Roland Orzabal on Astrology, Fate, and Tears for Fears

The Astrology Podcast - Chris Brennan

In this episode of The Astrology Podcast, Chris Brennan interviews Roland Orzabal, co-founder of Tears for Fears and author of the astrologically themed memoir 'Welcome to

Key takeaways

• Astrology helped Orzabal move from a 'blank slate' psychological model to recognizing innate personality complexes shaped by birth charts.

Main topics

• Astrology as a tool for self-discovery and psychological healing
• Interpersonal astrology: synastry and composite charts in relationships

Notable quotes

"I'm not a professional astrologer, obviously. I use it to understand myself... It's a know thyself, as someone once said."

Conclusion

Roland Orzabal's memoir exemplifies how astrology can serve as a profound narrative framework for understanding

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) Hey, my name is Chris Brennan, and you're listening to The Astrology Podcast. Joining me today is legendary songwriter, musician, and co-founder of Tears for Fears, Roland Orzabal. And we're going to be discussing his brand new autobiography, Welcome to Your Life, Love, Death, and Tears for Fears, which is also subtitled An Astrological Memoir, which he incorporated astrology throughout while telling his life story. So Roland, thank you so much for joining me. Welcome to The Astrology Podcast. Speaker 1 (0:31) Thank you very much. This is my first astrology podcast. I'm a virgin. Be gentle. Yeah, you're first. Speaker 2 (0:39) I'll try. This is your first time. So yeah, you've been promoting the book. And I just finished reading the book and I absolutely loved it. I read it all the way up until late into last night. And you told your entire life story, but then you would frequently have these digressions about astrology where you were both looking at your life through the lens of astrology, but also teaching the reader about astrology and the process. And I realized by the time I finished this book is while you're known as a legendary musician, you're also an astrologer. I mean, that's part of your biography, it seems like at this point to me, or would you classify yourself as that or how would you frame that? Speaker 1 (1:23) I'm not a professional astrologer, obviously. I use it Speaker 1 (1:31) to understand myself, what's going on inside me, what's going on in my life at this point in time because of transits, understanding my family, my parents. So yeah, it's... Speaker 1 (1:59) Solipsistic, you might want to say. I'm concerned about myself, not so much about mundane astrology. So events in the world, although I'm very keen, I listen to various astrologers talk about them, and it's always fascinating. But no, for me, it's a know thyself, as someone once said, and it's I don't think you can. without looking at yourself through the astrological lens. Speaker 1 (2:34) Right, right. Yeah. So I'm not a professional, but I know a lot about it. Speaker 2 (2:39) Sure. And I guess I should have said I have a pretty broad definition of astrologer because for me, an astrologer is somebody who believes that astrology is a legitimate phenomenon that has moderate to advanced training in it and who regularly incorporates it in their day-to-day personal life in some sort of active sense. And at least in that context, and to the context that you framed your biography partially through the lens of astrology. I'm really fascinated by that. And right from the start, let's talk about and let's frame it a little. When did you get into astrology? You started studying, I think you said in 1986, right? Speaker 1 (3:19) It was 86. It could have been 87. I'm not quite sure. Speaker 1 (3:26) Uranus in my chart is at 26 degrees Leo, so I'm wondering whether it was actually when I was 26. And I was in a form of psychotherapy called primal therapy. Speaker 1 (3:44) Primal Scream, the book, was made famous by a man called Arthur Janoff. He's a Californian psychologist. The reason I bring this up is because his philosophy, his belief system, was that of tabula rasa, the blank slate. We are all born a blank slate upon which life carves. are every nuance of character. So that was my belief system. I had a father that I was abusive. Speaker 1 (4:21) violent and unpredictable. Yeah. Speaker 2 (4:25) And Speaker 1 (4:26) so I wanted to divorce myself. I wanted to divorce myself from my childhood. That's why I was doing primal therapy. It's very intense. It's very Plutonian, meaning you go deep into yourself, into the cave of your soul. You slay the dragon, the dragon which is the ugly stuff that's protecting the trauma which occurs when you are too young and too vulnerable