Robert Smith of The Cure curated this year's Meltdown Festival which kicks off this Friday, June 15th. The festival includes Nine Inch Nails, My Bloody Valentine, The Church, The Psychedelic Furs, Mogwai and many more, plus Smith himself will close out the festival with a performance on June 24th. In promotion of Meltdown, this Friday June 15th Smith will be taking over Iggy Pop's BBC Radio 6 Music show to discuss Meltdown, the curation process, and more. Stream the two hour show starting at 2pm ET here.
Meanwhile, Smith has done a few interviews recently which always turn out to be great reads -- check out some nuggets from a recent interview published in The Guardian:
Smith revealed that as a "birthday treat" on his 53rd birthday in Mexico City, The Cure attempted to break Bruce Springsteen's record for performing the longest concert ever (4 hours, 6 minutes). Alas, The Cure miscalculated and fell short by three minutes. The "birthday treat" turned to tragedy because Smith said "I was a bit crushed...because we could have honestly kept going for another half an hour."
The Cure's nemesis in the 80s was Duran Duran:
"It was generally Duran Duran...which is really sad because they loved us and they used to come to our shows. But they represented everything we hated: the whole glamorous 80s, consumer bullshit; this horrorshow that we were up against."
The Cure are teaming up with director Tim Pope to create a 40th anniversary career-spanning documentary. Smith explains why he agreed to the project:
“I knew a few people wanted to – what’s a nice way of saying exploit? – celebrate the 40th anniversary with projects. I said no, but I knew that they would probably go ahead anyway unless I made it very obvious that we were doing something.”
Smith says he was "very optimistic" when he was young and is the opposite now. He refers to himself as a "grumpy old man" and claims he's "at war" with the modern world:
"It’s insane, people’s lust for technology and new things."
As for new music, he says he's been listening to a lot of new music which has inspired him to create new music. He's committed to making a new Cure album and says he'll be upset if it doesn't work out.
Read the full interview with Robert Smith over at The Guardian.
Published June 10th, 2018