The story of The Cure

Crawley schoolboys

Robert James Smith was born in Blackpool on the twenty first of April 1959, the third of four children in a musical family. His father sang and his mother played the piano. When he was three the family moved to Horley, and when he was six they settled in Crawley, a new town in West Sussex. His older brother Richard taught him his first guitar chords, and at nine he started classical guitar lessons with a student of the guitarist John Williams. His younger sister Janet was the real prodigy, on piano. Smith later joked that he took up the guitar out of sibling rivalry, because her fingers could not reach around its neck. Richard's records, from Hendrix to Captain Beefheart, did the rest.[1]

At primary school in Crawley, five year old Robert met Laurence Tolhurst, known to everyone as Lol, whose grandmother lived next door to the Smiths. They became lifelong friends. With schoolmates Michael Dempsey, Marc Ceccagno and Alan Hill, they played a one off school show as a band called the Obelisk, with Robert on piano. Accounts date that show to April 1972 or April 1973. At St Wilfrid's Comprehensive the friends kept playing, and from January 1976 they called themselves Malice, rehearsing Bowie, Hendrix and Alex Harvey songs in a church hall. Smith had already seen his first rock concert, Jimi Hendrix at the Isle of Wight Festival in 1970.[1] [2] [3]

Malice went through members quickly. Ceccagno left, Tolhurst moved onto drums, a guitarist named Porl Thompson joined, and a local newspaper journalist named Martin Creasy took over the singing. That line up played Malice's only three documented shows in December 1976, and the people involved remembered them as a disaster. In January 1977 Creasy left and the band renamed itself Easy Cure, after a song Tolhurst had written. Punk had arrived and Smith was hooked, but what he really loved were the melodies of the Buzzcocks and Elvis Costello. Living in Crawley, he said, you did not need to put a safety pin through your nose to get beaten up.[1] [2] [3]

Easy Cure won a talent contest and signed with the German label Ariola Hansa on the eighteenth of May 1977. Their singer then was a Bowie fan named Peter O'Toole, no relation to the actor, but that autumn he left to live on a kibbutz in Israel. After auditioning several replacements, Smith took the microphone himself. He later said he had been the drunk rhythm guitarist who wrote all the weird songs, and that although he hated his own voice, he hated everyone else's more. Hansa wanted a teen pop group and pushed for cover versions. The band refused, the label would not release an original called Killing an Arab, and by March 1978 the deal was dead.[1] [2]

In April 1978 Easy Cure played their last show, at a hall in the Three Bridges area of Crawley. Porl Thompson's flashy lead guitar no longer suited Smith's taste for bare, simple songs, so he was dropped and went off to art college. Smith shortened the name, and the trio of Smith, Dempsey and Tolhurst became the Cure. That month they recorded a demo at Chestnut Studios in Sussex and posted it to a dozen major labels. Earlier that year, at a Crawley pub called the Rocket, they had shared a bill with a Horley band called Lockjaw, whose bass player was a teenager named Simon Gallup. He would become the second pillar of the band.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Three imaginary boys

The demo reached Chris Parry, a New Zealander working as a talent scout at Polydor. He had signed the Jam and helped bring in Siouxsie and the Banshees, and he was about to launch his own label, Fiction. He loved the demo songs 10:15 Saturday Night and Boys Don't Cry. After watching the band at the Laker's Hotel in Redhill on the twenty seventh of August 1978, he took them to a pub and told them he wanted them to be his first signing. They signed in September. In December 1978 the Cure released their debut single, Killing an Arab, on the independent Small Wonder label while Fiction's distribution deal was being finished.[1] [2]

Killing an Arab brought praise and trouble at the same time. Smith wrote it as a short poetic summary of Albert Camus's novel The Stranger, whose narrator shoots a man on a beach. But the title led to accusations of racism, and when Fiction reissued the single in 1979 it carried a sticker rejecting that reading. The row came back in 1986, after a student DJ in Princeton introduced the song carelessly on air, and American copies of a compilation were stickered again. Smith has said the title is one of his few regrets in life, and that if he had called it Staring at the Sea, none of the controversy would ever have happened.[1] [2] [3]

The debut album, Three Imaginary Boys, came out on the eighth of May 1979 and reached number forty four in Britain. Because the band had no studio experience, Parry and the engineer Mike Hedges took charge. The label chose the songs, the running order and the artwork without Smith's consent, and even kept a Hendrix cover sung by Dempsey that was only ever meant as a soundcheck. Smith hated the result and called much of it superficial. From then on he made sure he had complete creative control over every Cure album. In June came the single Boys Don't Cry, about a boy hiding his hurt. It was no big hit then, but it became one of their most loved songs.[1] [2] [3]

