Jill Riley catches up with Tears for Fears' Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith about their 2022 record The Tipping Point. The English duo talk about getting the band back together after a fateful fax, how honesty in songwriting retains its appeal across generations, and how they stumbled into stardom in their early days by making art that they loved.

Interview Transcript

Edited for clarity and length.

JILL RILEY: Hey, I'm Jill Riley from The Current's Morning Show here on Minnesota Public Radio. I am--I don't even have words for what I am right now. But I can tell you that I'm excited. I'm a little wigged out. I've been looking forward to this interview ever since I heard that we had an opportunity to talk to our guests today. I thought, “Okay, this is gonna be awesome to be able to meet and talk to a couple of guys whose music was just such a big part of my upbringing,” and music was such a big part. We always had music playing in my house when I was growing up. Luckily, my parents were cool enough to get MTV in the mid 80s. Don't tell them I said that. I don't ever want them to find out that they were cool. But it really kind of formed the basis and shaped my musical taste. It's one of those cool things that we get to bring you an interview--this is the way that we've been doing and keeping you close to the artists that you hear on The Current. The artists that perhaps had a big influence on your musical taste, and certainly very excited to talk to Curt Smith and Roland Orzabal from Tears for Fears. Hi, how are you?

ROLAND ORZABAL: Good. How are you?

I'm doing well. This is great. You know, this is an awesome way to spend an afternoon, Curt, how are you doing?

CURT SMITH: I'm good. I'm trying to kind of get comfortable. But I'm good.

It's been really interesting to talk to musicians, talk to bands. Everybody's kind of in the comfort of their own home, which has been just this new way that we've been doing things. We're talking to you today because you have a new record on the way which is very exciting. I was just talking to a friend, I'm like, "I'm going to talk to Tears for Fears tomorrow afternoon." They were like, "What's going on? What's their news?" I'm like, "Well, they've got a new record on the way this winter." It's called "The Tipping Point" and we've been playing the title track on The Current. So it's great, great, great to have you join The Current. Curt and Roland, I want to talk about the new record. Because I mean, it's been it's been a while, like 17 years since the last one. So I do want to talk about the new record. But certainly it's been, what is it--the year 2021? So it's been 40 years since you formed the group Tears for Fears, how does that feel? To kind of look back to, "Wow, that was 1981. 40 years ago." How does that feel for you guys?

ROLAND ORZABAL: It feels like it was only yesterday.

Yeah?

ROLAND ORZABAL: No.

CURT SMITH: It's like it was 40 years ago.

Right.

ROLAND ORZABAL: Yeah. It's crazy.

CURT SMITH: Yeah, I don't think it's something you think about that often. I think that other people tend to remind us. I think we're more wrapped up in our own kind of worlds that those things don't matter as much. It really is dependent on whether we're enjoying ourselves, musically or not. So in that sense, it is a little strange when I think that next year, that "Mad World," which was our first hit in the UK, came out 40 years ago. And I'm thinking, you know, my oldest is 22 and that was nearly twice her lifetime ago. So it can be a little strange if you sit down and think about it, but it's not really something we spend a lot of time thinking about.

I'm glad that you mentioned the song "Mad World," and Curt, talking about, you know, "My daughter is 22," and that puts things into the perspective of a timeline. But that song in particular, I think the cool thing about thinking about the length of time that you've been together is every five to 10 years there's this new musical generation of people that are discovering your music for the first time. And I think "Mad World" is such a great example of that, especially when it was used in the movie--it was covered, the movie Donnie Darko, which obviously you know, but that was such a moment where a song really came back around and then what was it just last year that you and your daughter did a cover of it?

CURT SMITH: Yeah, we were asked to do it, weirdly, by my wife's boss, and I think it just resonated because it was during lockdown, and it's me and my daughter. So it's kind of took on a different meaning. It was literally just, I think we did two takes. The first one was wrong then the second one, we're like, "That's fine. That's good enough." But it then became this sort of viral thing, which I found interesting. But I think it was because of lockdown, and because it was a father and daughter doing it together.

But yeah, when you're saying about younger people, suddenly our music resonating with them. I think, the albums like, "The Hurting" and songs like "Mad World," which is from "The Hurting" resonates with younger people because that was the age we were when we wrote that album, and when that album was recorded. So the emotions we were feeling then are still valid emotions to 18 to 25 year olds now. So I think if you're writing from the heart, and you're writing with honesty I think that's why music lasts a long time, because a new generation who are at that age that you were when you did it, and when you recorded it, when you wrote it will relate to it then. That's just the sign of good music and honest music to me.

