Robert Smith

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Robert Smith is an English singer and guitarist, born in 1959 in Blackpool and raised in Crawley. As a child he had piano lessons and later guitar lessons, but mostly taught himself to play by listening to his brother's records. In 1976 he founded the post-punk band The Cure, of which he became the singer, guitarist and main writer. He is the only member who has always stayed. From 1982 to 1984 he also played guitar with Siouxsie and the Banshees, and in 1983 he briefly started the project The Glove.

Music and breakthrough

The 1980 album Seventeen Seconds contains the song A Forest. His guitar playing, in which he uses the Fender Bass VI among other instruments, and his own high voice form the sound of The Cure. His appearance is part of it too: pale skin, red lipstick, black eyeliner, tousled black hair and black clothes. That image had a strong influence on the goth culture of the 1980s.

Influence

Smith showed that pop music can be dark and sensitive without losing its catchiness. In 2019 The Cure was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In School of Rock he is the singer of the band that shows with A Forest how cool and bare rock could sound in the early 1980s.

Listening

In School of Rock

The chapters, maps and magazine stories of School of Rock are currently available in Dutch only.

• Mixtape 4: When Rock Was Still Pop^NL Reader

Mentioned in other articles

• Gothic rock GenreThe black clothes and dark hair of the singer Robert Smith became the uniform of a new youth culture, the goths.

See also

• Gothic rock