Ticket 2 Ride

I was awaiting this book, and hoping that it doesn’t disappoint like Evan Dando’s (The Lemonheads) recent book. I believe that “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” was one of the best songs of the 1980s, and actually, I enjoy their work post Songs From the Big Chair more than their early albums.

Roland Orzabal is better known as half of the pop group Tears for Fears. Welcome to Your Life is subtitled “An Astrological Memoir,” whatever that might be. Orzabal is a big follower of astrology and includes astrological info on certain events in his life. I tried understanding the planet placements, but it was lost on me. To each his own.

The book opens with the devastating 2017 death of Orzabal’s wife of 35 years, Caroline, at the age of 54 following alcohol-related dementia. It’s a sad story of her self-destruction, and guilt for Orzabal.

From a difficult childhood to becoming a member of the 1980s British synth band, Orzabal and longtime friend Curt Smith would tour the world and sell millions of records as Tears For Fears. Easy road? Not particularly, but being in the right place, a bit of luck and having talent can open the door to great success.

Tears for Fears came to an end after Sowing the Seeds of Love (1989), signaling a difficult breakup for Orzabal and Smith. This parting followed a complicated split with their manager, who embezzled tour funds from the band, putting them in debt and exacerbating the growing divide between Orzabal and Smith.

“A lot is made of The Seeds of Love being my baby, that I was being megalomaniacal during the making of that album, Orzabal writes. Sowing the Seeds of Love was really the first album the Orzabal and Smith produced, as other members of their production team left because of creative differences. “This led to an overindulgence and perhaps an overproduction on some of the numbers. And we didn’t change them or shorten them. The time spent in London recording studios was costly. We eventually spent over a million pounds on the album.”

Once on the road to promote the album, Orzabal and Smith split into two camps, and went their own separate ways. Orzabal recounts the story of the band playing in Kansas City and finding the singer Oleta Adams singing in a hotel bar. She was signed to a recording contract, toured with the band and had a long and successful solo career of her own. Great story, right here in Kansas City.

After his split from Smith, Orzabal kept the Tears for Fears name for what were his solo projects, trying to maintain the creativity and sound the duo had developed, but also taking advantage of new technology and input from other sources. Elemental and Raoul and the King of Spain are quite good albums, not as padded and 80s sounding as their earlier work, but I play them more often than their earlier ablums. Orzabal is a fine songwriter and guitarist, he did the band name well after Smith left. Orzabal’s solo album, Tomcats Screaming Outside, got virtually zero notice, but shows off Orzabal’s skills and maturity as a songwriter. The album doesn’t sound like Tears For Fears or even Orzabal, as he stretches his boundaries and offers up a great new sound.

Astrology is but one method Orzabal sought to bring deep meaning and understanding to his life. Primal Therapy, all the rage in the 1970s thanks to John Lennon, gave Orzabal a way of working on the past trauma in his life. The damage done from his deeply troubled father and his absent mother, plus a wife who descended into darkness, and made it okay for him to stray into other relationships, set him up for addictions (Ambien, alcohol) of his own and guilt from straying from a marriage that ceased to function. Hard stuff to read, and his struggle to keep a music career going years after the sell by date seemed more like work than joy.

Orzabal and Smith do reunite for Everybody Lives a Happy Ending (2004), more than 20 years after their last album of new material. While I really enjoyed the album, it didn’t sell and was dumped by Arista. The rise of popularity of older bands still provided the opportunity of tours, which Orzabal and Smith continued to do. While new music was tough to sell, the old songs were in films, streaming and alive with their aging audience.

Orzabal and Smith still had creative juices and wanted to record and release a new album. The long story of how The Tipping Point (2022) came about is definitely worth the read. How a legacy band, with no agent, management or record label gets an album made after years of development, with a few false starts and many headaches, is a story of endurance and faith. After their longtime manager resigned, they ended up with industry powerhouse Irving Azoff’s company to manage them.

Orzabal and Smith signed with Warner Bros. for a record label, which didn’t work out due to creative issues. Universal became interested (primarily because they now owned the band’s old masters and wanted a new greatest hits set), but they passed on the new album. Finally, they landed at Concord, a small boutique label owned by Norman Lear. That was the easy part.

Writing new songs together was a test of their friendship. Orzabal and Smith were childhood friends, and according to Orzabal, the problems in their relationship cropped up at different times, the first time kept them from talking for nine years before coming back together to write. Orzabal is careful in mentioning Smith, and their sometimes fractured relationship, not going into much detail and being respectful of Smith. Although Orzabal did not directly say it, I believe that as life has rolled on, some old issues have fallen away and both Orzabal and Smith have taken a fresh approach to their relationship. Maybe that is how the planets align.

During the long road with The Tipping Point, they were pushed by their management and record company to engage with outside songwriters to try and update their sound with successful contemporary writers. So they did. After completing enough songs for the album, Smith hit pause. The songs, he said, sounded like them trying to be something they weren’t. So they regrouped and went back to some of the songs they initially brought to the process and worked on those, combining their revamped songs with some they had developed with outside writers.

The Tipping Point proved very successful and generate new interest in the band, especially with a big tour to promote it. In the meantime, Orzabal remarried and started a new family.

Final Thoughts

The book is somewhat hard to follow, the astrological parts aside. Orzabal jumps around in telling his story and doesn’t include dates, so it’s difficult to understand his own point of being as his narrative jumped around. Still, I enjoyed reading about Orzabal and Tears For Fears. They had a big sound in the 1980s, and were able to continue their journey, although they discovered what most legacy bands face, new music is hard to promote and sell, but their is a core audience who still enjoy the old music.