Roland Orzabal: Staying “Absolutely Vital” with Tears For Fears

If you look at the history of Tears For Fears, the original duo of Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith only made three albums – The Hurting, Songs from the Big Chair, and The Seeds Of Love – 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, here’s 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. They’re 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, that’s easy to say if you’re not in the grip of some belief system – which is what we were when we made The Hurting , with Arthur Janov’s psychology and philosophy. We wrote a few songs in England. We also had another bit of a false start, making a bit more – shall we say – “bombastic” 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; he’s been with the band for many years now. We’d 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 Charlton’s wife made a lovely lunch. At some point afterwards, Gary said to us, “You’re not going to get a good record made with that guy in that studio.”

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, “Why don’t you do some tracks with him?” 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 “speed dating” 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. They’re bringing in what are called top-line guys nowadays.

Melodies and all.

I’m thinking, “Well, what am I then? What am I supposed to be doing here, if I’m not doing the top-line?” I don’t mean to sound arrogant, but here I am working with guys who aren’t as successful as me.

Well, you’ve written some pretty iconic melodies!

Exactly. It’s all quite strange. I also am one of these people who can come up with ideas very quickly when I’m in that slightly meditative state; where I’m 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 that’s 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. There’s 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 wasn’t the right place to be, so he approached Universal, who have our back catalog. They had this plan, which is exactly what they’d done with Jeff Lynne [ Tape Op #92 ], and it worked. They took two of the songs [“Stay” and “I Love You but I’m Lost”] 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 didn’t 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 didn’t like it. It’s not surprising, because that songwriting process, where everyone is shouting out ideas, didn’t suit Curt. Curt is more studied. He’ll sit in a room and won’t 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 wasn’t into it. He wasn’t into being in Tears For Fears. He didn’t need to be in Tears For Fears and didn’t 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 “No Small Thing.” That was the point at which Curt became interested again. He sprang to life. Then “Rivers of Mercy,” “Master Plan,” and “Break The Man” 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. What’s beautiful about working with Charlton is that he’s an incredible interpreter and moderator. He understands what I’m 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.

You’ve 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 [Apple’s] 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 they’ve got soundproofing in a room, they can make a record in a bedroom. We couldn’t 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 wouldn’t 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 it’s not hi-fi. It’s 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 didn’t 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 don’t have anything hardwired. I’m using a Universal Audio Apollo interface. I have a few good microphones, my favorite being a Telefunken. I can’t remember the actual model number, but it’s the typical vocal mic. I use that on acoustic guitars as well. I plug my electric guitars straight into the module and use Native Instruments’ Guitar Rig, which Charlton hates because he’s more of an amp man. But that’s what I use! I use all the Native Instruments sounds. I’ve got a million plug-ins.

Right. It is quite a different world.

Oh, it’s completely different now. Having said that, you need something in the chain – some kind of distortion – 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, that’s the thing. We decided what we didn’t want to do. What I call the 2016 album is “the broken album.” We sent that off to people to mix. That’s fine if you’re in the room with someone, and you become the pain in the ass that the mixer absolutely hates. You keep saying, “This, this, and this,” a million things on your list. Doing that over the internet is very, very difficult. We didn’t like the mixes. So, [for The Tipping Point ] we said, “Let’s not mix the album. If we like the sound of it, we will use that and then we’ll touch it up.” I did a couple of mixes on my laptop; “My Demons” and “End of Night.” I chose Tim Palmer [ Tape Op #99 ] – who I’ve worked with a lot. I’ve done two albums with him, and he mixed Everybody Loves a Happy Ending . I trust him like crazy. He mixed “The Tipping Point.” He could have probably mixed the album if we’d have had a bit more time and money. Charlton’s 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.

I’ve been to Tim’s studio before and interviewed him outside of Austin.

That’s 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. He’s a genius. He came along to this playback session we had in London for the new album. That’s the first time I’ve met him in person. He’s 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. I’d made most of the music, so it was like I didn’t 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 didn’t get. I’ll give you an example of that. When “Sowing the Seeds Of Love” was mixed – just before Christmas 1988 – we were happy. Curt was happy. I was happy. [Co-producer] David Baskin was happy. We took it away. It was called the “overnight” mix. This will give you a bit of history. We came in the next day, and all we did was edged down Curt’s 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 couldn’t make sense of everything. He played it to me, and I said, “Okay, don’t worry about it. Forget it!” He said, “What? You don’t want me to put it down?” I said, “No!” Apparently, I’m the only person who’s ever told him not to put something down. Of course, he mixed “Woman in Chains,” which is absolutely incredible. We did six months of remixing “Sowing the Seeds of Love.” When it came to collating the record, David Bates pulled out a mix called the “overnight” mix. He said, “That’s the one.” Did he think about how much money we spent – or was charged to us – because he had no confidence? He had no confidence, and he couldn’t 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 wasn’t in place, David Bates was confused. Imagine it: you’re an A&R man who has looked after Tears For Fears’ songs, pushing them to put guitars on their records, pushing them to become more “rock,” and helping us sell millions of records around the world. Then you walk into a studio years later, and there’s gospel music and Manu Katché playing all these crazy drum parts. You’re going to think, “What the hell has happened?”

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 we’re 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. He’d moved to New York. I was probably thinking about having kids, so that was a big change. It was really the touring; that’s when we fall apart. It happens almost every tour. If it’s a big one, it’s stressful. When you get stressed, you start to blame people. “I’m not enjoying myself. It’s his fault!” Of course, it’s not his fault at all. We’re getting on really well now and doing promo together.

I know you’re 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 you’re making a record in a recording studio.

What do you see with the future of Tears For Fears?

We can’t see the future. We don’t know. The timing is right for this record, without a doubt. I’m not quite sure what sort of cycle Curt and I are driven by or connected to. I would also say this: It’s easy to make a record. We could make a record every other year. We’re no longer a mainstream pop act. We’re 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 ‘70s. Steely Dan, Little Feat, Pink Floyd, and even back to The Beatles. We’re now in our niche. Because we tour a lot, there’s no point making a record unless we feel it is absolutely vital. And this is what we feel with this one.

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