THE Cure bassist Simon Gallup announced Saturday that he is leaving the band. “With a slightly heavy heart I am no longer a member of The Cure! Good luck to them all,” Gallup wrote on Facebook. The Cure has not yet commented on Gallup’s exit, but in 2018, frontman Robert Smith told the Irish Times that if Gallup were to leave the band, “it wouldn’t be called The Cure.” In 2019, Smith told NME, “For me, the heart of the live band has always been Simon, and he’s always been my best friend. 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.” Gallup joined The Cure soon after the release of their 1979 debut album “Three Imaginary Boys” and appeared on all three LPs in their “Dark Trilogy” — “Seventeen Seconds” (1980), “Faith” (1981) and “Pornography” (1982) — before tensions with Smith caused him to temporarily leave the band. In 1984, Gallup rejoined The Cure and had remained their bassist ever since. Though the goth-rock legends’ last album, “4:13 Dream,” came out in 2008, Smith told Zane Lowe in June that the band had recorded two new albums. “Probably in about six weeks time I’ll be able to say when everything’s coming out and what we’re doing next year and everything,” Smith said. “So we were doing two albums and one of them’s very, very doom and gloom and the other one isn’t. And they’re both very close to being done. I just have to decide who’s going to mix them. That’s really all I’ve got left to do.” Gallup then said he thinks it will be band’s last work, adding, “I can’t think we’ll ever do anything else. I definitely can’t do this again.” (SD-Agencies) | 