The Psychedelic Furs on four decades of raucous rock and pop
“We just came along at the right time,” says Tim Butler. “I like to think we were a cross between the Sex Pistols and Roxy Music when we first started!” The bassist and his brother, vocalist Richard Butler, are looking back over their work as The Psychedelic Furs as they prepare to release their long-awaited new album, Made Of Rain – the band’s first record since 1991’s Stephen Street-produced World Outside. “Oh yeah, I really enjoyed the process of making the new album,” explains Richard Butler, “and I don’t want to leave it for another 29 years. I might not be around in another 29 years!”
As they take Uncut through their finest albums, from 1980’s raucous self-titled debut onwards, we hear tales of partying dangerously in Woodstock, of turning down Daniel Lanois, of being adored by Bowie, and of how wider success proved a double-edged sword. “Some stick to one formula, one sound, and beat it into the ground, but we’ve never been into that,” says Tim Butler. “We’ve always been wanting to step our game up.”
THE PSYCHEDELIC FURS
Columbia, 1980
The dense, swirling and magnificent debut, produced by Steve Lillywhite
Tim Butler: When we started out we were just a bunch of friends getting together in my parents’ front room. We annoyed them so much that they said we had to find somewhere else to rehearse. So we moved into rehearsal spaces and we’d pretty much get together to rehearse without any shows, just to have fun.
Richard Butler: They would have amps chained to the walls and puddles in the middle of the floor. There was one rehearsal room at the back of Waterloo Station somewhere that was like going down into a dungeon. Working with Steve Lillywhite was great! We were very lucky, in that a lot of producers like to put their mark on records, they have a certain sound, but with Steve the only ‘certain sound’ was that big drum sound he had, which was fantastic for us.
Tim Butler: This was recorded in two weeks, which nowadays would be considered a very short time. Steve really wanted to capture the energy of a live concert, so there were very few overdubs. The lengthy tracks come from when we used to play live – we couldn’t really play well, but everybody was fighting to be noticed, so it’s basically a wall of melodies. Some of those songs live were even longer than they were on the record, and different songs would come out of jamming around – I think “India” was originally an intro for “Flowers”.
Richard Butler: Did Steve send us down the pub before a take? No – I think we used to send ourselves down the pub whenever we could. We were drunken louts for the most part on the first two albums!
TALK TALK TALK
CBS, 1981
The more crafted follow-up, a triumph of post-punk, featuring the original version of “Pretty in Pink”
Richard Butler: Unlike a lot of bands, we hadn’t played very many shows before the first album, but once we released that first record we were playing constantly, so we honed our craft to a large degree. I think that’s what accounts for the sound of the second record. It was written over a shorter period of time too, and some of the best songs are written very quickly. We had some tunes that didn’t have lyrics and I would just be writing them on the way into the studio and putting things off, getting someone to put on another guitar or something, so I had time to write lyrics. But I love both Talk Talk Talk and Forever Now.
Tim Butler: The whole thing is learning how to write and structure songs with dynamics. For this one, we spent a lot of time in rehearsal studios writing the songs. The cool thing is that before we went to record it we did two nights at the Marquee on Wardour Street to play all those new songs live. Steve came down to listen and to watch the crowd’s reaction to certain songs, so he could advise us on what needed changing. With “All of This and Nothing”, Richard and I went back to our apartment one night after we’d recorded the basic track. We came in the next day and Roger and John had come up with the picking intro part and recorded, which was a game changer for that song.
FOREVER NOW
CBS, 1982
Decamping to Woodstock to work with Todd Rundgren, the Furs create their most psychedelic, intense LP
Tim Butler: David Bowie was a fan, but I don’t know if he ever expressed any real interest in producing us. Either way, our schedules never matched up. A rumor I’ve heard for years is that he did a cover of “Pretty in Pink” that’s never been released. But we chose Todd to record Forever Now because we were fans of his ‘70s work, and we wanted to use strings. Todd was a pleasure to work with, and a production genius.
Richard Butler: Todd’s studio was kind of like a glamorous shed – fairly big, 30 feet by 50 feet maybe,and then there were stairs up at the side, and the mixing room was upstairs. You could barely see down into the studio – if he wanted to communicate with people he had to come down and sit on the stairs.
Tim Butler: We only had one clash with him: when we first went up to Woodstock he was still finishing a Utopia album, and of course we were bored waiting, rehearsing in his rehearsal barn in the day and at night partying in the town. But he was getting reports from Woodstock of us being a bit too rock’n’roll, so he sat us down and said, “Look, sorry it’s taking a while to finish the Utopia album, but we’ll be starting yours soon, and I want you all to be in good health and not injured or dead.” We calmed down after that!
