Roland '98 ("The Mix")

The Mix

Roland has once again ensconced himself in his own Neptune's Kitchen studio
with long-term collaborator Alan Griffiths to create what will be an album of
song-based drum & bass- a departure for a singer who is renowned for his vocal
and lyrics. But there are sound reasons for the decision.

"In the past I always had something to say, there was always something inside
me that I just had to get out, and I just don't anymore."

On to pastures new, then ?

" Well, I was looking around for different things that were turning me on," he
elaborates."I specifically liked drum and bass, so that's what I started
mucking about with. I've messed around for a while, but it's so different when
you put an actual song around it."

There's a whole new process to go through for Roland, but ever the innovator,
he likes to experiment .

"I'm working more with sampled loops, althought I have had musicians involved
too, so it never sounds as if it's completly computer-generated," he explains.
"What I'm doing now is a lot more structural. All of a sudden the lyrics
aren't so important. It's so much more to do with the music, which, in a way,
is quite ridiculous. All of a sudden I am not writing about anything. I still
muck about lyrically, but there's so much less influence on that side."

To date, Roland and Alan Griffiths have penned six tracks for the album, and
are still in the writing process.
 

Photo From Q Magazine - July/99
 

Primal Screamers: They Wanted To Rule The World. They Did For A While.
 

        Californian psychologist Arthur Janov made his name  in 1970 when million  people bought his  book, The  Primal  Scream. Advocating a revolutionary and often violent new form of  therapy, he'd tapped into all sorts of exciting  stuff that really appealed to anxious baby boomers: repressed pain, early trauma, the force of memory reverberating on lower brain levels,  but perhaps best of all, he encouraged patients  to shout, shout and let it all out.

       Fifteen years later, Janov's theory was a pop song. A very brilliant pop song. 'Shout' was Tears for Fears' second consecutive American Number 1. 'Everybody Wants To Rule The World', the first, had only been kept from the UK top slot by USA For Africa's 'We Are The World' (this was the  quilt-ridden mid-'80s, remember). It's parent  album 'Songs  From The Big Chair' topped the Billboard chart for five weeks, ultimately  selling over five  million copies there, and a total  of nine around the globe. Everybody might  have wanted to rule the world, but in 1985 it seemed that Curt Smith and Roland  Orzabal actually did.

       But were they happy? They were not "If a feelings such as 'I am not loved" is set in early  childhood, it never leaves, wrote Janov. "Even  being loved by hundreds of people will never  change the painful feeling".

       The Tears For Fears road to pain and fortune began in November 1982 with 'Mad World'. Their third single and first hit, it peaked at Number 3 in Britain, turning the pop spotlight  on  two very unlikely-looking  lads indeed. Dressed in the sort of charity-shop overcoats that were  rigueur among  "Echo & The Bunnyman' fans of the time, they were cartoon students, singer Smith had spidery little plaits, and the other one did a weird Ian Curtis kung-fu dance.

       Importantly predating 'The Smiths, 'Mad World' struck a chord with the nation's  dispossessed: "Went to  school and I was very nervous?  No one knew me, no one knew me... The dreams in which I'm dying are the best I've ever had". Looking back on Tears for Fears' early days, it is hard to see past the bloated, stadium-filling behemoth they became and acknowledge what an intelligent, singular talent they were. In fact, it's easier to write them off as an '80's joke - the librarian 'Simple Minds' - than to address the truth. Through a combination of  brains, honesty, pop magic and the perfect producer (Chris Hughes, drummer for 'Adam & The Ants', where he was called 'Merrick'), Tears for  Fears were neither embarrassing nor in the way.

       By 1989, they were both. Curt Smith, named  after the German actor Curt Jugens, and Roland Orzabal de La Quintana met aged 13 at school in Bath and enjoyed a teen  pop apprententiceship in ska  quintet 'Graduate' who put  singles out and  everything. In  1981, 'Graduate' split, but the duo  stayed together and started messing about with  synthesisers  under the prophetic moniker  'History of  Headaches'. A better name was found within the pages of Janov's book, 'Prisoners  Of Pain', and a demo recorded, which pricked them into the Mercury label.

