February 25, 2022 • 30 mins
Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith discuss the difficult creation of 'The Tipping Point,' the band's first record in nearly two decades. The album took shape after numerous false starts over the course of almost 10 years. Early sessions with a crew of outside songwriters left them so uninspired that they nearly parted company once again, but then the pair got back to basics, holing up in a room with acoustic guitars, just like that did when they first teamed up as teens. The resulting record is a stunning display of musical virtuosity and radical vulnerability, inspired in large part by the death of Orzabal's wife. Occasionally dark and moody — but never maudlin — it's a hopeful meditation on mental health, mortality, and moving on.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of Inside the
Studio on iHeart Radio. My name is Jordan run Tug,
but enough about me today, I'm speaking to one of
the most innovative and influential groups of the nineteen eighties.
Named for a quote from pioneering psychologist Arthur Yan of
their stunning breakthrough, The Hurting helped bring the topic of
mental health into popular music and radio hits like Mad World,
(00:25):
Shout Sowing the Seeds of Love, and of course, the
immortal MTV classic Everybody Wants to Rule the World helped
inspire the sound of a host of contemporary artists, ranging
from the Weekend Lord in the ninety to hip hop
titans like Drake and Kanye West. The duo parted company
at the dawn of the nineties, only to join forces
once again for the well received two thousand three album
(00:47):
Everybody Loves a Happy Ending. As the title suggests, this
was intended to be a short lived reunion. Most of
the tie up loose ends musically and give fans a
sense of closure, But now, almost two decades later, they're
back with the tipping point. The record had something of
a difficult birth, taking shape over the course of nearly
ten years. Early sessions with a crew of outside songwriters
(01:10):
left the band so uninspired that they nearly parted company
once again. But then the pair got back to basics,
holding up in a room with acoustic guitars, just like
they did when they first teamed up as teens. The
resulting record is a stunning display of musical virtuosity and
radical vulnerability, inspired in large part by the death of
Roland Orzabal's wife. Occasionally dark and moody, but never Maudlin,
(01:33):
it's a hopeful meditation on mental health, mortality, and moving on.
I'm so happy to welcome rolland Orzibal and Kurt Smith,
who together are Tears for Fears. In the statement for
the album's release, you had words to the effective before
(01:55):
everything went so right. First, everything had to go wrong,
And I feel like that's how the best arts it
a little bit of adversity. Uh. You originally working on
a very different album made with a host of outside writers,
basically a collection of potential singles, rather than an album
that that spoke for you and your shared experience. And
I think I've read that you jokingly called it UH
(02:15):
twos for Fierce to Musical, which sums it up pretty well.
How did you go from there to the tipping point
which is just so deeply personal and meaningful and honest
and just has such a surplus of soul. Was there
a point when you know you realize you had to
go in this different direction? Um? Yeah, I think so.
I mean we were, as you said, we we've it
(02:38):
felt like a collection of attempts at a single. So
so the premise was, you know that we we should
go and write with you know, modern songwriter hit writers
produces um and try and drag us kicking and screaming
into the twenty one century. Um. But the problem with
that is you don't have a shared history. Um. They
(03:00):
don't have that. The lyrical content um, and the subject
matters really kind of secondary to them. Most of the time.
They're looking for sort of melody lines and production more
than anything else. And we didn't feel it was particularly honest,
and by the end of it, well, we felt we
were left it with. You know, basically, we had this
finished album with twelve tracks. There were twelve attempts at
(03:21):
a modern hit single, and it didn't have any storyline
or arc or EBB and flow and really didn't tell
our story. Um lyrically, it didn't have the depth, and
so we kind of went back to the drawing board
and went full circle and decided to sit down in
my house in Los Angeles and write with two acoustic
(03:42):
guitars and see what came from that. And this one song,
the opening track of the album, No Small Thing, came
and we had in in. In the sort of interim
period between deciding we wanted to finish this and writing
that song, we'd gone back over the old material to
decide if anything there was worth keeping, and we decided
(04:04):
we really liked five songs. The recordings were secondary. We
just knew those five songs fit in with the storyline,
and um, so we we set about finishing the other
half of the album and No Small Thing was the
first thing to come. And then it became kind of easy. Um,
you know, it was it was us realizing that we
(04:25):
really are an album band and not a single band.
We've never gone in search of a hit single, never
have done in our careers. We've you know, the singles
we've released have only ever been singles taken from an
album we have finished. So um, we went, you know,
we we went at it with the viewpoint of finishing
something we considered to be a good album. You mentioned
(04:48):
those small thing It's such an incredible way to open
the record. It opens with a sound that I don't
traditionally associate with you, that kind of Southwestern acoustic guitar,
almost like a Malty Robins song. I got kind of
like al Paso vibes or something like that. It's it
really sounds like that was such a great breakthrough for
you when you reconnected as songwriters again. What what was
that experience like for you? Slipping back into those those
(05:10):
roles together kind of nose and those with guitars. What
was that experience like for you? Was it easy to
get back to that place? Yeah, I mean it was easy.
I think, you know it was the comfort level was fine,
and sitting down with two acoustics. We hadn't done that
since the hurting, and so it was us literally going
(05:31):
back to our roots. UM and I think you know,
Roland especially felt something was going to come from that
and and it did, you know, Um and Roland went
away and started working on that song. He it was
during just after that the writing session lockdown happened. So
Roland went back to England. Um, and and then he
(05:52):
couldn't get back to America. So then we started just
sending things back and forth to each other via email,
and Roland basically finished a lot of the song when
he was back in England, the sort of writing aspect
of what we had started. And he eventually got back
(06:13):
to America when they let him back in the country
at the end of August, and we went back into
the studio in September. We were done by Christmas. So
when you know what, when you know what you're doing,
process becomes easier, and I think left to our own devices,
and when we're both on the same page and we
both know what we want and that happens to be
(06:37):
the same thing, um, it becomes an easy process. It's
when we're fighting and looking for something that the process
is harder, when we don't quite know where we're going.