Richard Butler: He was a fantastic producer to work with, great sense of humour, and an impeccable ear – from hearing somebody play guitar he could tell them which string it was that was out of tune. It was his idea to bring in Flo & Eddie. I was against it at first, but Todd said, “You know what, if you don’t like ‘em I promise you we won’t use it, but I think you’ll like it.” And he was right. “Love My Way” was something I wrote on one of those little Casio things. I was due to go over to John Ashton’s house and I hadn’t got any ideas together, so I wrote that on a Casio and then went over to his house. The arrangement was pretty much there, to be honest, apart from the keyboard part which was written by Ed Buller, but Todd wanted it to be real marimbas, so he played that. Initially I was singing it fairly aggressively, and Todd said, “You should try singing it less aggressively, lay back on it a bit more. This could be a great song, but you’re making it a bit punkish.”
MIRROR MOVES
Columbia, 1984
With the Butler brothers living in New York, the group – slimmed down to a trio – create a sumptuous, synth-heavy slice of ‘80s alternative
Tim Butler: After the success of “Love My Way” we thought we’d take some steps forward and go into a more commercial, poppy territory, so we chose Keith Forsey because he had just recorded Rebel Yell with Billy Idol. We thought, ‘Who better to keep our English sensibilities but tap a bit more into the American market?’ The length of time we took on albums stepped up – once you realise what you can do in the studio, you always try to polish something even more. If something’s good you always feel, ‘I could do it better, this is gonna be out there forever’, so you can sort of second-guess yourself.
Richard Butler: Keith came over to London and he sat in on rehearsals. We’d just be throwing ideas around and playing bits and pieces, and I think it was him that picked up on the part for “The Ghost In You” and said, “That’s great, what you’re playing there. Do that again!” We improved on it and put the keyboard on with an odd sound, and built it out of that. But about half this record was written in the studio – “Heaven” certainly was – and lyrics to a lot of them were. “Heaven” is one of those songs that came really quickly – Tim just started playing that descending bassline and I started singing along with it almost immediately. Keith put some drums on it and John came later and put a guitar on it and that was it.
Tim Butler: For every other album the core band had played and then we’d overdubbed on top of that – but for this one, the tracks were pretty much me in the live room with a drum machine, and everything else was overdubbed. It worked out, but it was quite stressful. It’s hard to get the vibe like that, so it was the most taxing record from my point of view.
MIDNIGHT TO MIDNIGHT
Columbia, 1987
After their re-recorded version of “Pretty In Pink” brings them greater fame as the title song of John Hughes’ hit teen film, the Furs embark on their fifth album
Tim Butler: Initially the film company were going to get a different band to do a cover of “Pretty In Pink” because they thought the two guitars sounded slightly out of tune. And we said, “Hell no, we’ll redo it”, so we went in and did this slightly inferior version. But it was a blessing and a curse – we got a younger fanbase and we were playing bigger and bigger places, but in the long term we didn’t like the way it was pushing us.
Richard Butler: It was a great time [after “Pretty In Pink” became so popular], but recording this record was very strange. We were in Barwell Court, a residential studio in the country in England, trying to write stuff out there for weeks and weeks. Danny Lanois was gonna produce it, so he listened to some ideas and said, “Yeah, I like these ideas, but you need more. I want to hear more songs.” At that point we were used to doing a lot of work in the studio, so we went, “Ah, bugger that, we’re gonna find someone who’s willing to go now, we wanna do it now.” So we found Chris Kimsey and started work on it. But Danny was right – and it didn’t come together as quickly as it always had done before. We spent time in a studio in Switzerland, then we recorded the majority of it in Berlin at Hansa Tonstudios, and it was a difficult time all in all, really.
Tim Butler: I think it’s our weakest album. There are some good songs, but it’s overproduced and not
worked out enough.
BOOK OF DAYS
Columbia, 1989
Intended as a reaction to the glossy Midnight to Midnight, the Furs abandoned synths for their next LP
Richard Butler: I was disillusioned with the way the band had gone; it was too commercial-seeming for me, and not what I’d set out to do originally. I felt like we’d betrayed ourselves, or I’d betrayed myself and the band had gone along with it, or whatever, so I was talking about Midnight to Midnight being the last album. The band said, “No, don’t leave on a note that you hate – why not make a record that corrects the situation?” That’s why we made Book Of Days. I remember talking to Muff Winwood at the record company – God bless him, he was a great A&R guy – and saying to him, “I wanna do a record that doesn’t necessarily have any radio-playable singles on it,” and he was like, “Go for it.” That’s what Book Of Days was, us kind of redressing the balance and trying to undo the idea that people were viewing us as this commercial entity.
