Robert Smith credits late brother for “the idea that I could do whatever I wanted” and pursuing The Cure full-time

nme.com:

Robert Smith has credited his late brother for encouraging him to pursue The Cure full-time, instead of enrolling in further education.The frontman recently appeared on Radio X for a track-by-track run-through of the band’s first album in 16 years ‘Songs Of A Lost World’, which was released on November 1.Smith penned the track ‘I Can Never Say Goodbye’ about his brother’s death, and previously said that doing so had “helped [him] enormously”.Speaking to Radio X‘s John Kennedy about the song, the musician and vocalist – who formed The Cure in 1976 – explained: “My brother gave me the idea that I could do whatever I wanted.“It’s like, you know, my dad was also very supportive, but far more traditional.

He wanted me to finish my education and then be in a band, if that’s what I still wanted to do.”Smith continued: “And I used to, you know, initially try to get him to see that that isn’t how the world works.

You can’t come out the other end of university and then decide to be in a band. You do it, you know, or you don’t do it.”He went on to remember how his brother “took [his] side, and I think it was him actually cajoling my dad, because I think otherwise that would have been a problem, because they let me stay at home whilst I got it out of my system”.“But I never got it out of my system,” Smith added. “I think that maybe, with hindsight, my dad thought that the sooner we fail, the sooner he gets me back to the idea of a formal education.”You can watch the full conversation in the video above.Opening up about ‘I Can Never Say Goodbye’ in a previous interview, Smith explained: “I wrote this song a lot of different ways, until I hit on a very simple narrative of what actually happened on the night he died.