The Cure Concerts Setlist

The Cure is an English rock band. They were formed in 1978 in Crawley, United Kingdom. The founding members were lead vocalist and guitarist Robert Smith (born in 1959 in Blackpool, United Kingdom), bassist Michael “Mick” Dempsey (1958, Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia), and drummer and keyboardist Lol Tolhurst (1959, Horley, United Kingdom).

Smith, Tolhurst, and Dempsey all attended Notre Dame Middle School in Crawley, West Sussex. In 1976, they formed the band “Obelisk” with two of their friends to perform a single show at the end of the school year. Then, with little changes in the line-up, they created the group “Malice”, which performed cover songs of such artists as David Bowie, Jimi Hendrix and Alex Harvey. In 1977, 5 of the boys, including Smith, Tolhurst, and Dempsey, got together to form a punk band “Easy Cure”. They entered a talent search competition, which they won. This resulted in them signing a contract with the German record label Ariola-Hansa.

Their original lead singer left, so Robert Smith, originally a keyboardist, assumed the role in the band. They spent their next couple years recording demos and performing early versions of a The Cure concert around Crawley. However, their label didn’t find their demos satisfactory, so they never released any of their original songs. They suggested the band stick to cover songs, which Smith and the group refused, so the label just let their contract run out and never re-signed them.

In 1978, with the departure of their original guitarist, the fledgling band got down to the 3 founders at last, renaming themselves “The Cure”. They made another demo tape. This one, however, was good enough to impress a music producer at Polydor Records. The Cure debut single came out in December 1978, with the title “Killing an Arab”. They did catch some flak for their supposedly racist title, especially in the US. The track also never became commercially successful.

The Cure’s debut album, “Three Imaginary Boys”, was released in May 1979. It saw moderate success, peaking at the #44 spot on the OCC chart in the UK. Their second record, “Seventeen Seconds” from August 1980, did a lot better. It reached the #20 spot on the UK charts, while also breaking into the famous Billboard 200 chart in the US, at the #186 spot.

Since then, The Cure has released 11 more studio albums, thus they have 13 in total. The best selling among them is “Disintegration” from May 1989, which sold 3 million copies worldwide. Meanwhile, the latest new The Cure album came out in October 2008, with the title “4:13 Dream”.

The English rock band’s biggest hits to date are “Boys Don’t Cry” (1980), “Just Like Heaven” (1987), and “Friday I’m in Love” (1992). While they haven’t released a new album since 2008, the band is still together, regularly performing live The Cure concert shows around the world. Their line-up has changed a lot, vocalist-guitarist Robert Smith is the sole founding member still on board. The rest of the line-up is made up of bassist Simon Gallup, keyboardist Roger O'Donnell, drummer Jason Cooper, and second guitarist Reeves Gabrels. They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2019.