Roland, when you think about the beginning of Tears for Fears, I know that the two of you played in a different band together, that was more--I was tracking down some videos, it's easier to go down the rabbit hole--anything on the internet, but I was tracking down some pictures. I'm like, oh yeah, look at--like total mod band. I assume that was the kind of band that you want to get out and play live all the time. When did you guys realize that you wanted to do your own thing and get more into the studio? When did you realize that, "Oh, Curt and I are going to click doing this thing together"?

ROLAND ORZABAL: Well yeah, as you said, we were in this kind of mud band. There were five of us, we used to wear suits on stage and jump around and look, act very stupid. We weren't a very good example of that kind of music, we was kind of learning our craft quickly. Then there was this huge work ethic within the band and the manager we had at the time and it was decided that we needed to take our own PA with us everywhere. We needed to put on blue boiler suits. And we need to put on the boiler suits over our suits to put up the PA then we do the show, and then we put take the boiler suits off to do the show. Then we put the boiler suits back on to take the PA down.

We only did a two week tour of Germany, and Curt and I are in tears because we want to go home. We are so--we're the sensitive types, you know? It was really bad. We couldn't hack it, and at the same time as this was going on we were sitting together in Curt's flat in Bath, and we were listening to Radio One and in at number one was Gary Newman's, "Are 'Friends' Electric?". And we were going, "Woah, this--what the hell's going on?" And that really was the big hurrah for the new synthesizer movement, electronica was hitting things big time. And all of a sudden, wanting out of the band, the Californian psychologist Primal Theory, meeting someone who gave gave us his recording studio to make demos in. He had a synthesizer or else we would never been able to do it, his name's Ian Stanley. And then all of a sudden, we are, for some reason we understood that form of music far better than all the mod pop stuff. And we took to it, absolutely took to it. And suddenly we were in fashion. We changed our hair, we changed what we wore, and then all of a sudden we got interest from record company.

In the beginning, I'm sure you were just kind of amazed playing around with all of this new equipment, like a drum machine and a synthesizer and just kind of getting into the feeling of, "How can we use this as a tool?" But then when it came to the actual songwriting and the lyric writing, how did that partnership work?

ROLAND ORZABAL: Well, I've always written songs since I was seven years old. That never stopped. As Curt was saying earlier, we were in a heavy metal band when we were 14 and 15 and we were covering Led Zeppelin, Blue Oyster Cult. But even then we had original songs. It's just that when we formed the duo, what we started singing about changed radically. Instead of just talking about really about nothing much, we started to express our feelings. Those sensitive guys couldn't stand more than two weeks touring. We were talking about isolation, about depression, about sort of some kind of existentialist, you know, some kind of existentialist hell that we were in, in lovely Bath in England. But we were just good at it, and it all started to make sense and came to a beautiful head with "Mad World," when we released that as our third single, just climbed slowly up the charts, and then we were off.

CURT SMITH: If I can add to that, I think there's an amazing thing that happens when you're actually honest. And so what happened for us was we started singing, and recording things, emotionally and lyrically stuff that was far more honest. As Roland said that the things we were doing before were kind of vacuous pop songs, which we thought was the way to go on and have some success. Weirdly, when you're more honest, you're more likely to be successful. So I think what happened with us is we started writing and recording things that meant something to us. And you couldn't deny when you listen to them, and saw us that they meant something to us. So I think that was the big difference.

Yeah, I'm talking with Curt and Roland from Tears for Fears, "The Hurting" and "Songs From The Big Chair" and "The Seeds Of Love," I mean, these are just big records from the 1980s that so many people--again, Curt, you said, when you're honest, it's relatable. I mean, again, we were talking about "Mad World" and how that's across generations where those feelings are always there, the generations pass, but actual feelings and emotions never go away. Now, eventually after the 1980s it was time to be done, it was time to take a break. So I wonder, at what point did you decide, "Okay, we're gonna come back together, as Tears for Fears and do what we do best."

ROLAND ORZABAL: Well, I personally was getting a bit sick of the sound of my own voice, making music, I'd produced a couple of albums as well. I enjoyed that. One day, I think it was a fax or a phone call. No, it was a fax, wasn't it? There was something I had to go, and we always had business interests together. We couldn't get rid of them. So I had to do something with Curt, which I didn't have to do, and he sent me a fax saying, "Thank you, call me." I was thinking , "Woah! Call him? What am I going to--" because we hadn't spoken for nine years, but eventually I did and all the resentment that was there from our split up at the end, in 1990, had completely gone. We talked--my life was different. My experiences were different. Curt was sounding strangely Mid Atlantic, talking about inspiration and motivation and direction and I was like, "What the hell?" But yeah, we sort of we realized that there was no bad blood anymore. So we got together in LA, we started doing some writing, and we didn't know what was going to happen. We didn't know at all and we didn't have any expectations. So therefore we didn't have any pressure. But of course, there was a lot of interest from the music industry, and I think we only had about two or three new songs and someone wanted to sign us.

