The Telegraph (25.02.2022): “Harmony and conflict,” says Roland Orzabal, trying to articulate the essence of Tears for Fears’s notoriously volatile creative relationship. “People think conflict is always bad, but it is the grit in the oyster around which the pearl is formed.” “That’s deep,” smiles his band mate Curt Smith, and it is difficult to tell if he is impressed or teasing. Maybe a bit of both. [...] In particular, it [TTP album] was shaped by the death of Orzabal’s wife, Caroline, in 2017, whom the duo had both known since they were teenagers growing up in Bath. “The album became part of the healing process,” as Smith puts it. [...] But Tears for Fears resumed touring just two months later. “I was trying to move on quickly, but the mind and the soul has its own agenda. I started to experience a lot of worrying symptoms, beyond anything I’ve ever experienced, like I’m f---ing dying! I didn’t know whether they were panic attacks or heart attacks. So I’m taking everything I can to negate these things: drugs, alcohol, sleeping pills.” He experienced blackouts and seizures. “It was horrible. I got as close to death as I ever could, I was in ICU a couple of times.” Orzabal laughs but there is an edge to it, as if he is holding back tears. “It was almost karma, that I was experiencing everything Caroline went through in the last years of her life. But the difference between us is that I put myself into rehab, and she never did.” He ascribes his recovery to therapy and grief counselling, allied to a new relationship with writer and artist Emily Rath. The couple married in 2020. “I connected to my heart, which made my relationship with Curt so much better,” says Orzabal. “I was a different guy, more amenable, more humble, more open.” For Smith, Orzabal’s trauma had called the group’s future into question. “I wasn’t worrying about Tears for Fears. I just didn’t want you to die,” he tells his bandmate with touching sincerity. The pair have both described dysfunctional family backgrounds growing up in the 1970s, with music offering a balm to personal troubles. Writing songs, Orzabal suggests, is “a form of self-soothing.” They formed short-lived teenage mod band Graduate, with Orzabal as frontman, but when they fell apart and reconvened as a duo, bassist Smith stepped up to the front. “We switched roles, without discussion,” says Orzabal. “It suited me to go into the background and explore what was going on inside me. And Curt took over the more confident, arrogant, extrovert role.” [...] “Without question, Curt is much better at communicating with people than I am,” admits Orzabal. “He’s more grounded and politically aware, especially in the manoeuvrings of the record industry. It just used to drive me mad to the point that my anger wouldn’t allow me to communicate.” “I always say Tears for Fears is the stuff we can agree on,” says Smith, who returned for 2004’s satisfying Everybody Loves a Happy Ending. “Like any old married couple, we can butt heads in moments of insecurity. But the fact that we can coexist, as strong willed and opinionated as we are, is maybe a cause for hope.” [...] “All of us within ourselves have an extrovert and introvert,” says Orzabal, trying to describe the duo’s balancing act. “Where we are on the scale differs. But the talents of the introvert can be more enabled by someone who is willing to take the extrovert role. “Curt and I have done this dance for around 40 years, because we are both hermits and we’re both attention whores.” “And clearly Roland is the extrovert, right?” notes Smith, dryly. “Yeah, baby!” shouts Orzabal.
