“Robert Smith’s depression prior to the recording of Disintegration gave way to the realisation on his twenty-ninth birthday that he would turn thirty in one year. This was frightening to him, as he felt all the masterpieces in rock and roll had been completed well before the band members reached such an age. Smith consequently began to write music without the rest of the band. The material he had written instantly took a dismal, depressing form, which he credited to “the fact that I was gonna be thirty”
