Remembered as a relic of the 80’s Tears for Fears history was rooted in trauma, something
a lot of young music fans in the 80’s identified with. But by the 90’s the band would hit some
turbulent times and today we’re going to explore whatever happened to the band Tears for Fears.
Tears for Fears leaders Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith were both products of broken homes growing
up in Bath England. Smith would tell VIce "We both come from broken homes. We were both brought up
solely by our mothers, more or less," Smith would have a brief career as a criminal serving time
in juvenile detention that came to a head when he was arrested for stealing cameras from his school.
while Orzabal would have exposure to show business early on in his childhood.
Before his parents divorced, they would run an in-home promotion agency for working men’s clubs.
The entertainers who came through his childhood house included strippers,
musicians & ventriloquists It was this exposure that gave Orzabal an introduction of the world of
show business telling the morning call , "It was an unorthodox house,". "Always a lot of
entertaining people around including these three absolutely great guitarists who used to come by.
From watching them, I sort of fell in love with the guitar." Orzabal’s father a world
war 2 veteran suffered from post traumatic stress syndrome and had a chaotic relationship
with Roland's mother telling the guardian Orzabal I had suffered from depression in
my childhood. My dad had been in the second world war, had electric shock treatment,
suffered from anxiety and was abusive to my mum. I kept a lid on my feelings at school but,
when I was 18, dropped out of everything and couldn't even be bothered to get out of bed.
Orzabal would become a self taught guitarist at the age of 9 and soon
started playing in bands with his tastes including Paul Simon and the Talking Heads'
For Orzabal he would take a liking to glam acts including David Bowie and T. Rex,
but unlike a lot of kids who discovered music at the local record store he’d
get his hands on song books and find bands on the program top of the pops.
Smith, and Orzabal would meet at the age of 13 after being introduced by a mutual friend.
He would tell the morning call his first meeting with Smith remembering
. "We went to call for Curt but his mother said he wasn't allowed out because he'd been in a fight,"
Instead, the boys stayed inside and played records adding
"We found we had a lot in common. We seemed to have the same sense
of humor and we both liked cute girls," "What's more, we were the same height."
Orzabal would admit to being blown away by Smith’s singing talents after witnessing
him sing along to a blue oyster cult album. The pair started soon started playing together,
first in heavy metal cover bands before taking some time apart during which Smith attended
college. It was during this break that Orzabal got involved in folk music and formed a band.
But the pair’s break would be temporary as they soon reconnected and played together
as part of the mod group called Graduate who landed a record deal. Both men were
18 at the time and it was now 1980. Despite Graduate having a little taste of success in
Spain with their single Elvis should play ska the band broke up the following year in 1981.
Smith would tell Vice the turning point for both musicians stating
“What changed our view of music was Gary Numan," "It wasn't even so much liking him,
it's that we were kids following trends and trends in those days were really powerful,"
It would also be Peter Gabriel's third self-titled album and Talking Heads
Remain in Light that influenced both musicians. At 17 years of age Orzabal would be introduced to
the writing of psychologist Arhur Janov’s by a guitar teacher. after reading his book the
Primal scream. Janov would became most famous for pioneering something called scream therapy which
theorizes that neurotic behavior in one’s adult years has it’s roots in repressed feelings and
childhood trauama. Orzabal soon introduced smith to the same form of therapy telling Rolling Stone
I rushed out to everybody I knew and started blubbering to them about it. Everybody thought
I was a nutter. The only person who could see any sense in it was Curt.”. In fact Tears for
Fears would take their name from a chapter in Janov’s “Prisoner of Pain.” novel dealing with
childhood nightmares. Tears for Fears would record a handful of demos with the help of ian stanley
who allowed them to use his 24 track recorder and it was these demos that got them a record deal. .
The band’s debut record 1983’s The Hurting was very very much coloured
by the pair’s childhood with Orzabel revealing
We believed we were victims and that very much colored our approach to The Hurting,
thinking that we were born neutral beings and that our tough upbringing troubled us,"
"The way of releasing the trauma of my childhood was to do primal therapy,
which I did for six years. It was really gimmicky and very Californian."
The pair would end up meeting Janov in the mid 80’s but were disappointed by the author who
had now gone hollywood. The author would take the pair to luunch and tried to convince them
to write a broadway musical about primal therapy, but they declined. Getting back to The Hurting.
The album was full of gloomy tracks including , watch me bleed and suffer the children.