In August 1979 the Cure went out as the support act on Siouxsie and the Banshees' Join Hands tour. Smith had met the Banshees' bass player Steven Severin a few weeks earlier at a London gig, and the two got on straight away. A few dates in, the Banshees' guitarist John McKay and drummer Kenny Morris walked out, just hours before a show in Aberdeen. Smith offered to fill in on guitar, on condition that the Cure stayed on as the opening act, and from the eighteenth of September he played two sets a night. He said being a Banshee changed his attitude completely. Before, he had wanted the Cure to be the punk Beatles.[1] [2] [3]

Back home, Smith played Michael Dempsey his demos for the next album, recorded on his sister Janet's Hammond organ. Dempsey hated them. Smith put it simply: Dempsey wanted them to be XTC part two, and he wanted them to be the Banshees part two. In November 1979 Dempsey left and joined the Associates, another Fiction band. In came Simon Gallup on bass and his friend Matthieu Hartley on keyboards, both from a band called the Magazine Spies. Before the year was out, the whole gang of friends and family released a single under the name Cult Hero, with lead vocals by Smith's local postman, Frankie Bell.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Into the dark

Seventeen Seconds, released on the eighteenth of April 1980, was the first album Smith co produced, with Mike Hedges. Money was so tight that it was recorded and mixed in seven days in January, on a budget of two to three thousand pounds, with the band working sixteen or seventeen hours a day. The tape ran out during a track called The Final Sound, so it lasts just fifty three seconds. Smith had been listening to Nick Drake, Van Morrison's Astral Weeks and Bowie's Low, and the record sounded cold, spare and full of space. It reached number twenty, and its single A Forest became the band's first UK hit, peaking at number thirty one.[1] [2] [3]

A Forest became the Cure's signature. Smith wanted something really atmospheric, and Hedges stacked up flanger effects, around seven of them by his own estimate. Parry told Smith the song could be a hit if it sounded more radio friendly, and Smith refused to change it. It has since become the song the Cure have played live more than any other, over twelve hundred times as of 2025. The first world tour followed, and at the end of it keyboard player Matthieu Hartley quit. He said he could see the group heading towards suicidal, sombre music, and that did not interest him at all. The Cure were a trio again, Smith, Gallup and Tolhurst.[1] [2] [3]

Faith, released in April 1981, went darker still. Much of it was written in the studio between tours, and both founders were grieving. Smith's grandmother and Tolhurst's mother had recently died, and Tolhurst later called the album their statement about that part of existence. Smith now played a six string bass, a Fender Bass VI that Mike Hedges had passed on to him, and it became a key part of the early Cure sound. Faith reached number fourteen. On tour there was no support band. Instead, audiences watched Carnage Visors, a short animated film by Simon's brother Ric Gallup. The mood took its toll, and Smith sometimes walked off stage in tears.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Pornography was recorded at RAK Studios in London in early 1982 with a new producer, Phil Thornalley. Smith later said he had two choices at the time, giving in completely or making a record of it to get it out of himself. The sessions ran on LSD and alcohol. To save money the band slept in the record label's office, and a mountain of empty bottles grew in the corner of the studio. Smith admitted he was a pretty monstrous person then, and that he lost every friend he had. Gallup summed it up in two words, nihilism took over. Despite harsh reviews, Pornography became their first UK top ten album, reaching number eight.[1] [2] [3]

The Fourteen Explicit Moments tour gave the Cure the look that would define them, big backcombed hair and lipstick smeared across their faces, which ran under the lights until, in Smith's words, they looked like they had been smacked in the face. Behind the scenes things were falling apart. After a show in Strasbourg on the twenty seventh of May 1982, Smith and Gallup came to blows, reportedly over a bar bill, and both went home to England. Smith's father told him to get right back on tour, because people had bought tickets. The tour limped on to Brussels. Then Gallup left, and he and Smith did not speak for about eighteen months.[1] [2] [3]

Pop singles, Banshees and the Glove

By the end of 1982 many people assumed the Cure were finished, and Smith told Melody Maker he was wondering himself whether they still existed. Chris Parry had an idea, reinvent them. In Parry's words, the plan appealed to Smith because he wanted to destroy the Cure anyway. With Tolhurst switching from drums to keyboards and a session drummer called in, they made a deliberately blatant pop single, Let's Go to Bed. Smith thought it was a stupid throwaway and even wanted it released under the name Recur. It reached number forty four at home and the top twenty in Australia and New Zealand. It also began a long partnership with the video director Tim Pope.[1] [2] [3]

