Psychedelic Furs Chemistry
Where has all the mystery gone? Decorum, wit and wordplay is
becoming tragically out of fashion. Instead, you're more likely to hear about
someone throwing a bottle, a tantrum or a punch. If it's not Guns 'n Roses'
audience destroying a arena because Axel Rose leaps offstage to become a
temporary security guard it's Jane's Addiction punching one another out after a
bad gig then trashing each other for the encore. And what about Skid Row's
Sebastian Bach's favorite game of bean the fan with a bottle? Bands who profess
to love not only each other but every single fan go onstage to play search and
destroy. And let's not even get into that crop of creatively misogynistic
lyrics...where's the talent in all of that? Enough of this testosterone
masquerading as music. What kind of an example are these bands setting?
Although with Guns N Roses their fans were setting an example for training
demolition workers. Say, just how far can you throw that seat? This music is
the aural equivalent of a bad Von Damme movie.
Thankfully there are still those elegant bands, our
delicious dreamers of decadence like the Psychedelic Furs. A public brawl?
Extremely distasteful and quite boring, not today, thank you. A cigarette might
get broken. A hand rolled one at that. Mind you, not that the Furs sound friendly.
They're not the pop boys on the block, even if you live in Manhattan's East
Village area. Fluffy pop availability wouldn't be dangerous. It's just that
they've always maintained a decorum to their music, even while losing all
control. Contradiction? Welcome to the Furs.
The Furs are a wonderful black and white Alfred Hitchcock
movie, where nothing is ever as it seems and even the villains are charming in
their deadliness as characters shift, shimmer and emerge from darkness into
light and back again. And always the intent is carried off with an acid wit's
bite and a bitter romantic edge. But under this surface elegance comes the
harsh sound of a band clawing at its inner soul. When the Furs are at their
peak there's a cutting psychological tension, a deadly dark current that hints
at some deep violence both lyrically and musically...
"That's part of our creative process, that
tension," agrees guitarist John Ashton. "You're always pulling at
sides, playing a part that you believe in, and someone else is playing a part
that they believe in, and then the third person will feel something out of that
and will play against that. But that doesn't necessarily mean that everyone is
happy with everything that is going on at one time. But it's all just part of
that process... and sometimes it doesn't work, but in the main it seems to work
really well, that chemistry is quite good. And I think very much that this last
album was recorded like that, with what you're listening to is what is being played.
It's live. So that's how it works. That tension adds to it.'
So each member can step back from the creation and see that
al- though a part necessarily doesn't thrill them it can still work. Is
everybody really that polite in the studio? Do they all say please and thank
you? Lanky vocalist Richard Butler blasts this logic, shrugging, "Well, we
do argue... how we end up with a song sounding like it does end up is with
everyone basically thinking that it sounds good. If everyone jumps on John's
back then that guitar part gets changed. If I come up with a really weak vocal
melody everyone would jump on me going 'well the track is great but
really...," he laughs. "We argue but we don't get into fist fights.”
"Creatively, that is,” deadpans John with a subtle
crinkle of eyes. "Without creative argument it would be a lot more sterile
sounding that it is," quietly points out Richard's brother bassist Tim
Butler. It's easy to see why Richard is the vocalist as Tim's relaxed baritone
barely carries past his own lips. "It shows that everybody cares. Also now
the one thing that we've learned that makes it easier is that it's no good
persisting in one way all the time, because five guys aren't suddenly going to
come round to the way you're thinking. That tends to work against you if you
persist," remarks John in his dry manner. Richard begins to snicker as if
remembering past in- stances. Maybe there have been a few artistic brawls!
"You just carry on listening and hopefully you will come up with something
that will fit the mood." John until a few years ago resided in England,
while the Butler brothers had relocated to New York City in 1983. Richard notes
John's stateside move greatly helped the Furs' creative process. "The
luxury of having everyone living in the same place, if John has an idea with a
bunch of chords we'll all go round and try to play on it. And nothing may
happen. But it doesn't mean that those chords ain't any good. Those bunch of
chords aren't good or bad. But since you're there you'll work out something
else and if somebody comes up with something then everybody else will jump in
on it. And then it happens really quickly. That may happen twice a day, it may
only happen once in a week. But if you're all in the same place working an
album will come together quickly."
