British rock band the Cure is going to have to find a new prescription for success: Longtime bassist Simon Gallup announced he has left the band.
“With a slightly heavy heart I am no longer a member of the Cure!” the 61-year-old wrote Saturday in a brief Facebook post. “Good luck to them all.”
Fans quietly freaked out and expressed their sadness in the comments, with one declaring, “There is no Cure without Simon. This will be the end of a great 40 year run of greatness.”
“Wow, The Cure will be a very different band without you in it,” wrote Paul Baines, a 26-year veteran of EMI Music marketing in London. “Whatever happened is no ones business but yours. I hope you are ok and those lifelong friendships remain / heal in time. Best of luck for whatever the future brings.”
People found a short reply from Gallup to a friend’s comment, in which he said, “I’m OK... just got fed up of betrayal.”
Robert Smith, the band’s founding frontman, did not comment on social media.
The bass player joined the Cure officially in 1979 and quit it once before, in 1982, after clashing with Smith. He rejoined in time for the band’s 1985 release, “The Head on the Door,” with its single “In Between Days” that squeaked into Billboard’s Hot 100 chart early the next year.
The musician’s son, Eden Gallup of Violet Vendetta, has filled in for his father on other occasions, including when a “personal situation” sent the elder musician back to the U.K. instead of playing at the Austin City Limits festival in 2019. It is unclear what will happen to the Cure’s lineup now.
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