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Speaker 1: I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing from My Heart Radio. When there are stars that are flashes in the palm that burn fast and bright, and then there are those artists that endure. On the list of musical acts that continue to sell out their concerts pre and post COVID, you will find names like Paul McCartney, The Rolling Stones, Judy Collins, Lindsey Buckingham and my guests Today. One half of the eighties powerhouse Tears for Fears Kurt Smith, This is Advice for the young at Heart from the nine album The Seeds of Love. By the mid nineteen eighties, Tears for Fears had joined a dense pack of new wave artists that included Simple Minds, Crowded House and Simply Read, and releasing some of the most popular music of the day. The duo would eventually reach the stratospheres of stardom, selling over thirty million albums worldwide. Kurt Smith first met bandmate Roland Orzebal as a teenager in Bath, England, and put out their first album, The Hurting Three. They were still booking small clubs when they released their second album, Songs from the Big Chair. By the time the tour ended, however, they had pole vaulted into stadiums. I would guess the after recording itself took a year, but it was two years between The Hurting being released on Songs with the Big Chair, which which then was a long time. You know. Obviously the Hurting it had had huge success outside of America. It was big in New York and l A. So Songs from the Big Chair. I don't want to do all on that too much, but you know, you have the number one album in the US. Quite a different situation to have the number one album the biggest market of them all. That's that's not the most sophisticated market, but it's the biggest market. It was a little crazy, I mean, you know, like I said, were because touring here was was weird after Songs in the Big Chair because before we played our first ever show in the US, we never played when we released The Hurting. There was no real market, like we could have played in New York and l A. But that was kind of it and that would be too expensive just for those shows. So the first time I ever played in America was after Songs on the Big Chair and our first show was a little club in Hartford, Connecticut, and by the time we got there, Everybody Wants To All the World was number one. So there was the sweatiest show I've ever played. I think it was ridiculous. But then slowly as we got on, as they managed to then make the venues bigger and bigger, they started changing the venues because everything had taken off, and we went across America, and by the time we got to l A, we were playing to you know, twenty thousand people. But initially you found the Ronnie Scotts of Hartford Cannemy exactly. It was interesting, but but also a little I think soul destroying is a harsh word, but it was. It became hard work and I want to get to I want to get to the same you know, the wind under your wings and you really take off, you know, number one album. The music was coming out and every I mean that was so ubiquitous, and so I'm the present songs from the Big Chair was like they were applying it to like face cream on the radio. Yeah. No, and and we you know, because of the way reccompanies were and because of at that point in time, yeah, obviously there was no streaming, so the radio radio stations were the important things. So you know, we were up doing the morning drive shows, and we were doing interviews all day long, and then sound check and then shaking hands and kissing babies from local people, you know, local radio stations and things before the show, meets, meet and greets after of the show, and it became work. I mean it was really hard work. And myself and rolland and not renowned for being the hardest of workers. We like to take our time and we really didn't enjoy it that much. And what's sad when that happens is you know, you you know, because when you get home, your your friends say, isn't this wonderful? You traveled the world and you you went to all these places, and then you have to tell them, yeah, but I didn't get to see any of them. I was just working the whole time. I didn't get to visit any So people say that to me about the movie business, they say, you know, you travel all over the world and you see I go, No, we go to work at dark in the morning, we come home it's dark at night, and if the restaurant of the hotel is closed, then I have a microwave burrito out of the vending machine exactly said, it's really not traveling with my own chef. So Roland and you meet when you're young, I mean when you're very young. And I want to just clear up one thing for people Tears for Fears. Is it more like Simon and Garth uncle and really Dan where it's two primary players and everybody else's sessions, or you had full time members of the band, you know, everyone else session musicians. I mean people thought that, certainly on songs of the Big Chair, that there was a band because we actually took a picture as a band, because Ian, our keyboard player who also co produced, works a lot on the album with us, and many a liars at that point in time was had been our drummer on the Hurting and songs in the Big Chair. I mean, I guess what happens is you can tell what who the band are by who is signed to the record label. The only people signed to the record label all through our career is me in Rowland, and and so then we get to pick and choose who we worked with. But we've worked with Manny any and from the Hurting through songs from the Big Chair, and we felt they were kind of band members. But before we go back to the origins, who are you and Roland? I just what what you're triggering for me now? Was this idea that was there a time when you're in a studio recording any of your albums, after you really take off, were you're there and across the room with somebody going, I can't believe I'm have this person playing sessions with my band, like the do the quality of everything