This version of the Psychedelic Furs 1991 finally came
together after the Book of Days album. Aside from the core of Tim and Richard
Butler and John Ashton, the band has had members coming and going...Richard
gives the body count for the World Outside recording. "We've got a new
drummer, [Don Yallech] as we had had Vince Ely for a while but he didn't work
out playing live. We really didn't get along. But outside of that I think Joe
McGinty's [keyboards] been with us five years, and Knox Chandler [guitar,
cello] has been with us for about four years so that's a fairly long time. So
it's pretty much a solid band, the same band that made Book of Days,
really."
John wasn't in America for the recording of the Furs'
magnificent epic of 1989 Book of Days, making that album's creation far more
complex. "That involved a lot of traveling, you'd spend a couple of weeks
rehearsing, go away, spend a couple of weeks... but this time it was much more
focused. You put on a certain limit to how much you can work. You can only be
in a small room together for a number of hours and then it doesn't become
creative anymore. But when the onus is to get something done in two weeks
you're in there all the time but you might get more if you only spend a couple
of hours a day, knowing that you can spend another of couple of hours in the
days to come. The emphasis has shifted, you're using your time in a different
way, and probably in a much more constructive way, cause the onus isn't there
to COME UP WITH SOMETHING!" What a surprise to see even mock snarls coming
from this dryly matter of fact man.
"We also had the advantage of John having a studio set
up at his place. The first single, 'Until She Comes,' we tried re-recording it
up at Woodstock studio and we just couldn't get the same feel. It's an old
cliche that the record often doesn't sound as good as the demos so we didn't
bother trying to make it over. We tried a couple of times, got back to New York
and we basically used John's demos, as they were good quality recordings. We
just rolled that on to the 24 four track and the majority of 'Until She Comes'
is the demo," describes Richard.
"The feel of it. We replaced the bass and added
keyboards but the guitars were there," adjusts John towards details. That
initial demo freshness more often than not gets murdered in an errant
producer's hands. I for one am sick unto death of hearing bands bitch and
complain after the record has already been ruined. Someone should open a
training center for proper producer procurement. "It's the classic
seduction of technology. The technology u that we're living with is a bit of a
trap," agrees John. "You tend to think since you're in a studio you
want to use it to its fullest extent. And you do, but essentially the demos do
have a certain feel to them. That's a performance thing. There are a couple of
songs on this album that are total performance, we had riffs that were part
demo and part idea, and then we just walked in and started playing. We had one
song that was fifteen minutes long and we edited it down to four minutes.
That's where the producer comes in and splices it up and away you go." The
intriguing pacing on both World Out- side and Book of Days places songs on the edge
of unraveling against more tightly polished pieces. Not that it seems planned
but... is it? Richard claims, "That's just the way it happens. Sometimes a
song just.... take 'All About You,' I think the band had just finished playing
something else and you can hear John on the keyboards playing the end of another
track with some keyboard stabs then you get the whole band coming in playing
something else and that was a song where we all picked up as we were going
along and it was recorded as we were making it up and that is the one that was
edited down. With something like that you don't want to put overdubs on it, the
whole point of the song and what was exciting about it was that we had recorded
some- thing that was completely out of the blue. It's exciting hearing the
guitar do something different in each verse, and the keyboards doing something
different... each finding their way."
"It's like working on the brink," adds Tim. "It
gives it that tension, that excitement," as Richard stress the earlier
conversation. "Where other songs that you might have had for a bit longer,
you've had so much time to work on them before that just automatically you know
your part. And it all comes together very quickly. "But I don't think
there's a great deal.. there's a lot of songs on this record, there's a lot of
examples I can think of, like 'Until She Comes' being taken from the demo keeps
that rawness. 'Tearing Down' is another song that came about in the studio so
that was fresh. 'Get A Room,' we've had that songs around for ages but it'd
been in a different form, almost entirely acoustic, it had a harpsichord, and
it had the cello and the acoustic guitar, and we decided to approach it in a
different way when we got into the studio. So there aren't a great deal of
songs that sound over wrought or over- worked. We almost steered away from
that. It wasn't conscious but now, when we talk about it becomes clear that we
change a lot of things around to make them feel fresher." "Like with
a song we'd do a few takes and if it wasn't happening that day we wouldn't say
that we have to get it done that day, we could stop and come back another day
with fresh ears," notes Tim. "The trick is to leave it and go on to
another one."