I can't think of a better opener to me, especially
with the line I've just got one more song to sing,
one more story to tell. It's hard not to take
that as autobiographical, knowing knowing your your background and your history. Yeah,
(07:00):
and I think so taking a way back to your
your previous album two thousand four is everybody loves a
happy ending. Did you have any notion that you were
going to carry on making records together or was that,
like the title, kind of meant to be a nice
way to to wrap things up? When did you when
I guess, did this process of wanting to make a
new record start for you? Well? Yeah, I mean, as
(07:22):
you said, with a happy ending, Um, it was. It
seemed like a good way to finish, literally a happy
ending of Kurt and I getting back together after a
nine year hiatus. Um. And it was a fun record
to make. It was. I relocated my family to Los Angeles.
(07:43):
All of a sudden, we were waking up to a
blue sky doing the school run under this with in
this beautiful weather, drop the kids off down onto the
tennis court, back into the shower, then down to the
recording studio to to do. Work on this album was fun.
We had a lot of fun working with chant Pettus,
(08:04):
who is a great communicator between the two of us,
a great modulator. Um. Yeah, we were very happy with
the record. Um it was very different to anything I've
done in the previous decade. But yeah, I mean we
didn't we we went act to promote it. We had
quite a bit coverage, good radio play in Britain, we
(08:25):
did some popular TV shows in the States. But we
looked at the record sales the next day and we
found that people were thinking, you know, people were like, oh, well,
it's Tears for Fears. We love Tears for Fears. Let's
go to the record store. So they would go to
the record store and then they buy a copy of
the Greatest Hits record. So you're you're not you're not
(08:46):
really shifting new product um. Following that, no, there was
no plan to make another record. I sort of came
back to England. The project cycle had finished and over
the years, over about ye must have been about more
than a decade, we just got better and better and better,
and we started to get this great reputation playing live.
(09:09):
And I mean, what is your process like for for
writing these songs. Is it more of a case of
almost like no small thing where you're starting with acoustic
instruments and working out chord sequences and melodic parts, or
do you actually start with um, getting a bunch of
scynth lines together and kind of working on almost like
a sonic bed and use that as the bedrock for
(09:31):
the track and build it up brick by brick how
or is it a combination of both. It's a combination
of both. Of course. Around seven years on this album,
we we've tried pretty much every meth writing available. We
worked on about in the excess of thirty songs, so
(09:53):
right at the end, um we could cheery pick. But
it was you know, we say cometh the hour come
of the songs because it was only in twenty twenty
that we we stumbled across the heart and soul and
guts of the record. Everything that came before it was
(10:18):
just leading up to that moment and listening back to
the songs we chose when we've sequenced them, it was
just an incredible experience. I mean, that's something I love
(10:38):
about your records is that they do stand together as
a whole and tell a story which I feel like
it's a lost art. I mean that's a degree of
care and a skill that I think that we've we've
lost in recent years. Uh. In your words, what is
the story of the tipping point? Is there a way
to that? You know that that that you sum it
up amongst yourselves, Well, I mean, so much had gone
(11:01):
on in the world, um, and then you know our
personal lives over the previous bunch of years. You know,
obviously our specifically site Roland's wife passing away during that time.
Obviously that was a big bit, had a big effect
on us, Roland in particular, and UM, So obviously there
(11:21):
are songs there about that. UM. But also on top
of that, you know, we've gone through political upheaval worldwide,
the rise of the right wing worldwide, four years of
Donald Trump in America, the Me Too movement, the Black
Lives Matter movement, the climate climate crisis, the start of
the pandemic, So there was a lot of subject matter. UM,
(11:43):
and now they're certainly we weren't, you know, stuck for
things to write about. And I think all of that
is included in parts on the album, some more obvious
than others. But but I feel the overall sense of
the album is one of of of of hope, you know,
that there's life at the end of the tunnel. UM.
We didn't want it. Our intention was not to make
(12:04):
this sort of modeling record that was kind of depressing. UM.
You know, I think that especially tracks like Rivers of
Mercy on the album, UM, which really does sort of
talk about redemption more than anything else. You know um
and I think that the redemption and hope probably a
(12:24):
two themes going through the album that that you know,
our answers to all those other things that we talk about,
you know, without getting into too much depth on every track,
I definitely feel positive by the time I finished it. Oh.
I second, I mean, Rivers of Mercy is an amazing track,
(12:47):
as I feel like it does such an amazing job
of juxtaposing the the upheaval in the streets at the
same time when we were kind of in an enforced
imprisonment for lack of a better word, in our homes
do to the pandemic, and I feel like that that
strange kind of push pull that's going on internally and globally,
really you feel that in that track, and especially coming
(13:11):
right after the track My Demons, which is I love
the interplay between those two songs. Me My Demons is
just such a monster of a song sonically and lyrically,
I mean, My Demons don't get out much what a
what a line, and then following with the comparative gentle
sonic scope of Rivers of Mercy. I love the interplay
between those two songs. In particular for me, that was
(13:32):
really such a key moment in the album that that bend. Yeah,
I think that's um, imprisonment is a good word. Yeah,
that's I think that's kind of what was happening. Yeah,
it was. It was very strange. Um, that's for rivers
of Moosey. We ended up writing songs of the band
instead of writing songs with all these strangers and people
(13:56):
play as he has been with us for you know,
for a long time, and Sharton Pettus presented us with
this backing track which was so calm, beautiful and serene
and had a sense of longing within it, and as
(14:17):
it was so beautiful to put a liraing melody too. Yes,
this was the time of Lockdown number one in Britain
and it coincided with the most incredible Mediterranean weather here.
