Happy birthday Robert James Smith: the mastermind behind The Cure turns 54 today. Smith, through many incarnations of The Cure, has been influencing bands for decades.
I met him in the mid-90’s when I was Music Director at Washington D.C./Baltimore’s WHFS. Myself and Dave Marsh, pal and co-worker, had enlisted 18 Washington, D.C. bands to cover songs by The Cure. It was a benefit CD for the Whitman-Walker Clinic in DC, which is a community health center specializing in HIV/AIDS care and lesbian, gay bisexual and transgender care. The project was aptly titled Give Me the Cure. Around its release, Smith was kind enough to meet us and to sign copies of the benefit CD. He was quirky, quiet, fun and nice and, oh yeah, a massive hockey fan as evidenced by the jersey he was wearing!
Here’s hoping that Robert Smith is doing something really fun for his birthday. I’m celebrating with the live video for “A Forest.” This song literally immobilized me the first time I heard it. I was totally captivated and needless to say remain a massive fan.
The Cure remain at the forefront of modern rock, not just through their palpable influence upon legions of bands, but also as an August 2013 headliner at Lollapalooza.