John agrees, "You have to go through that process to
learn that. It's basically futile at the end of the day. Because you end up
finishing something that you're not that happy with. It's pristine but... it's
not what our music is about, really." "We've found out that our music
isn't something that you can push. You can put pressure on it, and we have put
pressure on it and it's worked before. Like Mirror Moves was a lot of pressure
in the studio. But this record was easily the most enjoyable record to make.
Everyone knew what we wanted, we had a very strong direction and working with
Steven Street, we haven't used the producer as the producer for a long time.
The last two al- bums were co-produced. There are a lot of things assigned to
the producer to do that we can do more adequately ourselves. But it helps to
have someone going in the same direction as you, and sees the whole thing
moving in the same direction as you. It's one less obstacle. It can be an
obstacle if the whole band is seeing one thing and the producer is even
slightly off kilter... it means that when the producer does something on his own,
bam, an idea, it's setting the whole thing back instead of everybody going ́yeah, that's a good idea' and moving it for-
ward," he describes.
John picks up, "Also you're not looking to the producer
to give you the sound..." He has to trail off as this comment causes
Richard even more amusement. I'm missing something but I am not missing the
analogy that you wouldn't take your precious Rolls to a mechanic who has only
worked on Fords, would you? Isn't the producer working for the band... so
shouldn't the musicians have the final say? "I think that's an easy trap
to fall into when you're a young band," despairs Richard. "We were
really lucky to get Steve Lillywhite, cause his approach was, he said for the
first Furs record he wanted it to sound like a great live show. So there was no
step- ping on anybody's toes with going 'it should sound like this or that.' It
was just 'you guys are going to make this record yourselves. I'm just gonna
record it.' And from there Talk Talk Talk was a step away from that. We've
developed musically and more so that than in terms of ideas, so that by the
time we'd left working with Steve we had found our direction, which was very
lucky. I think a lot of bands walk into the studio with the wrong producer
cause they don't know what to expect."
"You want the best possible performance instead of
studio trickery. There are certain producers who are very well known and
they're very well known cause they're so systematic with their approach. There
are certain bands that sound the same on all their albums. And that's what they
want," John shrugs. "But it wouldn't work for us. We don't use that
much electronic equipment for a start, which really regiments you anyway. We're
much more into the feel of real instruments. We do use computers in the studio
but that's as an aide rather than as a means to..." John suddenly halts,
grinning, "I don't know what I was really going to say, really," as
he looks embarrassed. Of course Richard won't let this chance to jest pass.
"You've done it! 'Oh, I was just waffling for a while, bear with
me!""
"We'll have to get that computer out for me," John
deadpans as he returns with great deliberation to the task of re-lighting his
hand- rolled cigarette. Richard is more than content to pick up John's
thoughts. "You've got much more freedom. I also think that records last
longer when you just go into the studio and play. Production tricks date. Like
those Frankie Goes to Hollywood records, who is going to be listening to them
in ten years? They'll go, 'Jesus, that is definitely 1986, whereas Neil Young,
his records still sound pretty fresh. Musicians will always walk in, just plug
in and play! It will never go out of fashion."
"It's our only form of expression anyway," remarks
John. But that's when people stumble and fail. That album is the ultimately an
unique expression of a collection of ideas and too many bands easily loose that
precious edge. "Some bands strive for perfection, but in that kind of
squeaky clean kind of way. And we've gone through quite a bit in our career so
we know what we want. And I guess this album is as close as we've got. So
far," Richard smiles. So the triumph of World Outside is a wonderfully
exciting point for the band. Richard's smile widens. "Oh yeah, I feel
really good about it."