So here I am in the West Country. Plenty big enough,
(14:38):
plenty enough space, you know, three acres, tennis court, recording studio,
all kinds of things, not much of a prison, or
a rather an elegant prison, shall we say. And feeling
this well, you know, this forced imprisonment, as you say,
that felt like freedom at the same time. And you
(15:00):
went out to the supermarket and there are security guards
but and then it was it was a very calm
and peaceful time. But when you turn if you put
on your computer, you turned on the news, you're looking
at all this rage contrast between the peace you can
feel inside and the information you're gleaning literally from thousands
(15:25):
and thousands of miles away. That is the zeitgeist. It's
not reflecting your inner state. So that's what that song's about.
And you're right, we come out of my demons. They
don't get out that much, especially especially lockdown um. But
it's just this. We start with the sounds of the
of the riots and sirens, and then we we sink
(15:50):
into this incredible feeling. It's almost like you are letting
yourself go, and you're letting yourself fall back into the ocean,
into the supportive waters, into the waters of redemption. And
it's almost suggesting that really the only way acts of
rage violence, some of it of course is understandably justified,
(16:15):
but the way forward is to find a place and
this might sound a bit hippie dippy, a finer place
of food gifts, because that's literally the only way you
are going to cleanse yourself. I think that's well said.
I mean, there's there's It's been commented on throughout your work,
(16:35):
throughout your history, but on this particular album, in particularly
the appearance of of of ghosts and specters that you know,
we we we sort of try to keep it bare.
I mean, it's there on the tipping point and in
a sense on my demons as well. Is making music
a kind of exorcism for you? I think it's a
way of acknowledging those ghosts, um acknowledging how important people
(17:06):
who are no longer here are. For instance, the title track,
it's a love song, but it's a love song for
someone you've lost, and that love it never goes. It's
locked in with your memory of them, and that in
itself is a beautiful thing, but yeah, it goes. It's
(17:27):
a symbol we use, we have used all a lot
in the past. I mean, thank you for sharing that
with me right now. And on on the songs. I mean,
there are so many moments on this album, I mean
the title track and please be happy among them that
that do come from from this this very personal tragedy
and and trauma and darkness, and and for that, I mean,
(17:49):
as a person, I apologize, and I'm sending you my
Best Wishes? Was there a concern about putting these moments
on the album, knowing that you would have to revisit
them on stage and you know, doing press for this
or what there had almost seemed almost disingenuous as artists
to think, well, it's silly that this is what I'm
dealing with right now, to pretend it's not happening. I
write about something else is not who I am. How
(18:14):
did you kind of strike that balance? Was it? Was
it a concern for you to put these out there?
I mean, I don't think it's ever a concern. You know.
Our concern initially really was that it didn't have the depth,
but it didn't have the meaning, and it didn't have
talk about subjects that were dear to us. You know.
I think that the best use of music for us
(18:36):
normally is to put these feelings into some sense of order,
you know. And you know I've said before that you
know a lot of the time when you're in these
moments of crisis or trying to work out what is
going on in the world or things externally, um, your
mind tends to go on this eternal kind of loop
of doom, you know. And the way we tend to
(18:58):
work it out, is to put it into so on
and somehow compartmentalize it, makes sense of it. And you know,
a lot of the songs, I would say most of
the songs in this album are an attempt by us
to make some sense out of things that are going on.
So in that sense, it's quite cathartic and and therapeutic
for us, Um And consequently you end up with an
(19:21):
album that has far more depth and far more meaning
to you personally, and I think to an audience, because
I'm sure a lot of people who listen to our
music are going through the same things and have the
same emotions. And you know, especially with you know, the
loss of someone in the sense of as you mentioned,
tipping point and please be happy the loss of Caroline Um.
(19:41):
You know, you're looking at the TV and you see
images and hospitals, you know, during the pandemic where people
all across the world are losing people. So in that sense,
it becomes more of a global thing than a person.
(20:04):
It's it's interesting to view this record against your your
first the hurting. I see them as as linked in
a certain way, almost as uh, you know, inverses or
mirrored image images of each other or something like that.
At least I see them certain similarities there. There are
definitely similarities. I think the difference is that the hurting
was you know, they're both a little angst written, but
(20:28):
on this album, I think we're making sense of what's
going on, whereas I'm there, I think we're more railing
against what is going on. We're angry at what's going on.
And this one comes from a or at least leaves
you with a far calmer feeling and a sense that
you know will work it out at some point. It's
just interesting for me to think of how you started
(20:49):
out pre Tears for Fears in the group you were in,
and then even as teens playing you know, Bloister Call
and led Zeppelin and original songs that were done in
that similar style. Was there a lightbulb moment for you
in terms of realizing that you could that would lead
you towards new kinds of songs that you could write
that would help you, uh process emotions, I guess in
(21:13):
a way and use music almost like as a as
a tool as opposed to you know, kind of these
more I don't want to say, you know, rock centric,
but you know something with maybe a little more depth
was there, whether people were there, either other artists or
people like Arthur Yanoff that, Um, it's kind of lead
you into realizing that music could have this whole other
layer inside the electronic music. So all of a sudden,
(21:39):
the two became a viable proposition because of the gene,
because of the tape machine, and we quickly adopted this
style and found we were very good at it. And
what was great is we could we could completely as
(22:00):
your ring and express the emotions of for the first time,
which we weren't really doing any before that writing personal songs. Um,
you know about what was going on inside us. But
it was the combination of that with these crazy electronic
arrangements that made the whole thing something something very special.
