Here's what happened when Fall Out Boy star — and Robert Smith fan — Pete Wentz, 27, dialed up the 47-year-old frontman for the Cure (whose Festival 2005 DVD hits stores in December).
PETE WENTZ: [Fall Out Boy] is at that early stage where bands are fiercely competitive with each other, and when another band gets an award we see it as a shot to ourselves. How important were the other bands in the scene at the time?
ROBERT SMITH: When Simple Minds got on Top of the Pops and when Echo & the Bunnymen [were doing well], I remember thinking, ''We're going to be the band that's left behind,'' which is quite funny, because as it turns out, we weren't. But that's a natural part of any artistic field. You can't help but occasionally look up and around.
WENTZ: You had giant pop hits and you had ''cult'' favorites. Did it bother you at times when certain songs were gigantic?
SMITH: We had such an awful long time to get well-known. [When] it happened, though, I found it very uncomfortable. For a long time, I didn't like certain songs [such as Friday I'm in Love] because I thought, ''You're to blame, you bastard. You made me popular.''
WENTZ: You're obviously an idol of mine. Who did you look up to?
SMITH: I suppose David Bowie. In fact, I did something similar to this with him in the '90s, where a London radio station would have people interview their heroes. I interviewed Bowie, and I got incredibly drunk before it and started arguing with him. It was one of the most awful days I've ever had in my life.
