I'll invade your space Your secrets will be mine

Even after 46 years of working together, I don't know how to describe Roland. He lives in the moment. I think he explained it well when we won the Ivor Novello Award last year: He described me as the brake to his accelerator, which is pretty much how it works. <...> Once we get the balance right, it works fantastically. After all, you can't get very far with just a brake. It requires a driving force.

Roland, 'TalkShopLive' Q&A (02.07.2026):

Argentina (01.1990)

Cancer ♋︎ // Leo ♌︎

bonus:

2021

Tears for Fears play Mr. & Mr. Remember the rules? That’s right, one group member is grilled in private about the personal habits of the other. Afterwards his answers are checked by telling them to his partner. Points scored depend on how near the mark they are. <...> Curt scores 8 and a half points and Roland scores a perfect 10 out of 10. RO: “I did extremely well, didn’t I?” CS: “I think we both did pretty well, in fact, maybe we should get married!”

The Beat (1993):

Radio Interview (2004): RO: Um, Curt lives in a cave. I live at the top of a very, very high mountain. But seriously, no, I was in UK and Curt was in Los Angeles, so it involved a lot of, uh, transatlantic flying for us to actually get it [ELAHE] together.  Int.: You live in a cave? I thought you lived in New York. CS:  I do. I'm actually a very well-known recluse. Apart from being a gay icon. RO: [laughs] Int.: Really? CS: Yeah. Int.: What does your wife think of that? CS: She's fine with it, actually. Int.: She is? Ok, well, that's good to know. RO: When you say 'she'. CS: Well... Int.: Yeah, what exactly do you mean? CS: I... you know... one of them. RO: Hehehe CS: They're always called 'she'. RO: It's so nice of you to refer to him like that!

Mr. Media podcast (2010): Int.: How do you keep this partnership, which is sort of like a marriage between, you know, two people? CS: Oh, it's very much like a marriage, trust me. Actually, well, it's less like a marriage than having a brother. Int.: Okay. How do you keep it fresh, and how do you keep, you know, out of each other's hair? CS: Um... We live 6,000 miles from each other. <...> I actually thought that earlier, and I'm like, 'You know what? The 6,000 miles thing works for us'. You know, we see each other a few times a year to work, and then in between, Roland's in England, I'm in Los Angeles, so we don't see each other. So the time we spend together, it's kind of valued a bit more, and it tends to be around work, but, you know, it's nice to hang out, and outside of that, we're very much family men, and we're with our families in our respective homes. We have completely different sets of friends, obviously Roland being in England, me being here. So I think, yeah, weirdly enough, distance. I mean, if you... put it this way, and I do... sort of... I can make an analogy with me and my wife. We've been together 22 years also, by the way. And there was a time where she had to work out of home, and it just wasn't good. Because I worked out of home, and she worked out of home. We were in, like, too close to each other all the time. But then, you know, now she's back in the office, and so we work, you know, separately, and we see each other in the evenings, obviously, and at the weekends, and everything else. That is a good way of keeping a marriage together, [instead] of spending every hour together. And with myself and Roland, it's sort of similar, as you say, it's a bit like a marriage. When we were... the reason I left back in 1990 for a while was, you know, we spent every hour of every day pretty much together because of how succesful we were and because of the work. And... it got too stressful. I don't think people ment to be together for that many hours per day. <...> No, I mean it's... there's gotta be a certain separation because then you appreciate when they come back.

The Quietus (20.09.2013): RO: I never looked up to him [Curt], but I’ve ended up in my life with people who are more fiery than me, and bring out the fire, like my wife. I didn’t marry someone timid and conservative. I guess it’s one of those psychic – relating to the mind, you know? – sort of things you bring into your life, things that hopefully bring the best out in you.

Record Collector (29.11.2014): “In Facebook parlance, our relationship is ‘complicated’,” says Smith. “We’ve been doing it so long we get it. It’s much easier now than it was the first time round, because we appreciate what we both bring to the party. We’re like an old married couple. An old married gay couple.” 

Medium (18.01.2020): CS: The song ['Stay'] is about how hard it is sometimes to leave. I was going through a period where I felt I should leave TFF again as I believed it wasn’t healthy for me. It’s analogous to a marriage. Do we stay together for the sake of the kids? The answer is of course always no as it doesn’t benefit anyone, but the decision is hard because of the decades of history.

Ivor Novello Music Awards (21.09.2021):

Variety (25.02.2022): RO: <...> I do think that we have a more profound respect for each other. We’re not butting heads. Maybe it’s the fact that the testosterone is dropping rapidly when you get to our age, I don’t know. But if we bicker now or if we argue now, it only lasts a couple of minutes, and then one of us says: “OK, shall we have a cup of tea?” CS: In marriage terms, we’ve got to the “Yes, dear” stage of our relationship.

Extra TV (2025):

'Scenes from the Big Chair' (1985), dir. Nigel Dick:

Breakfast with the Arts (2004):

bonus.

interview 1985: <...> “but I had a friend who was a bass player in this kid’s group. One day he told me a friend of his had been fighting with an Indian guy. I got confused, I thought the friend was the Indian guy. I wanted to meet him. It turned out to be Curt, who thought I was French, for some reason. But I really liked him.”

Rockonteurs podcast, se1ep22 (31.01.2021): <...> we walked up a couple of flights, we knocked on the door, and I saw Curt for the first time in my life. And he wasn't allowed out because he'd been in a fight and he'd knocked someone down the stairs. So it was like, that was my initial meeting. I thought, well, this is obviously a guy I need to steer clear of. I was like, you know, I was very conscientious, good at school, A-student. And here was, you know, a wuffian [ruffian]! So, you know, that's how we met.

Rockonteurs podcast, se2ep1, (09.01.2022): — Guy, do you remember how Roland said when he first met Curt, he was scared of him? — Yes! CS: As you should be! — Yeah, because I'm wondering what your, how your sort of family background was like, because the house he grew up in sounded extraordinary. — Yeah, and he said that you came to the door, he was introduced to you by a friend, and you came to the door, you'd been grounded for beating someone up, and he was scared of you. CS: Yeah, for throwing someone down a flight of stairs, actually. — We laugh now. CS: I wasn't a very nice child. But having said that... — Did he have it coming? CS: He did. He definitely did. But I think it was... I mean, I grew up on a council estate, you know, albeit in Bath, so hardly, you know, the worst council estate in England. But you end up getting in fights to stop people picking on you. You know, that was a part of growing up on a council estate, I think. So yeah, my thoughts of Roland, I don't really know. I mean, he seemed, after we met that one time and then I found out about his family background and everything else, it seemed, you know, very kind of, yeah, the antithesis of my family, I guess. — So what was yours? CS: Well, mine was completely 100% working class. You know, my father was a waiter. My mother worked in boots. — That was a lyric right there. It sounded like a Chris Diffen. CS: And, and, you know, his mother was, um, you know, I mean, they lived on a council estate as well when he was growing up. — But they were theatricals. CS: She was theatrical. He, I mean, he was a weird French philosopher, you know, I mean, he was batshit crazy, but, uh, but in a, in a, to me in a fascinating way. You know, it was all very different to my upbringing. I mean, his parents were kind of nuts, as mine were, but in a very different way. You know, his mother was highly intelligent and his father was this kind of wacky French philosopher. — There was a kindred spirit there, was there? Somehow that you saw in each other? CS: Yeah.

CS: Well it was a weird kind of time signature song and it just came from the chords that Charlton, again going back to Charlton Pettus who we worked with, had and the actual chorus went into the same time signature as well, but thankfully Roland came along and said, 'No that should be in straight four'.