(22:25):
And it was our emotional honesty of early tears for
Fears that kind of separated us from a lot of
the what we would call utopian synthesizer groups like Human League.
Um synthesizer groups could who would only play a keyboard
with one finger. It was a kind of little bit
punk we were. We were actually guitarists, and so we
(22:50):
were kind of approaching It would also be in the
orchestra at school, had been in the choir, and we
were approaching the arrangements in a completely different way. Yeah, man,
I think also that combined with you know, at the
time when we left graduate obviously you know, we we
had decided that we wanted, you know, songs to have
more meaning, We wanted to talk about personal emotions, personal trauma.
(23:12):
But also we around that time there were albums by
Peter Gabral's Third of one I would side, um Talking
Heads remain in like David Bowie Scary Monsters, that really
took production to a different level. So not only were
we deciding to write songs that had more far more
(23:32):
meaning and more and more personal meaning lyrically, but we
were getting into recording. The band we were with before
really had no interest in recording. I mean they we
were literally when in the studio and played live and
recorded it and that was that. Um, you might as
well just stuck a mic up in the middle of
the room of the room. But we actually became interested
in production and how these albums sounded so big, How
(23:54):
was that possible? Um, So we actually got far more
interested in studio work, which the other people in the
band that we were in at the time, had no
interesting studio work. I'm curious about your your home setups now,
I mean rolling in particular. I had fantasies of you
having the Santa's Grotto of you know, vintage since d
(24:14):
X sevens and Profit fives and Lynn drums, and then
I think I've read interview recently that apparently this is
not the case anymore. But what are they? What are
your your home setups? Like, yeah, I had this, I
had this life laundry back in about to fans and seven.
Um My, when I went through l A to do
(24:37):
happy Ending, my studio, which was full of electronics was
left to go sort of MAULDI for about a couple
of years, and I came back and nothing really was working.
So yes, at one point I kind of virtually had
the history of the electronic keyboard. And then when my
(24:58):
wife and I, my late wife designed did that we
were going to turn the recording studio into a guest accommodation.
The builders came in and they literally stood me there.
They pulled out keyboard by keyboard and said you want
to keep it? You want to keep it? Uh no,
and don't want to get working. So I gave away
or I sold at times, you know, all kinds of
(25:19):
things from PPG way to point to two profit fives
to rolland Jupiter eights to all kinds of rack communts
that I've used for decades, and now I've got them
all all on a laptop. There's more power in a
laptop nowadays than the entire SSL studio that I had
with a computer that was taller than me, you know,
(25:41):
not that I'm very tall, but it was still still sizable.
I just have Indiana Jones voice in my head saying
it belongs in a museum. But I guess if I guess,
it makes sense too. I mean that, do you um,
is there anything that you miss about, you know, recording
to tape and sort of the more hands on analog
recording experience. Analog tends to be warmer more than anything else,
(26:04):
you know. I mean, this is why I think that
for us it was I mean, you know the reason,
I mean, we would love to have released this album
last year, but the prime reason it wasn't was because
we had to wait for vinyl. You know, trying to
get vinyl pressed is pretty difficult these days, and and
the vinyl issue of the record was very important to us, so, um, yeah,
(26:24):
I mean that there's a certain warmth to analog recordings
that you miss, but there is a convenience to digital
recording that makes life a little bit easier when you're
in the studio. You haven't you don't have to be
so micro focused on every tiny little mistake because you
can easily correct them. There. You know, you're not splicing
tape anymore. You have the razor blade. And yeah, getting
(26:48):
back it's a little bit of what you were saying
earlier about um, your lyrical themes. I mean, you were
so instrumental in helping tape the conversation around mental health
into popular mu usic and and normalizing it and paving
the way for so many artists. I mean, one that
comes to mind off the bat is the is the
rapper Logic who had a huge hit not too long
ago that was titled after the number of the National
(27:11):
Suicide Prevention hotline and and made a huge difference in
I think they said that there was a spike in
calls to that hotline, some exponential number as soon as
that that song was released, And I think a lot
of that, you know, starting that conversation and popular music
can be drawn right to you. I mean, how do
you feel, uh, you know, the shift going from something
(27:32):
like suffer the children to today and being being a
part of that change in conversation and normalizing that, well,
I still think it's it's still a difficult area. There's
no doubt on it. It's still I mean, it's not
as to do. In fact, yesterday I did a whole
our podcasts purely about mental health, not bad music. If
(27:56):
you can give someone a sense that they're not alone
in their states, in their desperation, then you know, that's
the good things. The least you can do. Music in
that sense of plays an enormous part. I mean I
remember some of the you know, some of the letters
(28:17):
we got from from people after the hurting, and they
were heartbreaking. Yeah, I mean we still get people stopping
us now saying you know that the hurting helped me
through my college years, which is incredibly gratifying. Um, you know,
it means that you've done something that had some depth
and some use. But I think you know the word
(28:38):
you use, which is, you know, something that's used a
lot when you're bringing up children as well, and if
you talk to psychologists, is normalizing it that's the thing
you know there and we still do it as as
adults where we think, you know, something is completely abnormal
when there are you know, thous if not millions of
people going through the same thing. Um, but the first
(28:58):
thing you're you know, you do as a parent when
your child has anxiety or any issues is too normally
normalize those issues, to let them know it's not abnormal.
And that's their safety net, you know, is the that
that knowing that what they're feeling is not abnormal. So
then and it doesn't become then a panic and it
doesn't get out of control. So um yeah, I mean
(29:20):
I think, you know, treating ourselves like we treat our
children would become would be useful at times. Absolutely. I
think that's a beautiful answer. And in a wonderful note
to end on, Kurt Rowland, thank you so much for
your music and your time today. It's meant the world
to me for so many years. It's such an honor
to talk to you. Thank you so much. You're very welcome.