At the same time Smith rejoined Siouxsie and the Banshees as their guitarist in November 1982, after John McGeoch collapsed shortly before a tour. Smith said he was fed up and disillusioned with the Cure, and the Banshees offered an escape. In 1983 he and Steven Severin also made an album together as the Glove, named after the giant flying glove in the Beatles' film Yellow Submarine. By Smith's account they spent twelve weeks in the studio but only about five days recording, watching horror films all night. He also pushed the Banshees to record the Beatles' Dear Prudence, which became their biggest UK hit, reaching number three.[1] [2] [3]

The Cure's pop turn kept paying off. The Walk, a synth song made by Smith and Tolhurst as a duo, reached number twelve in 1983. Then The Love Cats, a jazzy romp with Phil Thornalley on double bass and a new drummer, Andy Anderson, gave the Cure their first British top ten hit, at number seven. In May 1984 came The Top, a psychedelic record on which Smith played almost everything except the drums. He called it the solo album he never made. It reached number ten at home and was their first studio album on the American Billboard chart. That month Smith quit the Banshees, citing health problems from being in two bands at once.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The Top tour brought Porl Thompson back into the fold, on guitar, keyboards and saxophone, with Thornalley on bass. It also brought trouble. While the band were touring France, Andy Anderson was confronted by a security guard in a racially motivated incident, and he wrecked a hotel room in frustration. His behaviour grew more erratic, and after a fight with bandmates and crew following a show in Japan, he was fired in October 1984. Vince Ely of the Psychedelic Furs filled in for a few shows, then Thornalley recommended Boris Williams, the Thompson Twins' touring drummer, who learned the whole set in three days. Soon Thornalley left too, worn out by touring.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The classic line up

Now the Cure needed a bass player. A roadie named Gary Biddles, a friend of Simon Gallup, brokered peace between Gallup and Smith, and Gallup came back. Smith was thrilled and told Melody Maker it was a group again. The new line up of Smith, Tolhurst, Gallup, Williams and Thompson released The Head on the Door in August 1985. For the first time Smith wrote every song alone, blending the bright and the bleak in one package. In Between Days and Close to Me became international hits, and the album reached number seven in Britain and number fifty nine in America, their first big success abroad.[1] [2] [3]

Tim Pope's videos carried the Cure around the world. For Close to Me he squeezed the band into a wardrobe on the cliffs at Beachy Head, then dropped the wardrobe, with them still inside, into a tank of water. Smith called it the most uncomfortable twelve hours he had ever spent. In 1986 came the singles collection Standing on a Beach, with a retired fisherman named John Button on the cover. It reached number four in Britain and the top fifty in America. Michael Dempsey even returned for one day to appear in a new video for Boys Don't Cry, which had been remixed with a fresh vocal.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

In early 1987 the Cure played Buenos Aires, one of the first British alternative bands to put on a big show in Argentina. It ended in a riot after fans holding counterfeit tickets were turned away, and the band did not play there again until 2013. That May they released the double album Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, recorded at Studio Miraval in the south of France. This time each member brought demos, and the band voted on which songs to keep. The album reached number six in Britain and was their first American top forty album, later going platinum there. Its third single, Just Like Heaven, became their first American top forty hit.[1] [2]

Just Like Heaven came out of a routine in which Smith forced himself to write for fifteen days every month. Boris Williams sped it up and added the opening drum fill. The lyric was inspired by a trip to Beachy Head with his girlfriend Mary Poole, and Smith called it the best pop song the Cure ever did. But the good times hid a problem. Lol Tolhurst's drinking was getting worse, and he seemed unprepared for the coming tour. So the band recruited a second keyboard player, Roger O'Donnell, a friend of Boris Williams who had toured with the Thompson Twins and the Psychedelic Furs.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Disintegration

On the thirteenth of August 1988 Robert Smith married Mary Poole at Worth Abbey. They had met in a drama class at St Wilfrid's when they were about fourteen. Around his twenty ninth birthday, Smith became haunted by the thought that rock's great masterpieces had all been made by people younger than thirty. Uncomfortable with pop stardom, he moved to Maida Vale in West London, started taking LSD again to cope with depression, and began writing on his own. The songs came out dark. The band demoed thirty two songs at Boris Williams's house, and twelve made the album. As a wedding present for Mary, Smith wrote Lovesong.[1] [2] [3]

