Joepie (Belgium): November 24, 1985

Life is a dream from which you never wake up:

 The Cure’s Robert Smith intimate:

The difference between dream and reality is very small sometimes, Robert Smith mumbles. “Sometimes, I have a feeling certain things from my daily life aren’t really happening, while my nightmares always seem horribly realistic.” An interview with the Cure chief is not an easy job. The man is rather happily insane and talks you to the moon before you even know it. Your reporter’s crew hung in there and even managed to get some secrets from spiky hair Smith.

Chopped off heads

The new record from The Cure has the strange title ‘The Head on the Door’. There must be a lovely story about that.

“How did you guess? ‘The Head On The Door’ refers to my childhood. I slept in the same room as my little sister and we used to play together with hand made puppets. Unfortunately we also had a brother that seemed be born just to bully us. One day, he cut off the head of my favourite puppet and stuck it to the door. For you, that might not seem very impressive, but I was pretty shaken up by it. Weeks later, I still had nightmares about chopped off heads who came peeping through doors. That memory came back to me a while ago. ‘The Head on the Door’ seemed like a nice record title – a bit mysterious, but funny nonetheless”.  

Dreams seem to play an important part in your life. Many of your lyrics breathe out that atmosphere.

“Yeah, reality and fiction are two things that are completely intertwined for me. Sometimes, the weirdest ideas and images run through my head. Afterwards, something you remember about it might deliver an interesting theme for a song. And when the other members of the band ask how the hell I came up with that, most of the times I don’t even know what to answer. My memories are so vague most of the time that I wonder if life isn’t one big dream from which you never wake up. Interesting thought, no?”

You have been living together with your girlfriend Mary for a couple of years now. I bet it isn’t always easy for her to get in contact with planet Robert.

“No, that’s true. But it’s not a problem. Mary is even weirder than me – she often disguises herself as a witch and goes out to scare people. She is the perfect woman for someone like me. And we don’t really have that much to say to each other anymore after all these years. When one of us starts a sentence, the other one almost automatically knows what the end of it will be. Mary and I also think talking is just a waste of time. We did a test a while ago by taping a few hours of our daily conversations. It cracked us up. Although we are both quite silent people, 90 % of our conversations were redundant, stuff so meaningless you had better keep it to yourself. Meditating together is far more fun than all that talking. Mary and I practice yoga. When we’re at home, we’re meditating most of the time. Forgetting about yourself completely while times goes by slowly. Lovely!

(Photographer: Richard Bellia)

 Thanks so much - Jerbbiepooh  (MFC) for TRANSLATING.