The Cure

English rock band formed in 1978 in Crawley, West Sussex. The founding members of the Cure were school friends at Notre Dame Middle School in Crawley, West Sussex. The Cure were one of the first alternative bands to have chart and commercial success in an era before alternative rock had broken into the mainstream. In 1992, NME declared the Cure had, during the 1980s, become “a goth hit machine (19 to date), an international phenomenon and, yet, the most successful alternative band that ever shuffled disconsolately about the earth”.

They first performed in public at an end-of-year show in April 1973 as members of a one-off school-band called Obelisk. That band consisted of Robert Smith on piano, Michael “Mick” Dempsey on guitar, Laurence “Lol” Tolhurst on percussion, Marc Ceccagno on lead guitar and Alan Hill on bass guitar. In May 1979 their debut album Three Imaginary Boys was released to great acclaim, and as the band toured extensively around the UK, the singles “Boys Don’t Cry” and “Jumping Someone Else’s Train” were released. Michael left the band at the end of the year, and Simon Gallup (bass) and Matthieu Hartley (keyboards) joined. In early 1980 the Cure quartet embarked on an exploration of the darker side of Robert’s song writing, and emerged with the minimalist classic album Seventeen Seconds, along with their first bona-fide ‘hit single’ “A Forest.”

Genres: Gothic rock, post-punk, alternative rock, new wave

Current members: Robert Smith, Simon Gallup, Roger O’Donnell, Jason Cooper, Reeves Gabrels