At Hook End Manor in Oxfordshire, Smith went into what he called a non talking mode, and said he actually wanted the atmosphere to be slightly unpleasant. Roger O'Donnell remembered it differently, with plenty of laughing and fooling around in the control room. What nobody disputed was the problem with Tolhurst. His drinking left him barely able to play. After he turned up drunk to the mixing and a shouting match broke out, the others told Smith that either Tolhurst went or they would. In February 1989 his departure was announced. Smith was now the only founder left, and O'Donnell became a full member.[1] [2] [3]

Disintegration was released on the second of May 1989. The band's American label, Elektra, was so alarmed by its sound that it asked to push the release back, and a letter accused Smith of being wilfully obscure. The fans disagreed. The album entered the British chart at number three and reached number twelve in America. Lullaby, with its video of Smith being swallowed by a giant spider, reached number five, the Cure's highest British single ever. In America, Fascination Street topped the new modern rock chart for seven weeks, and then Lovesong climbed to number two on the Billboard Hot 100, the band's only American top ten hit.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The Prayer Tour took the Cure into stadiums. Smith and Gallup were both afraid of flying, so the band crossed the Atlantic by ship. Their first American show, at Giants Stadium in New Jersey, drew forty four thousand people, and Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles drew about fifty thousand. Smith said the Cure had become exactly what he never wanted, a stadium rock band, and announced it would be their last tour. Cocaine and feuds made things worse. In May 1990 Roger O'Donnell quit, unhappy with the huge shows, and Smith's guitar technician Perry Bamonte, whom Janet Smith had taught to play the piano, took his place.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Wish and the revolving door

After the gloom came some fun. In November 1990 the Cure released Mixed Up, a remix album inspired by the acid house scene, with one new song, Never Enough. In 1991 they won the Brit Award for best British group, a year after Lullaby won best British video. That same year Lol Tolhurst sued Smith and Fiction Records over royalties. He argued he had been pushed into a bad contract while drinking heavily, and that he co owned the name the Cure. The case dragged on until 1994 and ended in Smith's favour, with Tolhurst ordered to pay Smith's legal costs. Years later, after they made up, Smith paid him that money back.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Wish, released on the twenty first of April 1992, was the band's commercial peak. It went straight to number one in Britain and number two in America. High and Friday I'm in Love both topped the American modern rock chart. Friday I'm in Love reached number six in Britain and eighteen in America, and as of 2026 it is still their last top ten hit at home. Smith has joked that to taxi drivers he is the bloke who sings Friday I'm in Love, not the bloke who sings One Hundred Years. Wish was nominated for a Grammy, and the tour produced two live albums, Show and Paris.[1] [2] [3]

Then the line up came apart again. Porl Thompson left in 1993 to spend time with his young children, and then toured with Jimmy Page and Robert Plant. Boris Williams left in 1994, just as sessions were about to start, and Simon Gallup was off sick. So the next album began with only Smith and Perry Bamonte. Roger O'Donnell came back, and Jason Cooper, formerly of My Life Story, answered an advertisement and landed the drum job. In between, the Cure wrote Burn for the 1994 film The Crow, whose soundtrack went to number one in America. Smith said he wrote it in the style of The Hanging Garden.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Wild Mood Swings, released in May 1996, was recorded at St Catherine's Court near Bath, a Tudor house owned by the actress Jane Seymour. The band used string quartets, a jazz quartet, an Indian orchestra and Mexican trumpets, and Smith said it was the most fun he had ever had making a record. Fans and critics were less sure. It reached number nine at home and twelve in America, but it was their lowest seller in twelve years. Smith later admitted it was too long and disjointed, and called it the only time he had been hugely disappointed. The 1997 collection Galore added a new single, Wrong Number, with David Bowie's guitarist Reeves Gabrels.[1] [2] [3]

Bloodflowers to 4:13 Dream

In January 1997 Smith sang with David Bowie at his fiftieth birthday concert at Madison Square Garden. The next year he voiced himself in a South Park episode, Mecha Streisand, turning into a giant moth to defeat a monstrous Barbra Streisand. Kyle's parting cry, Disintegration is the best album ever, delighted fans, and Smith later called it one of the greatest moments of his life. With one album left on the contract, Smith felt the end might be near again, and made Bloodflowers, released in February 2000. He called it the third part of a trilogy with Pornography and Disintegration, refused to release commercial singles from it, and saw it nominated for a Grammy.[1] [2] [3] [4]