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just go up? Well, yeah, definitely, and everybody want to play with you eventually, I mean after songs of the Big Chair, certainly, I'm in on Seeds of Love after you know, which is our third album. Um, we got to work with man who catch A on drums. We got to work with Phil Collins on drums. You know that there were Yeah, there were people that you know, when when you ask, people will come in and play with you, you know. So we did. Although most of the stuff we tend to do ourselves. And I don't know if that's by design or just that that's how we work sometimes that that normally happens when we hear a specific person, So say with Phil Collins playing on Woman in Chains, we heard Phil Collins. I mean, we heard there's a track on Petergether's third album called No Self Control that has this drum fill in, and that's what we heard on Women in Chains. We heard these tom fills that Phil Collins with the exact same sound, with the exact same sound. We were basically everyone's asking Phil to come and play the same films. Just do that, just that exactly, And and so I was doing. I performed on this sort of all star concert at Wembley Stadium for Nelson Mandela's birthday when Nelson Mandela was still in jail and Phil was the drummer, and I came on and sang, and so then I asked him, I said, would you would you come and drum on this one song that I we just hear you drumming on And he said, yeah, I'd love to, and and so I said we should I book a few days in the studio. He's like, well one, now, I'd come in around one. I'm I'm sure I'll be home by tea time, you know, and so and he was. But also we had a mutual friend, Hugh Padgum, who's a producer who produced Phil's albums and the Peter Gabriel album, and so I got Hu to come in and get the drum sound before Phil arrived, and I think Phil did it in like two takes and then went home. So where do you meet? Um? We met in my hometown of Bath. He had just moved to Bath. He grew up in a place called Portsmouth on the south coast of England. And we had this mutual friend who went to school with him. He was at a different school than me and Bath, but the mutual friend lived near me and so I knew him, and he was a musician of ace player actually, and we met and we kind of hit it off, even though we really were kind of polar opposites. But I think when you were playing one at the time, I wasn't playing anything at the time. I was singing. I mean, I've been in a choir since I was four, and I loved singing. It's interesting if if I think back on it, because I used to sing all the time around when since the age of like three or four, I would sing more than I would talk. Um, I would sing along to things on the radio. I would just sing things. And my mother was just got tired of it and she and she's like, get out of the house and sing. Go go go join the choir. If that you love singing, that must go join a quiet And when you were in public singing, when when this shy, you seem shy. Did you sing more than your talk because you
were shy? Maybe I think that there's a part of it. And I was a very shy kid and and still am a shy. I wouldn't say shy. I'm more of an introvert than shy. I guess what's interesting is that's what I sense. I'm not saying this to be kind. What I sense is you are unlike many people where they can go and s and gears and they can sing certain ways. But then there were those people who can sing and the singing is has a powerful emotional undercurrent that at the same time they sit on it, they don't go too far. Yeah, I mean, it's it's it's I find it an easier medium to communicate with than talking to people. I don't know that you know, even though this is quite comfortable, sometimes it can be hard, you know, since you know it can be difficult, and you know I'm a homebody, I'm I would say, I'm kind of an introvert. I'm comfortable with a small group of friends. Put me in a big group that I don't know anyone, I am completely uncomfortable. I'm the guy standing out in the corner. I don't have stage right digitally well, people eventually, what what's what's interesting is and and and I see this happen with my daughter as well, who as she was growing up and certainly in her teen years through to moving to New York, had major anxiety issues. And what happens is singing is one thing I know I can do, and that my stage fright comes forehand as soon as my mouth and starts singing. I'm comfortable, I'm fine, you know what you're doing. Yeah, And I feel like I belong. But the reason I mentioned that about the emotional combined with the with the I can see your hand on a knob, and there's just the right amount of emotion like that, like you, like I'll give you a kind of what's going to seem like an incongruous reference, but like I would listen to Dylan, and Dylan would sing a song like an anthem, like and when he sings Hurricane, he sits on that indignation and only let's it belch out and when you sing this is wonderful, beautiful emotion. But you don't. I leave that to my partner. Roland is he Roland is the one that you have to try and temper down slightly. He's he's like