If you look at the history of Tears For Fears, the original duo of Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith only made three albums â The Hurting, Songs from the Big Chair, and The Seeds Of Love â before splitting in 1991. But what albums they were! The Hurting proved that new technology could be harnessed in service of very emotional music. Songs from the Big Chair became a massive hit, with expanded production and goals. The Seeds Of Love was a studio tour de force and a massive production. After their breakup, Roland carried the band on without Curt, but a reunion in 2000 led to the album Everybody Loves a Happy Ending. Now, 17 years later, hereâs the follow-up, The Tipping Point, and some interesting stories to go with it.
The Tipping Point has a really interesting backstory. I was curious about your previous management, the co-writing, and how that threw everything askew for you two.
Yeah, I guess there were a couple of false starts. I always write songs. I do it all the time. Theyâre not always what I would consider Tears For Fears songs. The initial thrust was that we would try and do something that had the sparseness and honesty of The Hurting. But, again, thatâs easy to say if youâre not in the grip of some belief system â which is what we were when we made The Hurting, with Arthur Janovâs psychology and philosophy. We wrote a few songs in England. We also had another bit of a false start, making a bit more â shall we say â âbombasticâ music. Think Queen. We jokingly called the album Tears For Fears, The Musical. That was the point at which our manager, Gary Gersh at the time, came in. We were working with Charlton Pettus, who is our guitarist, co-songwriter, and co-producer; heâs been with the band for many years now. Weâd made Everybody Loves a Happy Ending with him in his studio in L.A. Gary came in, and we had about four songs on the go, none of which have made it onto this album. It was a very pleasant meeting, and Charltonâs wife made a lovely lunch. At some point afterwards, Gary said to us, âYouâre not going to get a good record made with that guy in that studio.â
Wow.
I mean, based on the material we played him, he had a point. So, we started off on this journey. At the time, Gary was listening to Sohn [Christopher Michael Taylor]. Very contemporary at the time; absolutely beautiful album [Tremors]. The first thing he said was, âWhy donât you do some tracks with him?â That started a whole procedure. At least Sohn tried to come up with very original material. We did a couple of tracks with him. Then we did what we call the âspeed datingâ writing, with modern hit songwriters. As opposed to not modern hit songwriters? It was all a bit strange. This process took years. I was working in a studio with a collective group; sometimes four or five people, sometimes even more. Theyâre bringing in what are called top-line guys nowadays.
Melodies and all.
Iâm thinking, âWell, what am I then? What am I supposed to be doing here, if Iâm not doing the top-line?â I donât mean to sound arrogant, but here I am working with guys who arenât as successful as me.
Well, youâve written some pretty iconic melodies!
Exactly. Itâs all quite strange. I also am one of these people who can come up with ideas very quickly when Iâm in that slightly meditative state; where Iâm opening a part of the brain up to the ether, as we say. I can do that. Also, I can just riff. I can come up with gobbledygook. I am not self-conscious at all. A lot of it is noise, a lot of it is crazy, and a lot of it is dark, like David Bowie. But thatâs not how we got the new Tears For Fears album. We got it in the usual way, by a lot of blood, sweat, and tears. A lot of banging our heads against a brick wall. Thereâs nothing much spontaneous about the new album.
Did you have to take a break, scrap this other way of working, and then reconvene?
Well, no. We actually finished an album. We had 12 tracks in 2016. We had been signed to Warner Bros. Our manager Gary decided that that wasnât the right place to be, so he approached Universal, who have our back catalog. They had this plan, which is exactly what theyâd done with Jeff Lynne [Tape Op #92], and it worked. They took two of the songs [âStayâ and âI Love You but Iâm Lostâ] and put out a greatest hits with the two new songs [Rule the World: The Greatest Hits]. Once that got in the charts, they would come out with our new album. In the process, Universal managed to get the two tracks off us for Greatest Hits and then didnât sign the album.
Oh, no.
That was a management/lawyer fuck-up, okay? Having said that, it worked in our favour long term, because when we removed the two tracks from the Greatest Hits, we looked at the album, and Curt specifically didnât like it. Itâs not surprising, because that songwriting process, where everyone is shouting out ideas, didnât suit Curt. Curt is more studied. Heâll sit in a room and wonât say anything until afterwards.
Right.
