Mad World!
Mad World!
Would I like to interview Curt Smith of Tears For Fears? Yes, please! My baptism of fire in the world of 1980s magazines.
Last week I had the pleasure of meeting up with my former boss from my 1980s magazine days, David Hepworth, at a literary festival, where he was giving a talk about his latest book, Hope I Get Old Before I Die: Why Rock Stars Never Retire.
“How did we end up with rock gods in their eighties?” he asks in the book. “How did a career which was supposed to last about as long as a boxer’s end up continuing as long as a pope’s?” To answer those questions he takes the reader on a fun and engaging roll-call of music superstars of the past 40 years and their perennial laps of honour.
David’s own career has been long and illustrious. He’s edited numerous UK music magazines, including Smash Hits, Q, Mojo and The Word. He’s been a TV presenter (including being one of the BBC anchors of Live Aid in 1985) and a podcaster. And he’s authored several successful books about the history of popular music.
I first met him in the summer of 1983 when he was managing editor of the UK’s pop bible, Smash Hits magazine, then selling half a million copies a week, and launch editor of its sister publication Just Seventeen.
I was 22 and working as a PA in a video production company in central London. (Remember VHS cassettes?!) My boss was driving me nuts. I hated having to apologise to her big-name hairdresser because she always ran late for appointments. I loathed phoning her GP for her contraceptive pills when she ran out, and sending a motorcycle courier to collect them. I wasn’t cut out to be a PA.
I was mad for magazines and wanted to be a journalist.
I spotted a brief news item in Marketing Week about the planned launch of Seventeen in the autumn. (The “Just” was added to avoid confusion with the US magazine of the same name.)
Back home that evening, I wrote a letter to David Hepworth.
Here are excerpts from my diary of the time:
11 August 1983
I took a couple of letters over to the West End today and thought, ugh! One was to a TV company in Poland Street. Production Assistant for a new Channel 4 series. Wasn’t keen on the street or the building.
And then to Carnaby Street, to EMAP, who are launching a new magazine called Seventeen in October. Smash Hits is there, too.
How anyone can work in Carnaby Street, I do not know. Awful. Always hated it anyway, but to have to go there every day! The noise! The crowds! The junk! And a Godawful building. And as for the Smash Hits office – messy.
I was relieved to find that, in fact, only the advertising side of Seventeen is going to be in Carnaby Street. So I toddled over to Lexington Street where the editorial side is.
Not a lot better. Another impersonal building. And the office, it seems, will be attached to Bike magazine.
On their door was a sign warding off everyone who wanted to sell them anything, because they bloody well don’t need anything.
I timidly slotted my letter between the two (locked) swing doors and trotted off.
I still feel that by some weird and wonderful way I could work my way into journalism in a few years’ time. When I know what I want to write about. When I have more scope and more experience.
13 August 1983
I’ve got an interview with David Hepworth, editor of Seventeen, on Tuesday. Rang me up the day after I dropped off my letter.
Now, in preparation, I’m having a think about what makes a good magazine. I bought Options, because it had a free novel, and Honey, 19 and Look Now.
Honey is terrific. Well-organised and impressive in that it’s a magazine for good writers. Bright, thoughtful, interesting.
I’ll write to them if the Seventeen idea doesn’t come to anything.
18 August 1983
It’s been a rare week. Everything I’ve done has been with a sense of purpose.
I’ve put myself forward – I’ve spoken to people thinking, “Well, here I am. This is me and you can take me or leave me.”
High spot of the week was my meeting with David Hepworth.
I was wrong about their offices. They’re fine inside. And David is immediately reassuring. One of those blokes who wins you over in an instant. From Yorkshire and still got his accent. About 30, I suppose. Nice looks. Just a bloody nice bloke.
He hadn’t got a job to offer me, but who cares. He impressed me with his open-mindedness. I’m sure most editors wouldn’t have given me the time of day, with my small experience and lack of “evidence”. But he asked intelligent questions. He liked Music In Time. [The book I’d worked on a couple of years earlier as editorial assistant at Mitchell Beazley publishers, to accompany the TV series of the same name.]