Curt, do you remember that moment? Do you remember sending that fax? Which is so funny to hear now, a fax.

CURT SMITH: Yeah, the word fax. Weirdly, we were discussing--I was at dinner the other night just as far as technology goes, faxes were a very short lived thing. That's how you communicated for a while, certainly in business, and then 10 years, 20 years, whatever, it may be later going, "Who uses faxes anymore?" But I remember that when once we met again, all the all the things that went wrong at the end of our time together, up until 1990, just really didn't seem that important. I mean, Roland had a family at that point, I was just about to start a family. And I think what happens, you know, suddenly, when you are planning and then have kids, is that those certain things that seems so huge and important to you, when you're younger, really aren't that important anymore. Because you have something that's far more important.

This is what I would say to my kids a lot is, "It may seem huge to you now, but trust me," and you know, not that they believe you, "but trust me, in 15 years time, it really is not going to be that important." So all of that had gone and we got together and it was a tentative start, we just thought we'd get together and see if anything kind of gelled. And there was no pressure on us particularly, we didn't have to do it. We didn't need the money. We weren't looking for something. But then we got this song "Closest Thing To Heaven," and suddenly I was like, "Oh, that's kind of what we do together." There's something about us singing together that makes it different to anything that and recording together. That makes it different to anything that we could possibly do individually. So that's when it all started up again. It kind of made sense.

Yeah, so then the result there, "Everybody Loves A Happy Ending," that was that record?

ROLAND ORZABAL: Yeah.

So 2004. Now we fast forward, we're, you know, the year 2021. And we're talking about a new Tears for Fears album, "The Tipping Point," which is due February of next year, which will be here before you know it, the year 2022. So I said at the beginning of our conversation, it's been 17 years, not necessarily 17 years in the making, but maybe. When did the work start on the new record?

ROLAND ORZABAL: Well, I think when we did "Happy Ending" we thought that was literally the end. We had no plans to make another record whatsoever. We did some touring, and quite often I would go across to LA for the summer with my family. And I'd email the guys. Email Curt and say, "Well, why don't we do some shows?" And it was as simple as that. Very very low key, maybe eight shows in a whole tour. But we were having a lot of fun, a lot of fun indeed. And although we've been away for 17 years, our music seems to rear it's not so ugly head every now and again with people covering it. And with digital media, with YouTube, and Spotify, and streaming our popularity has grown without us actually doing anything, which is quite strange. But we did embrace the live shows, we did a lot of festivals, we were playing with a lot of younger bands. We had a lot, a lot of younger, you know, a much younger audience, multigenerational audience. But at some point, we decided that, "Hey, we're pretty good at this now." As someone once said, we became road warriors, we were very, very good. We're a great band, selling out arenas around Europe. But we needed new material. That was the next step. But that was a long time ago--a long, long time ago. It must be about more than seven years where we actually decided to get together to make another album but we didn't quite know what we wanted to do.

So cut a long story short, we went for a whole period of working with young, successful hit songwriters, and we made an album of attempted hit singles, which was very nice, but it lacked the depth that comes with the Tears for Fears album. We decided to keep five of those songs. We reworked them, and then we sat down in LA at the beginning of 2020, just before the first lockdown with two acoustic guitars. Curt and I came up with a song called "No Small Thing" whic was just track one on the album. And that was really the key to finishing the album that you will be hearing next year.

I'm talking with Curt and Roland of Tears for Fears, I hope that we're on a first name basis. We're talking about the history of Tears for Fears, the new record, which is due out in February, the New Year. "The Tipping Point," we've been playing the first song here on The Current the title track, and I've kind of had it on repeat as I've been, you know, coming and going to work, we've been playing it on the station. It has this beautiful, almost ambient beginning. And then when it kind of kicks in, it's like, "Well, this sounds like Tears for Fears..." But it doesn't sound like it came from "Songs from the Big Chair". It doesn't sound like it came from the 1980s, it sounds like it came from today. I wonder if you could tell me, because we're gonna want to play the song here. If you could tell me how that song how that song came together?