If you were to tell me you didn't like this album I'd think
you were all insane. This is one time when a band sits here and says this is
the album we wanted to make and I totally believe them. World Outside had
people holding their breath even more then the masterful Book of Days. Book of
Days said the Furs have regained their artistic strength, whereas World Outside
had to prove that they had kept it intact.
But Richard describes, "It was more difficult to do
Book of Days,. There was a low feeling in the band after Midnight to
Midnight," he declares with self- mockery. That was very evident. Even the
interviews of that period sounded strained. And the record certainly sounded a
bit... well... "I think that no one was pleased with it. With Midnight to
Midnight, we really shouldn't have made a record at that time. The chemistry of
the band wasn't right, but it's one of those things where we had written a
record in the studio before, the previous album, and it had worked great, and
we said, 'hey, let's go do that again.' And we did, but the pressure being on
in the studio and with things not being all right, it worked out to be a record
we weren't really very pleased with. We had lost direction. And that leaves a
very bad taste in everybody's mouth, to have made a record that you're not
pleased with, the hardest thing is to get your impetuous back up to believe in
yourself. Not that it's that bad a record, but I think that we're very, very
critical about ourselves. It's always hard to do anything when the last thing
that you've done, that you're not personally pleased with it, outside of the
fact that it sold better than any other record that we've made," he half-
winces. "We didn't think it was a great personal achievement and it was
like a cul de sac, it wasn't a direction that we wanted. We had to say hey,
what do we want to do' and start doing it. "So for those reasons it was
harder to make Book of Days. This one was easy, much easier, in fact. We
enjoyed playing together again, we could sit in the studio as a band and work
as a band and all put our ideas in, and have lots of immediate feedback from
each other. And we had a lot of ideas, and we had the majority of the material
written before we went into the studio. And with it being a band where the
chemistry now feels really good, we wrote songs in the studio as well.
“So it was a pleasure making this record," Richard
concludes. This seems to be one of those cases where others around the band and
the press painted a much more darkly dramatic picture of what the band was
going though after Midnight to Midnight. They really took the critical brush to
the entire band in many ways, making it sound like the Furs were about to
self-destruct. Richard is nodding as is John, John commenting, "Oh yeah,
of course," as he shrugs. "I mean we're a bit ambivalent towards the
press, especially the British press, as we've been twice damned with records
before. It's like when we made Talk Talk Talk, it probably got the worst
reviews of any record that we've ever done. And since then now that it's a few
years later people are going 'well, that's a classic album, it's a very
important album for its time," he mocks.
Oh sorry, boys, we just didn't realize it back then!
"They decided at some point back in the mid-eighties that that was the
yardstick which we were to be measured by, and after a turn around like that
you feel that it's hard to take them seriously sometimes," very scoffs
Richard. "The main person you've got to please is yourself, and that's
what gives you the impetuous to carry on. You have to believe in yourself, to
know that what you're doing is worthwhile and that it's great," he
reasons. There also had to be the jealously factor in that the press couldn't
destroy the Furs as the band had already made the move to America and were
steadily gaining popularity. The Psychedelic Furs proved they didn't need the
British press and scribes never like that. They broke an age old un- spoken
law. Richard agrees, "There is some of that. I think a lot of people have
said that the band really changed when we moved to America, and that's just not
true. I mean a lot of people perceived Forever Now as an American album, and it
wasn't, it was written in London and we recorded it over here. But the fact that
we've chosen to live here has got nothing to do with it. You work the same as
musicians wherever you go, we could be in China and make a record but that
doesn't mean we're going to start using finger bells and stuff!" he
scoffs.
"It's like personality; you can't run away from your
problems. Wherever you go you're still going to carry the same baggage. Not
that I'm saying that musical style is baggage," he laughs, "but I
mean John, when he picks up a guitar he's going to sound the same in New York
as he sounds in Tokyo as he sounds in London.” This prompts Richard to recall
the vast amount of bands that fled from America to England to try to gain their
success after punk hit, when labels were signing anything and everyone had a
chance. "But that didn't happen here as much, and alternative music really
got watered down by the time it got over here. I mean the machinery of America
is so much huger!" It's typical that some- thing might be a vast success
on one coast and by the time it staggers bleeding and critically skewered to
the other there just isn't the interest. But too much of the music now being
thrown at us from England has little depth.. That's what makes the Furs still
mysterious, as they possess that obsessiveness that goes far beneath their
seductive surface.
