Robert's interview with The Word

Photo from The Times.

A caricature of Robert Smith will be the final cover of The Word magazine, which will publish it's last issue in mid-July. And the BBC says there will be an interview, too.
(Thanks @rob_fitzpatrick, @Native12, @honeyinmyveins)

Update (July 6th, 2012): Now available for iPad. (Thanks Adam)

Some excerpts (been asked not to post full interview until 2 weeks after publication), thanks to Perfect.Murder:

You’re contemplating the end of The Cure?
Well, we are a lot closer to the end! We couldn’t tour in the same way as we used to. It would be physically impossible for me to tour, because I refuse to not do this (lifts drink). I’m not going to go on and just sing the songs, but I also know I’m heading towards my mid-fifties, so there’s no fucking way I’m going to do a hundred shows in four months and they’ll all be great shows.

So the last tour was the last tour?
Yes. I haven’t said this for 20 years, but the last tour was the last world tour that I will ever do with The Cure. That tour taxed me so phenomenally. It’s a sad admission, but actually I’ve never, ever performed without taking some kind of stimulant: I can’t do it. My natural state is not one of a performer, it’s like something I’ve been saddled with. I love writing songs, I love writing words, I love singing at home, I love doing demos. We go in the studio, and then we go on stage, and I have to be this performer. I fucking love doing it, but I have to be able to do it my way.
I was touched by seeing you phone Mary just before you went on stage.
Well, Mary lives on my hours, so she’ll have been waiting up. I’ll phone her again in about an hour’s time [about 4am]. She’s on her own at home and I like to hear her say, “I hope it’s good.” She always says, “Sing well!”

You played Just Like Heaven tonight and there’s that lyric, “Why are you so far away, she said”, which always sounds so real. Like you love this person so much, but they’re always pissing off somewhere.
That’s why throughout the tours of 1987, 1989 and 1992 we took all the wives, all the girlfriends, all the family. We had three buses full of entourage, but we could afford it. We would have entire hotels sometimes. It was insane, the money we spent. But what else would we do with it? The whole point was then you didn’t go home and have to explain what you’d done. Of course, all that tailed off after Wish, because I went a bit mental.

In what way?
Because I couldn’t take the attention any more. When you’re U2, what do you do? It wasn’t us, it wasn’t me.

Didn’t you ever want to be the biggest band in the world?
No! I wanted to be the band that I would love, going to my grave. That has always been my dream. There’s a price to be paid for being U2 and it’s not a price I want to pay. So many people earn so much money out of a band when they’re on that trajectory. You are surrounded by fucking arseholes. You end up with people you would have pissed on when you were 17.

It really is a wonderful interview. Buy a copy for iPod now, or pick up a copy in mid-July.