Tim Butler: The songs were there, but the production not so much. We were kicking against everything that had happened on Midnight..., so we didn’t use any synthesisers; if it was a piano it would be a real piano and none of these walls and walls of synths. When we toured, we didn’t do any interviews. We did one video, grudgingly – we were trying to get our heads back together on where we should be going, but I think we tended to lose the audience through lack of promoting it. We were depressed with going so off-track from our original direction.
WORLD OUTSIDE
Columbia, 1991
The band’s seventh, produced by Stephen Street, was their finest in years, and also their goodbye
Tim Butler: We had a bunch of cool songs and we’d got our direction back on track. Stephen was a great producer – he had done “All That Money Wants” with us – in fact we’d wanted to use him for Book Of Days but he wasn’t available. By the time this came out our audience had been battered into submission by the lack of promotion and enthusiasm from us for Book Of Days and Midnight.... So it didn’t spark a lot of excitement. But it’s a great record. After that we decided we were tired of being The Psychedelic Furs and playing the same hits night after night, and getting pressure from the record company to retread the hits or the near-hits. So we decided to take a break, but we didn’t realise it was going to be that long.
Richard Butler: Stephen was great, again a very talented guy with a great ear. At this point I didn’t know whether I was leaving the Furs or we were just taking a break – we’d made the record, we toured and then it was time to start writing. We’d been doing it for a long time, it seemed, and I just wanted to step off and take stock, so I called the whole thing to a halt. Then it was 10 years until I thought – or somebody else actually said – “Why don’t you play some shows?”
LOVE SPIT LOVE
LOVE SPIT LOVE
Imago, 1994
A new band for the Butlers, together with St. Louis guitarist Richard Fortus
Richard Butler: When I decided to put a halt to The Psychedelic Furs, I thought, ‘Well, who do I know that I’d like to write with?’And Richard Fortus came to mind – he had played in an opening band for us called Pale Divine. I got on really well with Richard and I really liked his playing. So he would fly into New York and sleep on my couch and write songs with me during the day. Then he’d head back to St. Louis and I’d write lyrics and he’d work on tunes, then he’d come back over again. That carried on for a while, and eventually he just moved to the city. We’d written pretty much all of the first record by that point, so we went in with Dave Jerden and made the first Love Spit Love record. Tim was around and joined on bass, but he didn’t want to tour.
Tim Butler: I left the band because I had my own band in New York and I wanted to concentrate on that, but it didn’t go anywhere. So Richard got a new bass player and did another record. I regret not having stayed in it for that second album, but there you go, it happened.
Richard Butler: It’s strange that our version of “How Soon Is Now” has become well known through Charmed. And the Furs kept showing up in movies – “Love My Way” was in Call Me By Your Name, which was great, and Stranger Things had “The Ghost In You”.
MADE OF RAIN - Cooking Vinyl, 2020
Three decades after World Outside, the group power back rejuvenated
Tim Butler: We were always a bit worried it wouldn’t stand up to our past work, then we got listening to modern bands saying they were influenced by the Furs, and the resurgence of a sort of ‘80s sound going on, and we thought, ‘Hell, we still have something to say, we still have musical ideas that we think will stand up there among the young whippersnappers.’ So we decided it was time. We’d been sending demos back and forth since we’d got back together, but these are all pretty much new songs, except for “Wrong Train”, which was written in 2005.
Richard Butler: The band has been playing together for some time now, so everybody’s in the Furs headspace. There was no pressure to sound like past Furs stuff, though. I think it does, but it does because of Tim and because of my voice. And we wanted it to be fairly high energy, which again fell in line withwhat the Furs did. Paul Garisto [drums] had played with us a long time ago, back in the ‘80s, as had [saxophonist] Mars Williams, so they’d been in the band before for a long time. We recorded it quickly with Richard Fortus.
Tim Butler: We’d do two or three takes of a song and sleep on it, listen to it in the morning and maybe go through it again after deciding if it needed any changes. Most of it has very few overdubs. At the moment “Don’t Believe” is my favorite, because it harkens back to the force and sound of a song like “India”, guitar-wise, vibe-wise. We’re all excited to get out there and to play it for the people who’ve been waiting for a new album for 29 years. It’s not like we’re stuck in the ‘80s or ‘90s, it’s very much a Furs for today.