"Yeah," chuckles Curt, "it did seem easy, especially in America. Even
though we've done a lot of work, things seem to have taken off very
quickly. If we felt like it, we could carry on for ten years."
     Roland and Curt are exhausted but clearly rather pleased with
themselves. Who can blame them? At the beginning of 1985 they were just
thought of as a promising second rate band - two wimps from Bath whose
career was looking decidedly shaky. A year later they've just completed a
144 date world tour, have had number one hits just about everywhere that
number ones exist and have sold millions of their "Songs From The Big
Chair" LP.
     Not bad - especially for a band which, according to the daily papers,
have been on the verge of splitting up for the last six months, something
the two of them obviously find very amusing.
     "It started because I was asked the very simple question of 'have I
ever felt like leaving the tour' and I said 'yeah'." remembers Curt. "It
seemed like a simple answer to me at the time - everybody's bound to feel
like leaving their job now and again."
     But he didn't, though neither of them are prepared to romanticise
about Tears For Fears as something that will go on forever. "We're bound to
split up one day," says Roland honestly. "If there's one thing I don't like
about being in a duo, it's that it's always 'Curt is such-and-such but
Roland is such-and-such'. It's always the difference between us, which is a
load of rubbish."
     So the sort of thing they don't like is the way, for instance, some
newspapers like to see George Michael as the shiny, pure, talented member
of Wham! and Andrew Ridgeley as the most horrible person in the world?
     "Mmmm," says Curt, "but he probably is, isn't he?" That's the sort of
bitchy joke that Tears For Fears make all the time. "The problem is,"
laughs Curt, "that too many people take us seriously."
     Roland agrees. "People mistake us for a couple of guys who 'could'
give a toss."
     The fact is they spend much more time fooling about than being
serious. Like when the subject of Live Aid comes up. "What? You mean
there's another one?" jokes Curt.
     "Bob didn't have the guts to come and ask us himself so he's sent you
instead," roars Roland.
     Eventually, though, they calm down. "I'm definitely glad we didn't do
it." insists Roland. "The conditions under which it was done were OK for a
4-piece rock band like Led Zeppelin...I mean U2...but I think it would have
been embarrassing for us to do it. Though there's no way we'd have been as
bad as the Thompson Twins or Duran Duran."
     "Basically we weren't into the whole event. I'm glad somebody has
found a use for all the money that pop music makes - it's definately an
improvement on 'sending out good vibes all around the world' and all that
stuff. We did it our way - we donated the money from our concerts in
London,  Sydney, Tokyo and New York. That's our part. We didn't get to play
in front of billions of people which is the reason why an awful lot of
groups appeared."
     What actually happened to them, they explain, is that they said yes
when the original idea was first voiced but then (presumably because at
that point they weren't particularly famous) no-one would confirm that they
were on the bill. Then, when they suddenly had a number one single and
album in America they were announced as appearing without being consulted.
Because of that, and various misgivings about the whole Band Aid
organisation (whether all the aid was getting there, and whether Band Aid
was stopping other worthy causes getting donations) they pulled out. Their
public excuse on the day - that two musicians had left them wasn't the real
reason, it just "kind of helped - it was a good excuse". Roland watched the
concert on TV in Hawaii ("the visual images of the kids starving were very
very powerful - the music was like the bait") while Curt kept to his,
"previous engagement - the beach. In the middle of a musical tour the last
thing I wanted to do was watch a whole day's worth of music."
     The other main controversy Tears For Fears have been involved in this
year concerned Roland's father. When Roland was seven, his mother took him
and his two brothers away from Portsmouth where his French father, "an
engineer and part time philosopher", ran an "entertainment agency". His
father apparently used to treat Roland very badly and when they last saw
each other a few years back, they parted on very poor terms. After some of
Roland's recollections of his childhood were published in 'The Mirror', his
father got in touch with the paper and 'sold' them a story about Roland's
heartlessness, including a letter Roland had written to his father a few
years back calling him a "violent monster", "a leech" and "a worm" - "ghost
go back to your grave".
     The story even made the front page on 'The Sun': 'DEAR DAD, YOU ARE A
WORM'.
     "I was very upset, very upset," says Roland sadly. "What can I say? I
didn't know whether my father was dead. I hadn't heard from him for a long
time - he's a bit of a spectre in my life.
     "No-one will really understand. The letter that I wrote to him, I
wrote very much in his language. He uses lots of symbolism himself in the
way he writes and speaks so I wrote it using his symbolism because I knew
that's what would hurt most."
     Perversely there was one aspect of the whole affair that Roland quite
relished - 'The Sun' cartoon showing a note from Roland pinned to a door by
a spear and someone shouting to his father sitting in a chair inside "It's
another note from Roland". "It shows the humorous side of an incredibly
tacky and embarrassing affair," says Roland. "It makes light of the whole
thing." Which is why, believe it or not, Roland chose to have it reprinted
in the gatefold sleeve of 'I Believe' for all their audience to see (though
the doublepack wasn't easily available in Britian).
     Partly because of incidents like this, Tears For Fears are rather
tired of being in the "public eye" and 1986 will, they say, see no new
Tears For Fears records at all in Britian. Instead they're going to take
their time writing the third LP (which they want to release in a year or so
when people won't bother to compare it to 'Songs From the Big Chair') and
catch up on lost time with their wives and cats. They are, however, going
to "keep the plate spinning" in America by releasing new versions of
'Mother's Talk' (we'll smooth it out, with the harmonies we do on stage),
'Change' and 'Pale Shelter' with new videos to match. Not that they would
think it's going to take them a year to write the new songs - in fact
they've got one done already.
     "It's called 'The Bad Man Song', reveals Roland. "It's quite souly,
the singing is quite expressive. It was basically inspired by an overheard
conversation. I was in a hotel room in America and the people next door
were staying up late and drinking and I heard them talking about me to such
an extent that I wasn't aware the effect I had on people. It made me think.
     "The next day the chorus came to me just like that, and the funny
thing was I started singing it at that night's soundcheck - 'in my head
there is a mirror/food for the saints that are quick to judge me/hope for
the bad man/this is the bad man's song' - and one of the guys involved came
straight up to me and said 'I love the words of that new song'. I thought
'yeah, well.....'"
     Still, they both intend to avoid all that sort of thing in 1986 -
their year of "freedom". "All I want to do," laughs Curt, "is go on shows
like 'Harty' and be stupid."
     "I can't really say much about what we'll be doing next," says Roland
with a smile, "but it seems to me that in our own small way, we're doing
something quite magical. We're very different and separate from most of the
groups that are around nowadays. A lot of what everyone's doing is old hat.
     "People are getting to know a bit too much about us, so this year
we're going to weird out like you wouldn't believe!"