He asked about the video production company where I worked. Then he asked if I’d had anything published. No, I said, but I brought this along.
I handed him my ‘Thoughts on Fame’.
[I’d written a short piece on how we see film and music stars, and even sports stars, as “unreachable”. I reminisced about how I’d been obsessed with show jumpers when I was a kid, especially “Heathcliff on horseback”, Harvey Smith.]
“Mmmm – my sister used to follow Harvey Smith around,” he said. “Used to idolise him.”
“Yeah, he’s one of those blokes. I feel the same way now about Fred the Steeplejack – what’s his name?”
“Fred Dibnah.”
I realised I was preventing him from reading my “bit”, so sat quietly, staring avidly at a picture postcard and picking my nails (out of sight).
He read quickly and with concentration. Finished, then said, “Very good. That really is very good. You’ve obviously got a talent for it.”
Said that it ended weaker than it started and that there was a confusing bit toward the end (both of which I knew). Also, that it was too sophisticated for the magazine. But, yes, I could definitely write.
I glow inside whenever I remember that moment he looked up from the last page and said it was good.
Anyway, we got onto interests.
“Well… astrology…”1
His eyes lit up.
“Are you having a column?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Who’s writing it?”
“Well, funny you should mention it. We haven’t got anyone. I was going to get round to looking this week.”
“I’ll do it!” I said.
“Well, I was just thinking that.”
“Would you like me to have a go and see what I can do?”
“Yes.”
So that’s what I’ve got to do this weekend. I know what’s going on as far as all the signs, but I’ve got to work out the right way to tackle it. He wants me to relate it to young people, eg Saturday jobs for money, instead of being really general.
Then he went on to ask my ideas for the magazine, which were identical to ideas they’d already had!
I mentioned my idea for asking stars how they felt at 17, whether they had any ambition to be what they are – how they subsequently got there etc.
“Yeah, funny you should say that. We decided to do that anyway.” (Though they might take a different angle and take personalities back to their home towns.)
The Terry Jones “on the streets” fashion idea that I was going to mention was already in the dummy issue that he showed me.
“Oh! Terry Jones! i-D magazine!” I said.
“Yeah. Unashamed rip-off, I’m afraid.”
And they’re having a careers spot, which I’d thought might be interesting.
It was very encouraging to know that I’d independently thought up similar features!
I thoroughly enjoyed myself and came away with an appointment for next week and a brief to do an issue’s stars column (covering a fortnight) and to bring in any ideas for features etc that I might have.
He said, would I like some freelance work?
Yes, yes, yes! Oh yes!
In comparison, my interview at the TV company was dull. I felt nothing – not nerves, or anything. And though it’s a job I could do and earn more than I earn now, I’m not 100% sure I’d want it.
17 September 1983
The astrology insert for the launch issue is down to me and is worth £300. That cheers me up. That could cover a holiday or a second-hand car, or loads of clothes or a new sofa. I’m proud of having got this far.
21 September 1983
I spent half an hour on the phone to [a friend] and described the anxiety attack I’d had during the night. “I feel as if I’ve got to do something. Be something.”
She knew what I meant.
After lunch, the phone rang.
“Hello?”
“Wendy, it’s Louise at Seventeen.” [Louise Chunn was the Features Editor.]
“Oh, Hi Louise.”
“Look, we’re doing an interview with Curt Smith of Tears for Fears. It would be in Wales [actually near Bath], probably Friday. Would you be interested in doing it?”
“Oh yes, I’d love to,” I said.
I felt I was going to burst!
No, of course I’m not doing anything Friday. No, I don’t have a car, but I could get there by train. Yes, I’ll wait to hear from you.
Oh, Louise, bless you. When I told her last week that I was free this week, “So if you have anything, I mean, really, anything, just give me a ring.”
She watched and she nodded. And when I went in on Monday, she looked and said hello, as if wondering. I just knew with her and Dave together that something would come up some time. At least, I prayed it would.
But so opportune. Oh, bless you.
Last night I was thinking, I have to prove myself to be a journalist, not in six months, but now. No more sidestepping. If only Seventeen acknowledged my bright, accurate, well-presented copy and pleasant, willing personality and gave me a chance. If only, if only, I thought.