to experience the reality of the emotion. So when you're older, you can. You're no longer vulnerable. You can do that. So that was my belief. Blank slate. We're born a blank slate. Speaker 1 (5:18) This lady across the road from me and my wife, my late wife, Caroline, drew up astrological charts. And I thought, wow, it's amazing. So we asked her, and I think this was the time before computers, so she was doing it by hand. And we then went out for a meal with her so that she could explain what they meant. But something occurred, something... there was a bad atmosphere between her and my wife. I don't know what it is, what it was, you know. And so my wife kind of stormed that and I sort of ran after her, you know, that kind of thing. And I had two charts of these glyphs, squiggles and lines, one which represented me and I had no idea what they meant. So I thought, well, this is the type of guy I am, I thought, right, I'm going to find out. So I went to a local bookstore just up the road and I bought quite a few books. I was very sceptical, obviously. I didn't know how it worked. I didn't know if it worked. I didn't know what it meant. So one of the first books I bought was Percy Seymour, The Evidence of Science. I don't know if you know that book. I mean, it's no longer relevant, but at the time it was the best guess. And I kind of read that and I read a few things and then I looked at an ephemeris and I saw. wait a minute, I'm a Leo. I thought I was a Virgo. I was looking at those magazine columns and I thought, yeah, I'm a Virgo. It makes sense. I felt very Virgo-ing, you know. You had a song Speaker 2 (7:12) lyric referring to your son in Virgo before you learned that your son was in Leo? Speaker 1 (7:17) Exactly. I can't believe it. I can't deny that I'm a Virgo too. It's in, I believe, from songs from The Big Chair. And so I'm a Leo all of a sudden. I think, okay. And then I see I've got three planets in Capricorn. I'm going, okay, well, let me look at Capricorn. Oh, that makes sense. That makes a lot of sense. And then I looked at my father's, and there I saw him with a Capricorn sun and a moon in Leo. I'm thinking, what's going on? I mean, this is kind of hard for me to take that I'm actually made from the same stuff. Speaker 1 (8:00) So then it completely changed my perspective, my belief system from tabula rasa to completely the opposite, that we are actually born with like a set of complexes, meaning complex in a kind of, in a psychological way, and also astrological, meaning Speaker 1 (8:24) You know, if you have something that's difficult to coordinate, like moon square Mars, for instance, a part of you might want to be nurturing and a part of you might want to be rugged individualist. So they don't go together. So that's a complex. That's what's called a complex. We all have them. So my mother had the same thing as me, a T-square of signs between Capricorn Cancer and Libra, you know. So that for me was initially hard to take. But then I started looking at other people and their chemistry and what was going on inside them. And then I realized that, my God, this is absolutely incredible. Speaker 1 (9:20) Then I started getting into interpersonal astrology, the chemistry between people. So like synastry, where one of your planets might hit my descendant, you know, in your case, Venus-Uranus conjunction in Sagittarius. Beautiful, you know. Speaker 1 (9:46) That was fascinating to me. And also what's called the composite chart, where you put two charts together and you end up with midpoints, even though it's not a chart that reflects the sky in reality, it's still absolutely fascinating. Speaker 1 (10:05) You know, I saw, you know, for instance, if you are born where there were Venuses before the sun. So, for instance, I'm a Leo, Venus is in Cancer, and you meet someone whose Venus is after the sun. When you put the charts together in a composite manner and get midpoints, the sun is conjunct Venus, which is very nice. So I started to think, well, you know, there is a way. of mapping out the chemistry between people quite easily. You know, the difference between, you know, whether you fall in love with someone, you like someone, they're your friend, they're your bank manager, your... all kinds of things. Speaker 2 (10:53) Yeah, that's one of the most fascinating reflections throughout the book is how you reflect on some of your interpersonal relationships, especially with important people in your life, like your bandmate Kurt Smith and how you both share these late Capricorn placements and the sort of like give and take of having one of you having Jupiter at 28 Capricorn and the other having Saturn gave this. quality