In 2001 the Cure left Fiction after more than twenty years and released a Greatest Hits collection. Smith's friend Billy Mackenzie of the Associates had taken his own life in January 1997, and one of the new songs, Cut Here, was about Smith's regret at brushing him off backstage a few weeks before he died. In November 2002 the band played Pornography, Disintegration and Bloodflowers in full, one after the other, on two nights at the Tempodrom in Berlin, released as the film Trilogy. Then they signed to Geffen and teamed up with Ross Robinson, a producer best known for heavy bands like Korn and Slipknot.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The Cure, released in June 2004, went top ten on both sides of the Atlantic. Robinson had the band record live in the studio and pushed Smith to write lyrics first. Gallup did not enjoy working with him, and Smith later called it his least favourite Cure album. That summer the band headlined Coachella and led Curiosa, a travelling festival across North America with Interpol, Muse, Mogwai and others, bands that openly owed them a debt. MTV honoured them with an Icon special. Then, in May 2005, Smith dismissed both Roger O'Donnell and Perry Bamonte. O'Donnell said he had found out about upcoming tour dates from a fan site.[1] [2] [3]

Smith, Gallup and Jason Cooper played a few shows as a trio before Porl Thompson returned on guitar for the summer of 2005, including Live 8 in Paris. The next album took years. In 2008 the band released four singles, each on the thirteenth of the month, before 4:13 Dream arrived in October. Smith had wanted a sprawling double album, the record company insisted on a single disc, and it peaked at only number thirty three in Britain. Smith later said it was nowhere near what he wanted. In February 2009 Tim Burton handed Smith NME's Godlike Genius award, saying the Cure's music had saved him when he was a depressed young animator at Disney.[1] [2] [3]

In 2011 Roger O'Donnell rejoined, and Lol Tolhurst, sober for years, came back as a guest. Tolhurst had suggested marking thirty years of Faith, and the result was the Reflections shows, starting at the Sydney Opera House, where the band played its first three albums in full. More followed in London, New York and Los Angeles. Tolhurst described it as old friends adjusting to each other as older men. That year Smith told the Guardian he was uncomfortable with politicised musicians, yet spoke angrily about inequality, and explained that he and Mary had chosen not to have children because he refused to impose life on someone else.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Songs of a lost world

In May 2012 Porl Thompson left the Cure for a second time to concentrate on his art, and he later changed his name to Pearl Thompson. For that summer's festival tour Smith called in Reeves Gabrels, whom he had met through David Bowie, and a few weeks in Gabrels was asked to become a full member. In 2014 Smith announced a companion album of leftovers called 4:14 Scream, but it never appeared. The band kept touring hard instead. In 2018 Smith curated London's Meltdown festival, and on the seventh of July the Cure marked forty years with a concert in Hyde Park for about sixty five thousand people, filmed by Tim Pope.[1] [2] [3] [4]

On the twenty ninth of March 2019 the Cure were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame by Trent Reznor. Smith was angry that only some former members were being honoured and almost stayed away, until Gallup talked him round, and Reeves Gabrels was added to the list that February. One former drummer could not be there. Andy Anderson had revealed he had terminal cancer, and he died on the twenty sixth of February 2019, aged sixty eight. From the stage Smith thanked the much missed Andy Anderson. That same year, Gallup's wife Sarah died of pancreatic cancer.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

The promised new album kept slipping. In August 2021 Gallup posted on Facebook that he had left the band, saying he was fed up of betrayal. No explanation followed, the post was deleted, and in October he confirmed he was still in the Cure. Smith had long called Gallup his best friend and the heart of the live band. In October 2022 the Shows of a Lost World tour opened in Riga, with Perry Bamonte unexpectedly back on stage. When the tour reached North America in 2023, Smith refused dynamic pricing, called it a bit of a scam, and got Ticketmaster to refund part of the fees some fans had paid.[1] [2] [3] [4]

On the first of November 2024, the day after Halloween at Smith's request, the Cure released Songs of a Lost World, their first album of new songs in sixteen years. Smith wrote every song alone, for the first time since 1985. It is a record about loss. I Can Never Say Goodbye was written after the death of his brother Richard, and Endsong grew from memories of watching the moon landing with his father. It went to number one in Britain, their first chart topper since Wish, and number four in America. Two months earlier, Roger O'Donnell had revealed he had been treated for a rare and aggressive lymphoma, with an excellent prognosis.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

In October 2024 Smith said the Cure would stop in 2029, when he turns seventy and their first album turns fifty, if he makes it that far. Sadness came first. Perry Bamonte died after a short illness at home over Christmas, on the twenty fourth of December 2025, at the age of sixty five. The band remembered him as quiet, intense, intuitive, constant and hugely creative. On the first of February 2026 the Cure won their first ever Grammys, for Best Alternative Music Album and for the song Alone. They were not there to collect them, because they were at Bamonte's private funeral. As of 2026 the line up is Smith, Gallup, O'Donnell, Cooper and Gabrels.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8]

