It all started on a summer evening in 1985. In the lounge of the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Kansas City. A group of English musicians were relaxing after a sell-out show in one of the town's larger auditoria. Tears For Fears were midway through a demanding North American Tour promoting their multi-million-selling Songs from the Big Chair album. The record had already spawned two US number one singles in "Shout" and "EWTRTW" and the accompanying roadshow was proving to be one of the hottest tickets on that year's concert merry-go-round. It should have been a cause for some celebration . But ,in the hotel Bar, emotions were mixed and and the moood strangely subdued. A vital spark had been missing from that night's show. It had been the same the night before. And the night before that...

As the day hit the night, the elegant brown frame of the hotel's resident entertainer took her usual place behind a white baby grand piano.
Accompanied only by the barely audible jazz shuffle of a brushed drum and an upright bass, Oleta Adams sat by candelight and began to play. Her voice floated out above the muffled chatter and into the pervading emptyness of the hotel bar. For Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith, listening to Oleta was a revelation. Here was a musical performance that was raw and honest, pure and soulful. In contrast with their own show , with it's backing tapes , lighting rigs, marathon soundchecks and business-like emphasis on perfection, this was music with only the most basic embellishment. The impact on Roland and Curt was deep and lasting: this chance encounter with Oleta Adams was to prove a
watershed in the career of TFF.

Four years on from that night in Kansas City, Roland Orzabal is sitting in the front room of his North London home. He is sorrounded by the material fruits of his success. The trappings, however, are not those of the run-of-the-mill pop personality. There are a couple of original pieces of Abstract Expressionism, a word proccesor and shelf after shelf of astrological, scientific and social literature. This man is obviously an avid reader. He is also an earnest and engaging talker. And every time he recalls that first encounter with Oleta, he sees a slightly different perspective on its precise relevance. He starts to explain:

'Coming across Oleta was a reminder of the power of music. It was a reminder of what music could do, a reminder that music should basically be about self-expression. It was an emotional experience for me. 'At the time, we were acting  out the roles of succesful players in the music business - running into Oleta showed us the other side of the coin. It brought us face-to-face with music on a pure level. Here was someone literally singing for her supper but still expressing herself brilliantly. Oleta's roots were in blues and gospel, but she had been told to tone those aspects down and sing ina more cabaret-orientated style. Within those restrictions, however, she was still able to express herself far more honestly than we were. 'The whole performance was very inmediate, very live and very personal. It wasn't passing through any medium. It was sung straight from her soul. It was also something that we had discovered for ourselves rather than something that had been sold to us by the record company. It wasn't removed or distant in the way that our own music was.'

Curt Smith shares his partners feelings about the night in Kansas City and it's profound effect on Tears For Fears. 'Seeing Oleta was a big turning point. There we were with a seven-piece band and an audience of thousands every night and yet there was no soul in what we were doing. And then there was this woman with just a piano who could reduce an audience to tears. It was amazing to see someone express themselves so naturally.'

Roland takes up the tale once more:
'Tears For Fears had been travelling across America playing songs that worked in the studio but not on the stage. The material was not particularly loose or free or expressive. We would have liked to be more expressive, but the songs we played were repressing those desires. Because of our backing tapes and our sequencers, we were tied to the structure of the songs. 'Most bands start making music in order to express themselves, but get waylaid in the process, particularly as they become more succesful. People become diverted and get preoccupied by their niche in the marketplace. Ascompetitive concerns  become more important, selfexpression tends to take a back seat.'

Roland and Curt knew they had encountered something something special that night in Kansas City -both on the stage and also within themselves. They were too shellshocked by the performance they had they had witnessed to introduce themselves to Oleta there and then, but she would re-enter their story at a later date. The important thing at the time was that Tears For Fears rediscovered the reason why they began making music in the first place.

Returning to England in 1986 after the "Big Chair" tour, Tears For Fears took a few months off, Roland in London and Curt in their original home town of Bath in the West Country. It was a time for Reflection before the commencement of woork on their next project-the difficult third album. The band had been working more or less non-stop for the previous five years. Signed to Phonogram Records by Maverick A&R director David Bates in 1981, their eraly singles -'Suffer the Children', 'Pale Shelter', 'Mad World' and 'Change'- were precious, itrospective affairs that earned the band a rather gloomy reputation, something only increased in March 1983 by their debut album The Hurting. Like the band name itself, the album's thematic roots lay in psichologist Arthur Janov's controversial primal scream theory, an analysis of problems that involves the shedding of neurosis (fears) through expressing emotions (tears). Not exactly the typical concerns of your average fun-loving pop group. Album No.2, Songs From The Big Chair, was released in 1985 and proved a tougher ,more mature collection of songs. Produced by Chris Hughes and recorded with a band that comprised Roland and Curt with keyboard player Ian Stanley and drummer Many Elias, it was certainly more confident and outward-looking than their debut.

Says Curt:
'The second album was definitely  a growth from the first. To be honest, it was a blatant attempt making a commercial record , even to the extent of using obvious mucical devices like rockist guitar solos. It was quite disgusting but it worked. 'The other notable thing about the second album was that we were older. As you get older you learn to express yourself slightly better. We wanted to be amusing as well as serious, so that people could see that we weren't two dour, depressed individuals. I think that the album achieved that for us.