he's jazz hands, you know, He's like, I'm out there and he'll be you know, performing, I mean he he performs. My voice has more of a tone of melancholy. I guess to it to a certain degree and on the right amount of it. Yeah, And I'm and I'm the quieter singer, you know. So basically, you know, it's it's you know, We've been asked a lot of times, you know, how how do you because it's a you know, we have a weird setup. We have two lead singers, which which is very rare, and you know, I get asked, how do you pick the songs? And it's like to us, it's becomes very obvious. You know, if something demands vocal acrobatics and power and in your face, that's going to be Roland. Is something requires a certain touch of melancholy or slightly undersung or you really want to kind of listen, that would be me so the song has become very obvious. There's not normally, there's no songs we've ever done. I don't think where we've both gone in and both think we should do it. We it becomes obvious, you know what, you can compete because we're two lead singers, so there's ego involved. But when we both try and sing a song, it's clear which one should be singing it. It becomes very clear. So we're so between your choral career and your meeting Roland, when did you first get the sense? I always wonder, you know, people say to me, you know, did you think you could act? And I say, oh god no. But my point is is that was your a point in between choral career and professional you know, beginnings with Roland, when you said yourself, I really can do this. I mean, I really think I can make a go at this. I think once myself and Roland started playing together, I mean, what happened he listened to me? So the start of our musical career together, you know, we met and we sort of became friends. Like I said, we were sort of polar opposite. Roland was kind of this sort of intellect to a certain degree, but he was a you know, straight a student, you know, graded everything at school, and by this point in my life I had gone the other way. I was the dropout, skyped off school, God in trouble, God in fights. I used to be an a student before, but but I didn't get enough attention to you do that wasn't going to help your rock and roll career. So no, I didn't get any attention from my parents. And so you know, I was singing along in my room role and was in the room to a track called the Last Days and made by Blois To. I was a big blois To cult fan at that point in time because they were bizarre for a rock band. And he wasn't comfortable being a lead singer. He was a guitar player and he he didn't think he could be a lead singer. He just wasn't did you pick up the bass guitar when we needed a bass player. So this is how we started. When we were fourteen our first band, I was the lead singer, That's what I was. Roland just played guitar and did backing vocals. And then as our career progressed, he started feeling more comfortable with lead vocals then and we realized we had two very different voices, so we gave it us an extra sort of width and breadth of music we could use. And then so we played fourteen from fourteen in the sort of this kid's band school band, and then it's around sixteen. That lasted about a year, year and a half, and then we we stopped playing together. That band fell apart and he formed another band called Graduate. I think this is when I was around sixteen, and they fired the bass player because they hated him. And so Roland came to my house and he's like, do you think you can play bass? I'm like, you want to teach me? Then? Yeah, can you play it by tomorrow? Yeah? Well basically well next week. It was basically next week. He said, I'll teach you all the parts, so you'll go yeah, and um. I went into the audition and I used it because you know, I knew all the parts and it was fine, and it seemed I was a natural at it, you know, because drums and bass are
really that's the rhythm section, you know, that's the backbone of a band. And all the great bands have a good looking bass player who can sing. Paul Paul Paul well so you're Paul. Now you're the good looking bass player who can sing exactly what Paul. Paul was kind of a hero of a Phill lineup was my other hero from Thin Lizzy, and he was the bass player who sang so yeah between Paul McCartney and Phil Line. And I'm like, yeah, yeah, I can, I can do this. I see myself in that pantheon exactly. And so I learned to play bass at sixteen and have continued since then and have become you know now now I've I've become competent musician. Kurt Smith. If you love conversations with contemplative rockers from the nineteen eighties, be sure to check out my episode with ari E Ms Michael Stipe in a band dynamic, everyone's got an idea, in an opinion, and what happened, what happens when it all comes together? Is this this beautiful compromise where one person kind of oversees one part, another overseas another part. Somehow it all works, and that chemistry served us pretty well for most of her career. But but it was, you know, it was at times very very difficult. Here the rest of my conversation with Michael Stipe that Here's the Thing dot Org. After the break, Kurt Smith shares what was going on in his head when he left Tears for Fears at the height of their fame. I'm Alec Baldwin and you were listening to Hear's the Thing. Peter Jackson's recent Beatles documentary Get Back vividly demonstrates how even the most successful acts are not without their tensions. I like the Beatles, many artists, including Simon and Garf, Uncle Journey, and The Beach Boys, just to name a few, have