of give and take and sometimes tension, but then also sometimes balance. Or other times you'll mention a producer who had Mercury there at 28 and how that fit in with you and Kurt's placement. So it was really brilliant. This is literally the type of autobiography we always wish that somebody would write or that prominent celebrities would write that astrologers read biographies. with this in the back of their mind, like the person's birth chart placements. But your book is so unique for the first time I've ever seen of somebody that actually consciously did that and weaved astrology into the narrative while telling your life story. Speaker 1 (11:57) Yeah. When I wrote that, no one's asked me about that, by the way. I've done quite a few interviews. Not a lot of people necessarily are astrologers going to know what the hell 28 degrees Capricorn means. Speaker 1 (12:12) I put the, there's a saying, a little sentence in the book by Mark Edmund Jones. He describes, he makes an attempt to describe what every degree of every sign actually means in a very small, succinct way. And I think it's pretty good. But, you know, the... That 28 degrees Capricorn, for me, it was blindingly obvious, especially in 2020. I think it was 2020 when we had... Speaker 1 (12:56) Saturn, Jupiter and Pluto all coming together around that degree. And I knew, I mean, I knew that this something was going to happen. I didn't know what was going to happen, but I knew it was big. I knew it was important. And it coincided with me and Kurt finishing the Tipping Point album. which was very well received. And at the same time, I realized that our producer, our modulator, the go-between also had mercury at 28 degrees as well. So we're all having the same transit at the same time, which it strikes me that you often... Come together with people so that your joint fates collide. And I'll give you another example that's also in the book, which is, again, going to be hard for a lot of people to understand. So, for instance, I met my second wife, Emily, just before Pluto and Capricorn was about to enter her seventh house. And I said to her, Speaker 1 (14:28) You're going to meet an old man, older man, who's going to change your life. Now, I never thought that was me. But while it was entering Emily's seventh house of partners and first marriage, it was also entering my ninth house of second marriage. So there was a convergence of destinies. Speaker 1 (14:58) that relied on other people. And for me, it's a mystery, an absolute mystery why this happens. But we seem to have in the back of our mind, something is compelling us to do certain things. And it's almost like the whole thing is arranged. I'm not completely sure, but that's what it seems like. Speaker 2 (15:28) Yeah, that's one of my favorite things about the book ultimately is you keep having these reflections about fate and about the nature of fate and what the implications of some of these alignments are that you talk about that line up so perfectly with major turning points in your life or major interconnections with people. You mentioned intergenerational astrology, which you mentioned earlier, like having almost like the reversed placements of your father with the Capricorn and Leo placements and just how ultimately you keep coming to this place. I think later in the book, despite the astrology coinciding with sometimes very difficult or tragic things and other times very positive things, that ultimately you seem to view fate as something ultimately positive and encouraging or that you don't necessarily look at negatively, but instead you seem like most astrologers where you view it with a sense of awe and wonderment? Speaker 1 (16:31) Well... Or Speaker 2 (16:33) how would you frame that? That was just my take. No, that's Speaker 1 (16:36) fine. For me, it's fate is a lovely word. It's got medieval overtones. For me, it's life. This is life. And these are... such huge phases in your life it's very hard to say whether it's you know whether it's fate determinism you know you your free will your your will combines with determinism with fate in a way that again you don't understand you think you're making a choice here but when you look back you go Speaker 1 (17:27) was that really a choice or was I compelled to do it? And I give it, given it, you know, I think a lot of things, I think some people are more fated than others. That's one thing. I think if you're seriously touched by Pluto, that's always going to be the case that that's going to play an important part of your life. And I would say, for instance, you know, When Pluto was square, my parental axis, my father died. It's to be expected, but that