Longtime guitarist and keyboardist for The Cure Perry Bamonte has died. He was 65.
Bamonte, born on September 3, 1960, in London, England, played a significant part in the band from the early 1990s. The Cure confirmed his death on their official website: “It is with enormous sadness that we confirm the death of our great friend and bandmate Perry Bamonte, who passed away after a short illness at home over Christmas,” said the band in an official statement on their website.
He began his journey with The Cure in 1984, initially working as a roadie and guitar tech. His brother Daryl, who managed tours for The Cure and Depeche Mode, introduced Perry to the band. After Roger O’Donnell left in 1990, Bamonte became a full-fledged member, showcasing his skills in guitar, bass, keyboard, and drums.
Bamonte contributed to several albums, including Wish (1992), Wild Mood Swings (1996), Bloodflowers (2000), and The Cure (2004). He also took part in live albums like Paris (1993), Show (1993), Galore (1997), and Trilogy (2003 DVD). His songwriting credits include music for tracks like “Trust,” “This Is a Lie,” and “Anniversary.”
During his time with the band, Bamonte participated in over 400 concerts. The band let him go in 2005; however, he returned in 2022, performing in 90 shows, including all 46 sold-out Lost World concerts.
The band statement remembers Bamonte as “quiet, intense, intuitive, constant and hugely creative, ‘Teddy’ was a warm-hearted and vital part of The Cure story. Our thoughts and condolences are with all his family. He will be very greatly missed.”
His last public appearance was on November 1, 2024, in London, marking the release of Songs of a Lost World, the band’s first album in 16 years. The album’s launch was visually captured and globally released under the name The Cure: The Show of a Lost World. This reunion was significant for Bamonte and The Cure.
Bamonte was present when The Cure was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2019, joining both past and current members. His contributions to the band continue to influence the rock music scene.
As fans and family mourn, The Cure’s statement reflects on his lasting impact on music communities. Perry Bamonte’s involvement with the band will continue to resonate with audiences worldwide forever.
The Cure will introduce a new album in early 2026. The band plans this work as a companion to their 2024 album. “The companion piece to Songs Of A Lost World, which will be out hopefully before next summer, is what I’m currently finishing. I just need to mix it,” lead singer Robert Smith said, according to Cult Following. While less gloomy than its predecessor, the upcoming release still strikes deep emotional chords. “It’s not as dark in some ways, although it actually has probably the saddest song of all of them on it,” Smith added.
Fresh material will blend with songs The Cure tested live but left off Songs Of A Lost World. The sound shifts between styles more than in recent works. The band’s last show packed London’s Troxy in November 2024 for the Songs Of A Lost World debut. Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong and Radiohead’s Ed O’Brien joined 3,000 fans at the small venue. Smith’s willingness to book shows suggests that the upcoming album nears completion. He’d sworn off scheduling dates until new music was ready.
In summer 2026, The Cure will perform in the UK and Ireland, including Dublin, Belfast, Manchester, and Edinburgh, between June and August. Festival spots include Rock En Seine in Paris, Primavera Sound in Barcelona, Nova Rock in Austria, and the Isle of Wight Festival.
Øya Festival in Norway features The Cure as the headline act for the opening night in Oslo on August 12. Many people praised the band’s last performance at this event in 2019 for its energy. Amyl & The Sniffers, an Australian punk-rock band, will perform with The Cure at many shows, including the Øya Festival. You can find all of their upcoming shows on their official website.
In 2026, The Cure may celebrate their 50th anniversary as well. They haven’t announced the title or release date for the upcoming record yet.
Tour posters are an often-overlooked art form. They convey a message about the tour and the band and can even become the perfect addition to your home decor…
When we reached Justin Furstenfeld to discuss Blue October’s approaching Houston shows and a new movie he’s in, we were sorry to learn he was at a Houston hospital seeing after a cherished family member. He assured us everything was all right and he was prepared to press on with our appointed chat about a pair of sold-out shows, March 1 and 2, at 713 Music Hall.
Blue October is one of Houston music’s big success stories, a platinum-certified act approaching 30 years in a chew ’em up, spit ’em out industry. Furstenfeld is the band’s singer, guitarist and centerpiece and the group still has a solid nucleus of founding members, including his brother Jeremy on drums and multi-instrumentalist Ryan Delahoussaye.
Justin would be the first to say it hasn’t always been easy, but Blue October has navigated the infernal maze of the music business. He’s aware the band might easily have been another pile of bones in some forgotten corner of that labyrinth but through it all – the rigors of road life, a changing record industry, drugs and depression and life in general – they have emerged. Perhaps not unscathed, but at least free of the maze’s tangle.
“I’ve always said that success is measured on whether your kids are being taken care of and your bills are getting paid. That’s it,” he said. “I’m the most successful man you’ll ever meet because all of those things are being taken care of and I’m happy, and I’m sober and I get to play music for a living and I no longer have to beg for God to forgive me. I can just go out and rock out and take care of my kids and that’s success. Whether or not you’re huge and famous, it really doesn’t matter.”
Since Furstenfeld is in a position to give advice to some of Houston’s young exciting bands, groups on the cusp of the sort of success Blue October has enjoyed, we asked for his best recommendation to taking the next step.
“My advice to them is to get the best running vehicle that they have and tour,” he said. “Just get out there and tour.”
He recalled Blue October’s path from its early days. The band formed in 1995 and in the beginning the circle on the map was small – a show in Dallas, one in Austin, head to San Antonio, then back to Houston.