all experienced the growing pains that come with enormous commercial success. Tears for Fears ultimately succumbed to that same musical fate. That's Kurt Smith's bandmate Roland oors a Ball, singing head over heels from Tears for Fear's seminal album Songs from the Big Chair. After three albums and tens of millions in sales, Kurt Smith and Roland or Zibal's creative partnership was severed in Although Orzibal would go on to release two additional albums under the name Tears for Fears, it would be ten years before the duo would reunite to release new work together, including this year's album The Tipping Point. Kurt Smith shared how Tears for Fears at its essence was a sound forged by two uniquely different creative minds. Well, we had the band Graduate and and that band when we were eighteen to wait for Roland to turn eighteen, signed a record deal with the record label in England. Um, but we we never felt comfortable in that band. It was like a kind of sixties graduate Yeah, sixties kind of retrosh lighthearted pop song covers. He was doing most of the writing Roland, and still to this day it's Roland. But I would say then me, But it's it's hard to really sort of quantify the writing thing because even when Roland's writing a lot of the time, and certainly in early in our career, during the hurting especially, I'd always be in the room and i'd be I'm normally the one in the bag as I am as a sort of producer, going no, yes, yeah, that that's that's bad. Um, so you're kind of doing it together. I don't like the word tongue. Take the word tongue out exactly, well, and those things have happened like that. That line is dreadful, that's just horrible, get rid of it. And he was receptive, absolutely, Yeah, he wanted to collaborate with he wanted to amuse in the background. Yeah, And I think this happens with a lot of writers in any industry, where you can get so self involved that you don't know what's good or not. You don't know what's resonating with other people because it's all in your head. So I'm kind of the sounding board, I guess. So that's sort of how it works. When we worked together, you know, on The Hurting we did a lot more stuff together on the newest album we've done, The Tipping Point. This is the first time we've worked very closely together in a long time. Which band of viewers had the number one song in Spain that was graduate? Okay? How did how did that happen? How did English guys from Bath write a song about reggae that became the number one hit in Spain? What the hell is going on? I had no idea. I mean they kind of it's because we were young and good looks. It was. It was definitely sort of danceable and it just took off in Spain for some obscure reason. I mean, there's no rhyme or reason to it. So we had screaming girls after us in Spain and that's you know, this is how I remember when John Lennon was killed, because that's what we worked. We were in Spain promoting that single in the hotel in Spain, and so every interview ends up doing, of course, was about John Lennon. But yeah, that was weird. So it was kind of our first taste of success as such. But then as a band, we then went touring around Europe in two vans, ugging the gear, ourselves, driving ourselves and myself in Roland. As you know, I don't I don't need to say this too many times, but we were not really particularly into heart labor and we decided by the end of this three weeks of touring Germany that we'd had enough and um, we sort of sat down together and said, you know, this is not for us then, and and that the other guys in the band we loved it, you know, they loved just playing live. They were party kind of people, and we wanted to do something that had more depth. Now I'm gonna read from our prep it says the song mad World was born at the time in their lives as they were finding themselves as young adults. We were sitting in his flat, says Smith, and we were looking out the window with people going to work in existences we thought were pointless. So did you have I mean artists, You're like, what's the point? Where do we fit in? Yeah, that was the whole. That was more the point. The point was we felt we did not it in in that world. We we definitely felt outside of that world. We didn't feel we could ever be in that world. We didn't
understand it. I didn't understand training, the idea of training for a career and then being in that career for the rest of your life, even though I ended up training for this career, being in this career in my all life. But I don't consider this a career because it's a passion and it's something I enjoy doing. So it's it's slightly different. But yeah, we were looking at it people and it was it was in the morning and they were all going to work and and we were like this. It was just like this sort of you know, treadmill of people going then going to lunch and then going back and then you know, five o'clock, they all go home and all kind of dressed the same, and it was just peculiar to us. So, yeah, we we felt like outsiders to a certain degree. And I think, you know, the people we related to at that point in time were each other. That was pretty much it, because we both felt the same way. Collaborators. Yeah, and that's when we, you know, when we decided to leave Graduate because we didn't feel like the other three. We didn't feel like we had any thing in common with them. They didn't feel like outsiders. They wanted, you know, to do They're going to play that same pub forever. Oh absolutely, you know, as long as they got free drinks and got laid afterwards. That was That