth, right?

It's so bad to be lumped in with the Cure?
Actually, the Cure were cool. They made very cool alternative pop music. Robert's bloody talented. It's just that Joy Division was closer to Bauhaus than anybody else. (Thanks Kate)

9 comments:

  1. Great quotes, I interviewed Peter for Clash Magazine last month (I'm the guy who's done the feature mentioned in the post above) and I ended up chatting very briefly about The Cure amongst others.

    Clash: 1983, Joy Division had become New Order and Goth had become a fully-fledged subculture and style. Bands like Siouxsie and The Banshees and The Cure cementing the look.

    PM: Once we had been and gone I certainly noticed this bloke (Robert Smith) in this pale and interesting band, no image with roll ups suddenly have high black hair and lippy smeared on his face. I was like oh yeah, a wink in my eye. There was spawn, bands took one aspect of what we did and just helped cement that into the 20th century and made you egocentric. But when your English you just go fuck it.

    He was hilarious to chat to.

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  2. maybe a little less time wanking, and more time spent writing music - and THEY would have been more like the Cure?

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  3. sounds bitter... well, at least RSX still has hair to tease... murphy's gonna have a hard time backcombing that bald head

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  4. oh come on. i don't think anything he said was all that bad. bauhaus and the cure were/are iconic in their own ways. completely different bands, different sounds, different priorities.

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  5. OK. "I wanna be David Bowie" sums up the entire Bauhaus career. Not that it was that bad, though.

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  6. At least he said Robert was "Bloody Talented", which we all, of course, know to be the truth.

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  7. Pale elder brother? Robert is younger than him...

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