In 1973, before the dawn of The Cure, the future poster boy of post-punk’s goth sect, Robert Smith, set out with his Crawley schoolmates to form their first band, Obelisk. This was a short-lived five-piece band with Smith in a surprising role on the piano, his first instrument before he considered picking up the guitar.
Smith later decided that he’d need to grab a guitar if he was ever to outshine his younger sister, Janet, who was allegedly a dab-hand on the ivory. He grew competent as a rhythm guitarist through the mid-1970s and began to play in an altered line-up and formation of Obelisk, called Malice. Governed by Smith’s early taste in rock, the band mainly stuck to David Bowie and Jimi Hendrix covers.
After morphing into a stable trio, now known as Easy Cure, Smith was flanked by Mike…