In order for us to make a balanced Tears For Fears album, we scrapped half of what we had. We kept the songs that we agreed on, the songs which we felt were absolutely vital, and then we started again. I got together with Curt at the beginning of 2020, before the pandemic was announced. Curt wasnât into it. He wasnât into being in Tears For Fears. He didnât need to be in Tears For Fears and didnât need the money. Fair enough. So, for the first time in many, many decades, we sat down together at his house in L.A. with two acoustic guitars and an iPhone, recording, and came up with a song called âNo Small Thing.â That was the point at which Curt became interested again. He sprang to life. Then âRivers of Mercy,â âMaster Plan,â and âBreak The Manâ all came afterwards. We ended up going full circle, working with Charlton Pettus in his studio.
He ended up co-producing and mixing a lot of the album.
I did a lot of recording at my home in England, and I was sending it off to Curt to listen to. It all came together. Whatâs beautiful about working with Charlton is that heâs an incredible interpreter and moderator. He understands what Iâm talking about, all the detailed aspects of recording. He also understands what Curt talks about; all the big picture elements not being correct sonically or sounds not being emotive enough. It works really well. I think getting together with Curt and actually making music again was the cure for everything.
Youâve described the Tears For Fears recording process as being insular. It sounds as if you were trying something very non-insular before this.
Well, nowadays people have got [Appleâs] GarageBand or Logic Pro on their laptops. They have [Antares] Auto-Tune, and all these little boxes. They can plug in a decent microphone. As long as theyâve got soundproofing in a room, they can make a record in a bedroom. We couldnât do that back in the day. We had 12-foot-long mixing consoles and seven-foot-tall computers that had less computational power than laptops. I feel very privileged to have started recording on analogue tape machines, plus getting to follow through the birth of digital to what we have now.
When you guys started, it was some of the earliest samplers. I assume the Fairlight CMI. It was a new process of recording, especially on The Hurting.
Oh, yeah. It was an incredibly exciting time. We were kids and very much in the right place at the right time. If you think about every time a new keyboard would come out⊠I remember the [Yamaha] DX7. I remember the first [E-mu] Emulator, which was 8-bit. I wrote most of Songs from the Big Chair on a [Sequential Circuits] Prophet-5 and a [Linn Electronics] LinnDrum, the LM-2. It was having access to those instruments that gave birth to the music. We wouldnât have done it otherwise. I remember when the DX7 came around, you saw the presets being used on virtually every hit song at the time. The 8-bit sampling gave it a specific sound, which translates onto every speaker because itâs not hi-fi. Itâs limited amounts of information.
Definitely.
I remember, at one point, when I turned my recording studio into a guest accommodation, and I had to get rid of essentially the history of the electronic keyboards in one swoop, from the [Roland] JP-8 all the way to Korg M1 modules and a [Korg] Wavestation. I didnât have to get rid of them, but I chose to.
Do you have a fairly involved home setup for recording at this point?
Not really. I could take what I have and put it anywhere. I donât have anything hardwired. Iâm using a Universal Audio Apollo interface. I have a few good microphones, my favorite being a Telefunken. I canât remember the actual model number, but itâs the typical vocal mic. I use that on acoustic guitars as well. I plug my electric guitars straight into the module and use Native Instrumentsâ Guitar Rig, which Charlton hates because heâs more of an amp man. But thatâs what I use! I use all the Native Instruments sounds. Iâve got a million plug-ins.
Right. It is quite a different world.
Oh, itâs completely different now. Having said that, you need something in the chain â some kind of distortion â to give it that warmth and soul. Because nothing ever compares to recording on analogue. Nothing.
When you guys mixed The Tipping Point, what was the process for that? I know Charlton mixed a lot, and you also mixed some together as a band.
Well, again, thatâs the thing. We decided what we didnât want to do. What I call the 2016 album is âthe broken album.â We sent that off to people to mix. Thatâs fine if youâre in the room with someone, and you become the pain in the ass that the mixer absolutely hates. You keep saying, âThis, this, and this,â a million things on your list. Doing that over the internet is very, very difficult. We didnât like the mixes. So, [for The Tipping Point] we said, âLetâs not mix the album. If we like the sound of it, we will use that and then weâll touch it up.â I did a couple of mixes on my laptop; âMy Demonsâ and âEnd of Night.â I chose Tim Palmer [Tape Op #99] â who Iâve worked with a lot. Iâve done two albums with him, and he mixed Everybody Loves a Happy Ending. I trust him like crazy. He mixed âThe Tipping Point.â He could have probably mixed the album if weâd have had a bit more time and money. Charltonâs absolutely brilliant. And Curt nowadays, his ears are incredible. I had to buy a pair of speakers like Curt uses at home so I could hear what he was complaining about. Curt has been brilliant with the mixes.
