Simon Gallup

Biography

Simon Johnathon Gallup (born 1 June 1960) is an English musician and bassist with the alternative rock band The Cure. He is the second longest-serving member of the band after lead vocalist/guitarist Robert Smith.

Born in Duxhurst, Surrey, Simon's family moved to Horley in 1961 where he attended Horley Infants and Junior Schools until 1971, followed by Horley Comprehensive School (now Oakwood secondary school) to 1976. Between 1976 and 1978 he worked in a plastics factory and became the bass player for local punk band Lockjaw, who later evolved into the Magazine Spies (1979–1980), also known as the Mag/Spys. Lockjaw and the Mag/Spys played regular live shows with Easy Cure and later the Cure between 1977 and 1979, and after collaborating in the studio on the Cult Hero recording sessions in October 1979, both Gallup and keyboardist Matthieu Hartley left the Mag/Spys to join the Cure. Former Mag/Spys Gallup, Hartley and Stuart Curran later performed together under the name of the Cry and later Fools Dance during Gallup's hiatus from the Cure between 1982 and 1984.

Gallup first joined the Cure in 1979, replacing Michael Dempsey on bass guitar. He also has been credited for occasionally playing the keyboards, particularly after Matthieu Hartley's departure in 1980. He took over keyboard lines for many of the songs that Hartley played. Examples of songs he played keyboard on live include "At Night", "A Forest", "A Strange Day" and "Pornography". During "Cold" he multi-tasked playing bass guitar and bass pedals.

On the Swing Tour in 1996, he played twelve-string acoustic guitar on "This Is a Lie". On the Dream Tour in 2000 he played a Fender Bass VI on "There Is No If".

Gallup is also credited with singing lead vocals for a demo for "Violin Song". Gallup first performed on the Cure albums that make up "The Dark Trilogy": Seventeen Seconds, Faith, and Pornography.

During the Pornography Tour in 1982, a series of incidents prompted Gallup to leave the Cure, including an incident on 27 May 1982 after a live performance at Hall Tivoli, Strasbourg, France when he got into a fist fight with Robert Smith at a nightclub in Strasbourg reportedly over a bar tab.

Gallup has said that "I was about to leave when some guy came up and told me I hadn't paid for my drinks. He thought I was Robert. I was knackered but the bloke took me up to the bar and Robert appeared to see what was going on. I hit him, he responded and we had a fight". ...

Source: Article "Simon Gallup" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.