Sound, look and legacy

Smith once described the Cure sound as six string bass, acoustic guitar and his voice, plus the string sound of an old Solina synthesiser. Most songs start with Smith and Gallup working out bass lines and drum patterns at home. Smith deliberately detunes his guitars, especially the high E string, because normal tuning never sounds quite right to him, and much of what sounds like a chorus effect on Wish is really out of tune instruments layered together. He calls himself technically not a good player, but says at least he does not sound like anyone else. Guitar World has ranked him among the most influential indie and alternative guitarists of the eighties.[1] [2]

Smith's look, the pale face, smeared red lipstick, black eyeliner and backcombed nest of hair, became a template for the goth scene, even though he has always rejected the label. He has said that anyone who calls the Cure a goth band has either never heard them or has no idea what goth is. The image still spread far. Tim Burton's Edward Scissorhands drew on it, Neil Gaiman had artists draw his Sandman partly in Smith's likeness, and James O'Barr filled The Crow comics with Cure lyrics. Tim Pope, who directed over thirty seven Cure videos, said Smith really understood the camera.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The list of musicians who cite the Cure is long, including Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins, Deftones, Interpol, Mogwai, Blink 182, the Killers' Brandon Flowers, Chvrches and Olivia Rodrigo. At Glastonbury in 2025, Rodrigo called Smith perhaps the best songwriter to come out of England and brought him on to sing Friday I'm in Love and Just Like Heaven with her. In 1992 NME called the Cure the most successful alternative band that ever shuffled disconsolately about the earth. They have sold more than thirty million records. Asked about his legacy, Smith said he had never thought about it, because you do not attend your own funeral.[1] [2] [3]

The people around The Cure

Robert Smith and Lol Tolhurst. They met at five, at primary school in Crawley, and founded the band together. Tolhurst drummed on the first four albums and named Easy Cure. His alcoholism led Smith to fire him in 1989, and his lawsuit over royalties and the band name failed in 1994. After getting sober in Los Angeles he reconciled with Smith, who refunded his legal costs, and he joined the 2011 Reflections shows. He says you cannot know someone for sixty years and not be reconciled.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Robert Smith and Simon Gallup. Gallup joined in 1979 and quickly became Smith's closest ally. Their 1982 fistfight in Strasbourg ended his first spell, and they did not speak for eighteen months, until a roadie brokered peace in 1984. He was best man at Smith's wedding. Smith calls him his best friend and the heart of the live band. Even his brief, unexplained resignation in 2021 lasted only weeks.[1] [2] [3]

Robert Smith and Mary Poole. They met in a drama class at St Wilfrid's at about fourteen and married at Worth Abbey on the thirteenth of August 1988. Smith wrote Lovesong for her as a wedding present, her photo appears on two Cure single sleeves, and she is the only woman featured in any Cure video, dancing in Just Like Heaven. The couple chose not to have children. By Smith's account, she also steered Songs of a Lost World away from being even darker.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Robert Smith and Chris Parry. Parry signed the Cure as the first act on his Fiction label in 1978, produced their debut and managed them until 1988. He clashed with Smith over control of Three Imaginary Boys and pushed for hit singles, yet in 1982 it was his plan to reinvent the Cure as a pop band that saved them. At the Hall of Fame in 2019, Smith singled him out as the man who saw something in them that most people did not.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Robert Smith and Steven Severin. They met at a London gig in early August 1979, weeks before the Cure toured with Siouxsie and the Banshees. When two Banshees quit mid tour, Smith played both sets every night, and from 1982 to 1984 he was a full Banshee. With Severin he made the Glove's Blue Sunshine in 1983. Smith said the Banshees were the group who led him towards Pornography.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Robert Smith and Tim Pope. Pope directed his first Cure video, Let's Go to Bed, in 1982 and went on to make over thirty seven more, including Close to Me, Just Like Heaven and Friday I'm in Love. He brought out the band's playful side, dropping them off a cliff in a wardrobe and dressing them as bears and bumblebees. He also filmed the concert films The Cure in Orange and the 2018 Hyde Park show. Smith even played most of the instruments on Pope's own novelty single.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Robert Smith and Porl Thompson. Thompson played in Malice and Easy Cure, was dropped in 1978, then designed Cure sleeves with Andy Vella before rejoining in 1983. He also married Smith's younger sister Janet, making the two brothers in law until the couple divorced in 2000. He left in 1993, returned in 2005, and left again in 2012 to focus on painting, later becoming Pearl Thompson.[1] [2] [3]