(29:45):
We hope you enjoyed this episode of Inside the Studio,
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your favorite podcast.
Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of Inside the
Studio on iHeart Radio. My name is Jordan run Tug,
but enough about me today, I'm speaking to one of
the most innovative and influential groups of the nineteen eighties.
Named for a quote from pioneering psychologist Arthur Yan of
their stunning breakthrough, The Hurting helped bring the topic of
mental health into popular music and radio hits like Mad World,
(00:25):
Shout Sowing the Seeds of Love, and of course, the
immortal MTV classic Everybody Wants to Rule the World helped
inspire the sound of a host of contemporary artists, ranging
from the Weekend Lord in the ninety to hip hop
titans like Drake and Kanye West. The duo parted company
at the dawn of the nineties, only to join forces
once again for the well received two thousand three album
(00:47):
Everybody Loves a Happy Ending. As the title suggests, this
was intended to be a short lived reunion. Most of
the tie up loose ends musically and give fans a
sense of closure, But now, almost two decades later, they're
back with the tipping point. The record had something of
a difficult birth, taking shape over the course of nearly
ten years. Early sessions with a crew of outside songwriters
(01:10):
left the band so uninspired that they nearly parted company
once again. But then the pair got back to basics,
holding up in a room with acoustic guitars, just like
they did when they first teamed up as teens. The
resulting record is a stunning display of musical virtuosity and
radical vulnerability, inspired in large part by the death of
Roland Orzabal's wife. Occasionally dark and moody, but never Maudlin,
(01:33):
it's a hopeful meditation on mental health, mortality, and moving on.
I'm so happy to welcome rolland Orzibal and Kurt Smith,
who together are Tears for Fears. In the statement for
the album's release, you had words to the effective before
(01:55):
everything went so right. First, everything had to go wrong,
And I feel like that's how the best arts it
a little bit of adversity. Uh. You originally working on
a very different album made with a host of outside writers,
basically a collection of potential singles, rather than an album
that that spoke for you and your shared experience. And
I think I've read that you jokingly called it UH
(02:15):
twos for Fierce to Musical, which sums it up pretty well.
How did you go from there to the tipping point
which is just so deeply personal and meaningful and honest
and just has such a surplus of soul. Was there
a point when you know you realize you had to
go in this different direction? Um? Yeah, I think so.
I mean we were, as you said, we we've it
(02:38):
felt like a collection of attempts at a single. So
so the premise was, you know that we we should
go and write with you know, modern songwriter hit writers
produces um and try and drag us kicking and screaming
into the twenty one century. Um. But the problem with
that is you don't have a shared history. Um. They
(03:00):
don't have that. The lyrical content um, and the subject
matters really kind of secondary to them. Most of the time.
They're looking for sort of melody lines and production more
than anything else. And we didn't feel it was particularly honest,
and by the end of it, well, we felt we
were left it with. You know, basically, we had this
finished album with twelve tracks. There were twelve attempts at
(03:21):
a modern hit single, and it didn't have any storyline
or arc or EBB and flow and really didn't tell
our story. Um lyrically, it didn't have the depth, and
so we kind of went back to the drawing board
and went full circle and decided to sit down in
my house in Los Angeles and write with two acoustic
(03:42):
guitars and see what came from that. And this one song,
the opening track of the album, No Small Thing, came
and we had in in. In the sort of interim
period between deciding we wanted to finish this and writing
that song, we'd gone back over the old material to
decide if anything there was worth keeping, and we decided
(04:04):
we really liked five songs. The recordings were secondary. We
just knew those five songs fit in with the storyline,
and um, so we we set about finishing the other
half of the album and No Small Thing was the
first thing to come. And then it became kind of easy. Um,
you know, it was it was us realizing that we
(04:25):
really are an album band and not a single band.
We've never gone in search of a hit single, never
have done in our careers. We've you know, the singles
we've released have only ever been singles taken from an
album we have finished. So um, we went, you know,
we we went at it with the viewpoint of finishing
something we considered to be a good album. You mentioned
(04:48):
those small thing It's such an incredible way to open
the record. It opens with a sound that I don't
traditionally associate with you, that kind of Southwestern acoustic guitar,
almost like a Malty Robins song. I got kind of
like al Paso vibes or something like that. It's it
really sounds like that was such a great breakthrough for
you when you reconnected as songwriters again. What what was
that experience like for you? Slipping back into those those
(05:10):
roles together kind of nose and those with guitars. What
was that experience like for you? Was it easy to
get back to that place? Yeah, I mean it was easy.
I think, you know it was the comfort level was fine,
and sitting down with two acoustics. We hadn't done that
since the hurting, and so it was us literally going
(05:31):
back to our roots. UM and I think you know,
Roland especially felt something was going to come from that
and and it did, you know, Um and Roland went
away and started working on that song. He it was
during just after that the writing session lockdown happened. So
Roland went back to England. Um, and and then he
(05:52):
couldn't get back to America. So then we started just
sending things back and forth to each other via email,
and Roland basically finished a lot of the song when
he was back in England, the sort of writing aspect
of what we had started. And he eventually got back
(06:13):
to America when they let him back in the country
at the end of August, and we went back into
the studio in September. We were done by Christmas. So
when you know what, when you know what you're doing,
process becomes easier, and I think left to our own devices,
and when we're both on the same page and we
both know what we want and that happens to be
(06:37):
the same thing, um, it becomes an easy process. It's
when we're fighting and looking for something that the process
is harder, when we don't quite know where we're going.