Richard gives a little frown, gallantly defending, "I
don't know, I think there are a lot of interesting bands coming out of Britain.
But they will take time to develop. Take Ride, for instance, I'm not a huge fan
of their record although I know that Tim likes it a lot. But the noise that
they're making is pretty good. But it's still only their first record, and they're
getting onto their feet. I mean even bands like Happy Mondays or the Stone
Roses still could turn out to be pretty good," he generously concedes.
"A lot of those bands like Blur could turn out interesting, or My Bloody
Valentine. They're on not typical shallow pop bands. I think way too much
interest has been thrown Manchester, saying that Manchester is the place that
it's all happening, and it never really is, you only get one or two bands at
any given time and a whole lot of garbage. Like the Beatles coming out of
Liverpool; I mean who else was there?" he laughs with a shrug. An elegant
one, mind you.
Yet a band like the Stone Roses who have probably burnt out
from the exposure to that whole scene and their legal battles just signed to
Geffen for megabucks. Who’s to say they still have any creativity left...It
makes no sense. John laughs, "They're still having raves over in Germany
when the whole scene's been dead for years!" That's another fascinating
facet to the Furs: their out of focus feeling, combining with the fact that the
Furs have never sounded quite like anyone else. Not in the beginning, not now.
No scenesters here. There are few handholds in their sound: it al- ways sounds
ready to fall off some manic musical ledge into a long spiraling float to
nowhere. Richard grins, "No, no, it wasn't a conscious thing when we first
started. When we first went into the studio nobody had an idea of what we
wanted to sound like..."
"We all just started playing at the same time and
everyone wanted to get their piece in there and it created this wall of sound
which became our trademark," remarks Tim with a laugh. "And John just
tends to write that way. I mean even at the time when the band was down to one
guitarist... John when he's writing now will still writes four guitar parts.
And he works more with textures rather than with one definitive guitar part, which
is a lot of the way that Tim plays. It's that chemistry, the sound that we
naturally make. It's not very self-conscious..." dismisses Richard. "You
can't replace that sort of feel, it's like a one off, like a great live show,
you can't recapture that. It's like when people go back and patch up their live
albums," John claims. Then what's the point? Live albums have always
puzzled me... they're a complete contradition. The Furs haven't attempted
one... yet.
"The question of us doing one has come up a number of times,
but it feels to me like a cop out," shrugs Richard. "I have never
bought a live album that I considered any good. So if I've never bought one by
anybody else that's any good, why us? You want to hear new songs when you buy
record. It seems like the only way to or the only good reason to do one is if
you were going to do an acoustic set, something different, or doing it in a
totally different way." John has been looking a bit skeptical while he
waits his turn. "Without sounding rather bombastic that's the way that
most great classical records are recorded. They're all recorded live, and it's
the performance that you go for. And I think it's a big interest now, with the
Bob Dylan bootleg boxed set, there are a lot of cool things on that...'
"You basically want to hear people with their pants down," jests
Richard. John retorts, "Yeah, the but- tons of his jeans hitting his
guitar."
Still, with regard to classical music done by dead folks,
what else is there except the different performances cause they certainly ain't
coming out with a new sonata after being dead for a few hundred years. On the
whole, live albums just seem like something that people do to get out of a
contract... Richard leans forward with a laugh. "Or to make it seem like
it wasn't so long since the last album!" John shakes his head. "I
somewhat disagree with what Richard says. I think a great live performance from
any band is at times better than their studio albums. Take the Grateful Dead,
their stuff is better live." Tim throws a new angle in. "Todd
Rundgren just did a new album which he recorded live, and it was all new
stuff." "But that's different! He had like all glass partitions onstage;
he did it in San Francisco. And every night was like a recording session. I
think... didn't he have something passed out in the audience where you had to
tick off which tape you thought was best?" queries Richard as Tim
corrects, "No, I think the people in the band did that, then they passed
it about."
