2003 - Unknown (Italy)* (Translation below)
"The Lord sees black."

"

Paragraph 
Robert Smith, 44-years-old, Cure leader: the band who invented the dark brings out the “Trilogy” dvd, where plays “Pornography”, “Disintegration” and “Bloodflowers”.

Review at page 53.

 Interview – The Lord sees black.

 By Giulio BRUSATI

 Bruxelles. Among businessmen, politicians and secretaries dressed in suit, Robert Smith is the only person with the lipstick and the made-up eyes in the afternoon. He doesn’t pass unnoticed dressed in black and with all that make up. A Cure away on business in the middle of the Europe, as any businessman, to promote a new work of the band who invented the dark music. “I often go to Bruxelles to meet the journalists. It’s a central city and it’s easy to reach. And then, here, I feel really an European among the Europeans. I’d never feel part of the continent sitting in a pub of London. Coming here gives me the impression that I also make an effort”. Aliens in a rock world which goes too fast to give gratitude to their work (goth, dark, metal or grunge: everybody is forced to give something to the Cure, and even a person without rules as Tricky pays homage to their The Lovecats in his last album), the English quintet publishes in these days a colossal dvd which testify to the double concert of the last November in Berlin, where Mr. Smith and friends played in full the tracks of Pornography, Disintegration and Bloodflowers, the three foundation album of a over-20-years career.

The double dvd, Trilogy, come out now as the summa of  the rock of the 80s and 90s, and it talks about a group who seems it has found the stability in the line-up (Smith and Simon Gallup, with Perry Bamonte, Jason Cooper and Roger O’Donnell).

At the end, fragments of images from the vision of over three hours of concert remains in mind. The ring at the Robert’s finger, a faith which sanctions his marriage with the eternal lover Mary Poole (it’s a pity that Smith is among the five rockstar who didn’t want to talk about their homosexuality, according to the american monthly magazine Spin). The Robert’s bistred eyes, the sweat which drips from the made-up mask. The faces of the youths in the stalls, so young, people even born when the Cure made the first single, Killing an Arab, 1978 (and maybe, today they’d have boycotted a title like this...).

The first question is required. You have more than 20 years of career behind you and your concerts are always crowded of people who still have to be born at your debut...

“It’s fault of the songs, let us say. It’s the “emotional content”.The more youths are more open-minded. Take Simon, our bass player. Beh, he has a son of 13 who has two passions: the wrestling and Playstation. And the top is when he can put them together. Simon had just told that few days ago, while he was playing, the boy pointed out to him that the soundtrack of a wrestling videogame seemed the Cure music. –Yes- he answered – but the Cure of 20 years ago!- . Well, today that thing which attracts the youths to our concerts is, after all, the same thing which attracts them in the 80s. We are a strange band because we haven’t ever want to leave our past. Our public is made up of people who aren’t included in a precise category.”

What does it mean?

“When we became really popular, at the end of the 80s, we filled the stadiums in the USA, but we felt all that people weren’t our more-sincere public. We became a phenomenon, and I don’t know if the people came and saw us [...]

 Robert Smith maintained that after 40 it can do rock no more. But now he says he feels boy again, The Cure will never become like U2 (a band for adults). And he says that he is ready to launch the darkest album of the world.

Thanks so much FRANCY for TRANSLATING!!!