was pretty much what they wanted to um. And we wanted to say something, you know, that was our desire. And yeah, and so we decided to leave. And and this coincided at a time in music when you know, synthesizers were just becoming bigger. The Lynn Drum Machine had just come in, which used real drum samples, even though they don't sound real to me anymore, but they were the most real you could find at that point in time. So you didn't need a drummer. You didn't need a keyboard. You know, anyone could do it. You could program it and you could sequence it yourself. So you didn't need to be an expert keyboard player. You didn't need to be a fantastic drummer. You just program it yourself. The computer was expert enough. Yeah, it would correct your timing, it would you know? It would it? Would you know, give you suggestions, you know, I mean for like a sequence like do do do do? Do? You know? What we do is hold a chord and the keyboard did it for you, you know, So it was you guys are shaping this yourselves when Roland is writing and your chip and you're pitching in there and so forth, and you're doing this stuff, and then you wind up getting into a studio where my understanding is people who get to that level, you know, once you hit it big and eighty five, they have a surge of producers that want to work with them and record with them. What did a producer give to you? What did they do for? They have any help with that with that question? We didn't need that help eventually, I mean songs. So the Big Chair was the last time we used a producer. Since then we produced ourselves with the help of an engineer or you know, someone else normally is in the studio, but but the production is normally ours because we learned enough by then, or a primal scream therapist as well. Yeah, Arthur General came to one of our shows. He came to a show in London, and uh I met him. It was very pleasant, very nice, and he's like, can I take you to lunch? He wanted to be in the business and Hollywood and he was. He was that. He was so you know all the things I dislike about Los Angeles, but you've but you've lasted there a long time, you know. I feel more at home in New York. I have to say New York is the same. New Yorkers have changed. And what's changed is there's a decrease in the number of people who got the key rule, which is you have to be very aware of other people. Whenever people said that New Yorkers were rude or what have you, I was always taken him back because I thought New Yorkers when I first came here in the late seventies to go to finish college, um, New Yorkers were some of the most respectful and polite because they knew we were in this thing together. Remember I was with a therapist years ago during the time of my life because I was living out there and I was behind the wheel of a car. So I had to stop drinking because I was ship faced drunk every for like two years in l A behind the wheel of a car. And one day I woke up and what that's got to end? And this is this therapist said to me. He goes, I have a tip for you. He says, here's the only thing I believe you need to keep in mind. That's the best form of therapy. And he said, forgive everybody. And I sat there and I go, wow, man, I go, you mean Jesus. And he goes, well, don't set your goals. That trying to lower the bar a little bit, you know, it kind of like Jesus. Maybe trying to be a little like Jesus. And I thought to myself, that blew my mind. He was just he said, just forgive everybody and move on with your which brings me to you and him when you when you split up. Now, when you split up with someone, I'm less interested in the acrimony because everything is the same. I mean, in the idea that another generation of people around the world are going to be spray painted by Beatlemania. Again, since Get Back came out, I couldn't watch it. Um it was interesting Roland watched the whole thing. I watched forty minutes and why it brought back too many bad memories. I was like, I've been there. I fucking hated it. And it's just, you know, because McCartney was Roland at that point in time, and you know, and I and I was I've actually, to be honest, I think I was probably more George. I don't know, but it was that kind of you know, someone is just getting a bit too big because I, in my opinion, you know. And again based on the first fourteen minutes I watched, although it may have been necessary because someone had to be the driving force I guess once Epstein died, indeed, someone had to be a vacuum. Yeah. And also I think, weirdly at the age they were then, I think was the age pretty much we were when we split up, so I can relate. And again it brought back bad memories, which is
why I broke up. We broke up in I well, I left after Seeds of Love at the end of the tour, So I was I was twenty nine then, so late twenties, but I like that. But I'd already decided I was going to leave prior to the tour. Made the big mistake of telling Roland that before we toured. But that's a different story. Should have probably wait, you wanted to know how you felt? Yeah, and that didn't care my last tour on the surface, no, I mean he was like, what fuck you? Then? Um, but I think he was kind of hurt by it, and that's sort of probably come out since then, you know. But what it is and or at least what I've discovered, and which is why New York I've always said, and my wife, and they go hand in hand because we met in New York, the city, and my wife for my savior at that point in time, because what happens in your mid to late twenties. You don't want to be that guy from that