One of the biggest songs off their debut album would be mad world which Orzabal told the Guardian
“I wrote it when I was 19, on the dole in Bath. We're known as a synthesiser group,
but back then I just had an acoustic guitar. I've not told many people this, but I was
listening to Radio 1 on this tinny radio and Duran Duran's Girls on Film came on. I just thought:
"I'm going to have a crack at something like that." I did and ended up with Mad World. It
sounded pretty awful on guitar, though, with just me singing…Eventually, we made the first
demo of Mad World still with me singing. But I didn't like it. So I said to Curt [Smith]: "Look,
you sing it." And suddenly it sounded fabulous." The press made a lot out of primal scream therapy
influences and lyrical content of the band’s first record something that irritated the
band members with Smith looking back at the album years later telling the LA times in 1985
“It’s hard to looking to now--it seems like what was on our minds so long ago. We made it when we
were 20, and it had a lot to do with our emotions between 10 and 15. Recording it wasn’t fun--it
was hard to listen to just after we did it. It was hard dealing with those feelings. Maybe we were
taking ourselves a bit too seriously then adding The press has made too much about this,”
“It’s been written about so often that people should be bored with it. I know I am.”
While the group’s debut album wasn’t a huge hit in America it still sold a million copies worldwide..
The success of the band’s first record did little to impact the lifestyles of Smith and Orzabal.
They still stayed close to their home of Bath, didn’t have a ton of celebrity friends
or live a promiscuous life marrying their high school girlfriends.
As the duo began work on their follow up record they were caught between what their record
company polygram wanted and where hey wanted to go artistically. Orzabal would tell Las Vegas Weekly
“I suppose our whole thrust, musically and philosophically, as Tears for Fears came out
in The Hurting,” R“When we finished that album, it was almost like, ‘Okay, well, we’ve kind of said
our bit. What are we going to do now?’ But, of course, we were successful, and the record company
was pushing us to come up with another single.” Bowing to record label pressure to “strike while
the iron’s hot”, the band would return to the studio to work on new material,
the result of which was standalone single The Way You Are. The single would Peak at No.24,
it was a commercial disappointment following the momentum they’d achieved from their debut
album – though the band themselves feelt angry that they had compromised themselves artistically
to fulfil a commercial obligation. Smith would tell Consequence of SOund “The Way You Are was the
least favourite song of either of ours. Definitely one of the worst recordings we’ve done. We were
basically coerced by the record company to go in and do something to release quickly after
The Hurting was successful and that’s what we came up with. The A&R guy behind us at the time
thought it was the best thing we’d ever done. It was just so fragmented to me and so not a song;
it’s just something created in the studio. It would be the way you are that made the
band realize they had to change their musical direction.
with Smith telling the LA Times “We started an album at the end of 1983 but we didn’t
like it,”. “It was too much like the first one, and we were determined to do something different
There was record-company pressure after the first album. It was successful worldwide and
they wanted us to do another album, no matter what the quality, just as long as we did it
quickly. But we weren’t willing.” While the album connected with listeners who could relate to the
difficult upbrings of the duo,some critics labelled their debut album as pretentious. .
As a result of all the pressure the band changed their approach
with Smith pointing out in the same interview “We took a break from serious recording--a couple
of months to experiment and play around with music, try things we had never tried before.”
The result would be a more straight forward pop album in 1985’s “Songs From the Big Chair”
with Smith adding to the LA Times ”The material on the album is basically straight pop,” “the
kind of stuff played on the radio all the time. The heavy focus of the band’s dark and gloomy
lyrics led the group to not include a lyric sheet for their sophomore effort with Orzabal
telling the morning call "We noticed people were reviewing the lyrics apart from the music,""But
you've got to lump it all together. People took what we put across in the first album
to be all there was to us," he laments. "Such an expression of feelings may have been a bit
heavy for people to accept and some people got the impression that we didn't know how to smile.
Adding about the group’s second alum "What I think we've done with this album is put across
a more balanced picture of our personalities by combining emotion with humor album is far more
representative of us…. 'Songs From The Big Chair' shows more maturity; this is us becoming men."
Based on the strength of several big singles including ‘Shout,’ ‘Head over
Heels,’ and Everybody Wants to Rule the WOrld’ the album to go platinum five times in America.