        Synthesisers did many things for pop music in the '80s, but perhaps the  most dynamic was to facilitate the  return of duos (Soft Cell, Pet  Shop Boys, WHAM!, "not  that" Dave Stewart  & Barbara  Gaskin). Smith and Orzabal were musically self-sufficient. Although Orzabal was usually  sole songwriter, he needed Smith's sweet voice (and bright-eyed good looks) as much Smith needed his unusually deep, uncommonly catchy songs. Orzabal proved himself a lousy singer on the   pair's debut album 'The Hurting'. Compare the  lemonfresh Smith sung 'Pale Shelter' or 'Mad World' to the more dirgey 'Suffer The Children'  or 'Watch Me Bleed' (sung by Orzabal-unless it really is a sea-lion).

       The two-way dept is clear. Despite its occasional bum  note, "The Hurting' remains a  landmark work, although it has 1983 written trough it like a stick of rock. It's as dated by the real saxophone in 'Ideas As Opiates' and 'Memories Fade'  as by the crashing programmed rhythms and Fairlight  whistling, but it's nonetheless a  highly emotional pop record, at its simplest,  'Change'  one of three Top 5 hits here), and its  most complex, 'The Prisoner' (a ferocious,  hammering, gothic opera that Marilyn  Manson  wouldn't release as a single).

      If Hughes, who'd produced every 'Adam &The  Ants' hit up to 'Ant Rap, is the unsung genius of 'The Hurting', let us not overlook  octopus drummer Manny Elias or keyboard wizard Ian Stanley.

        All three freelances would be recalled for 'The Hurting's' follow up, 1985's 'Songs From The Big Chair'. It duly launched the "duo" onto the world stage, probably because it's a slightly  diluted, more soul-influenced retread of 'The Hurting'. To its eternal detriment, five of its eight tracks are over five minutes long, of which  two (The Working Hour, Mothers Talk) are inflated  rot.  Overtreated vocals, overlong  introductions, over-confident noodling, were it not for  the skyscrapping 'Shou't, the always uplifting 'Everybody Wants To Rule The World' and the mighty 'Head Over Heels', this would possess museum value only.

       But the third album killed Tears for Fears. It had gone down in history before it had even  emerged. Three years, four producers, nine studios  and a million quid in the making, the 'Seeds Of Love' is less an album, more a black hole into which countless personnel and many yards of brown tape were sucked while Orzabal's new direction    took shape.

     'Badman's Song' - all eight ghastly minutes, 32 horrible seconds-epitomises the folly. It truly is Jazz Odyssey, a seemingly unedited jam with delusions of soulfulness (despite Oleta "From America" Adams, whom the boys had picked up in a hotel bar in Kansas City, whose vocal prowess is at sea amid self-important twiddling and kitchensink utilisation).

     The Beatles-mimicking 'Sowing The Seeds Of Love', while genuine toe-tapper (and, at Number 2 in America and Number 5 here, the beginning of the end, commercially) still groans under the weight of its own three-ring circus production.

       Chris Hughes, one of the album's umpteen casualties, worked for 10 months and was  dismissed following an argument over a  particular guitar sound at Olympic Studios, after which Orzabal took over as producer, initially   besotted with a "band  vibe" and the possibilities of Pino Palladino, then mired again in studio navel-gazing, even replacing Hughes's original Ringo-style drums on "Sowing The Seeds Of Love' with  samples. There are flashes of directions and meaning, but in the end, Orzabal's indecision was final.

       The album sold a paltry million in America and  in 1990, won Best Album Cover in the 'Rolling Stone' readers'  poll (even that was overdone).  Smith walked in October 1991, going solo without  trace.

       Orzabal kept the name, said nasty things about Smith in interviews (their relationship had been parent and child-with-guess-who as the parent), and even 'Tears Roll Down' (Greatest Hit 1982-1992) was kept from the British top spot in 1992 by someone else's Greatest Hits album. But  at least Madness still speak to each other and make jolly gig money when needs must.

       In the 21st Century, the Tears for Fears story will be taught, as a note of caution, in rock school. Meanwhile, these three records from a valuable historical document, especially embellished as they now are with B-sides and American remixes, but only one - the innocent first- will  give actual, uninterrupted listening  pleasure, while one - the corrupted last - may  induce entirely the wrong kind of primal yell.

       If only Roland Orzabal had been adopted as Cockney rhyming slang for "implausible". Then  you could say: Tears For Fears' rise and fall -that was all a bit "Roland" wasn't it?
 

By: Andrew Collins
 
(Thanks to Ellen Boots for typing this.)

--> Many fans took exception to this biased and unprofessional article.