band. You really want to be an individual you were you were still looking for your individuality and who you are is in our cases men or you know, And I think the same applies for women. That's when you're really becoming established as an individual and to be a part of this group. I didn't feel comfortable in it anymore. Plus the fame side was really screwing me up, so it wasn't healthy for me. I drank too much, probably took it was the eighties. Probably took too much cocaine at that point in time. I didn't think it was health. Really did a lot of cocaine in the eighties. Strange, so obviously you know the experience. Um, So I just didn't think it was healthy. And and England, you know, the answer to everything in England is you know, if you're older, it's put the catalan, I'll go and make some tea. Or if you're at that age is let's just go down the pub and get sucked up. You know that, will you know, if you're feeling sad, let's go to the pub. Um And I knew that's not what I needed. Um And I've met Frances in New York, and that's not the way New York operates. Particularly. I mean, obviously people drink here, and I did to a certain degree when I came here, but I stayed with a friend up stay this This was during the recording of Seeds of Love. I was. I went through a divorce during the Caesar love and it really that and the drinking and everything else that was going on just really messed me up. And I'm like, I, I can't be just going down the pub. This is not going to help. But how does the shy guy who gets married and for whatever reason, it doesn't matter, your first marriage ends. Were you at the height of your fame when the first marriage marriage ended? Was it prior No? So it was a casualty of fame to a degree, to a degree. I mean, it wasn't my choice, you know, I think you know, it was one of those things where clearly I got married too young. So what gave you the courage or gave you the ability to get married again? Oh? Well that was because I had grown up by then, you know, you know, I I to get over my divorce weirdly, I mean, this is why I have, you know, some kind of guardian angel looks so after me. But I was like, I need to go stay with someone who doesn't drink, right, So I need to just like deal with the emotion because I wasn't dealing with how hurt and destroyed I was by this divorce. I went to this tour manager and his wife, who was you know in a a I mean, not a bit of matters. But neither of them drank. So I went and stay with them in Brewster, upstate, New York. Just not that far outside the city, I guess. And I was with them depressed for like two weeks, you know, just letting the emotion out, just feeling it. And then I think after two weeks they got bored with me being there. Now that we're taking you into the city, we're going out. There's this party St. Patrick's Day party happening in It was in the meatpacking district. Let's go out, Let's get you out, come on. So I went out with them, and weirdly, that's where I met my wife. So how long did you know where after you got married? Oh, we'd got married quite a while later. Um, we dated for a while. Yeah, we lived together by the end of that year. By the end of A T eight, I bought the apartment, my apartment in New York in Soho soho, Yeah, on Mercer Street between Houston and Prince. What years were you in New York A T eight to so for me, I mean, after you get married and you have a kind of tumultuous partying with that person getting married. I was single for eleven years and it was really tough, and I dated people, and I dated one person in particularly who just got sick of the fact that I wouldn't get married. I wouldn't have had a very close relationship with them, and they were you know, I was, you know, only with that woman. But I just couldn't. I just can't do it. Well, we were my hat myself, and France has never really put much emphasis on being married. She's never taken my name. Can't blame her with the name Mike Smith. But um, you know, she was known as Francis Pennington in the industry. She's always been known as you know, as that in music industry, which you know she was well known in, especially in America. I mean, in fact, when I used to go into MTV, they used to call me Mr Pennington's because they knew Frances far. Yeah, these no know her better, far better than me. Then it gets back to your other ex who you remarry in musical terms, so how did you get back together? Well, I mean the comedy line is by facts, if anyone remembers what effects is. But no, we had ongoing business in interest together. You know, I left. We didn't speak to each other at all during my parent in how long um nine years? You know, I was just enjoying life in New York. You know that there was this joy and again the fame side, the other thing New York gave me in the fame side. In England, I lived in Bath my hometown, so I'm ostensibly the most famous person ever born there. So you can't take a ship with everyone knowing about it. But you come to New York and no one gives a damn. You know, I mean I I in the ten years I lived in New York, ten years I
