Psychedelic (si’ki del’ik) adj. Of or noting a mental state characterized by a profound sense of intensified sensory perception, sometimes accompanied by severe perceptual distortion and hallucinations and by extreme feelings of either euphoria or despair.
“As Brian Eno has pointed out, every single one of the 20,000 people who bought the Velvet Underground’s first album eventually formed a band,” wrote R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck in the October issue of The Record magazine.
Three of those people were Britishers Richard Butler, his brother Tim and John Ashton – better known as the Psychedelic Furs, who will perform at Muhlenberg College Wednesday.
Recording in the late 1960s, The Velvet Underground and its founder, the innovative, highly-principled Lou Reed, laid the groundwork for the new wave of the mid-’70s, the wave The Furs rode in on in 1980.
The Velvets served, then and now, as an archetype of psychedelia, the genre that spawned, among others, The Standells (“Dirty Water”), The Strangeloves (“In the Nighttime”), Count Five (“Psychotic Reaction”), The Blues Magoos (“Tobacco Road”), The Thirteenth Floor Elevators, The Amboy Dukes and The Electric Prunes, not to mention Bob Dylan’s Mouse, Stephen Stills’ Mojo Men and an outfit that eventually developed into ZZ Top.
The bands of the first psychedelic era displaced Flower Power, leaving in its stead a mesh of folk-rock vocal harmonies, hypnotic guitars, intensely cerebral lyrics, deceptively simple melodies and potent wall of sound production.
Alongside the sounds, the term “psychedelic” conjures images of kaleidoscopic pulsating colored lights, abstract art-deco, paisley, plastic dresses and go-go boots, and a much younger Andy Warhol.
Today, in the ever-evolving and revolving cycle of popular music culture, pockets of the country are steeped in a neo-psychedelic revival. Bands with names like Dream Syndicate, The Bangles, The Lyres, The Trypes, The Long Ryders, The Chesterfield Kings and Rain Parade inhabit the Paisley Underground, the sub-mainstream wonderland of modern psychedelic happenings.
Though never targeted as a potential mainstream act until the release of “Mirror Moves,” the Psychedelic Furs’ fourth and most accessible album, the Furs had their musical leanings well-established years before the Paisley Underground took hold. Consequently, one might presume the band partially responsible for psychedelia’s rebirth. Or would one? After all, a name isn’t necessarily a description.
Speaking recently from the Mayflower Hotel in New York City, where the Furs prepared for the second leg of a tour which began Monday in Montreal, guitarist John Ashton contemplated the question has haunted the Furs like the ancient mariner’s albatross.
“I think our music is psychedelic, yeah,” said the affable Britisher, “but Richard (Butler, lyricist and frontman) would deny that, saying our name is intentionally ironic, and Tim would say the same. Being brothers, they think alike.
“Our first album had a weird, eerie feel to it, much like what some of the psychedelic bands are doing now,” he explained. ” ‘Forever Now’ was a psychedelic sort of eccentric production, dance pop with weirdness. Our older stuff was weirder though.”
Ashton appreciates weirdness, probably more so than either of his cohorts, although Richard Butler’s lyrics are anything but typical. Angry, romantic (sometimes painfully so), eccentric, bittersweet, enigmatic, interesting, but never average and rarely cheerful.
“The lyrics on ‘Mirror Moves’ do sound happier than anything he’s ever written, but there’s still an underlying darkness,” says Ashton.
Butler’s subject matter, even on the new album, remains a far cry from roses, butterflys, and care bears. “Mirror Moves” comes without benefit of lyric sheet, and Butler’s raspy cigarettes-and-whiskey voice does obscure the lyrics beyond comfortable perception much of the time, so the uncharacteristically soft melodies threw fans for a loop at first.
“The love songs on ‘Mirror Moves’ have an ambiguity about them,” concurs Ashton. “They’re personal, about Richard’s own feelings, but at the same time, they’re for everybody. Most of the others aren’t love songs at all. ‘Heaven’ is about nuclear war, ‘Here Come Cowboys’ and ‘High Wire Days’ are political, “Heartbeat” is about life in the city, specifically about some people we know.”
“Richard’s lyrics used to paint pictures, but they don’t anymore. He’s more straightforward.”
While in New York, the band took time to compose new material for a forthcoming album, due next spring. After Butler puts his words to paper, Ashton molds the music to complement them.
“Richard came over last night with a new verse and chorus,” he said, “so I have to come up with a weird guitar part that comes in straight and goes funky. As it seems now, this next album won’t be too dissimilar from the last. Richard is still very poppy; he’s got good pop sensibilities and Tim sort of follows suit.
“Although I like pop, I’m not influenced by pop artists as much as the Butler boys are. I would get fed up with writing pop tunes,” says Ashton, who admits contrasting preferences do stir the occasional rift in the studio, but their working relationship is a sturdy one.
“We argue, but I don’t see it as a battle of two against one. It’s a debate with Richard. Tim echoes what Richard says so I’m really only fighting against one mind. And no, Inever feel like a third Butler brother.”
At the outset, the Psychedelic Furs numbered an even half-dozen, but after the release of the band’s second album, “Talk Talk Talk,” saxophonist Duncan Kilburn and rhythm guitarist Roger Morris left to pursue personal projects. Drummer Vince Ely stuck around for the recording of “Forever Now” before emigrating to the other side of the soundboard for a career in production (most notably, he engineered Ministry’s debut, “Work For Love”).
What’s left of the line-up is its nucleus, Ashton and the Butler brothers. “We started with six musicians who all came from different backgrounds, with different ideas and strong egos, so our early material is a weird mish- mash of influences. When the other members departed, the music came into focus from the remaining guys’ points-of-view. We three wrote the songs all along, so when the music was accredited collectively to the Psychedelic Furs, we were writing a lot of riffs and giving them away. On the other hand, it wasn’t fair to credit just one person when the whole band contributed input in the studio.”
The group of additional musicians filling in the gaps in the studio and onstage come with impressive resumes. Drummer Paul Garisto is a former studio musician who previously worked with Martha Reeves and Vandellas and a regionally successful but ill-fated New York band, Khmer Rouge; saxophonist Mars Williams used to play in the Waitresses, and rhythm guitarist Mike Mooney did a stint with Echo & The Bunnymen. Keyboardist Ed Buller rounds out the current line-up.
Fans who caught the Furs on the “Forever Now” tour, which stopped at Lehigh University last year, will remember eerie mood lighting, an atmospheric, but un-flashy, stage show and a seated cellist.
“We dropped the cello when everybody in England started using cellos, but those parts will be substituted on guitar and keyboards. The stage show is very different this year, more up front, more fairyland, sort of a colorful moodiness.”
Lighting designer Alex Nissic has worked up a system of backlighting, appropriately reflective for the “Mirror Moves” tour. “The band stands in front of a grid of sequenced colored lights with mirrored balls overhead. It’s very unlike anything we’ve done in the past. We like to keep people guessing what we’re going to do next.”
The Furs aren’t immune to the homesickness musicians sometimes endure on the road, and seeing his girlfriend Bev and their baby daughter Sophie Louise off to Britain as the U.S. tour continues through mid-November makes traveling less appetizing for Ashton.
“To be honest, I wish I were going home with them. Of the three band members, I’m the most British. I find it difficult to settle down and work in America, but Tim and Richard love it.”