Gallup didn’t elaborate on what, if any, incident, precipitated his split, and at press time, it did not appear that frontman Smith had reacted. But as Variety pointed out, in 2019 Smith told the Irish Times that if the second longest-serving member of the group took leave, “it wouldn’t be called The Cure.” That same year, he also told the NME that their relationship was the key to the band’s success.
“For me, the heart of the live band has always been Simon, and he’s always been my best friend,” Smith 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. 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.”
Gallup joined The Cure shortly after the release of their 1979 debut, Three Imaginary Boys, and appeared on Seventeen Seconds (1980), Faith (1981) and Pornography (1982) before taking a short break and returning in 1984. Smith formed The Cure in 1978, and more than a dozen members have cycled through over the years, with Gallup serving as the second longest-running member of the outfit.
Smith — who has collaborated with Chvches and Gorillaz recently — has promised several times that the new — and he’s said final — The Cure album is slated for release this year.