I am amazed and quite overjoyed.
I need to get some sleep as I’ve been exhausted lately.
Curt Smith is the singer/bassist with Tears For Fears, of Mad World fame. They’d just released their first album, The Hurting.
27 September 1983
Ouch. Twitch in my eye.
The phone.
That was Louise. My Curt Smith interview, having been put off and put off, is now Friday afternoon, still to be confirmed though.
Louise says she wants a general feature, which is good. That’s what I’d like to do.
29 September 1983
Reading Smash Hits, I wonder if Seventeen requires the same slangy, “hip” style. Not at all sure I can do it if it does!
I feel nervous and jittery and I mustn’t forget to buy some cassette tapes this aft. I need a good cassette tape recorder. I need to stock up on typewriter ribbons.
8.35 Paddington to Chippenham 10 to 10 am.
Taxi to the house.
[Curt Smith’s address and phone number.]
House with red sports car.
Jill Furmanovsky (photographer).
Curt’s wife runs a restaurant.
30 September 1983
Well, after my first journalistic assignment I felt – I feel – shattered. And sort of depressed. Drained. A bit odd.
Jill was marvellous. I feel sure we’ll work again.
I started to panic when, at 8.31 (the train would leave at 8.35) there was still no sign of her.
I’d bought her ticket when I realised she was going to be late.
She came trotting up, smiling and petite, wearing red tracksuit style bottoms, black woolly loose jumper, trainers. Lovely face.
I liked her immediately and we chatted easily about quite thought-provoking subjects.
She’s a very well-known and highly-regarded rock photographer. She’s very perceptive, interested and interesting.
It’s funny to think I wasn’t going to mention that this is my first ‘mission’, in case she felt she was working with an amateur. She was actually incredibly well tuned to how I felt and very encouraging.
I liked her more and more as the day progressed.
Curt and Lynn live in an amazing house in a tiny village. A friendly cabby took us there.
I thought I was going to be nervous, but in fact I wasn’t, really, though I did feel slightly self-conscious, wondering how I came across in my new role as a journalist.
The house was beautiful. So old, so full of character. And animals so prominent – or rather, cats.
They’ve known each other four years now and married at Christmas.2
I managed to fill almost all of a 90-minute cassette, so there was no running out of questions as I’d thought there might be. I’m not sure how to write it up yet.
4 October 1983
I saw the pictures Jill took of me when I went into the office yesterday. Even I thought they were nice, and I think she actually had touched up a spot!
The Tears for Fears interview in Just Seventeen, 3 November 1983
Mr & Mrs Smith
“When I first saw him my knees went like jelly…” That’s not a Tears For Fears fan talking. It’s Lynn Smith, describing how she met her husband Curt.
Wendy Varley dropped in on them at home in the West Country.
Like model newly weds Mr and Mrs Curt Smith live in a renovated rectory in the Wiltshire countryside. They share it with three Siamese cats, possibly a ghost, and – for the morning anyway – me.
Both 22, Lynn and Curt have been married for less than a year, but they met four years ago. Curt was playing with a band called Graduate in a club in Bath, when Lynn first clapped eyes on him.
She took one look at his sad and moody stage face and thought he’d be game for a laugh. “I was miming, ‘Come on, smile’ and he’d just sort of lift his top lip then put it back down again. But in the end he smiled.”
Curt’s got an equally cute version of the magic moment. “Lynn was there in her pink bodysuit, getting down and boogying. The only reason I looked up was that we were playing in a club – over 18s you know – and I was thinking, “How can they let 14-year olds in?”
Two months later Lynn was hard at her job waitressing in a Bath pizza restaurant when Curt came in with the band to put up a poster. “When I saw him again my knees went like jelly!” So she went back to the club that night – and that was the start of it all.
Their new home – which they moved into in April – is a large old house, full of character and staircases where you’d least expect them. They’re decorating it with comfy old furniture – for use, not show. Just as well, with three resident cats: Ben, named after the song by Michael Jackson; Garp, after one of Curt’s favourite books The World According to Garp by John Irving (they’re sisters!) and mother cat, Treasure.