Iâve been to Timâs studio before and interviewed him outside of Austin.
Thatâs right, yeah.
I interviewed Steven Wilson a while back and we talked about The Seeds Of Love and the remix project he did for that.
Oh, wow. Heâs a genius. He came along to this playback session we had in London for the new album. Thatâs the first time Iâve met him in person. Heâs quite a funny guy. He was saying that he almost gave up [remixing it]. It was remarkably over the top, that album. I think it sprang from the fact that we were, or I was, impossible to produce at that point in time. Impossible.
How so? Why do you think?
I was growing older and getting more experienced. Iâd made most of the music, so it was like I didnât want anyone telling me what to do anymore. Curt and I, from the age of 18, had sat in recording studios, always the guys at the front, behind the producer and engineer. Always the guys who never leave the room. Always the guys with opinions. All we needed with The Seeds Of Love was the confidence of the record company, which we didnât get. Iâll give you an example of that. When âSowing the Seeds Of Loveâ was mixed â just before Christmas 1988 â we were happy. Curt was happy. I was happy. [Co-producer] David Baskin was happy. We took it away. It was called the âovernightâ mix. This will give you a bit of history. We came in the next day, and all we did was edged down Curtâs chorus vocals about half a dB. It was nothing. That mix was rejected by the record company, David Bates [A&R]. We then spent six months remixing that song.
Oh geez!
We had Bob Clearmountain [Tape Op #84, #129] come in, and he couldnât make sense of everything. He played it to me, and I said, âOkay, donât worry about it. Forget it!â He said, âWhat? You donât want me to put it down?â I said, âNo!â Apparently, Iâm the only person whoâs ever told him not to put something down. Of course, he mixed âWoman in Chains,â which is absolutely incredible. We did six months of remixing âSowing the Seeds of Love.â When it came to collating the record, David Bates pulled out a mix called the âovernightâ mix. He said, âThatâs the one.â Did he think about how much money we spent â or was charged to us â because he had no confidence? He had no confidence, and he couldnât deal with us as individuals. He could deal with his friend Chris [Hughes, who produced the first two albums], and Chris could deal with us as individuals, so the hierarchy was in place. Once the hierarchy wasnât in place, David Bates was confused. Imagine it: youâre an A&R man who has looked after Tears For Fearsâ songs, pushing them to put guitars on their records, pushing them to become more ârock,â and helping us sell millions of records around the world. Then you walk into a studio years later, and thereâs gospel music and Manu KatchĂ© playing all these crazy drum parts. Youâre going to think, âWhat the hell has happened?â
Well, it was a process. Do you think making that album took a toll on the relationship between you and Curt?
To be honest with you, no. Curt and I always get on very well when weâre recording together. We talk to each other and listen to each other. We argue. I think both of us were ready to do something solo after that. Definitely. Curt was starting to live a different life in America. Heâd moved to New York. I was probably thinking about having kids, so that was a big change. It was really the touring; thatâs when we fall apart. It happens almost every tour. If itâs a big one, itâs stressful. When you get stressed, you start to blame people. âIâm not enjoying myself. Itâs his fault!â Of course, itâs not his fault at all. Weâre getting on really well now and doing promo together.
I know youâre about to announce an upcoming tour. In these days, do you find touring to be easier?
It is easier, because my lovely wife Emily [Rath Orzabal] accompanies me on every show. We have a lot of fun together. We go out to all these Michelin star restaurants as much as we can. We have an amazing band of very, very nice people. With the in-ear monitors nowadays, you can get it to sound like youâre making a record in a recording studio.
What do you see with the future of Tears For Fears?
We canât see the future. We donât know. The timing is right for this record, without a doubt. Iâm not quite sure what sort of cycle Curt and I are driven by or connected to. I would also say this: Itâs easy to make a record. We could make a record every other year. Weâre no longer a mainstream pop act. Weâre not. We left that orbit during The Seeds Of Love. We started to not listen to pop music anymore, but instead chose to go back to our influences from the â70s. Steely Dan, Little Feat, Pink Floyd, and even back to The Beatles. Weâre now in our niche. Because we tour a lot, thereâs no point making a record unless we feel it is absolutely vital. And this is what we feel with this one.