It was also during this time the band drew frequent comparisons to Wham who came up at
the same time, but the band shruggd off these comparisons. The media frequently summraized
both group’s audiences as young and female, but Smith would insist to the lA Times “There’s a lot
of older people at our shows too,” Smith insisted. “We appeal to people who are serious about music,
not just to young girls" he'd say. When Songs From the Big Chair took off in
such a big way, Smith said he and Orzabal agreed that a long rest following the incessant touring
and interviews that accompanied the project. After a much needed break the duo began writing
again in late 1986 before entering the studio the following year. But these sessions weren’t
fruitful with smith telling the sun-sentinel "We got together that year, started playing,
and realized after several months, we really hated what we'd done."the band would end up throwing
away two years worth of work with smith adding "We realized we wanted to produce the new album
ourselves,. We wanted a more accessible feel to the music." it was during this time the band also
added a young pianist and vocalist Oleta Adams who they met years back in kansas city while on tour.
The band would spent nearly another year and a half working on new music resulting in the record
seeds of love which came out in late 1989. The album contained more politically themed songs, a
sign of the times as a divided country re-relected UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher giving her,
her third term . The four year gap between albums didn’t seem to have much pressure from their label
despite spending a millions pounds recording the album with Smith recalling to the sun-sentinel
"We were very lucky that Polygram didn't hang all over us," Smith said. "We know we
were running late, but not until 1988 did we feel any (record company) pressure."
Regarding the politically themed songs Smith would tell the Sun-Sentinel
"We've never considered ourselves overtly political, but when it comes to English
politics -- people like Margaret Thatcher -- you cannot just stand by and ignore all
that's happening around us," "We know we have a method of reaching people,
but we have never wanted to preach. We like to make our views palatable, music that is easy to
swallow,and I think we've done that" he'd say. While the album was a huge success, critically
acclaimed and spurred several successful singles, the band wasn’t without their
detractors. The sun-sentinel would write in 1990 during a profile on the band and i quote
Because of the band's unique writing style and penchant for avoiding conventional
bridge and chorus formations, many have dubbed them pompous -- throwbacks to the
mid-'70s art-rock era that featured such groups as The Moody Blues and Genesis.
Critics also have accused the band of borrowing a bit too heavily from the Beatles.
The recent single, Sowing the Seeds of Love, contains arrangements and
several progressions that are similar to the Lennon-McCartney classic, I Am the Walrus.
Smith would answer back these accusations in the same paper
"Well, yes, it was completely intentional," Smith said. "But I think we did it in such a way that
people liked it."I read that Paul (McCartney) said on Italian television that we'd 'ripped him off.'
Well, fair enough. We did. But no one should own a rhythm. No one owns any kind of music" he'd say.
Despite the success Smith and Orzabal seemed to know that the end was near for the time being.
In fact at one point Orzabal was considering calling the album famous last words.
The three year time frame to write the band’s last album took it’s toll with Smith going through a
divorce at the time and Orzabal’s perfectionist attitude would stifle creative sessions.
Smith would leave the band in the early 90’s while Orzabal kept the band’s name. It was in
1992 that the band’s greatest hits album came out and none of Smith’s compositions made the record.
The hartford courrant perfectly summarized the breakup and the creative leader in the band saying
While he distinguished himself as "The Guy With the Shorter Hair," it was clear that Roland
Orzabal was responsible for most of the band's creative direction. The Washington Post would
echo the same sentiment in 1993 writing Tears for Fears had one guy who seemed to do all the
work and all the talking, while the other one apparently just showed up for the video shoots.
The band’s follow up album the smith less Elemental would be
put out in 1993 and it would be their last album with phonogram and
mercury records. The departure of Smith would influence Orzabals songwriting process keeping
things simpler recording the record in his home studio to keep costs down and be near his son.
Orzabal would release another album under the tears for fears moniker in 1995 titled Raoul
and the Kings of Spain before the band underwent a period of inactivity. It wouldn’t be until the
early 2000’s that Orzabal and Smith reconnected after dealing with some band related business.
Orzabal was still living in England, while smith had moved across the atlantic and was
now in America. They would reconvene and release their first album together in nearly a decade
2004’s everybody loves a happy ending. In the subsequent years the band would tour extensively
with other 80’s era acts and celebrating the anniversary’s of their older albums,
but not all of it was smooth sailing. Orzbul would deal with turbulent times reeling from the
death of his longtime wife Caroline who he’d been married to since 1982 who would pass away in 2017.
She would deal with addiction and mental illness leading him into his own addiction,
going to counselling. Orzabal would tell MSN “Things started to look up. I did therapy, grief
counselling and a couple of rehabs, met a new woman, and my general demeanour and approach to
life started to brighten up.He would start writing new music with Smith leading to the group’s latest
effort 2022’s Tipping Point which peaked at number 8 on the US Billboard album charts. That does
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