I can't think of a better opener to me, especially
with the line I've just got one more song to sing,
one more story to tell. It's hard not to take
that as autobiographical, knowing knowing your your background and your history. Yeah,
(07:00):
and I think so taking a way back to your
your previous album two thousand four is everybody loves a
happy ending. Did you have any notion that you were
going to carry on making records together or was that,
like the title, kind of meant to be a nice
way to to wrap things up? When did you when
I guess, did this process of wanting to make a
new record start for you? Well? Yeah, I mean, as
(07:22):
you said, with a happy ending, Um, it was. It
seemed like a good way to finish, literally a happy
ending of Kurt and I getting back together after a
nine year hiatus. Um. And it was a fun record
to make. It was. I relocated my family to Los Angeles.
(07:43):
All of a sudden, we were waking up to a
blue sky doing the school run under this with in
this beautiful weather, drop the kids off down onto the
tennis court, back into the shower, then down to the
recording studio to to do. Work on this album was fun.
We had a lot of fun working with chant Pettus,
(08:04):
who is a great communicator between the two of us,
a great modulator. Um. Yeah, we were very happy with
the record. Um it was very different to anything I've
done in the previous decade. But yeah, I mean we
didn't we we went act to promote it. We had
quite a bit coverage, good radio play in Britain, we
(08:25):
did some popular TV shows in the States. But we
looked at the record sales the next day and we
found that people were thinking, you know, people were like, oh, well,
it's Tears for Fears. We love Tears for Fears. Let's
go to the record store. So they would go to
the record store and then they buy a copy of
the Greatest Hits record. So you're you're not you're not
(08:46):
really shifting new product um. Following that, no, there was
no plan to make another record. I sort of came
back to England. The project cycle had finished and over
the years, over about ye must have been about more
than a decade, we just got better and better and better,
and we started to get this great reputation playing live.
(09:09):
And I mean, what is your process like for for
writing these songs. Is it more of a case of
almost like no small thing where you're starting with acoustic
instruments and working out chord sequences and melodic parts, or
do you actually start with um, getting a bunch of
scynth lines together and kind of working on almost like
a sonic bed and use that as the bedrock for
(09:31):
the track and build it up brick by brick how
or is it a combination of both. It's a combination
of both. Of course. Around seven years on this album,
we we've tried pretty much every meth writing available. We
worked on about in the excess of thirty songs, so
(09:53):
right at the end, um we could cheery pick. But
it was you know, we say cometh the hour come
of the songs because it was only in twenty twenty
that we we stumbled across the heart and soul and
guts of the record. Everything that came before it was
(10:18):
just leading up to that moment and listening back to
the songs we chose when we've sequenced them, it was
just an incredible experience. I mean, that's something I love
(10:38):
about your records is that they do stand together as
a whole and tell a story which I feel like
it's a lost art. I mean that's a degree of
care and a skill that I think that we've we've
lost in recent years. Uh. In your words, what is
the story of the tipping point? Is there a way
to that? You know that that that you sum it
up amongst yourselves, Well, I mean, so much had gone
(11:01):
on in the world, um, and then you know our
personal lives over the previous bunch of years. You know,
obviously our specifically site Roland's wife passing away during that time.
Obviously that was a big bit, had a big effect
on us, Roland in particular, and UM, So obviously there
(11:21):
are songs there about that. UM. But also on top
of that, you know, we've gone through political upheaval worldwide,
the rise of the right wing worldwide, four years of
Donald Trump in America, the Me Too movement, the Black
Lives Matter movement, the climate climate crisis, the start of
the pandemic, So there was a lot of subject matter. UM,
(11:43):
and now they're certainly we weren't, you know, stuck for
things to write about. And I think all of that
is included in parts on the album, some more obvious
than others. But but I feel the overall sense of
the album is one of of of of hope, you know,
that there's life at the end of the tunnel. UM.
We didn't want it. Our intention was not to make
(12:04):
this sort of modeling record that was kind of depressing. UM.
You know, I think that especially tracks like Rivers of
Mercy on the album, UM, which really does sort of
talk about redemption more than anything else. You know um
and I think that the redemption and hope probably a
(12:24):
two themes going through the album that that you know,
our answers to all those other things that we talk about,
you know, without getting into too much depth on every track,
I definitely feel positive by the time I finished it. Oh.
I second, I mean, Rivers of Mercy is an amazing track,
(12:47):
as I feel like it does such an amazing job
of juxtaposing the the upheaval in the streets at the
same time when we were kind of in an enforced
imprisonment for lack of a better word, in our homes
do to the pandemic, and I feel like that that
strange kind of push pull that's going on internally and globally,
really you feel that in that track, and especially coming
(13:11):
right after the track My Demons, which is I love
the interplay between those two songs. Me My Demons is
just such a monster of a song sonically and lyrically,
I mean, My Demons don't get out much what a
what a line, and then following with the comparative gentle
sonic scope of Rivers of Mercy. I love the interplay
between those two songs. In particular for me, that was
(13:32):
really such a key moment in the album that that bend. Yeah,
I think that's um, imprisonment is a good word. Yeah,
that's I think that's kind of what was happening. Yeah,
it was. It was very strange. Um, that's for rivers
of Moosey. We ended up writing songs of the band
instead of writing songs with all these strangers and people
(13:56):
play as he has been with us for you know,
for a long time, and Sharton Pettus presented us with
this backing track which was so calm, beautiful and serene
and had a sense of longing within it, and as
(14:17):
it was so beautiful to put a liraing melody too. Yes,
this was the time of Lockdown number one in Britain
and it coincided with the most incredible Mediterranean weather here.