Robert Smith and Roger O'Donnell. O'Donnell arrived in 1987 to cover for Lol Tolhurst and became central to Disintegration, but quit in 1990 over the stadium shows. Smith invited him back in 1995, then dismissed him in 2005, when he learned of tour dates from a fan site. He rejoined for good in 2011, and in 2024 revealed he had been treated for a rare lymphoma, with a strong prognosis.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Robert Smith and Perry Bamonte. Bamonte joined the road crew in 1984 and became Smith's guitar technician and assistant. Janet Smith taught him piano, and in 1990 he became a full member, playing on four albums. Smith dismissed him in 2005, but the two stayed on good terms, and he returned in 2022 for the Shows of a Lost World tour. He died on the twenty fourth of December 2025, and the band skipped the Grammys to attend his funeral.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Robert Smith and Billy Mackenzie. Mackenzie, the Associates' singer, was Smith's friend for over twenty years, and the two bands shared the Fiction label, where Michael Dempsey joined the Associates after leaving the Cure. Smith sang backing vocals on their debut album. After Mackenzie died by suicide in January 1997, Smith wrote Cut Here about his regret at brushing him off backstage weeks earlier, instead of sitting down for a drink.[1] [2] [3]

Robert Smith and Reeves Gabrels. They met at rehearsals for David Bowie's fiftieth birthday concert in January 1997, where Gabrels was musical director. He soon played on the Cure's Wrong Number, and he, Smith and Jason Cooper formed the joke project Cogasm for a Trey Parker film. Smith invited him onto the 2012 festival tour, and he became a full member within weeks. Songs of a Lost World was his first full album with the band.[1] [2] [3]

