Robert Smith

For a period in the '90s, I felt that the Cure was massively undervalued. But there has been a paradigm shift. There's a bunch of newer bands coming up who've grown up listening to the Cure and don't understand that you're not supposed to like us.

I always place myself as the archetypal Cure fan. I'm the wrong age, but I still think that if I like anything particularly, our fans will.

There were only two times in my life when I've actually felt down about things and gotten myself into a full mental mess. One of the times was in 1982. I had a horrible time for a few months and felt pretty desperate. Then again in 1984, for various reasons, not all of them within my control. Since then, I just wander in and out of black moods.

The very first concert I ever went to on my own was actually Rory Gallagher. In a one-month period in 1973 or '74, I saw him, Thin Lizzy and the Rolling Stones. I wasn't really a big Rory Gallagher fan, but I thought his guitar playing was fabulous. But Thin Lizzy, they were fabulous.

When you're on stage, the real world just drops away for that time. It's pretty intense.

Whatever I was doing, even when I was at school, I never repressed anything that I felt. I wasn't flamboyant; I was actually quite reticent most of the time. But if I felt I had to do something, I did it.

I am very self-conscious a lot of the time.

I'm happy quite a lot of the time. I've done far more than I ever thought I would have, so I'd be very hard-pressed to walk around miserable.

A lot of journalists give me a hard time about how I look, but I've never met a journalist I'd rather look like.

I married somebody who likes the way I look. If I changed my hair every year, and I reinvented myself in time-honoured pop fashion, I think understandably the person I'm married to would grow slightly sick of me.

Each time I play a song it seems more real.

I've always spent more time with a smile on my face than not, but the thing is, I don't write about it.