So here I am in the West Country. Plenty big enough,
(14:38):
plenty enough space, you know, three acres, tennis court, recording studio,
all kinds of things, not much of a prison, or
a rather an elegant prison, shall we say. And feeling
this well, you know, this forced imprisonment, as you say,
that felt like freedom at the same time. And you
(15:00):
went out to the supermarket and there are security guards
but and then it was it was a very calm
and peaceful time. But when you turn if you put
on your computer, you turned on the news, you're looking
at all this rage contrast between the peace you can
feel inside and the information you're gleaning literally from thousands
(15:25):
and thousands of miles away. That is the zeitgeist. It's
not reflecting your inner state. So that's what that song's about.
And you're right, we come out of my demons. They
don't get out that much, especially especially lockdown um. But
it's just this. We start with the sounds of the
of the riots and sirens, and then we we sink
(15:50):
into this incredible feeling. It's almost like you are letting
yourself go, and you're letting yourself fall back into the ocean,
into the supportive waters, into the waters of redemption. And
it's almost suggesting that really the only way acts of
rage violence, some of it of course is understandably justified,
(16:15):
but the way forward is to find a place and
this might sound a bit hippie dippy, a finer place
of food gifts, because that's literally the only way you
are going to cleanse yourself. I think that's well said.
I mean, there's there's It's been commented on throughout your work,
(16:35):
throughout your history, but on this particular album, in particularly
the appearance of of of ghosts and specters that you know,
we we we sort of try to keep it bare.
I mean, it's there on the tipping point and in
a sense on my demons as well. Is making music
a kind of exorcism for you? I think it's a
way of acknowledging those ghosts, um acknowledging how important people
(17:06):
who are no longer here are. For instance, the title track,
it's a love song, but it's a love song for
someone you've lost, and that love it never goes. It's
locked in with your memory of them, and that in
itself is a beautiful thing, but yeah, it goes. It's
(17:27):
a symbol we use, we have used all a lot
in the past. I mean, thank you for sharing that
with me right now. And on on the songs. I mean,
there are so many moments on this album, I mean
the title track and please be happy among them that
that do come from from this this very personal tragedy
and and trauma and darkness, and and for that, I mean,
(17:49):
as a person, I apologize, and I'm sending you my
Best Wishes? Was there a concern about putting these moments
on the album, knowing that you would have to revisit
them on stage and you know, doing press for this
or what there had almost seemed almost disingenuous as artists
to think, well, it's silly that this is what I'm
dealing with right now, to pretend it's not happening. I
write about something else is not who I am. How
(18:14):
did you kind of strike that balance? Was it? Was
it a concern for you to put these out there?
I mean, I don't think it's ever a concern. You know.
Our concern initially really was that it didn't have the depth,
but it didn't have the meaning, and it didn't have
talk about subjects that were dear to us. You know.
I think that the best use of music for us
(18:36):
normally is to put these feelings into some sense of order,
you know. And you know I've said before that you
know a lot of the time when you're in these
moments of crisis or trying to work out what is
going on in the world or things externally, um, your
mind tends to go on this eternal kind of loop
of doom, you know. And the way we tend to
(18:58):
work it out, is to put it into so on
and somehow compartmentalize it, makes sense of it. And you know,
a lot of the songs, I would say most of
the songs in this album are an attempt by us
to make some sense out of things that are going on.
So in that sense, it's quite cathartic and and therapeutic
for us, Um And consequently you end up with an
(19:21):
album that has far more depth and far more meaning
to you personally, and I think to an audience, because
I'm sure a lot of people who listen to our
music are going through the same things and have the
same emotions. And you know, especially with you know, the
loss of someone in the sense of as you mentioned,
tipping point and please be happy the loss of Caroline Um.
(19:41):
You know, you're looking at the TV and you see
images and hospitals, you know, during the pandemic where people
all across the world are losing people. So in that sense,
it becomes more of a global thing than a person.
(20:04):
It's it's interesting to view this record against your your
first the hurting. I see them as as linked in
a certain way, almost as uh, you know, inverses or
mirrored image images of each other or something like that.
At least I see them certain similarities there. There are
definitely similarities. I think the difference is that the hurting
was you know, they're both a little angst written, but
(20:28):
on this album, I think we're making sense of what's
going on, whereas I'm there, I think we're more railing
against what is going on. We're angry at what's going on.
And this one comes from a or at least leaves
you with a far calmer feeling and a sense that
you know will work it out at some point. It's
just interesting for me to think of how you started
(20:49):
out pre Tears for Fears in the group you were in,
and then even as teens playing you know, Bloister Call
and led Zeppelin and original songs that were done in
that similar style. Was there a lightbulb moment for you
in terms of realizing that you could that would lead
you towards new kinds of songs that you could write
that would help you, uh process emotions, I guess in
(21:13):
a way and use music almost like as a as
a tool as opposed to you know, kind of these
more I don't want to say, you know, rock centric,
but you know something with maybe a little more depth
was there, whether people were there, either other artists or
people like Arthur Yanoff that, Um, it's kind of lead
you into realizing that music could have this whole other
layer inside the electronic music. So all of a sudden,
(21:39):
the two became a viable proposition because of the gene,
because of the tape machine, and we quickly adopted this
style and found we were very good at it. And
what was great is we could we could completely as
(22:00):
your ring and express the emotions of for the first time,
which we weren't really doing any before that writing personal songs. Um,
you know about what was going on inside us. But
it was the combination of that with these crazy electronic
arrangements that made the whole thing something something very special.
(22:25):
And it was our emotional honesty of early tears for
Fears that kind of separated us from a lot of
the what we would call utopian synthesizer groups like Human League.