lived in New York. I've stopped on the street once in the last four years that my kid has been at n y U, and I've coming to visit a lot more. I've been stopped far more times. We're interestingly, and all by younger people. There is this resurgence of interest in music. Weird, and it happened to me on the way here. Good music is always going to come back. Good music research. That is my theory. I well, my theory has always been that good music, if you put some thought and some depth into it, is the music that will last, you know, And this is where I have disagreements with people who are fans of an era. Right. So I get so many people that you know, of my age, not younger people that come up to me and say, you know, music nowadays is not as good as it was in the eighties, and I'm like, well, yeah it is. You just got to go find it. And you have this weird vision of nostalgia for that decade. But the music you're remembering is the good stuff that was just as much. That was just as much crap then as there is error, just as much Tears for Fears Hurt Smith. If you're enjoying this episode, don't keep it to yourself, Tell a friend, and be sure to follow us on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. When we returned, Kurt Smith shares the circumstances that led to his breakup with bandmate Roland or Zeball. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing That's Kurt Smith singing Mad World from Tears for Fear three album. The Hurting Smith left Tears for years. He moved to the United States and pursued other musical interests, resulting in several solo albums and a new band called Mayfield. Kurt Smith and roland Or Zibow reunited in two thousand, a decade after their acrimonious split. What began as business communications through a fax machine eventually led to the pair finally meeting face to face. We end up talking on the phone. So when we see at the time he was in England and I was had just moved to l A. The fact came through about some like business thing because we own these buildings in England together, and I was kind of like tired of talking through lawyers and accountants and you're spending money on them every time you're using them, and I'm like, why don't we just get on the phone and talk about this. Because it was a complicated sort of situation, and so we did. You know, his recollection is, Oh my god, you I sounded very American to him, and because I lived, you know, in America ten years by then, and it's just felt like the so much water under the bridge. He had already had a family, I was just starting a family, and we'd grown up. We would just just as simple as that. We were. We were fully formed. We were fully formed adults who really didn't have those same grudges when we parted, we weren't fully formed adults. We didn't have that individual strength. Where did you see each other? Next? I went back because my family he lived in Bath, both my brothers still lived in Bath. So I was back. He was in Bath at that time. Then we still lives still as a house there. Yeah, oh my god. So I was back visiting my family and my mother who was still alive then, and my brothers and we went out to dinner and it seemed like quite normal and it was quite pleasant. And then he said, you know, you fancy sort of maybe trying to work together again, and so I I said, well, we can have a go. I mean, let's why not, you know, let's let's have a go and see if anything comes. And if nothing comes, no pressure, then it's we're not on the same wavelength anymore. And that's two. And we went in and we wrote this song called the Closest Thing to Heaven, which is offered an album called Everybody Loves a Happy Ending, which of course you know, is the funny title of the album, and it ended up being a kind of lighthearted album. It was more of a celebration of us getting back together again. It it didn't really have the depth of the first three albums and the new album the tipping point, I don't think. But it was still really good and we had a really good time doing it, and and it was nice to be working together again. So since then we've been touring and working together and it seems to be good. You know, we we know we need into our individual space. You know, when we're not working together, we don't see each other. We don't see each other socially. We know we're very different people, but we also know now that that's our strength. But also I'm always wondering, you know, I read this is only from what I read that some of the tension was because of his perfectionism. Was the world they keep using his perfectionism? Yeah, that was definitely the tension during Seeds of Love. Yeah, that he was getting into everything had be precise and exact and down to like when we had man who catch a come in and play drums on the song called Batman song, and Man who is a wonderful drummer, but his timing is not exact. You know, a lot of the time, which I personally like. I I like the kind of roughness. But Roland was into grids. He was into looking at the fair Light, which was the computer we were using at the time. So there was a man who's take on man on Batman song is is twenty takes edited together, so they were exactly in time. And that kind of thing drove me up. But at the same time, did you find yourself, like, years later after you split up with him, you were in a room with other people and you're sitting there going God, there's a part of me that really misses Rowland's perfections. Were their benefits to it as well his approach, Yeah, But weirdly the benefits are not, you know, because he's got over to a certain degree that neatness, and you know he does Yeah, he's now got into more feel stuff. I mean, he's he's moved more towards me on that. I think what I missed was Roland has this which can be incredibly useful and frustrating and annoying, all of these things and thoroughly enjoyable lack of a filter. And that's kind of what I missed. Ship just comes out of him and
