Curt Smith

incredible.

And very early on, you and Kurt Smith, your partner in Tears for Fears, find yourself working with some really heavy hitters.

You're working with Peter Gabriel's producer while he's making Security.

The song Shock the Monkey.

Welcome to the Sweet Song Podcast, where we unwrap your favorite songs and the stories, secrets, and worldviews of the artists who write them.

I'm your host, Christy York Wooten, and this week is really a dream come true for me, a conversation with Roland Orzabal, co-founder with Kurt Smith of a band I listen to all the time, Tears for Fears.

You know their songs like Mad World, Shout, Head Over Heels, and Everybody Wants to Rule the World.

And today, Roland will tell us about his New York Times bestselling memoir, Welcome to Your Life, Love, Death, and Tears for Fears, which ties his personal and musical life to astrology.

There were never any questions in my mind, even though there could have been.

But the older I got, the more I, you know, veered towards things philosophical i yeah i i started to feel that i needed to explore

and so musically that enabled you that was kind of the kickoff point you're with kurt you left the band graduate tears or fears is coming along but this is also when you talk about this astrological conjunction also saying that there was a conjunction between you and Kurt.

And this is when you also introduced the concept of each of you being the sun and the moon.

Back at the SVPD, Chief Vic confirms that the dead man was in fact dead before his fall, meaning Sean was right and Lassie was yet again wrong.

So Henry decides to put Sean and Gus up against Lassie and Jules for a friendly competition that Lassie thinks he's already won.

Yes.

I

It was a short little interview, but it was mostly to promote.

He has written a memoir called Welcome to Your Life, colon, love death and tears for fears which is described as a hybrid of his history with bandmate kurt smith juxtaposed against lessons in astrology if i haven't given you an opportunity to finish the end of that sentence would you ever have gotten to lessons in astrology a

hundred percent no

It's weird.

He's a front man for Tears for Fears.

He and Kurt Smith were in the band for a long, long time.

He kind of kept that flag flying under the Tears for Fears banner for many, many years after Kurt Smith bailed.

But Roland Orzebal has, to my mind, he was always possessed of one of the most interesting looks and voices of that era.

And he's got a book.

But I thought it was, that was a great tie-in.

Yes, but foreshadowing to having Kurt Smith on, I guess, 'cause we hadn't had that yet.

There you go.

You just saved me.

I forgot how many number one songs they had, and they did sell over 30 million records in their career at that time.

He also opens up and talks about his creative partnership and sometimes turbulent relationship that he had and shared with Curt Smith, the other half of Tears for Fears.

He's a different type of rock star.

He and Smith formed the band as a project to help them understand their difficult childhoods through primal scream therapy.

There are elements you expect in a musician's memoir, career highs or lows, tales of addiction and rehabilitation, and Roland Orzabal's book has those things.

What you don't expect is astrology, but Orzabal, founder of the cerebral new wave band Tears for Fears with Curt Smith, has woven astrological wisdom throughout his memoir, Welcome to Your Life.

He also explores his mental health struggles and grief, oh, excuse me, over the death of his first wife.

"Some of the book when I was writing it, I was in tears," he told USA Today.