Tears for Fears: Escaping the mad world

Curt Smith and Roland Orzabal of Tears For Fears don't shout at each other any more. Towards the end of the British band's first life in the late 80s, following a stint as one of the biggest pop acts around with 1985 album Songs From the Big Chair, their were tense and fiery moments between the two old friends.

Smith says because of their heavy touring schedule and the band's success, their relationship started getting "weird" and "strange".

Ironically, it was following their stirring feel-good pop hit Sowing the Seeds Of Love that it all ended.

"I think it was primarily for personal reasons and I just didn't think I could do it anymore - and it wasn't healthy for me. I wasn't enjoying it," says Smith on the phone from Los Angeles.

"And Roland and I had been together since we were 14 in bands, and it was enough. At that point in time we had been living in each others pockets for over half our lives, so it was time for us to take a break."

These days though, like one of their biggest hits once proclaimed, they've "let it all out".

"Now we're more like family," he says cheerily.

They got back together in 2000 and play at Vector Arena with fellow 80s pop stars Spandau Ballet on Thursday.

It was Orzabal who instigated the reunion, and one day his manager called Smith to ask him if he'd be keen on playing together again.

Smith was unsure at first but during one of his trips to see his family in his hometown of Bath, he and Orzabal hooked up for dinner.

"It wasn't weird," he remembers, "and the next step was to go into the studio and see what happened."

The result was 2004 album, Everyone Loves A Happy Ending, which is not exactly Songs From the Big Chair or up there with their darkly melodic and synth-driven debut, The Hurting, but it inspired the pair to carry on.

"What's interesting is on our own we are nowhere near as commercial because we tend to get self indulgent, but the things we happen to like together are very melodic and emotional and that is where we meet."

Emotional is possibly an understatement when it comes to describing songs like Shout, one of pop's most angsty and chest-beating pleas, and Everybody Wants To Rule the World - the band's two biggest hits. Overwrought is probably a better description, especially of Shout.

But they were big songs, and the album went on to sell millions around the world - and in New Zealand, recalls Smith, it sold more copies per capita than anywhere else.

The pair met as teenagers in Bath and were in a number of bands before Tears For Fears formed in 1981. They always had designs on being pop stars. Influenced by Talking Heads, Pink Floyd, Brian Eno and Peter Gabriel, they became part of the synth-pop and new romantic movement of the early 80s thanks to debut album The Hurting, which featured the song Mad World (which had a resurgence in popularity when it was covered on the Donnie Darko film soundtrack).

The Hurting still sounds fresh today - and intense. After all, it was inspired by the pair's intrigue with primal scream therapy and Orzabal's harrowing childhood.

"The first album is dark and introspective - tailor made for England," he jokes. Then with Songs From the Big Chair "we came out of our shells" and they slung on their guitars.

"I think people forget even though we were labelled a synth band because of The Hurting, but keyboards are not our native instruments. Roland's a guitar player and I'm a bass player. That's what we naturally play, and I think with Songs from the Big Chair we were just putting that back into our music."

LOWDOWN

Who: Tears For Fears
What: Reunited 80s pop stars
Where & when: Vector Arena, Thursday, April 29 (with Spandau Ballet)
Listen to: The Hurting (1983); Songs From the Big Chair (1985); The Seeds Of Love (1989); Everybody Loves A Happy Ending (2004).