Pearl Thompson
English musician best known for being a member of The Cure
Pearl Thompson (born Paul Stephen Thompson, 8 November 1957) is an English musician and artist. Thompson is best known as a member of the English alternative rock band the Cure from 1983 to 1993 and from 2005 to 2011, during which he was credited as Porl Thompson and played mainly guitar with occasional keyboards and saxophone. After leaving the Cure he focused on a successful career as a visual artist.
Career
Thompson spent his early childhood in London and his family later moved to Crawley. He was a school friend of Robert Smith, Michael Dempsey, and Lol Tolhurst and played with them in various local bands that eventually evolved into the Easy Cure. He adopted the stage name Porl Thompson to avoid confusion with Paul Thompson of Roxy Music. Thompson's guitar style did not mesh with Smith's post-punk songwriting, so he left the Easy Cure to go to art college; the band then changed their name to the Cure.
After art school, Thompson formed an artistic partnership with Andy Vella for music-related projects. Their company was later known as Parched Art. In 1981, Thompson volunteered his services for the Cure's single and album covers, with his first designs for the band being the "Primary" single and then the Faith album.
The public source identifies “Pearl Thompson” as english musician best known for being a member of The Cure. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Pearl, Thompson and English.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Dec 28, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q739650. VIAF identifies the subject as 94175920. The Library of Congress control number is n78043557. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1957, 1983, 1993 and 2005.
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This entry incorporates text from “Pearl Thompson” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.