The Psychedelic Furs Retool For An Assault On The U.S.A.
Critics and fans have been playing pin-the-tail on the donkey with the Paychedelic Furs since they first hit the United States, probably because their music incorporates so many genres it’s hard to nail down what bag they're coming out of. The sound of Psychedelic Furs and Talk, Talk, Talk was a Spectorish garage melange, bathed in echo and reverb until everything surged together into a single rush of anthemic books and bittersweet vocal sentiments- as if Johnny Lydon and Roger McGuinn got hooked up in a back alley brawl (with David Bowie holding their coats)
"Yeah," admits Richard Butler, singer-lyricist for the Furs, and the group's conceptual lightning rod "We were going for a wall of sound then. Definitely. And although I do like Phil Spector, that's not the reason for it. I was really into the Velvet Underground, and a lot of bands that used that big sound with a lot of force behind it. When we started out, it was all punk rock over here in England, and we called ourselves Psychedelic Funs partly as a rebellion against the fact that bands were called all these heavy names like the Stranglers and the Sex Pistols, also, all these bands were putting down the music of the 60s which seemed a little narrow- minded to me, seeing as how I was very influenced by them. So there was no point in me going along with the fashion and saying. Yeah, I agree, all those old hippie bands were useless, when, in fact, I liked them a lot. Given those influences from the 60s, what was interesting about the punk thing was the energy it had. And the Furs, I guess, fused the energy of punk rock with the ideas of the 60s."
For Butler and the Furs, who've been plugging away since 1977, an American audience now beckons like the fains glimmers of light and romanticism that occasionally flicker through the dark, gnarling haze of their songs. One can bear the rapprochement beginning with
Talk Talk Talk, where if Butler doesn’t exactly sound tender (Into You Like A Train"), he at least seems reconciled to the ambiguities of life and loss "The second album is mainly just love songs," says Butler, "whereas the first wasn't about any one thing in particular- it sort of darted here and there. When you make a first album and get in the studio, you sort of go, "Wow, let's try this and I want to sing that," so it becomes a little bit jumbled.”
Certainly the results were unified by the Furs' waves of sound and emotion, yet more often than not any distinctions between foreground and background, music and vocalist, were obscured, and the content of the lyrics and the arrangements tended to contradict each other. "You're right about that," Butler concurs. "We feel songs work best when the feeling of the music works in with the feeling of the words, as opposed to the sound of the first two albums where there were a lot of songs that were very heavy musically that needn't have been that way."
Which is part of the reason why Butler and the Furs decided to make significant personnel changes and seek out an American producer (Steve Lillywhite had worked on the band's first two LPs) for their third album, ending up by making Forever Now with Todd Rundgren behind the board at his Bearsville, New York studios. "That wall of sound still comes through in a couple of places- it's almost a trademark, if you like- but we're not doing it to the same extent. We just thought it was time we got a little cleaned up bring out more of the melody.”
"That was part of the reason for using an American producer, because we'd like to do well in America. People over here tend to listen to music through much higher quality systems, even the car stereo systems sound really good. Todd's drum sound is even bigger than Steve Lillywhite's. Steve goes for much more- I don't mean to insult him of a mushy sound; the snare is a bit trebly, and the bass drum and toms are a bit muddy Steve wants things felt as much as board, and the bass went very much in with the drums. That's our sound and he does it on purpose. Todd goes for a much rounder, deeper, fuller tom sound much more separated and the bass is much cleaner sounding, which can actually make the music sound more powerful Todd said that when the album came out people might think it was he who'd augmented and directed the change in our sound, but we'd already done all the arrangements with cellos, marimbas and things before we came to him. There were some horn section arrangements Todd helped us with, but because the material was sounding exactly like the first two albums, we figured we needed to change, which is why we got rid of the saxophonist (Duncan Kilburn) and the other guitarist (Roger Morris). We'd gone along long enough, and it just didn't work anymore.”
The release of Forever Now marks the first stage of an extended foray into the United States, designed to take advantage of the Furs' support with the college market, so the touring band (including Butler, brother Tim Butler on bass, guitar is John Ashton and drummer Vince Ely) will be criss-crossing the country from mid-October through December, with tentative plans to flesh out the studio sound with some additional musicians. The new album's songs (like the piss-take on right wing politicians. "President Gas," and the dreamy "Sleep Comes Down") represent a distillation of the Furs sound, not a fashionable about face And with the continued exposure to American audiences, the music and the subject matter can only get deeper. "With the Clash," Butler observes, "they'd been singing songs that were specifically British, and when they got over to the States, they saw that the issues were a lot wider than they were in Britain. I think that did their writing a lot of good.
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