Fact #163815
When:
Short story:
When The Cure's European tour ends at L’Ancien Belgique, Brussels, Belgium, bassist Simon Gallup immediately quits the band.
Full article:
Robert Smith (The Cure) : The final night of the tour in Brussels was extraordinary. I thought, I’m not going through this pantomime, because I knew it was going to kick off, I knew it was the last chance we had to make this memorable in the worst possible way. I’d never played the drums in public at all, I don’t even think Lol knew which way up a bass went.
We just launched into feedback and noise and this roadie started screaming obscenities about me down the mike. We started having a ruck on stage, there was a kind of mini riot in the audience, and we went home.
Lol Tolhurst (drums, The Cure) : I remember sitting in the dressing room thinking, Oh well, that’s the end of the band, then I went off to France for a bit. I guess I ran away. Escaping from the reality of The Cure.
Simon Gallup : There’s a lot of things I’d rather do than trek around countries being drunk and playing to drunk people. The tour was like a re-run of the worst movie you’ve ever seen. It’s as if you’re leaning against a wall, eyes closed, and when you come to you’re in the same place you were a year ago.
We were cracking up, so the people offstage began to crack up as well. Twenty three people reverting to primitives is not a pretty sight. We were more like a rugby tour than a Cure tour.
Robert Smith (The Cure) : Over the last few months of touring, I’ve had to close down completely. I’ve been operating on a really basic level, which is awful because I’ve been turning into a complete idiot. You resort to anything to get away from what you’re doing. Drink, drugs, the usual. And to find yourself slipping into the old cliché of a band on the road is a really depressing experience. At times, there’s no difference between us and AC/DC, and the hour and a half on stage is the only saving grace of the whole mindless grind. No-one talks to anyone else. It’s a mindless circus.
I just don’t speak at all. I probably utter about twenty words a day and, at the moment, it has destroyed the relationships within the band.
Touring is like a job. I kept coming back from Europe. It cost us thousands of pounds because I had to cancel concerts, because I couldn’t bear to carry on. We were at the point of fighting each other.
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We just launched into feedback and noise and this roadie started screaming obscenities about me down the mike. We started having a ruck on stage, there was a kind of mini riot in the audience, and we went home.
Lol Tolhurst (drums, The Cure) : I remember sitting in the dressing room thinking, Oh well, that’s the end of the band, then I went off to France for a bit. I guess I ran away. Escaping from the reality of The Cure.
Simon Gallup : There’s a lot of things I’d rather do than trek around countries being drunk and playing to drunk people. The tour was like a re-run of the worst movie you’ve ever seen. It’s as if you’re leaning against a wall, eyes closed, and when you come to you’re in the same place you were a year ago.
We were cracking up, so the people offstage began to crack up as well. Twenty three people reverting to primitives is not a pretty sight. We were more like a rugby tour than a Cure tour.
Robert Smith (The Cure) : Over the last few months of touring, I’ve had to close down completely. I’ve been operating on a really basic level, which is awful because I’ve been turning into a complete idiot. You resort to anything to get away from what you’re doing. Drink, drugs, the usual. And to find yourself slipping into the old cliché of a band on the road is a really depressing experience. At times, there’s no difference between us and AC/DC, and the hour and a half on stage is the only saving grace of the whole mindless grind. No-one talks to anyone else. It’s a mindless circus.
I just don’t speak at all. I probably utter about twenty words a day and, at the moment, it has destroyed the relationships within the band.
Touring is like a job. I kept coming back from Europe. It cost us thousands of pounds because I had to cancel concerts, because I couldn’t bear to carry on. We were at the point of fighting each other.