It was also a remarkable commercial success, selling a staggering 8 million copies worldwide. half of them in America. But success brought its own attendant set of problems, from an exhausting tour schedule to the artistic frustration of a live show that was hamstrung by its own computer-programmed rigidity. The limitations of the latter had been put into sharp relief that night in Kansas City when the Tears roadshow ran headlong into the unfettered soul swing of Oleta Adams.

Both Roland and Curt knew that things had to be different on their next album. But if such a change was to be a fundamnetal one, it would not happen overnight. Like producer Chris Hughs and keyboard maestro Ian Stanley-credited as co-writerof half of the songs on Big Chair- the Tears For Fears duo were children of the lectronic age. Roland and Curt might have played guitar and bass when on-stage and in the recording studio, but their music was essentialy rooted in the solid rock of programmed machines. The songs on Big Chair and The hurting had been founded on the Fairlight and strained through a sequencer. If Tears were to change to a looser and more organicway of working, they were going to have to sacrifice some of the computerised tools of their trade. Escaping from what had become something of a musical straitjacket was to prove a painful process, as Curt explains:

'As band, we came from the programmed pop era of the early eighties and we had inheritated sense of structure that permeated almost all our music. The way we werew orking was becoming too sterile. We wanted to do something more colourful, something that sounded big and warm.You cannot get that from machines. You only get that with real musicians and real players.' The music the band had been listening to while travelling across the States on tour also had a profound impact. Specialist R&B radio stations pumping forth hour after hour of brilliant black dance music opened up totally new sonic vistas for for the duo, virtually guaranteeing that their third album would lean far more heavily on soul styles. Roland admits readily to the influences:

'Having R&B music thrust at us for 3 or 4 months, culminating in the encounter with Oleta, was bound to have an effect. As music, it had such great emotional impact that it forced us to re-examine our own attitudes. It was obvious that we were trying to make emotional music within too rigid a format.. Hoping across into the realm of soul and borrowing something from that made it easier to be expressive. It made our music more expressive.' 'I didn't see the success of SFTBC as some sort of green light. After two No.1 singles in America, we appeared to have hit on a formula that could have brought us continued success. There was obviously pressure from within the unit to continue as we were and produce 'More Songs from the Big Chair', but it wasn't what Curt and I wanted. 'There would have to be a death before we could be reborn'. The seeds have been sown. It would take a further four years before they flowered.

The old chesnut 'musical diferences' was, for once, a genuine reason; there was fundamental disagreement over the band's direction, many of the arguments stemming from the over use of machines and programmes. A brave move followed. With the tentative agreement of the record
company-now the reactivated Phonogram offshot label, Fontana- the band decided to produce themselves. Roland who had declared himself
'unproduceable' after the difficulties with Chris Hughes, was to work in conjuction with engineer Dave Bascombe. First, however, he had to finish writting the songs and begin to choose a select band of musicians.

For songwriting he turned for help to a new partner in Nicky Holland, a one-time ravishing Beauty and former musical director of The Fun Boy Three. Nicky had provided keyboards on the ardous worldwide tour promoting the Big Chair album, and was already well tune-in to both Orzabal's fastidious, perfectionist nature and his designs for a more soulful, expressive Tears For Fears. Of the songs that eventually made it to the finished album, holland worked with Orzabal on 'Badman's song', 'Advice for the Young at Heart', 'Swords and Knives', 'Year of The Knife',and  'Famous Last Words'. The collaboration brought about a significant shift in Roland's approach to songwriting.

'It was vital for me to work with Nicky. On Advice for instance, I had a set of words and then worked with her on the musical ideas. Prior to that, I had been writting on the machines with Chris and Ian, but the songs were not working out very well. Nicky's approach was more fluid. 'The fact that Nicky is a keyboard player has also added a new dimension to our writting. She took me into the realm of the piano and I learnt a lot from that. I used to write on the guitar and the synthesiser, nut she got me away from that. 'You can play more interesting and developed chords on a piano. As it says on the sleeve on the album, "thanks to Nicky for her harmonic inversions". Her knowledge of chords is far more developed than mine.'

Nicky and Roland had already collaborated on one Tears For Fears arrangement before the Seeds project -an interpretation of Robert Wyatt's 'Sea Song' that graced the B-side of the 'I Believe' single. And, in retrospect, Holland views that collaboration as yet another pivotal point in the progression of ideas and incidents that lead the Tears team to 'The Seeds of Love'. 'Although the Wyatt song was obviously a cover and thus involved no composition or writting, we did our own arrangement of it. The whole thing came toghether in a day. The fact that Robert Wyatt later said ina n interview that he liked it also meant a lot to us. The song was an indication that Roland and I could work toghether. With hindsight, it was something of a turning point.'

Nicky, sharing some of Roland's frustrations with the direction of Tears For Fears on the Big Chair tour, was also keen to work on a looser, more organic manner on the new songs. 'The gigs we were doing at the time were all very similar. The structure was very rigid and the music was consequently boring to play. The tour was nine months long and that certainly had an affect on the playing. It was impossible to change the tempo of any of the songs and even Roland initially frowned on anyone who deviated from the set patern. The first few times I broke away from it, I would get a look from Roland that indicated it was not the done thing.

'When it came to writting we would record things very roughly onto a cassette recorder. We would both be singing and playing at the same time, me on a piano and Roland on a guitar. We tried not to control things too much at the early stage. We wanted to let the songs evolve. My involvement was very much musical, but we would also discuss the lyrical ideas while we were putting the musical side toghether. On some songs, I would come up with lines or ideas, but the great bulk of the lyricalideas were Roland's.