When People Run In Circles: Gary Jules And ‘Mad World’
Some of the best Christmas songs are also the most affecting. There’s something about Midwinter – the dark nights, the plummeting temperatures, the glare of the shop lights – there an conjure melancholy, and it seeps into some of the season’s finest songwriting.
Just look at some perennial festive hits. ‘Fairytale Of New York’ is actually an astonishingly grim tale, while even something like ‘White Christmas’ was originally framed by the crippling sense of loss conjured by the Second World War.
20 years ago, Gary Jules and close friend Michael Andrews, supplied us with the definitive Christmas sad-banger. Their take on Tear For Fears essential art-pop classic ‘Mad World’ inverted the dense arrangement of the original, favouring feather-soft notes of piano, and an intimate vocal that pulled you into the studio alongside them.
Originally featured on the soundtrack of cult 2001 flick Donnie Darko – which Michael Andrews scored – it was given a low key single release in the winter of 2003, before soaring to become the UK’s No. 1 single over the Christmas period.
A glum counterpoint to the chasing competition – The Darkness and their glam stomper ‘Christmasstime (Don’t Let The Bells End)’ – Gary Jules and Michael Andrews used an understated approach, one that clearly touched a chord.
Two decades on, Clash spoke to Gary Jules over Zoom from his home in Los Angeles, about the unexpected success, and what its evergreen status says about societal isolation.
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Has it really been 20 years…?
Ha! I’ve been speaking about it recently, and it feels simultaneously like a lifetime ago, or yesterday. Mind you, if I haven’t seen a friend in forever I’ll also feel it’s only been one day. Alongside, though, my son is 20 and my daughter is now almost 13 – so there’s an entire lifetime between the single, and now. It’s crazy.
Do you remember first hearing Tears For Fears?
Absolutely. I grew up in San Diego, and the city this radio station called 91X. San Diego was always the step-child to cool Los Angeles, but it had its own thing. California was into classic rock and punk rock, but San Diego picked up on early 80s pop – like ska, 2-tone, surf culture. It’s different. 91X had this host called Mike Halloran, and he spun ‘Mad World’. I heard it when I was 13 or 14 and it was the first non guitar song that I fell in love with. I wasn’t quite accustomed to those sounds, but Tear For Fears – and their album ‘The Hurting’ – represented new possibilities. It was a completely different voice. I was really into that record all through that year.
There’s so much depth to that band – it’s the definitive art-pop experience.
I could tell that by the sound. I didn’t know quite how sophisticated it was, I found that out later. But to me, they had the songwriting thing – a song vehicle, an emotion vehicle. But the sounds were so unique. It was an inbetween point. A good jumping off point, for me.
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Did ‘Mad World’ stay with you?
It actually did. I had never recorded a cover as a professional. I had played a lot of covers. When I was 19 I ran away from home and went to Bali, Indonesia, and I would sing covers in bars. And I always played ‘Mad World’ – because my band in high school, that I formed alongside Michael Andrews, played ‘Mad World’. It was all guitar, but it was basically their arrangement.
When I was older, Mike produced my first record for A&M. After that went south, we made the second record in the basement of his house, on a machine he bought in a garage sale. He got the script for Donnie Darko in the mail, so he was also working on the score for that. When it came time to do the end piece, he said there’s this thing in scores where you do a song from the period the movie is set in, but you do it in the style of the score. And he suggested doing ‘Mad World’. We went in, and it happened in 15 minutes.
There’s just something about that song. The original arrangement is very ‘busy’ isn’t it?
Someone close to me said it was like a freight train… but the song needs to kind of sneak up on you to get the full impact.
Do you remember the ‘Mad World’ session?
It was all people I knew at the time who were in the studio. I actually went for a jog the other day, and ran past the house we recorded it in. It was just a few people there. I was really comfortable, and it was just a cool thing to be able to do.
It’s a very intimate recording – you can hear the fingers on the piano keys.
I literally called out the chords, he changed it a half-step, and I was still in the hallway… we could see each other. He played through the chords, then we sang through it twice and it was over. I remember very clearly singing it, but at the time it was almost hard to connect to it. We were so close, and yet also so young. Our complete focus was on the recording.
Did you get to go to the Donnie Darko premiere?
I did, yeah. My then-girlfriend and now wife went. It was at the Egyptian Theatre. It was cool for us, because I’d lived in Los Angeles for a really long time, and we’d always been happy but broke. This was the first time we could go to something big and get dressed up. It was super cool, the people from the movie were all there.
It’s a very affecting film.
Oh yeah. It’s dark. There’s a feel about it. I woke up this morning and it was foggy – and that feeling when the fog rolls in, and time slows down… that’s what that movie feels like for me. A foggy morning.
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Remarkably, it then becomes a slow-burn success… and then a Christmas No. 1.
It was amazing. At the time, the internet was still kind of underground. It was like graffiti! The way the movie was marketed in England was so smart, it attached itself to underground culture. And because of that, the song was propelled. It had started in a different place. It was framed as something a bit cooler. But it was all word of mouth.
It does strike a chord with people – there’s an undeniable beauty to it.
Christmas – or these winter solstice holidays – has a huge element of joy. But ‘Mad World’ proved to me that not everyone connects to that. There’s a great deal of mental health issues that no one really knew about. We need to recognise that. When people want to discuss ‘Mad World’ they want to discuss huge world problems, but that’s not what the song is about. It’s about isolation. And just look at how many people attach themselves to it. It started in 2003, and it’s continued until now. It’s no joke. If it connects people, and makes them more empathetic… then who knows?
Do you feel the song – and your performance – has become more relevant with time?
I do. Like with everything – the world’s gotten bigger, but also so much smaller. The separation people feel now isn’t just the holidays. People feel like that all the time. Just look at social media – it breeds isolation. And it happens to almost everybody, you get caught up in this online envy of other people’s lives. That sense is isolation comes as fast as information comes in now.
As an Anglophile, how did it feel to reach No. 1 on the UK charts? At Christmas, no less!
It was insane! The first time Roland from Tears For Fears phoned me – I had this terrible Nokia – I was just like… oh my God! He told me our version was closer to how they had first envisioned it. And the 14-year-old kid in me, who was so in love with that record, would have burst into tears! I got married around then, and I thought: wow, we actually got somewhere. It connected me to a much younger version of myself but in a grown-up way. It felt like freedom.
It’s an amazing point of introduction, isn’t it? People come to your work through ‘Mad World’, but equally it also introduces fans to Tears For Fears – you’re bound together!
The song almost belongs to no one and everyone. I feel this huge responsibility when I perform it – I don’t think it’s right to change that particular version. It belongs to so many people. It’s become its own entity, that song.
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Gary Jules is revisiting ‘Mad World’ as part of a three volume live-in-the-studio series focussing on his solo catalogue.
Words: Robin Murray
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