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==Musical influences== Smith has credited his older siblings Richard and Margaret with exposing him to rock music such as [[the Beatles]] and [[the Rolling Stones]] when he was six years old.<ref name="Les Inrockuptibles"/> He has said that his early songwriting "was influenced by early Beatles β the sense of a three-minute guitar-pop song",<ref name="Black Celebration">{{cite news |title=Black Celebration |newspaper=[[CMJ New Music Report]] |date=27 December 1999}}</ref> and early in his career the Cure's second single "[[Boys Don't Cry (The Cure song)|Boys Don't Cry]]" was compared by British music paper ''[[Record Mirror]]'' to "[[John Lennon]] at 12 or 13".<ref name="Sutherland 1"/> His parents encouraged their children's musical development, as he told French magazine ''Les Inrockuptibles'': "My parents were lending us their stuff; my mum made me listen to a lot of classical music to enable me to have a larger vision of music."<ref name="Les Inrockuptibles"/> When Smith was eight years old in 1967, Richard played him "[[Purple Haze]]" by [[Jimi Hendrix]], who became hugely influential.<ref name="Hi 5">{{cite magazine |title=Hi 5 |magazine=[[Rolling Stone Australia]] |date=December 1993}}</ref> Of this period, he went on to say, "My brother was also crazy about [[Captain Beefheart]], [[Cream (band)|Cream]], Jimi Hendrix, so much so that when I was 7 or 8, to the despair of my parents, I became some kinda little devil fed on [[psychedelic rock]]."<ref name="Les Inrockuptibles"/> Smith was 10 years old in 1969 when he first heard [[Nick Drake]]'s album ''[[Five Leaves Left]]'': "Nick Drake's on the other side of the coin to Jimi Hendrix. He was very quiet and withdrawn ... I think also that because he had an untimely death like Jimi Hendrix, he was never able to compromise his early work. He was never able to put a foot wrong. It's a morbid romanticism, but there is something attractive about that."<ref name="Hi 5"/> It was not long afterwards that Robert Smith attended his first rock concert: Jimi Hendrix at the [[Isle of Wight Festival 1970|1970 Isle of Wight Festival]].<ref name="Les Inrockuptibles"/> At the age of 13 in 1972, Smith first saw [[David Bowie]] on television, performing "[[Starman (song)|Starman]]" on ''[[Top of the Pops]]''. He recalled, "Every person in Britain who saw that performance, it's stuck with them. It's like [[JFK assassination|Kennedy being shot]] for another generation. You just remember that night watching David Bowie on TV. It really was a formative, seminal experience."<ref name="Hi 5"/> Smith said that the first [[LP record|LP]] he ever purchased with his pocket money was ''[[The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars]]''.<ref name="Les Inrockuptibles"/> According to Apter, Bowie also paved the way for Smith's love of [[glam rock]] bands such as [[Slade]], [[the Sweet]], and [[T. Rex (band)|T. Rex]], and during the same period, he also became a fan of [[Roxy Music]].<ref name="Apter, Jeff 2009 p. 15"/> His parents maintained their supportive attitude: "My mum and dad were encouraging us to talk [about] the records we liked. I remember staggering talks about Slade and [[Gary Glitter]]."<ref name="Les Inrockuptibles"/> Smith said that he was 15 when he first heard [[Alex Harvey (musician)|Alex Harvey]], and that [[the Sensational Alex Harvey Band]] was the first and only group he ever really followed. He said, "[Harvey] was probably my only real idol. I travelled around the country to see them. [...] People talk about [[Iggy Pop]] as the original punk but certainly in Britain the forerunner of the punk movement was Alex Harvey. [...] I remembered the power of that live performance and I've tried to have that in my mind since I started up my own group."<ref name="Hi 5"/> He soon became influenced by the emergence of the UK [[Punk rock|punk]] scene of 1977 and has cited [[the Sex Pistols]], the Stranglers, [[Elvis Costello]] and [[the Buzzcocks]] as important influences on his own music from this period. He described the release of "[[Anarchy in the UK]]" by the Sex Pistols as "the last time something major happened to me and changed me [...] it was the best summer of my life. I remember listening to 'Anarchy' for the very first time at a party and thinking, 'This is it!' You knew straight away, you either loved it or hated it, and it polarised an entire nation for that summer."