“We would play as much as we could, like once a month, bro, for years, and our crowd got bigger and bigger and bigger and then once it got to a point we started adding shows in San Angelo and Odessa and then we’d break out further.
“If you go to New York, you play New York, you play Boston, you play Philly, you play Chicago. You play every week – Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday – every week for three months straight. Same club, same venue, make a deal with the venue that you’re going to bring X amount of people every week,” he said. “You say, ‘Hey, we’re going to be here next week, same time, bring your friends,’ and if you’re a good band, they’ll bring their friends.
“You can’t just stay in Houston and hope some guy’s going to fly in and see you and take you off to Never Never Land and give you a record deal,” he said. “You can’t just put all your eggs in one basket and hope that you’re going to get some big record deal.
“You can’t do that because they don’t have big record deals anymore,” he continued. “They do what’s called ‘360’ deals now because the record industry is no longer what is used to be, so nobody is going to give you millions of dollars. They’re going to give you a 360 deal, which means they want 20 percent of your publishing, 20 percent of your touring, 20 percent of your merchandise and then they want 85 percent of your album sales. You’re never going to make money unless you’re huge.
“But,” he added, “if you can be proactive enough to book places like Schuba’s in Chicago, House of Blues in Boston and you just keep doing it over and over and over again, then when you’re done with that spot, you go to the center of America – Omaha, Kansas City, St. Louis, Denver – you hit those markets and you do it all the time. Salt Lake City, Vegas, L.A. And you just keep doing it, you live on the road, you tell your girlfriend you won’t see her for six months, peace out, bye. And you just do it. That’s it.”
Furstenfeld knows the industry model has pivoted to all things digital, but Blue October owes a huge debt to terrestrial radio stations, most notably Houston’s KTBZ, 94.5 FM, aka The Buzz.
“Every one of those cities, you go visit your local radio station,” he said. “I know it’s all about streaming and stuff these days, but your local radio station is the only thing that is going to put music and the community together. It’s not going to be Spotify, it’ not going to be Apple Music. It’s going to be The Buzz in Houston. And, if you go support The Buzz, they will support you.
“It’s a lot of hard work,” he said, “but it’s fun work because you meet so many beautiful people on the road. You meet beautiful friends, you meet beautiful women, you meet beautiful businessmen, you create relationships, you create band camaraderie. You learn, you write on the road, you stay in hotels, you party, you get sober, you learn – it’s just an amazing experience.”
That hard, amazing work has created some interesting opportunities for Furstenfeld. Of late, he’s tried his hand at acting, a lifelong love. Lights Out, a new action movie in which he has a small role, released in mid-February. Our chat was planned to cover that ground but the paternal, nurturing side of Furstenfeld was awakened by our line of questions and, perhaps, by being in a clinical setting seeing after a loved one.
“There’s a bigger film out there that I wish everybody would go watch, don’t even worry about all the acting stuff I’m doing right now, go watch a documentary called Get Back Up that we made,” he said. “It’s a documentary about recovery in the music business, it’s on Amazon right now, it’ll blow your mind about how beautiful life can get if you just stay sober and keep playing rock and roll and you keep supporting people that support you. That’s what you should focus on.
“These little action movies that I do, they’re fun, they’re cool. I get to blow people’s heads off, yeah it’s fun,” he laughed, “but that’s not what’s important. It’s the fact that sobriety is possible and recovery is possible and life is possible. And it’s beautiful and you can wrap it in music.”
Speaking of music, Blue October is in the midst of releasing a three-part album series titled Spinning the Truth Around. The first part of the album debuted in October 2022 and the next installment appeared a year later and featured the single “Down Here Waiting.”
“We’re coming out with part three soon which is a remix album, but I think what’s going to be surprising is that we’ve already started on our next album and I think it might surpass the Spinning the Truth Around Part III remix album just because we have a whole brand-new single that’s going to be hitting 94.5 The Buzz soon,” Furstenfeld announced.
A three-part album is ambitious so we asked Furstenfeld if there was an album that was pivotal to his musical upbringing. He went straight to The Cure’s 1989 album, Disintegration.
“You write on the road, you stay in hotels, you party, you get sober, you learn – it’s just an amazing experience.”
Photo by Rachel Ziegler, courtesy of Kid Logic Media
“That kicked my ass. That just showed me a whole new side of what music could sound like. It was rock and roll but it was dark, dreamy rock and roll. It was gloom and doom. And I loved it. It described every aspect of my depression inside of my head and every ounce of romance that I had in my heart. It’s just a brilliant album. To this day, it’s still one of the best albums ever made.”
Good music, good advice and good living. Maybe being in a hospital setting reminded Furstenfeld of all he’s grateful for today, including the many fans who will attend this weekend’s shows and the clarity with which he’ll receive them thanks to more than a decade of sobriety.
“Recovery is such a beautiful thing, sobriety is such a beautiful thing, it’s such a ‘to thine own self be true’ powerful, powerful thing, it gains confidence in people that hated themselves before. I’m the most confident, happy, peaceful man in the world. I may not be good at marriage and I may not be good at relationships but I don’t care. I’ve got three kids, I’m sober, I play rock and roll, I love Houston, I love being from Houston, I love supporting people that support Houston and that’s what it’s about.
“Today I don’t have to go smoke meth and drink alcohol to make myself feel good. I wake up in the morning and I feel good about myself and that’s a direct result of being able to live my dream. And I can only live my dream because of sobriety.”
Blue October are scheduled for March 1 and 2 at 713 Music Hall, 401 Franklin. Sold out.
