Self-assembled monolayers made of thiolated conjugated wires attached on gold surfaces currently attract a considerable interest in the field of nanoelectronics. The interactions taking place at the metal/molecule interface govern the electronic structure of the complex, and hence the barriers for charge injection from the electrodes to the molecules. Considering benzenethiol as a prototype molecule, we investigate here the way the electronic structure is affected by the nature of the anchoring site of the sulfur atom on the gold surface and by the relative orientation of the molecule with respect to the surface. We also assess whether the changes in the molecular electronic properties upon substitution are similar for the isolated molecule and for the molecule attached on the gold surface. Our results provide strong evidences that, in order to introduce functionalities and/or improve charge injection in molecular devices, the electronic properties of conjugated molecular wires can be tailored by derivatization independently of the metal electrodes. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.