There’s another litter on the way and Lynn is hoping that Treasure will behave better this time around. When she had Ben and Garp, she crawled into the couple’s bed in the middle of the night. Lynn was woken up by a spreading damp patch and pushed into the role of dozy midwife – right there in the bedroom
I’m wondering if there are any more inhabitants when, after Lynn has opened the window, it suddenly bangs shut. We all jump and laugh nervously.
“Poltergeists?” I enquire.
“Well, there is supposed to be a ghost in the dining room,” is the reply. “But we’ve never seen it.”
It seems the vicar’s wife went a bit nutty. She was often locked in the room and one day she set fire to herself.
“That accounts for the smell of burning,” explains Lynn.
I fight back a joke about overdone dinners. But I do ask about the cooking and domestic chores: who does what?
The grocery shopping involves a trip to Bath, but it’s Lynn who pushes the trolley around Sainsbury’s.
“That’s because the cashiers always ask for Curt’s autograph on the paper bags,” she laughs. And Curt admits that he does get embarrassed if he’s recognised when he knows he looks a bit rough.
And the cooking? “Nobody,” they answer at once. Because Lynn works with food (she’s now assistant manager at the pizza restaurant) cooking isn’t something she gets excited about. They both work in the evenings anyway. Lynn’s mum, who’s glad of a bit of extra cash to help pay her mortgage, cleans for them when she has time and will often rustle up a meal while she’s there. Otherwise, she runs a nearly-new shop near Bath where she sells, among other things, Curt’s cast-offs.
Lynn’s dad lives in South Carolina in the States, which is where she was born. Her parents moved to Bath when she was four as her dad was in the air force; they split up when she was 17.
Curt has lived in or near Bath all his life and loves the area. His mum works in Boots; his dad died two years ago. Both Curt and Lynn went to comprehensive schools, but neither of them feels it did them much good. “I hate comprehensive schools, they’re so impersonal,” says Curt. “You just don’t know that this kid might not be doing very well because his dad beat him up last night or something. At junior school you tend to find out that sort of thing.”
He likes the idea of free schools: “Go there when you want, wear what you want. But the thing is, it’s so nice the kids always go. Children do want to learn.”
Lynn agrees. “There’s times when children can work and times when they can’t. Just like adults. They know something’s bothering them and there’s no way they can learn anything… I don’t think most adults regard children as people. They’re children and that’s it. I see a lot of that in the restaurant and it upsets me.”
Curt got 6 ‘O’ levels and stayed on. “I was led to believe that it’s really OK in the 6th form. You’re now a grown-up and get treated like one… But I had to wear more uniform than I did in the 5th form and I refused to do it. I kept turning up in jeans and in the end they said, ‘Look start wearing proper clothes or you’ll have to go,’ so I said, ‘OK, I’ll go.’”
The next year Curt went to Chippenham Tech where he was doing ‘A’ levels in English, Accounts and Maths and was teaching one day a week at his old junior school. But he was also heavily involved in music and, deciding it was more important, gave up college. He admits, though, that the only other thing he’s wanted to do apart from music is to teach.
I ask if they plan to have any children. “If we do, not for a long time,” says Lynn. “I’m not prepared to give up that much of my life. I hate getting up in the morning. I couldn’t do it, not properly.” And Curt agrees that he’d want to be home based for several years if they had a child.
The press have made a lot of out Curt’s interest in Primal Therapy: “People used to make us out to be something really weird.” But he explains that by reliving early experiences through Primal Therapy and getting them out of your system, it’s possible to find your ‘natural’ self again. Curt and Lynn haven’t done a course yet – there isn’t a centre in England so it means spending six months in America – but they’d like to fit it in sometime. For anyone wanting to find out more, Curt recommends reading ‘Prisoner of Pain’ by Athur Janov.
We finish our chat with something every pop star has to consider: image. It was Lynn’s idea to put little plaits in Curt’s hair and he’s had them for more than two years now. But clothes are a problem.
