Watching the Cure’s live-streamed performance of their first album in 16 years, it was hard not to notice the toll time has taken on Robert Smith. At 65, his black spiky hair has long turned into a bedhead of fag-ash grey – a reminder to those of us who have grown up with him that none of us are as young as we used to be.
As the slow waltz of the first track of Songs of a Lost World kicked in, and Smith wailed ‘Where did it go?’, it was starting to look like a very gloomy evening indeed – even by the standards of a band hardly known for its cheeriness.
I’ll admit that as I started to watch the Troxy gig live from my sofa, even I, as a long-time Cure fan, worried how dark it was going to get. And sure enough, along came seven more songs covering the death of loved ones, ageing, regret and fear for the future.
Many of Smith’s fans have grown up with him – and now he speaks for those of us who are looking in the mirror also ‘wondering how I got so old’
But then, along the way, something else happened too.
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