sometimes it's bad, but now and again it's just like whoa where did that come from? And it's wonderful. I don't have that freedom. I'm I am the introvert. I don't you know, I I haven't. I have many filters, So how it it's interesting how it works, and we've come to appreciate each other far more, and certainly during the tipping point, we definitely got to a point where we really appreciated what we both brought to the party. And I think this is the first time that's happened since the hurting to me, and I think Roland weirdly, you know, we were awarded this thing called the Ivan Novello Award, which is a songwriting award in England for our body of work. It's it's kind of like the musical Oscars, kind of in England. And he, you know, he gave his old speech because he tends to be enjoy those kind of things, and he had a few drinks. He described me as the break to his accelerator. And I think that's probably the best description I've I've heard of our relationship together. Now I see that you acted, How did you feel? How did you like? Oh? I loved it. It was fun, but I was playing myself, you know. And I've done it like four was it for yourself? Yeah? Yeah, in this some TV show called Psych and and and the movies as well. And actually, and it's a fan, I mean James Rode Rodriguez, who's who's also a Tish alumni. He's a huge fan. And um, they did on one the first one I went on. Um, I redid their theme tune for the second one, and then the other ones were just kind of acting basically. But I always was playing myself. So I mean, I guess you call it acting because they're not the words I would necessarily say. Even though I did change something, I spent my life saying things other people have exhaust Yeah, I mean, and and there are times I I said to them like, do you mind if I change it a little bit, because it just that there's no way I would say that in your mouth. Yeah. Now, what about teaching? Have you ever taught My guest taught it at vocals um No, not music business um really more than anything or young artists, So I guess taught at n YU when I lived in wasn't there yet? My actually my connection with them, why you goes back a ways because I also opened because I was on the charity board, which is actually weirdly how me and Francis had our second date because I started the charity in America, the Nord of Robbins Music Therapy Center that's at n y U. I opened that because I was part of, you know, raising the funds to build it that program at NYU. What would you say, you guys, the emphasis on your new album, but what kind of an album did you want? Did you sit down and map out the texture of that? And then we did eventually again the same thing. I mean, it took us forever because we spent seven years working on this record from start to finish. But but initially it was at the behest of sort of our management and record company at the time what they wanted us to all these young producers and songwriters and hopefully, you know, get us to make a modern record. And I have no idea what that means. Still, don't your voice you're such I mean, I hope you never stop singing because you have such a beautiful voice and such a signature voice. How was that song written? When you write a song that just resonates now, I mean everybody wants to all the what's an interesting one because it was an afterthought. Effectively, when you get sort of near the end of a project, you then start looking at what you're missing, because we always like an album to have a sort of not necessarily a story. I mean, it becomes a story bit it's a journey, so it needs these ups and downs, and sometimes it needs something quiet and deep, and sometimes you're missing that lighthearted, kind of bouncy, poppier kind of song. I think Boys of Summer had come out, you know, that's the kind of like driving down a freeway in the US, a kind of song that bounces along and you can sing along to it, even though the lyrics ended up being a lot deeper than that. So there's this sort of balance of something that you may not listen intently to the lyrics, but it's sort of is a little air warm already, and then you kind of go, oh, that song is heavier than I thought it was. Because it's a bouncy pop song. We had this shuffle beat that don't do, Don't do, Don't do, don't We're like, yeah, that's the kind of thing we're missing. So we started working on this shuffle beat, and that's where everybody came from and from start to finish. And the album took us two years to make, but that one song two weeks. I mean, I look at those pictures of those albums. You you mean you look like you look like an altar boy, really like such a sweet little looking a little boy, a little boy. You were a little boy. When you look at those albums, you see that, kid, what do you think? What? The fact that I've survived it is a miracle in and of itself, and the fact that we're still doing and still enjoying it, and the fact that you know, last year when we toured, was our most successful tour ever in our career, and it's it's kind of crazy. You're gonna keep at it for a little while. Maybe without question. The two of us now the closest we've been since we first started Tears for Fears as such, since we were like a teen. We're old enough and wise enough to appreciate what we both bring to the party, and and that's a great position to be in my thanks to Tears for Fears, Kurt Smith, I'll leave you with a little bit more of everybody wants to rule the world from Songs from the Big Chair. I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the thing, is brought to you by my Heart Radio. Say that you have never, never did why while it was when never? That's my friend. When body sh a