Once darlings of the 80s pop scene, Tears For Fears have made a bold return with their first new album since 2004’s Everybody Loves A Happy Ending. The Tipping Point finds the duo embarking on a united quest to strike musical gold via a more experimental path. Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith discuss how their reunion led to them rediscovering themselves.

Words: Rob Hughes

Tears For Fears: Curt Smith and Roland Orzabal.

Images: Frank W Ockenfels

“We’ve always been drawn to a certain kind of music. Complicated music, if you like, whether it’s My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts by David Byrne and Brian Eno, Peter Gabriel 3, or whatever.”

Roland Orzabal

Curt Smith has a framed picture of King Crimson on his bathroom wall. It’s not just any old photo. The occasion is April 30, 1981, in the confines of Bath’s Moles club, where a fresh iteration of the band – tentatively called Discipline – is returning to the live stage for the first time in seven years. Bassist Tony Levin dominates the foreground, while the 19-year-old Smith stands directly in front of him, utterly transfixed.

“A friend of mine got Tony Levin to send that picture to me,” explains Smith, who went on to form Tears For Fears with Roland Orzabal later in ’81. “Apparently, Tony used to have this side-stage camera that he’d take pictures with during a gig, using a footswitch. So it’s taken from slightly behind him, with me looking at him playing a Chapman stick. In the picture I’m like, ‘What is that?’”

To the uninitiated, it may come as a surprise to discover that Tears For Fears are big prog fans. After all, they became synonymous with the new breed of British synthpop with 1983 debut, The Hurting, before conquering the rest of the 80s with platinum-selling monsters Songs From The Big Chair and The Seeds Of Love. But there was always something much deeper going on.