Simon Gallup’s five best basslines for The Cure
Simon Gallup, the innovative bassist of The Cure, has carved a legacy at odds with Peter Hook’s as one of the defining punk bassists of the 1980s. Renowned for his melodic and rhythmic prowess, Gallup’s basslines have become a central ingredient of The Cure’s iconic sound. This sound was once unique, but over the past 45 years, a host of inspired acts have verified The Cure’s immortal impact on popular music and continue to do so to this day.
With the exception of frontman Robert Smith, Gallup is The Cure’s longest-standing member. He joined in 1979 to replace the band’s founding bassist Mike Dempsey just in time for Seventeen Seconds, their second studio album. His pulsing rhythmic style helped to sculpt The Cure’s early identity over three albums, reaching a peak with 1982’s early masterpiece, Pornography.
Following the infamously frosty European tour promoting Pornography, Gallup left The Cure amid artistic and personal quarrels with Smith. The former founded Fools Dance, while the latter took a hiatus to play with Siouxsie and the Banshees. “It’s just basically that Robert and I are both really arrogant bastards, and it got to such an extreme,” Gallup recalled in a Fools Dance tour programme. “I suppose you just can’t have two egocentrics in a band, and Robert was sort of ‘the main man’.”
After a two-year hiatus, Smith and Gallup buried the hatchet, and The Cure returned with newfound optimism and maturity translated through their music. Over the 1980s, Gallup widened his creative scope to bring more complex, melodious basslines to season Smith’s lyrics. These arrangements opened the door to a more varied emotional and thematic direction, giving rise to their most commercially successful run, highlighted by 1989’s Disintegration.
Today, Gallup remains a prominent force in The Cure, soon to release their long-awaited follow-up to 2008’s 4:13 Dream, Songs Of The Lost World. While we await this new studio LP, let’s delve into Gallup’s five greatest basslines for The Cure.
Simon Gallup’s best basslines for The Cure:
‘Lovesong’
Appearing on The Cure’s 1989 masterpiece Disintegration, ‘Lovesong’ displays Gallup’s bass virtuosity at its melodic best. In their famed Dark Trilogy of the early 1980s, The Cure benefitted from a dense, driving bass sound, but in their latter, more radio-conscious work, Gallup opted for a more dynamic rhythm.
‘Lovesong’ heard all members of the band in perfect harmony. Gallup and Lol Tolhurst’s sturdy and confident rhythm section is adorned more sporadically by Smith’s guitar voicings and his beautiful lyrical ode to Mary Poole, whom he married in 1988 and remains devoted to this day.
‘Fascination Street’
‘Fascination Street’ fights for light in the rich canopy that is Disintegration. A great deal of its appeal arrived courtesy of Gallup’s tense bassline. Like much of his work on the album, the bassline provided a strong skeleton at the heart of the song that Smith could flesh out with overdriven guitar embellishments.
“A ‘generic’ song about the (often cynical) delights of exploring a new city nightlife; based loosely on one particular ‘band adventure’ in New Orleans 1985 – Bourbon Street, the cliche perhaps,” Robert Smith commented on the lyrics on the Disintegration liner notes.
‘Hot Hot Hot!!!’
Having shown his ability to lay down driving, oppressive basslines in keeping with the punk era, Gallup expanded his scope in the late 1980s. ‘Hot Hot Hot!!!’ was released as the fourth and final single from 1987’s Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me. This track remains one of The Cure’s most unique thanks to its lack of melancholy and compensatory funkiness.
‘Hot Hot Hot!!!’ has been treated to several versions over the years. Perhaps the greatest appeared on the 1990 remix album, Mixed Up. Guitar and drum tracks introduce the rhythm in the “Extended Mix” version before Gallup’s bassline brings a bold, danceable groove to proceedings.
‘Primary’
‘Primary’ is one of the true unsung heroes of The Cure’s early rise to prominence. The track was the only single taken from 1981’s Faith, which sat between Seventeen Seconds and Pornography as the quiet assassin at the heart of the Dark Trilogy. While Faith didn’t spawn so many readily accessible tracks as its neighbouring albums, many fans consider it among The Cure’s most consummate works.
Gallup’s bassline gives ‘Primary’ its intrinsic impetus and a cold, desolate atmosphere emblematic of The Cure’s early work. The song’s pace feeds off the dying punk era, seamlessly blending with the gothic aesthetic the band would ultimately define.
‘A Forest’
Gallup’s bassline in ‘A Forest’, The Cure’s most popular Dark Trilogy hit, perfectly tessellates with Smith’s iconic guitar riff. After the ethereal intro, Smith’s lead guitar begins in earnest with the pace of Tolhurst’s drums for two bars before Gallup enters the fray. This layered entry has been used to great effect throughout the Cure’s catalogue and never fails to highlight Gallup’s essential presence.
In Robert Webb’s popular 2017 memoir How Not to Be a Boy, the Peep Show actor remembered being at school when ‘A Forest’ came out and lamented that he didn’t learn the bassline like all of his uber-cool classmates. Gallup clearly made quite the impression, undoubtedly inspiring countless youngsters to pick up the bass guitar.