“He hates shopping,” says Lynn and Curt admits he’s happiest in jeans so buying trousers is particularly difficult. He confesses laughingly that he bought the tank top he wore for his first appearance on Top of the Pops from Top Man. But he now has a straight reply for curious fans. “South Molton Street in London. They’ll be pleased with that.”
I say goodbye to the cats, and when Curt offers to drive me to the station, Lynn puts in a request: “Will you get me some fish and chips.” Curt hesitates – perhaps thinking about his image – but Lynn reassures him he won’t be pestered and adds, “Cod, chips… and peas.”
Can’t get more normal than that, can you?
And that was it! I was a journalist!
Initially, I freelanced for Just Seventeen, then joined the staff full-time. The magazine moved to Carnaby Street, sharing the building with Smash Hits. I loved working there!
David Hepworth (again) spotted I had an eye for detail and could spell the word “gherkin” and offered me the role of Production Editor. Then later I was Features Editor. And Fiction Editor. And at one point, all three combined.
1980s publishing was indeed a mad world!
For more on my Just Seventeen years, here’s Just Waiting For Freddie Mercury and The Time I Interviewed Tom Cruise.
© Wendy Varley 2024
Thanks to everyone who read, liked, commented and/or shared my piece last week Coal Dust Memories. It was fascinating to be reminded in the comments of how far-reaching the effects of the miners’ strikes and power cuts of the 1970s and ’80s were. Everyone in Britain at that time was affected, whether they were connected to the coal industry or not.
wrote:“A great post, Wendy. The effect of the power cuts were severe on small dairy farms like my father's in Devon. No power meant no milking machines. My father had learnt to milk by hand, but it was impossible to milk a herd of 60 or 70 cows by hand on your own. So he had to buy a diesel-powered generator to keep going. There were dark stories in the county of farmers being unable to milk their cows and ending their lives in traditional fashion with a shotgun in a far flung field. Grim stuff.”
Back to this week: Have you had “gung-ho” moments in your life when you’ve just gone for it, winged it, and hoped for the best? Any vivid magazine memories? How have you felt if you’ve ever met a celebrity? Have you kept your cool or been tongue-tied?
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I’d studied astrology since I was 18. It appealed to my love of mystery, a good puzzle and, for a shy girl curious about people, it was a good ice-breaker, as everyone loves to hear about themselves. For several years, alongside journalism, I wrote magazine astrology columns under a pseudonym. I gave up the columns once family life got super busy and I lost interest in astrology.
According to Wikipedia, Curt and Lynn divorced in 1988. Curt now lives in the US. Tears For Fears are still touring. Their latest album, The Tipping Point, was released in 2022.
PS I would never have been given a job on a magazine. About twelve years ago I was queuing at a cash machine inside Marks & Spencer in London’s Covent Garden. Kiefer Sutherland was in front of me trying to withdraw cash but the machine appeared faulty. I didn’t recognise him. Even when he turned around and asked me if I knew if there was another cash machine close by, I didn’t recognise him. Even though I had watched hours of reruns of him starring in the TV show 24 hours, I still didn’t recognise him. Wanting to help this tourist and not knowing the exact whereabouts of another cash machine I suggested he could get up to £50 cash from the shop’s food department if he just made a cheap purchase. He smiled and politely told me he would need considerably more than £50. Just then, a shop assistant approached and shook his hand. I was in awe. I had never seen such politeness to a member of the public.
How cool!!! I was OBSESSED with Tears for Fears and that song, and even had the short hair with the little braids at the back for a while! My first job was boring (I think I told you already) but I had a lot of mad times outside of work. There were no jobs like that in Switzerland!!! But I loved those magazines and would stick up on them whenever I went to England. I particularly remember Look Now, and had forgotten all about it until you jolted my memory. You’ve had an incredible career! My uncle was a huge music journalist in the 60s and 70s, he interviewed all the greats and made me the best mixed tapes because the record companies sent him all the new albums! He still writes for the Daily Mail occasionally. He wrote the screenplay for That’ll Be The Day and Stardust, starring David Essex and Ringo Starr. He’s my idol! Stardust is dedicated to me. Did you ever see those films?