Curt Smith and Roland Orzabal: “We weren’t anything like Duran Duran – that was all excess and glamour. We weren’t about that. It was all about an interior world, not the exterior world”
The Hurting was inspired musically by Curt Smith’s recollections of a show by Bristol band Electric Guitars. “Curt described their music,” Orzabal recalls, “and I wrote the guitar riff.” The song was later sampled for Band Aid’s Do They Know It’s Christmas? “I found that amusing,” Smith laughs, “‘cos they didn’t invite us!”
For their first-ever video the duo enlisted up-and-coming director Clive Richardson (Siouxsie and the Banshees, Depeche Mode, Adam and the Ants). Renting a house with grounds in the country not far from Bath, they travelled up en masse in a coach with friends and family and filmed Curt emoting through a window while Roland wandered moodily around a pond, occasionally breaking out into a remarkably stylish dance routine. The no-cost extras were roped into a brief scene of a birthday party thrown by none other than Orzabal’s mother. youtu.be/u1ZvPSpLxCg