The Cure’s Roger O’Donnell responds to Paul Weller’s dig at Robert Smith

9 November, 2022

Roger O'Donnell and Paul Weller

The Cure‘s Roger O’Donnell has responded to Paul Weller’s scathing personal attack on Robert Smith.

Former The Jam singer Weller called Smith a “fucking fat cunt” in a lengthy interview for next month’s issue of Record Collector magazine, which is a special Weller edition (via Louder Sound).

At one point in the conversation the interviewer noted how one of the tracks on Noel Gallagher‘s new album bears a resemblance to The Cure’s classic singe ‘A Forest’ (1980).

The writer said that Weller then responded to this observation with a mixture of “incredulity and revulsion”.

“Really?!” the soloist said. “I can’t fucking stand them. Fucking fat cunt, with his lipstick and all that bollocks. He is my age as well, isn’t he?”

Weller added: “He’s a fucking knob end. I don’t like him. There you go. There’s someone I would work with. I’d fucking slap him, or something.”

Now, Smith’s bandmate O’Donnell has weighed in with comments of his own via Twitter today (November 9).

“I’ve always thought, as Spike Milligan said, people who live in glass houses should pull the blinds down before removing their trousers… Mr Weller?” the keyboardist wrote.

The reason behind the musician’s severe dislike for Smith is not clear, though Louder Sound notes how The Jam had inadvertently helped The Cure during the recording of their debut album ‘Three Imaginary Boys’ (1979).

In 1985, Smith mentioned Weller during an interview in which he said that punk wasn’t a political movement: “It later became that, because people wanted it to be seen as a movement.”

He added that people were dissatisfied with listening to “bands like Yes and Genesis“, and instead “wanted to hear something they could dance to”.

“Even people who think they’re socially aware and lend their names to things, like Paul Weller and stuff…  I mean it does no good at all, ultimately,” Smith explained. “Because you’d have to be particularly stupid to believe someone like Paul Weller.

“You’d have to be particularly stupid to believe someone like me.”

Both The Jam and The Cure were discovered by the same A&R scout, Chris Parry, who went on to sign The Jam to Polydor in 1977 and The Cure to his own label, Fiction Records, in 1978.

Smith has not yet responded to Weller’s comments.

The Cure are currently out on a European headline tour, where they’ve debuted a range of new tracks: ‘And Nothing Is Forever’, ‘Alone’, ‘Endsong’, ‘I Can Never Say Goodbye’ and ‘A Fragile Thing’.

The band’s UK and Ireland tour is set to kick off in Dublin on December 1 – see the full list of dates below and find any remaining tickets here.

Speaking at the BandLab NME Awards 2022 in March, Smith told NME exclusively that The Cure’s long-awaited 14th album – the follow-up to 2008’s ‘4:13 Dream’ – will be called ‘Songs Of A Lost World’.

“It’s got artwork, it’s got a running order, it’s almost done!” he explained.

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