Rare facts about The Cure

• Smith recorded the whole of Three Imaginary Boys through the pickup of a cheap Woolworths Top 20 guitar. Chris Parry told him he could not use the Woolworths guitar, so they bought a Fender Jazzmaster. Smith immediately had the Top 20 pickup fitted into it, which really upset Parry.[1]
• The six string bass that shaped the early Cure sound was, according to Smith, stolen by producer Mike Hedges. Smith said Hedges took it from a big name artist, feeling it was his socialist duty, and gave it to Smith after Seventeen Seconds. Smith wrote Primary on it.[1]
• The Final Sound on Seventeen Seconds lasts just fifty three seconds because the tape ran out. The album was made in seven days on a tiny budget, so the band could not afford to record the longer piece again.[1]
• In the A Forest video, Smith's left thumb is bandaged because he had broken it changing a tyre. The video was the first to show the band. Smith said they looked morose and disinterested because that is how they felt, and he was also in pain.[1]
• A Forest is the song the Cure have played live most often, over twelve hundred times as of 2025. The original master tape was later lost, so for the 1990 Mixed Up album the band had to record A Forest all over again.[1]
• The 1979 spin off single by Cult Hero was sung by Robert Smith's local postman, Frankie Bell. The band behind him included Smith, Tolhurst, Dempsey, Gallup, Hartley and Thompson, with family and friends on backing vocals. Smith's sister Janet played keyboards and his sister Margaret sang backing vocals.[1] [2]
• The film Carnage Visors, shown instead of a support act on the 1981 tour, has since disappeared. It was an animated short by Simon Gallup's brother Ric. Only Smith, Tolhurst and Gallup are said to own copies.[1]
• The ghostly church on the cover of Faith is Bolton Priory, photographed in fog. The cover was designed by Porl Thompson, who with his partner Andy Vella, as Parched Art, went on to design most of the band's sleeves.[1] [2]
• Lol Tolhurst and Porl Thompson were at the 1976 Notting Hill Carnival when the riot broke out, and ran. The two future Cure members were among the crowd as the violence began in August 1976.[1]
• Smith and Severin named the Glove after the giant flying glove in the Beatles' Yellow Submarine. The album title Blue Sunshine came from a horror film about a strain of LSD that turns people into killers years later.[1] [2]
• Phil Thornalley had never played an upright bass before recording The Love Cats. Even so, in 2022 Bass Player magazine ranked his performance on the song as the twenty third best bass line of all time.[1]
• Boris Williams taught himself to drum using his mother's knitting needles. He never had formal lessons. When he joined the Cure mid tour in 1984, he learned their whole set in three days.[1]
• For the Close to Me video, Tim Pope put a light bulb in Simon Gallup's mouth. Pope wanted him to look lit from within, and the cloth tied around Gallup's face was there to hide the wire. The wardrobe then went into a tank of water.[1]
• Before it had lyrics, Just Like Heaven was the theme tune of a French TV show, Les Enfants du Rock. Smith offered the instrumental because it meant millions of Europeans would already know the music before the single came out.[1]
• Just Like Heaven was played to wake up the crew of Space Shuttle Discovery in July 2006. Astronaut Piers Sellers' family requested it. He said it reminded him of the wild, happy, beer drinking years of his youth.[1]
• Tim Pope says Mary Poole is the only featured woman in any Cure video ever. She dances with Smith in the Just Like Heaven video, because, Smith said, she was the girl the song was about.[1]
• The lettering on the Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me cover landed where it is because a taxi hit a speed bump. Designer Andy Vella was arranging the words on a clear sheet on the way to the airport. He taped them where they fell, and Smith loved it.[1]
• Friday I'm in Love plays a quarter tone sharp, because Smith forgot to switch off the tape speed control. It sits halfway between D and E flat. Live, the band plays it in its original key.[1] [2]
• Smith was so sure he had stolen the tune of Friday I'm in Love that he phoned everyone he knew. He played it to them and asked if they had heard it before. Nobody had, and he accepted the melody was his own.[1]
• In the Friday I'm in Love video, the drum kit is labelled The Cures. The video, a tribute to the French film pioneer Georges Méliès, won the European viewers' choice award at the 1992 MTV Video Music Awards.[1]
• The weathered face on Standing on a Beach belongs to John Button, a retired fisherman, not a band member. He also appeared in the Killing an Arab video. He reportedly agreed to help the youngsters break through, and said he might buy a record player out of curiosity.[1]
• Pictures of You was inspired by photos of Mary that Smith found in his wallet after a fire at home. The same photo of Mary appears on the Pictures of You sleeve, and in distorted form on the earlier Charlotte Sometimes single.[1] [2]
• The Pictures of You video was shot in the snow at the foot of Buachaille Etive Mòr in Glencoe. It was filmed on Super 8 cameras in February 1990, and Smith said he had never been colder.[1]
• Wild Mood Swings was recorded at a Tudor house owned by the actress Jane Seymour. The Cure were the first band to record at St Catherine's Court. Radiohead later made OK Computer there.[1]
• Smith recorded his South Park lines down a phone line after staying up all night. He had no idea what the episode was about. His nephews and nieces were more impressed by it than by anything else in his career.[1] [2]
• The cover art of the 2004 album The Cure was drawn by Smith's nieces and nephews, who did not know it would be used. Smith asked each child to draw a good dream and a bad dream, then picked the best drawings for the sleeve.[1]
• The sculpture on the cover of Songs of a Lost World is Bagatelle, made in 1975 by Janez Pirnat. Smith chose the Slovenian artist's work for the sleeve, and has said he now owns the sculpture.[1]
• The 2019 sessions for what became Songs of a Lost World took place at Rockfield in Wales, where Queen made Bohemian Rhapsody. Smith told Rolling Stone in 2019 that its working title was Live From the Moon, inspired by watching the moon landing with his father.[1] [2]
• Chris Parry says he got his first drumming job in New Zealand because he had a truck licence. His band, the Fourmyula, had a New Zealand number one in 1969. He later co founded the London radio station Xfm.[1]
• Perry Bamonte and his wife Donna ran a retirement home for elderly racehorses in Devon. After his first spell in the Cure he also worked as a fly fishing illustrator, contributing to the magazine Fly Culture.[1]
• Andy Anderson briefly played in a Cure tribute band, the Cureheads, in 2012. The same year he made a guest appearance with Levinhurst, the band led by his former Cure bandmate Lol Tolhurst.[1]
• Smith has said he would cut off his own hands before accepting a royal honour. In a 2012 French interview he called hereditary privilege inherently wrong, and in 2012 and 2013 he toured with a citizens, not subjects slogan on his guitar.[1] [2]
• Smith is so shortsighted that a huge festival crowd looks to him like an amorphous mess. He told Rolling Stone he can only make real eye contact with an audience at small, intimate shows.[1]
• The Twilight Sad thought Smith's first fan email might be a prank by a member of Mogwai. It was real. Smith later recorded a cover of their song There's a Girl in the Corner, released in 2015.[1]
• Boys Don't Cry was performed live for the thousandth time on the thirteenth of December 2022, at Wembley. It was no big hit on release in 1979, but it has grown into one of the band's best known songs.[1]

Disputed stories

These stories are told often but the accounts don't agree. Here are the versions and who says what.