Tears for Fears guitarist Roland Orzabal recently reflected on the creation of the band’s iconic hit “Everybody Wants to Rule the World.” He revealed that he was initially skeptical about the song’s potential for success when it was recorded four decades ago. His bandmate, Curt Smith, shared similar doubts.
The inspiration for the song came unexpectedly when Orzabal created a distinctive guitar riff on his Fender Stratocaster after tuning the E string down to D. This seemingly casual moment led to a track that would become one of the band’s most recognized songs.
Released in 1984 as part of the album Songs From the Big Chair, “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” marked Tears for Fears’ second number-one single, following their earlier success with “Shout,” which had topped the Billboard Hot 100 chart. The song has since achieved triple Platinum status and stands as the band’s best-selling track of all time. It won the Brit Award for Best Single in 1986 and contributed to the album’s impressive five-times Platinum sales. In 1986, the band also recorded a reworked version titled “Everybody Wants to Run the World” to support the African famine relief organization Sport Aid.
The song is characterized by its prominent synthesizers and drum machines, complemented by electric and acoustic guitars played by Orzabal. He contributed the song’s first break, which he refers to as the “rhythm solo,” while the second fiery solo was performed by the band’s touring guitarist, Neil Taylor.
Orzabal’s passion for the guitar began in his early teens, around ages 13 or 14, while growing up in Bath, England. He was introduced to various rock bands by a neighbor, including Budgie, Uriah Heep, and Led Zeppelin, although he initially resisted their influence due to his fondness for glam rock. “It took a long time for that music to wash over me,” he recalled with a laugh. “Of course, once you start trying to copy Jimmy Page, it becomes a little bit off-putting. But I appreciate a lot of those artists now.”
Currently, Orzabal boasts a collection of around 50 guitars, including the walnut Fender model he played during the recording of “Everybody Wants to Rule the World.” Manufactured between 1980 and 1983, this deluxe version of the Fender Stratocaster featured nine pickup combinations, gold hardware, a colored headstock, and a unique bridge.
At the time of creating the song, Orzabal noted that guitar work was not a significant aspect of Tears for Fears’ music. About six months prior to writing and recording Songs From the Big Chair, the band had released “Mother’s Talk,” a track created with considerable difficulty and primarily using synthesizers.
“It had been a very painful process,” Orzabal recalled, describing the production of “Mother’s Talk.” “It had been mainly synthesizers, marimbas, and xylophones. There wasn’t much rock about it. Chris Hughes, who produced the group’s debut album The Hurting, was brought back in to produce us, and he changed it all around. It was a difficult process, but the record company seemed to like it.”
With a month off to compose new material for the upcoming album, Orzabal retreated to his home in Bath and began experimenting with his walnut Strat, a Prophet 5 synthesizer, and a LinnDrum rhythm box. “The downstairs had no furniture in it, so there was a lot of echo,” he explained. “I would copy the drum parts from certain records into the drum machine. It gave me confidence knowing that had produced a great song, and I would write to those beats.”
Among the rhythms that influenced him was one from Simple Minds’ “Waterfront.” “Just that simple ba-bump, ba-bump, ba-bump,” he noted, referring to the bass drum and snare. He also borrowed elements from Lynx’s track “Throw Away the Key,” which featured a distinctive hi-hat part. These combined rhythms helped create the infectious shuffle beat that defines “Everybody Wants to Rule the World.”
Orzabal recounted, “And then I tuned my guitar’s E string down to D, and I came up with this riff.” He demonstrated the percolating arpeggiated guitar line that opens the song. “I didn’t really think anything of it, to be honest. It didn’t have the depth of the other material I’d been working on. But my wife at the time liked it. So I thought, Okay, maybe I’m wrong.”
Once in the studio, Orzabal shared his unfinished songs, which included “Shout” and an early version of “Everybody Wants to Rule the World,” then titled “Everybody Wants to Go to War.” Despite his own doubts about the latter’s potential, producer Hughes and the band’s label representative, David Bates, were immediately intrigued.
“Chris and David were adamant about it,” Orzabal remembered. “They wanted some kind of drive-time American hit — whatever that was — and they thought this could be. But neither Curt nor I were convinced. So Chris said, ‘All right, we’ll do a proper day’s recording on the other songs, and at the end of the day, we’ll put up the beats and just jam and muck around with it.’”
When they returned to the song, Orzabal gradually recognized its appeal. “At some point, I realized that it shouldn’t be ‘Everybody Wants to Go to War,’ which was an annoying title,” he said. “We recorded it with Curt singing it. I didn’t want to sing it — I didn’t want anything to do with it.”
Besides, Orzabal was busy playing his eye-catching walnut-bodied Strat. “I’d just bought it for its looks alone,” he admitted. “It had gold everywhere. Where you would have the bridge tone control, you had a [nine-position] pickup selector switch. I played the guitar through a Boss compressor — I remember it was blue, most likely the Compression Sustainer CS-2 pedal, released in 1982 — into a Roland JC-120 with the chorus on. That’s all.”
When it came time to record a solo, Orzabal adopted a chordal approach. “The rhythm solo is my kind of thing, but it was a lot of drop-ins — all kinds of things just to sort of get the shape of it.”
However, when Hughes and Bates suggested that the song required an explosive lead guitar solo for the outro, Orzabal knew that it wasn’t his forte. “At the end, they decided to put on a real, proper lead guitar solo,” he recounted. “The first thing we said, without thinking, was ‘Neil Taylor.’ Neil had been floating around Tears for Fears for a while, but he wanted to do his own thing. But we always knew he had a very idiosyncratic way of playing — far better than us when it comes to playing lead.”
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