"The best part of the live thing is that feeling that
you get when you play to an audience," begins John but Richard cuts in,
"I think it's good if you're there but when you're listening to it on
record..." he shrugs. "They should include a scratch and sniff of
sweat and spilled beer," grins Tim. “And a coupon so you can hire somebody
to push you around and someone to come in and jump on your feet," agrees
Richard. "And to rip a hole in your shirt," laughs John. That could
be a pretty expensive package! Maybe when they perfect holograms for CD players
they'll give it a go!
Something about the Furs that surprises one upon meeting
them is their total lack of pretension. There were certain little indicators
that led me to believe they were going to be difficult, initially causing my
primadonna index to be set on "difficult." But they are refreshingly
normal. Richard even pushes tables about during the photo shoot to help get
them out of the way. Since he's not the fragile primadonna who might get riled
at a negative note, I decide to air the curious comment I got from more than
one person upon mentioning I was to interview the Furs. Aside from the snide
"Oh, I don't like them any more..." that comment is easily fixed by
asking those people if they've heard the last two albums. If they answer in the
negative then I know they have no argument. But to be told to make sure you
interview the rest of the band because Richard's lyrics are the probably the
same old material as usual...
Richard is one cool dude, he bursting into. heroic laughter
at this summation. "Well obviously it's somebody you shouldn't listen
to!" he laughs. I gather Richard disagrees with that offensive comment.
Richard continues to grin with great amusement. So just how hard is it for
Richard to continually come up with lyrics so personal yet so diverse? He never
sounds the same to these ears, always, challenging his and the listener's
emotions. "It doesn't get easier with each time. It's like with anything,
when you come up with a tune on guitar you'll work with some notes and go
'well, I like the sound of them but I've used them before! It sounds a bit like
this!' You often come up with that, the longer you've been working on it. So it
doesn't get easier as every time you write a song you're closing off a whole
bunch of phrases and words and you have to change them. I don't think it all
sounds the same. I think that's a very superficial judgement about it. I think
that Bob Dylan sounds the same as well."
John comments, "Yeah, the same can be said for the
music as well. Unless you're going off and experimenting, or dragging in
Eastern music or Eastern rhythms. It's like Richard said, you're closing off a
part of something that you've done before. There are only so many chords or so
many voicings, so many rhythms." But there's many ways a record company
abuse a band. Obviously Columbia/ Sony haven't ruffled the Furs overly much. It
must be hands off by now. "Yeah, they always have been. We've been pretty
fortunate. I mean I was surprised with Book of Days, when we came in and said,
'Well look, this isn't going to be a commercial record or be a singles oriented
record. And we want to approach press in an alternative way. Cause that's the
kind of record it is.' And they said yes!," he laughs. "And we said
'Oh God!' But yeah, they've been pretty good. Cause they've never really understood
what we're doing!" he laughs anew.
"We've never known ourselves," adds Tim in his low
murmur. Keep them in suspense and they can't steer you wrong. There's that
mystery! Richard nods, commenting, "From the beginning we've never slotted
into that category... if we had been a very pop oriented band and come out with
our first album and had a lot of hit singles, then we would have immediately
been stuck into that train of thought. But it wasn't like that, it was a slow
developing as a career, if you like, we were never seen as being a pop hit
singles band. People were surprised when 'Love My Way' hit from our third
record. To be on your third record and to be surprised by the moderate success
of a single..." he grins. "We see this as a long term project, which
makes us very lucky."
The band is at the point where they have the knowledge and
expertise of the years but they're still drawing on that initial burst of raw
spirit. Obviously too many bands loose contact with their creative source, but
even after that short lull the Furs are back stronger than ever. "I think
that everyone hits a creative dry spot now and then," defends John.
"It's if you can overcome that hurdle and carry on and go 'oh yeah,' and
just get on to the next thing. I think everyone has that. But some bands can
never go past that and they just go down. And it's a shame really, as it just
shows what your standing is, really, if you can overcome that creative
hurtle."
"Even people like Bob Dylan, who has an incredible
amount of songs, incredibly productive, he hit a time where for years he
couldn't write a half decent tune. And he just kept at it. It happens to
anybody, it even happens to the greats," shrugs Richard. Maybe lesser
bands lacking the Furs' strong determination hit that point and give up rather than
work through it.
