“I played and sang Suffragette City and everyone else was doing Foxy Lady – I was so drunk, I didn’t...

Amid a stunning new album and a short-but-sweet return to the stage with The Cure, Robert Smith’s stock couldn’t be much higher as the new year beckons. But his career as a singing guitarist got off to a cacophonous start as he drunkenly butchered a Jimi Hendrix classic.

“I was horrified when I ended up as the singer,” he tells The Charlatans’ Tim Burgess on his Absolute Radio show.

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