Tears For Fears singer Roland Orzabal: Touring again has helped me get over loss of wife

Tears For Fears singer Roland Orzabal says touring again is helping him get over the death of his wife of 35 years, Caroline.

The 57-year-old star, who with Curt Smith had a string of hits in the Eighties including Shout, Change and Pale Shelter, revealed he “lost a year” and suffered health problems as he grieved.

The tragedy happened in 2017 as the band toured the US with Hall & Oates.

Orzabal told A List: “I had to fly back to take care of the funeral and the wake. Then I finished the tour. We continued to work until the end of the year and it wasn’t until I stopped working that things started to go wrong, physically.

“I won’t go into detail. It was bizarre. Grief is a very strange thing. It can affect you in all kinds of ways. I lost a year. I’ve done a lot of therapy and it’s great to be back on the horse.”

Despite touring regularly in the US, the band — who play the O2 tonight — did not realise their popularity in the UK until they supported The Killers at British Summer Time in Hyde Park in 2017. Orzabal said the warm reception helped convince them to embark on their first UK tour for 12 years.

He added: “There seems to be a real fondness for us here. A lot of young people have been raised on our music, or rather had it forced upon them by their parents.

“But doing Hyde Park and seeing the response... then we sold out the Royal Albert Hall immediately, we thought, ‘Oh oh’. It was just fantastic.”

The Seeds Of Love hitmakers will also play two nights at Hampton Court Palace Festival in the summer. They are working on new album The Tipping Point, which features writing collaborations including Dan Smith from Bastille.

Orzabal added: “It’s the modern way. It’s like speed dating ... but after two to three hours we came up with a riff, and we wrote a whole song in two days.”