"They get swallowed up. And their record company might
not be as understanding, so therefore they're just lost. Which is not really
their fault in a way," sympathizes John. Certain bands finally put their
first album out and if it doesn't generate some revenue, they're suddenly off
the label. It's a cruel process propagated by major labels. "That all
depends on what your audience is as well. If you have a pop audience the pop
audience will disappear just like that. People like Adam Ant and the Thompson Twins
and the flavor of the month or maybe even the year. But they come and go, like
that Boy George stuff. Those kind disappear very quick, it's the nature of the
game that they're playing. It's instant sales and instant failure." Richard
punctuates his summation with a wicked little laugh. "Then all of a sudden
their audience grows up," scoffs John. Richard is right there. "And
they go, ‘Gee, that guy's a fucking idiot!""
"I think our audience has grown with us. We've got this
hardcore audience which will buy stuff no matter what it is, they might like
some things more than others. I guess we do attract new people still,"
John modestly muses. "Still, we see a lot of the same people. It's a good
feeling to have people who were there ten years ago and they still like the
music. And I think we've influenced quite a few people too, and we've got some
respect from other bands. It's great when you hear someone else talking about
an album you made four years ago and they cite that as an influence. That is a
pretty good feeling." That says something about the Furs. Richard laughs,
"Yeah, 'get off, you're old!""
Oh, nonsense! The respect really is there for the band. For
all the flirting with fame the band did, the Furs are still out there when it
comes to innovative sounds. People who want a different flavor can come to the
Furs. "And I think that we're..." as Richard play- fully hesitates,
finally finishing, "good I think we make good music. I think good music is
always good music. I don't think someone who is 17 or 18 is going to go 'Wait a
minute, how old did you say that person was? Thirty-what? Oh, I don't think I
like that record anymore!' I think if what you're saying is valid, people are
going to listen. If you don't look like you could be in New Kids on the
Block... if people buy records on the way you look..." as he shakes his
head. There's the danger of that fickle crowd. That's also the point I was
getting at before. Some of the bands being signed to labels don't sound like
long term bands, "Without those sorts of bands selling a lot of records
then disappearing but making money for the record company, certain other bands
wouldn't be able to be nurtured or brought along," Tim comments.
That old disposable band theory. I would like to hear that
meeting. Let's sign band Y to support band Z. Ouch. It's like being a tax
write-off band. Oh, they lost money? No problem, they're a business loss! This
triggers John again. "Record companies will always chase success. They'll
always look for the next Deee-Lite or Guns 'n Roses. That's the problem. I
think that's the good thing about England these days, people are playing
guitars again. Be- cause a couple of years ago it was anybody with a computer
and a keyboard... that's it, you're making records. But it must be very
difficult to be an original band and get signed; record companies aren't just
roaming around dropping contracts. There are a lot of good groups out there
that will never get signed. Maybe the A&R man got drunk the night before
and he didn't fancy going down to see them, or he just waffled his way through
their set. So groups are at the mercy of the A&R men... there are some good
ones, but I think there are an awful lot of bad ones. But the way things are
going hopefully they will sign bands that will mean something in ten years
time. That's why we're still here. Cause our records have sold, cause we do
have a catalog, and we will have a catalog in ten years... maybe twenty, who
knows? Richard by this time is kneeling on his chair and spinning himself around
by pushing off from the conference room table as John finishes his talk. Does
this mean something? Do I ask? Ahhh, nope!
"I think that record companies tend to look too much
towards England all the time, when they've got great talent on their own
doorstep," Tim remarks. It's just those fancy accents they go for all the
time. Let's see if Richard will stop spinning for this one. Even though the
Furs profess no label interference, from all indications there was a fair
amount of headbutting going on between the Furs and Columbia when it came to
that "greatest hits" collection of a few years ago:
This gets everybody making noise at once, they creating a
small three man riot. "It was just about time that we did that,"
dismisses John, he winning the clarity factor as Richard does halt his spinning
to declare, "There's always headbutting with compilations. I've never
thought that what a band sells as singles were the best representations of what
they do on record. So when they come around to putting out a compilation they
always want to put out the singles. And if you've got any involvement with it,
as we did, you go, 'Hang on, if you're going to put those in then you have to
put this one in and and this one as these are important songs but that isn't an
important song.' It gets argued 'cause they'll say, 'Well, look, we have to
have this song on it or else it's not worth putting it out.' So it ends up
being a compromise. But saying it's a greatest hits record is a contradiction
in terms. It's something you've managed to hash out and agree on. They put
songs on that they argued for and you put songs on that you argued for."