Um synthesizer groups could who would only play a keyboard
with one finger. It was a kind of little bit
punk we were. We were actually guitarists, and so we
(22:50):
were kind of approaching It would also be in the
orchestra at school, had been in the choir, and we
were approaching the arrangements in a completely different way. Yeah, man,
I think also that combined with you know, at the
time when we left graduate obviously you know, we we
had decided that we wanted, you know, songs to have
more meaning, We wanted to talk about personal emotions, personal trauma.
(23:12):
But also we around that time there were albums by
Peter Gabral's Third of one I would side, um Talking
Heads remain in like David Bowie Scary Monsters, that really
took production to a different level. So not only were
we deciding to write songs that had more far more
(23:32):
meaning and more and more personal meaning lyrically, but we
were getting into recording. The band we were with before
really had no interest in recording. I mean they we
were literally when in the studio and played live and
recorded it and that was that. Um, you might as
well just stuck a mic up in the middle of
the room of the room. But we actually became interested
in production and how these albums sounded so big, How
(23:54):
was that possible? Um, So we actually got far more
interested in studio work, which the other people in the
band that we were in at the time, had no
interesting studio work. I'm curious about your your home setups now,
I mean rolling in particular. I had fantasies of you
having the Santa's Grotto of you know, vintage since d
(24:14):
X sevens and Profit fives and Lynn drums, and then
I think I've read interview recently that apparently this is
not the case anymore. But what are they? What are
your your home setups? Like, yeah, I had this, I
had this life laundry back in about to fans and seven.
Um My, when I went through l A to do
(24:37):
happy Ending, my studio, which was full of electronics was
left to go sort of MAULDI for about a couple
of years, and I came back and nothing really was working.
So yes, at one point I kind of virtually had
the history of the electronic keyboard. And then when my
(24:58):
wife and I, my late wife designed did that we
were going to turn the recording studio into a guest accommodation.
The builders came in and they literally stood me there.
They pulled out keyboard by keyboard and said you want
to keep it? You want to keep it? Uh no,
and don't want to get working. So I gave away
or I sold at times, you know, all kinds of
(25:19):
things from PPG way to point to two profit fives
to rolland Jupiter eights to all kinds of rack communts
that I've used for decades, and now I've got them
all all on a laptop. There's more power in a
laptop nowadays than the entire SSL studio that I had
with a computer that was taller than me, you know,
(25:41):
not that I'm very tall, but it was still still sizable.
I just have Indiana Jones voice in my head saying
it belongs in a museum. But I guess if I guess,
it makes sense too. I mean that, do you um,
is there anything that you miss about, you know, recording
to tape and sort of the more hands on analog
recording experience. Analog tends to be warmer more than anything else,
(26:04):
you know. I mean, this is why I think that
for us it was I mean, you know the reason,
I mean, we would love to have released this album
last year, but the prime reason it wasn't was because
we had to wait for vinyl. You know, trying to
get vinyl pressed is pretty difficult these days, and and
the vinyl issue of the record was very important to us, so, um, yeah,
(26:24):
I mean that there's a certain warmth to analog recordings
that you miss, but there is a convenience to digital
recording that makes life a little bit easier when you're
in the studio. You haven't you don't have to be
so micro focused on every tiny little mistake because you
can easily correct them. There. You know, you're not splicing
tape anymore. You have the razor blade. And yeah, getting
(26:48):
back it's a little bit of what you were saying
earlier about um, your lyrical themes. I mean, you were
so instrumental in helping tape the conversation around mental health
into popular mu usic and and normalizing it and paving
the way for so many artists. I mean, one that
comes to mind off the bat is the is the
rapper Logic who had a huge hit not too long
ago that was titled after the number of the National
(27:11):
Suicide Prevention hotline and and made a huge difference in
I think they said that there was a spike in
calls to that hotline, some exponential number as soon as
that that song was released, And I think a lot
of that, you know, starting that conversation and popular music
can be drawn right to you. I mean, how do
you feel, uh, you know, the shift going from something
(27:32):
like suffer the children to today and being being a
part of that change in conversation and normalizing that, well,
I still think it's it's still a difficult area. There's
no doubt on it. It's still I mean, it's not
as to do. In fact, yesterday I did a whole
our podcasts purely about mental health, not bad music. If
(27:56):
you can give someone a sense that they're not alone
in their states, in their desperation, then you know, that's
the good things. The least you can do. Music in
that sense of plays an enormous part. I mean I
remember some of the you know, some of the letters
(28:17):
we got from from people after the hurting, and they
were heartbreaking. Yeah, I mean we still get people stopping
us now saying you know that the hurting helped me
through my college years, which is incredibly gratifying. Um, you know,
it means that you've done something that had some depth
and some use. But I think you know the word
(28:38):
you use, which is, you know, something that's used a
lot when you're bringing up children as well, and if
you talk to psychologists, is normalizing it that's the thing
you know there and we still do it as as
adults where we think, you know, something is completely abnormal
when there are you know, thous if not millions of
people going through the same thing. Um, but the first
(28:58):
thing you're you know, you do as a parent when
your child has anxiety or any issues is too normally
normalize those issues, to let them know it's not abnormal.
And that's their safety net, you know, is the that
that knowing that what they're feeling is not abnormal. So
then and it doesn't become then a panic and it
doesn't get out of control. So um yeah, I mean
(29:20):
I think, you know, treating ourselves like we treat our
children would become would be useful at times. Absolutely. I
think that's a beautiful answer. And in a wonderful note
to end on, Kurt Rowland, thank you so much for
your music and your time today. It's meant the world
to me for so many years. It's such an honor
to talk to you. Thank you so much. You're very welcome.
(29:45):
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