Simon Gallup announces departure from the Cure: “I got fed up of betrayal”

Simon Gallup – longtime bass guitar player of British rock band the Cure – has announced his departure from the band.

In a statement posted to his personal Facebook profile, Gallup writes: “With a slightly heavy heart I am no longer a member of the Cure! Good luck to them all.” Responding to a comment on the post, the bassist noted that he's “ok”, and that he “got fed up of betrayal."

In recent years, the Cure frontman Robert Smith has spoken highly of Gallup. In an interview with NME in 2019, he described the bassist as “the heart of the live band."

“He's always been my best friend,” Smith continued. “It's weird that over the years and the decades he's often been overlooked... and yet he's absolutely vital to what we do.

“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.”

And in a 2018 interview with The Irish Times, Smith noted that “it wouldn’t be called the Cure” anymore if Gallup left.

Gallup joined the Cure in 1979 after playing in Smith's side project, Cult Hero. He recorded three albums with the band – Seventeen Seconds (1980), Faith (1981) and Pornography (1982) – before leaving in 1982. After he rejoined in 1984, he stayed with the band until 2021, meaning he's the second longest-serving member of the Cure behind Smith.

At present, the Cure have not commented on Gallup's departure.