"That should be a retrospective instead of a greatest
hits," corrects John. "We're not a hit band," Richard gently
reminds. All right, all right, it's just the term I used! I said quote and
crooked my fingers! But with these last two albums all the material sounds
prime... I would have a hard time aiming one song at a certain audience. You
must drive them insane handing them so many songs of that caliber at one time.
"Surprising they knew which one they wanted. We're not any good at
choosing them, the singles. To understand what a single should be you have to
be listening to the charts all the time and understand what people buy. And we
don't listen to that. We just do what we do. And we'll sit down at the end of
the day and have suggestions. We don't put out a single that we don't agree
with, but then again anything on the record is fine as far as we're
concerned!" he laughs. "We stand behind every song that we put out or
else it wouldn't be on the record."
Tasteful listeners will always find the Furs. I doubt that
people will suddenly flee, especially since you pulled through that slightly dodgy
phase. "Unless people suddenly start hating guitars again," laughs
Richard. We went through that already! But come on, there are some bands who
create innovative music without the use of the guitar. Don't be so unfair. And
besides, I have never thought of the Furs as a "guitar" band. Sorry,
John, no insult intended! John inclines his head in response, explaining,
"No, we're not into the histrionics of it. We do use guitars a lot. We use
them more than keyboards, more than drums, voice, so forth. But it’s good to
have Knox in the band, as we've been without a steady second guitar for a long
time, and he also plays cello. And that really opens it out and makes it
easier. And live it is what it is, and it's pretty true to what we play on
record." I've always been a sucker for creative use of cello. That and
those sax textures have always attracted me to the band's music. "And
they're real, not synthesized," John is quick to comment.
Honest, you can hear that rosin hitting the strings. There's
talk of a few undercover dates in New York before the tour in mid-October. Last
year those now famous CBGB's dates were a bit under publicized... five nights,
all sold out. The Furs didn't perform in that famous narrow venue due to
declining interest but just for the fun of it. To get back in touch with that
something special, much like when I first saw them back in 1982. Richard truly
enjoyed that experience. "They were great. I'd been down to see Tom Tom
club doing a similar thing, I think they did three nights, and when it came
time to do New York, we had already done the Beacon Theater, and we didn't want
to play another theater. We thought it would be a much more exciting idea to
play somewhere for five nights and not have a lot of lights or production to
hide behind. CBGB's was great. There's like three light bulbs..." he
mocks.
"And with the much smaller stage it was intimate.
Sometimes a little cramped..." as John arches a brow towards Richard who
grins in turn, Oh, did someone hog the stage? Manners, lads! "But you get
used to it." Before these men commit their faces to film, one last little
query... how did the band keep in check after that fling with fame? They were
doing arena dates and gaining commercial radio interest but were unhappy
artistically. The Furs had the potential to become a monster then...they came
back.
"It did threaten to be..." laughs Richard, falling
serious. "I think.. it's not something that we've ever really striven
towards. I think... we pulled back when it seemed that for us the direction
wasn't right. We didn't like the direction after Midnight to Midnight. So we've
always pulled ourselves back before we got completely out of control. Bands
like U2 made a huge blunder with Rattle and Hum, and I hope they come back with
something good." U2 obviously came to that line the Furs halted at and
cheerfully jumped over it into musical banality. Now they have to redeem
themselves. Is their soul still there? Can they return to the world of mystery
and madness? The Psychedelic Furs proved that they could. This phase began with
Book of Days and now with World Outside the Furs prove they still have their
proud, unique soul intact. Along with that dark sense of mystery and restrained,
elegant drama, Alfred would definitely approve.