<ref name="Hi 5"/> Elsewhere, Smith said that the Stranglers were his favourite punk band and that Costello "was a cut above the whole lot of them" in terms of lyrics and song crafting.<ref name="The Gothfather"/> Smith was influenced by [[Siouxsie and the Banshees]]' "wall of noise" and the Buzzcocks' melodies, and aspired to combine the two.<ref name=bad>{{cite magazine |first=James |last=Oldman |title=Bad Medicine |magazine=[[Uncut (magazine)|Uncut]] |date=February 2000}}</ref> He said, "The two groups that I aspired to be like were [Siouxsie and] the Banshees and the Buzzcocks. I really liked the Buzzcocks' melodies, while the great thing about the Banshees was that they had this great wall of noise, which I'd never heard before. My ambition was to marry the two."<ref name=bad /> Ian Birch of ''Melody Maker'' recognised the Banshees' influence on Smith's band early on, comparing the Cure's 1978 debut single "[[Killing An Arab]]" favourably to Siouxsie's "[[Hong Kong Garden (song)|Hong Kong Garden]]" (released a few months earlier).<ref>{{cite magazine |first=Ian |last=Birch |title=Practical poprock |magazine=[[Melody Maker]] |date=24 March 1979}}</ref> Speaking of his stint of playing guitar with Siouxsie and the Banshees in 1979, Smith said, "It allowed me to experiment. I inherited an approach from [[John McKay (guitarist)|John [McKay]]] which was just to have everything full up. [...] It was [[Phaser (effect)|phased]]/[[Flanging|flanged]] [[Distortion (music)|distortion]] noise."<ref name=guitar /> From that time, Siouxsie and the Banshees "were a massive influence on me". He said, "They were the group who led me towards doing ''Pornography''. They drew something out of me."<ref>{{cite magazine |title=Siamese Twins β The Cure and the Banshees |magazine=[[Uncut (magazine)|Uncut]] |issue=87 |date=August 2004 |last=Oldham |first=James |page=60}}</ref> Along with the Banshees, early Cure gigs from 1978β1979 supporting other post-punk bands such as [[Wire (band)|Wire]] and Joy Division also influenced Smith's shift in musical direction from the Cure's 1979 album ''Three Imaginary Boys'' to 1980's second album ''Seventeen Seconds''.<ref name="Black Celebration"/> Playing support for Wire (at Kent University in October 1978) gave Smith the idea "to follow a different course, to hold out against the punk wave [...] Wire pointed out another direction to me".<ref name="The Gothfather"/> When asked what were his five favorite guitar tracks, Smith listed "Purple Haze" by Hendrix, "[[Hanging Around (The Stranglers song)|Hanging Around]]" by Hugh Cornwell of the Stranglers, "Head Cut" by [[John McGeoch]] of Siouxsie and the Banshees, "[[White Riot]]" by [[Mick Jones (The Clash guitarist)|Mick Jones]]/[[Joe Strummer]] of [[the Clash]] and "[[White Light/White Heat (song)|White Light/White Heat]]" by [[Lou Reed]] of [[the Velvet Underground]].<ref>{{cite journal |first=David |last=Sinclair |title=The Best Guitar Breaks In The World [Our six favourite guitarists choose their 30-odd favourite guitar tracks]|journal=One Two Testing |date=May 1984|quote=[Robert Smith:] 1) Jimi Hendrix "Purple Haze" Jimi Hendrix Experience (1967): "There's a quality about it that nobody else has ever quite achieved. It sounds so effortless and everything sounds as it should be." 2) Hugh Cornwell "Hanging Around" The Stranglers (1977): "This has got a really good understated solo bit in it. I like unusual guitar playing... original sounds and interesting ideas." 3) John McGeoch "Headcut" Siouxsie And The Banshees (1981): "This is really harsh funk in a weird way β clever choppy chords." 4) Joe Strummer/Mick Jones "White Riot" The Clash (1977): "It had a complete disregard for technical merit, but sounded extremely vibrant, very exciting." 5 Lou Reed "White Light/White Heat" Velvet Underground (1967): "Hypnotic... a kind of drone that builds up and up around a repetitive motif. Noise and sound rather than defined sequences of notes.}}</ref>
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