Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
We've influenced other artists, and when younger generations become fans of those artists and hear about us, they discover our music too.
We've never been a musically fashionable band. We've been successful, but I think that has something to do with us never following the trends.
We just weren't a hip band. I mean we recorded our second album in Bath at a time when everyone else was recording in New York or Los Angeles.
For a lot of bands, the London club scene very much starts to become more important than the music they create. Which we never want to happen.
I hate touring beyond measure. I don't like all the travelling and the hotel rooms. But the hour and a half on stage each night keep me going.
It's incredibly cool that R & B artists like Kanye and the Weekend, who from a completely different genre to us have tapped into 'The Hurting.'
I live 10 miles outside of Bath, where there are about 10 houses. So it's nice and peaceful and quiet. Keeps your feet on the ground, basically.
I went to live in New York and released a solo album that I now know was very bad. Roland kept on with the Tears For Fears name. It was a bad split.
My father always worked away, and died when I was 17, but I hated him by that point. It hit me later in life, but back then I was teenage and angry.
In England, people get bored very quickly. People aren't satisfied with one thing. You can have hits, but to stay there you have to start doing new things.
Mad World's distinctive percussion intro was played on a Roland CR-78 drum machine. We first recorded it at twice the speed, but it sounded great slowed down.
You know, if you ever listen to your voice on an answering machine everyone thinks we sound dreadful. That's sort of the way I think when I hear myself speak.
I think a truly fantastic video is worth it. We spend so much time on the music, it only makes sense to have a really well-done visual translation of that music.
We know our limitations. There's only a certain amount of time that Roland and I really want to be on the same bus together. Our limit is about four to six weeks.
It's definitely a joy when you make a record to know you are doing it for the right reasons: You want to do it and that you think you have something valid to offer.
We've been playing together since we were 13, and from the age of 18, we've had a record contract. I think that we've been incredibly lucky, yeah. But we deserve it.
American rock was, and still is to some extent, a closed shop. REO Speedwagon, Toto, Boston, Foreigner all those bands, and I wouldn't be able to tell which from which.
At the height of our fame, we didn't see anything. We didn't leave the hotel because we were doing interviews all day. We may have traveled the world, but we saw nothing.
We rushed to finish the album when 'Mad World' became a hit. The pressure was on and it stopped being as enjoyable as it had been; in the end, it wasn't enjoyable at all.
I'm becoming hip to my children because bands of their generation name us as influences, so you can definitely hear it, the same way as we were influenced by other people.
I don't think we ever really think about it when we're doing it, because if you sort of go in with a plan of attack, it tends to take away the natural rhythm of songwriting.
We really hated being in a band. The joy for us and why we slipped nicely and neatly into it was because we didn't need a band anymore. We became a duo because of technology.
My daughters prefer Tears for Fears songs as they're more upbeat and generic. Dad's songs are 'a little too sad' for them, which just means that they're harder to understand.
I see bands that have been around for a long time who go through the motions. They're tired and they shouldn't really be doing it any more. We are doing it because we like it.
We know we have a method of reaching people, but we have never wanted to preach. We like to make our views palatable, music that is easy to swallow, and I think we've done that.
Mad World' was easy for me to sing because I could relate to Roland's lyrics. We were both the middle of three sons and had been brought up by single mothers with absent fathers.
I have no preconceived ideas; I gave that up a long time ago… The only thing we can do as musicians is make an album we like, and an album that we consider to be incredibly good.
I saw a band called The Electric Guitars, from Bristol. I described them to Roland, and he just started playing a riff on guitar and said, 'Do they sound like this?' And they did.
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.
We were touring the States tied to a load of drum machines and sequencers and synthesizers, playing to hundreds of thousands of people and yet feeling strangely removed from the music.
Normally doing an album you go from track to track and go, 'Let's not work on this one today, let's go work on the other one,' and I think you tend to get more self-indulgent that way.
We've never considered ourselves overtly political, but when it comes to English politics - people like Margaret Thatcher - you cannot just stand by and ignore all that's happening around us.
In the music business, we're much better off staying in Bath - we don't get involved in the competitiveness, where you've got to be seen in the right places and music kind of takes second place.
To be honest, I've been back to Atlanta a couple of times, I can't remember what for. One for a big conference, a radio conference. I feel like it's a vibrant place. It has a vibrant music scene.
When we play live show we tend to find there's a whole portion that's a considerably younger demographic. That's quite gratifying. They primarily seem to be into 'The Hurting' which I guess makes sense.
Due to the Internet, we don't perform new songs until a release. Don't get me wrong, I love new technology, but in the case of a new song we would like the original recording and production to be heard first.
I think Roland read 'Primal Scream' first and then gave it to me. This was, I think, even prior to 'The Graduate' days. We both got heavily into and it offered a lot of questions about how screwed up our home life was.
And I think the first LP was perhaps too precious. It was our life's work up to that point; there was so much pain in trying to make the perfect statement. We couldn't relax and I think most people missed what we were trying to say.
I mean the joy of doing the 'Psych' thing I have to say, is that, you know, I'd met them beforehand, James Roday and Timothy Omundson specifically. I met Dule Hill when I got up there. But they're just, you know, a nice bunch of people.
Technology was changing just as we were getting started. You had these records by people like David Bowie and Talking Heads and Brian Eno that took production into a whole new direction. That really influenced us, and pushed us to find that early sound we had.
New York was a fantastic place to disappear because no one cares who you are. No one bothers you. In my ten years living there I was never once asked for an autograph or stopped on the street. It was an absolute joy. I gave myself time and space to get to know myself more.
We're both getting older, our children are starting to leave home. But I can say that I'm just as passionate a songwriter now in my 50s as I was in my 20s. But instead of talking about the general kind of angst that I felt as a teenager, I'm writing about more specific issues.
The only formula we have when we work together is that we both have to have a product we can endorse when we finish. Something we both like. It's a matter of compromise. In the end what you get is what both of us can agree on. In that comes Tears for Fears. I don't know what the mix or magic is, that's just what it is.
I think what we find fascinating and interesting is when people take our music and turn it into emotionally something else. And weirdly, Lorde's version of 'Everybody Wants to Rule the World,' the production really goes with the lyric more than our version does, because our version, albeit the lyric is dark, the music is quite uplifting.