coincided with it. When Pluto was square, my son, Elio, S-U-N, I became a father. So that's Pluto, death and rebirth, or death and birth. During the same transit of... the Pluto square, my son. I became a father again three years later. When Pluto went all the way, I mean, this is a long story, but when it went all the way where it is now, which is perched on top of my midheaven, slightly come back, I became a father again to Eula, my daughter. So there's, how can I put it? I mean, it's... Speaker 1 (19:08) Pluto, the power behind the throne, you know? Who's sitting on the throne? You are, yourself, with a capital S, the sun. So these are the automatic parts of your brain or body or whatever you want to call it, the parts that go unrewarded, unapplauded. They are private. They are secret. This is all the things you do in your body that you don't think about, like breathing. So yeah, I mean, for me, Pluto is, we know it's about survival, obviously. But it's about survival in the most obvious way. And it's about, well, you can't do anything without it. That's a start. It's almost the starting point from which you can hopefully evolve and learn more. Speaker 1 (20:27) I mean, I saw recently there was a guy who had written a whole book about demoting Pluto. I don't know if you saw that. Speaker 2 (20:37) Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I don't know about that. I did my Pluto episode I did with Richard Tarnas, who's one of your major influences that you cite in the book. And Pluto is so central to your life because your ruler of the Ascendant is exactly conjunct Pluto. Exactly, Speaker 1 (20:56) yeah. Speaker 2 (20:56) if you're open to it, maybe we could take a look at your chart just to orient Speaker 1 (20:59) people a little bit. Speaker 2 (21:00) Talking about it so much here. So my chart format, I hope it's not, I think how you usually put your chart format, but this is used Placidus houses, right? Okay. So this is a Placidus chart. So I'm going to describe it a little bit for the audio listeners. So we've got a chart with mid-Gemini rising and the ruler of the Ascendant is Mercury which is at 7° of Virgo, exactly conjunct Pluto at 7° of Virgo as well. The Sun is a little earlier, it's 29° of Leo conjunct the North Node and Uranus which are at 27° and 26° of Leo respectively. We have Mars at 3° of Libra. We've got a Capricorn stellium with the Moon at 14, Saturn at 24, and Jupiter at 28, and they're opposite to Venus at 22 degrees of Cancer. And then finally, we have Neptune at 8 degrees of Scorpio. And yeah, this is the basic setup for your chart. And one of the things I mentioned to you just before we started talking about that I had in mind that we might sort of think about or keep in mind is just In some of the ancient astrologers, they would look at the quadrant house placements like this, but they would also pay attention to what sign a planet was relative to the rising sign and treat that as if it was like a secondary overlay for the house placement. So that's like the whole sign house. And there's just a few placements for you that I thought were really striking, like the ruler of the Ascendant in your chart is that Mercury. which by quadrant house in Placidus is in the fifth house, the house of creativity, of music and everything else. But it's also in the whole sign placement, it's in your fourth house. And I thought this was really relevant in terms of the focus on your father, on your parents, on the relationship with them, but also your interest in psychotherapy and in getting to the bottom of things. And even like the relationship you had with Kurt early on as being more of the person, not directly the front man that wasn't as directly in the front, but was kind of behind the scenes in some ways, as you described, seemed reminiscent a little bit of that overlap between like fourth and fifth house sort of like themes. So it's just something we might. keep in mind as an additional perspective as we're talking through some of this. Speaker 1 (23:32) Yeah. I mean, I only know this, well, equal house, not equal house, but for me, I would definitely describe my father as Uranian. So I would put Uranus in the fourth. myself, my mother, funnily enough, also has Uranus in Aries in the fourth, which can explain why she was caught in a sudden bout of violence. Speaker 1 (24:11) Yeah, I mean, also the way I see it and I experienced it, I would say also my father was Plutonian. So there's a loose conjunction there with Pluto and Uranus, I would say. I would say that both of those planets, Uranus and Pluto, have played a big part in my life because I give you an example. Yes, I was always fascinated