Smith has credited his older siblings Richard and Margaret with exposing him to rock music such as the Beatles and the Rolling Stones when he was six years old. He has said that his early songwriting "was influenced by early Beatles – the sense of a three-minute guitar-pop song", and early in his career The Cure's second single "Boys Don't Cry" was compared by British music paper "Record Mirror" to "John Lennon at 12 or 13". His parents encouraged their children's musical development, as he told French magazine "Les Inrockuptibles": "My parents were lending us their stuff; my mum made me listen to a lot of classical music to enable me to have a larger vision of music." When Smith was eight years old in 1967, Richard played him "Purple Haze" by Jimi Hendrix, who became hugely influential. Of this period, he went on to say, "My brother was also crazy about Captain Beefheart, Cream, Jimi Hendrix, so much so that when I was 7 or 8, to the despair of my parents, I became some kinda little devil fed on psychedelic rock."