ROLAND ORZABAL: Well, as I said earlier, we were working with a lot of external songwriters. The guy we made "Happy Ending" with is a man called John Pettus. He plays guitar with us live and he co-writes and co-produces. Now I think Charlton [Pettus] was getting a bit miffed that we were working with other guys when he knew exactly, having been touring with us for years, he knew exactly how to write a Tears For Fears song. He thought, let me get some kind of moody synthesizer. Use the beat from "Everybody Wants to Rule the World," a little of a head over heels piano motif, and it sounds horrendous. It sounds like Frankenstein's monster. But in fact, what he created was the germ of the most beautiful, beautiful yearning song. Now at the time it interfaced with what was happening with me personally, my wife was becoming more and more ill with alcohol problems, addiction and mental illness. She was becoming a ghost of her former self. And so the song is really about when do you let this person go? Do you grieve while they're still alive? Or do you just build up resentment? Do you grieve while they're still alive, or do you grieve when they're gone? And when do they go? Because you can sit there and watch them really, really close to death. But they never really go because they live on in your memory. That's the least of it. So that's what the song is about, and that's how it came.

Thank you for sharing that story. Yeah, and I have to wonder for you the artist, for you the group, I would hope that there's some there's some peace that comes out of releasing a song like that?

ROLAND ORZABAL: Definitely. I personally think that the songs that we recorded from the start of "No Small Thing" are, in a sense, a resolution of all the pain that was being experienced at the beginning of the album. There is a sense of release, and a sense of relief, and a sense of moving on, and actually coming to terms with all of that. That's what I think makes this this album so special.

Well, Curt, I wonder if you have any final thoughts, I know we have to wrap up here pretty soon. Thoughts about the new album, about the song "The Tipping Point," and what it was like to be there, not just a band mate, but as a friend when making this song?

CURT SMITH: Well, it's horrendous to watch someone have to go through that. It's a difficult thing. As far as the album goes, I'll go back to what I was saying about "The Hurting," when we got to the point where we were making what we considered honest music, and weirdly, it just happened to be far more successful than us trying to be successful. We started this album looking for--the pressure put on us was to look for something new and modern, that could be a hit today. So in that sense very much going back to where we were back then, we end up doing an album that we love because it's honest, and that's the strength of the record. This record is an incredibly honest, passionate record. And I think, without question, I mean, for me, certainly now, the best record we've made.

Normally when we finished an album, I tend to not listen to it that much because I've been listening to it for years, because that's how long it normally takes us. This one I still listen to, I still go hiking with my dog and I'll listen to the whole album. I'm very proud of it, and I think it's incredibly representative of us. I could not have said that about what we ended up with a couple of years ago, I thought it was an attempt by us to do something that wasn't particularly honest. The fact that this is an honest record means a lot to me.

Curt Smith, Roland Orzabal--Tears for Fears, the new record is called "The Tipping Point," due on February 25, 2022. On a personal note, I want to thank you so much for the music over the years. And thank you for your honesty and candor during this interview. When it comes to the emotions and the real life experiences that we all go through, I have this friend who said this beautiful thing to me once that our pain is our gift to others. And I kind of got what he was going for when he told that to me, but it really has come out a lot in my life, especially in the last few years that our our pain can be a gift to someone. I think it sounds like you've accomplished what you set out to do with this record. So thank you so much for talking to me, for sharing your story, for going back to the beginning 40 years ago and coming up to the present. It's really cool to see you guys back out here and in releasing a new record. Any plans to maybe tour this eventually? Or were you more satisfied with making something in the in the studio?

ROLAND ORZABAL: No, no, we're coming. We'll be there. Starting next month.

CURT SMITH: There are plans for touring next year, 2022. Year. So yes, we'll be on tour. The plan is next summer, we're very excited about it primarily because we get to play some new material for the first time in a long time. Which was really the, the prime reason why we wanted to make this record initially, was because it was kind of getting a bit, you know, every night--I mean, obviously we have a big body of work, but it's still a limited amount of songs you can call from. So now we have no whole album's worth of material that we can now bring in new songs from so it's going to be fun.

Alright, that sounds like good news. With that I'm going to let you guys go Curt Smith and Roland Orzabal, Tears for Fears. The new record is "The Topping Point" and we're going to hear the title track here on the radio. Appreciate your time. Thank you so much for talking to us. So hopefully we see you somewhere in the Twin Cities, somewhere in Minnesota down the line when you're on your tour.

ROLAND ORZABAL: Thank you very much.

CURT SMITH: I believe that's in there somewhere.

All right, good. That's good to hear. Thank you.

External Link

Tears for Fears - Official Site

Credits

Host - Jill Riley

Guests - Roland Orzabal, Curt Smith

Producers - Jesse Wiza, Anna Weggel

Technical Director - Evan Clark