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Simon Gallup is parting ways with The Cure after four decades with the English rock band.
The 61-year-old bassist made the announcement on Saturday in a public post to his personal Facebook account.
“With a slightly heavy heart I am no longer a member of the Cure ! Good luck to them all,“he wrotein the brief statement.
A couple of hours later, keyboardist Roger O’Donnell appeared to reference Gallup’s departure on Twitter.
“A friend just told me they saw Lol in the Guitar Centre buying a bass???????“the 65-year-old wrote, referencing the band’s former drummer and keyboardist, Lol Tolhurst.
Gallup was one of the longest-tenured members of The Cure, having spent 40 years with the group. He spent his first three years with the band between 1979 and 1982 but took a brief hiatus after clashing with lead singer Robert Smith while touring.
The musician then returned to the band at Smith’s request in 1984.
In a 2019 interview withNME, Smith said that despite some hiccups along the way, he and Gallup had “a really good balance” and “discourse” between them, which he felt was “on a level that’s just more enjoyable than it used to be.”
“For me, the heart of the live band has always been Simon, and he’s always been my best friend,” he said. “It’s weird that over the years and the decades he’s often been overlooked. He doesn’t do interviews, he isn’t really out there and he doesn’t play the role of a foil to me in public, and yet he’s absolutely vital to what we do.”
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Smith continued: “We’ve had some difficult periods over the years but we’ve managed to maintain a very strong friendship that grew out of that shared experience from when we were teens. When you have friends like that, particularly for that long, it would take something really extraordinary for that friendship to break.”
In June,Smith toldThe Sunday Timesthat he expects The Cure’s upcoming album would be their last. The band has not released an album since4:13 Dreamin 2008.
The album will be “very emotional,” the singer said, and encapsulate “10 years of life distilled into a couple of hours of intense stuff.”
“And I can’t think we’ll ever do anything else,” Smith admitted to the outlet. “I definitely can’t do this again.”
The Cure was inducted intoThe Rock and Roll Hall of Famein 2019.
source: people.com
