Excess: Sex, Drugs and the Vanity of the Psychedelic Furs
Disowning the past, re-writing the course of furry rock and roll history is Richard Butler's forte. All his psychedelic back-press seems to be about the meaning of lyrics, lots of semi pseudo philosophical statements pertaining to whatever project The Furs were involved with at the time, and much talk and self-conscious anarchistic ramblings about the state of the nation. Odd? Or not?
A Japanese journalist emerges from the basement backwards, bowing and repeating "thank you, thank you". It's my turn now, Richard's tenth interview today and, frankly, he looks a bit of a mess. Pale with carrotty stubble which doesn't suit him, he dangles wearily in his chair and pounces on my packet of Silk Cut. When Richard Butler was sixteen he had a nervous breakdown. He attributes much of the reason to the fact that "my old man had a total nervous breakdown at the same time, it was really bad, he had to have electric shock treatment (his father was a Doctor of Chemistry)... it was a crazy time for my family and I got very depressed and had to see a psychiatrist, which really pissed me off. I got so bored with all their trite explanations, I couldn't swallow it, I just laughed. I still don't know to this day exactly what happened, it was confusion, depression and anxiety which all built up."
Rumour has it that Richard is worried that he may be heading for another breakdown. He shoots me a where-did-you-hear-this? look and admits slowly:
"Yes, I sometimes think I'm going to have another one but I try to keep a healthy grip on reality these days. The truth is very frightening but I'm pretty down to earth now, I've got a good sense of who I am, what I like doing, with my position in music I know my strengths and weaknesses and I feel I know my identity now. I think a lot of it is to do with giving up drinking and giving up drugs." Of course, the famous drink problem. There was a time when Richard was known as Lord Lush, The Thin White Soak. He also had a reputation for being abusive, violent and unprofessional. During the Forever Now period, his breakfast consisted of a glass of wine, a bottle of beer and a whisky. Finally, it got to the point where Richard either stopped drinking or stopped breathing. He chose the former option: "We were in Australia and the tour manager was talking to my girlfriend and told her he didn't think I was going to last six months and she agreed. She (Sherry) had just given up herself, and she helped me to stop. I realised that when I was drinking and doing drugs, some of the shows I was doing weren't the best I'd done in my life; also I thought it was boring dragging my girlfriend round bars, I loved the girl and I didn't want to lose her by boring her to death."
On top of having to give up drinking, it looked like the right time to throw away the little straw and packets of white powder. The Butlers were being referred to uncomfortably frequently as The Hoover Brothers. Richard laughs in fond remembrance of the good old days and dishes up an explanation: "I think I've got an addictive sort of personality, if I get into something I tend to overdo it. If it wasn't drink, it was drugs. I quit at the point where I was hitting it all too hard. I stopped coke just after I stopped drinking. I just wanted to feel fit and I got bored with the cliché of it and the fact that it seems to be the currency of rock and roll — the way, if you want to meet a band you can buy your way backstage with a bit of coke. I got pissed off with having these people around." So now Richard Butler is Mr. Clean: teetotal, vegetarian, vitamin freak. His only weakness is chain smoking. Even though you could argue that he was just living his rock'n'roll lifestyle to the full, now he condemns drug-dealers so wholeheartedly, I wonder if he'd feel morally obliged to report pushers who approach him?
"I think a quick kick in the balls is the best solution. I don't know if I'd report them, if they approach me I just tell them to fuck off and I think other people in bands should do the same."
And what about groupies? Does he offer the same advice — especially with the AIDS scare, are the days of throwaway freebie fan-fucks numbered?
"I think people in rock bands are going to be a lot more careful. It's a very promiscuous business. With something as dangerous as AIDS you should put the fear of God into people."
Does Richard Butler wear a condom now? Am I serious? Yes, are you?
"In my worst moments I take myself very seriously, but not on an average day — it's a bit difficult to take anything seriously." I bet he's well stocked-up on Red Stripe, after all, he's a complete hypochondriac, a fact he admits freely. For example, a couple of years ago he heard about a friend who had a cancerous mole. After worrying for weeks about an "average sized" mole on his arm, he went "completely over the top" and asked his New York doctor to remove it who told him not to be so silly, whereupon Richard jumped on a plane and flew to Beverley Hills, where they'll remove or add anything — for a price. Still, it's better to take direct action than lose sleep over it, and sleep is a very precious commodity — you see, Richard is also afflicted with insomnia: "I'm a chronic insomniac. There's nothing I can do about it. I lie there and feel really exhausted, then I go to bed and my brain starts ticking over and it won't stop. The more I'm lying there I tend to get into a bad temper and I end up punching the bed and gritting my teeth — when you get to that stage you might as well give up and read a book."
Which he does — Stephen King novels, only one step away from the Virago paperbacks.
UP TO THIS point, we've established that Richard is neurotic, a hypochondriac, insomniac and reformed alcoholic/coke fiend. We've had sex and drugs in true rock and roll traditions. Now to touch upon incest. The Psychedelic Furs have got to be one of the most interactive groups in rock history. Richard snickers: "Yes, we did go through a fairly incestuous period. We get along better now than before because we know each other better." The Furs nucleus now consists of Richard, his brother Tim on bass and John Ashton on guitar. When the band first got together, there were six members, some who got chucked by the wayside for previously undisclosed reasons. Some people could accuse Richard of being a psychedelic Hitler, or just a general keeping a tight unit. Victim number one was his third brother, Simon. Butler waves his hand dismissively: "Well, it would have been a bit like the Bee Gees, two is acceptable, three is like a conspiracy." Second to get the Johnson's boot was sax player Duncan Kilburn, who proved more costly to remove: "He and I started not getting along — shall we say there was a personality clash? It came to a head one time when we were on a boat coming back from Europe and I was leaning over shouting at him and he said, 'If you lean over one more inch I'll throw this drink in your face', and I said if he did he'd regret it and I leaned over one more inch and he threw the drink in my face." Duncan probably added a couple of extra noughts to his redundancy cheque in view of the fact that a certain member of The Furs entourage was also sleeping with his girlfriend. Eventually he agreed to leave after his mortgage was paid for.
The second guitarist, Roger 'Dog' Morris, also had to go because John Ashton "wanted a bit more space — and he got it!" The fourth dramatic departure came from Vince Ely — the drummer. Richard looks rather embarrassed about this one: "Vince's girlfriend (Bebe Buelle) decided she really liked me and I was very wary about the consequences so I moved out of the hotel because I didn't want it to get between Vince and me. But it did, although I could never take Bebe seriously, I'd just describe it as a fling rather than a relationship. Anyway, it pissed him off plus we did a lot of touring and stayed in shitty hotels and had shitty travel and I think he got sick of it." Vince's replacement was Phil Calvert, formerly of The Birthday Party: "Phil's drumming wasn't spot on and Keith Forsey — who's best known for his tight production — said he wasn't good enough so we decided to sack him and give him the benefit of the doubt."
There's one more name to add to the casualty list. The Furs are now managed exclusively by Les Mills (who used to be a drum roadie for The Banshees), but in the early days of The Furs a girl called Tracey co-managed the band. She went out with John. Then she went out with Les and after they split up, Les took over and decided that Tracey's services were no longer required. How did they get rid of her?
"We paid her to go. There was some enmity in some quarters. It's very difficult to have someone who's managing a band to be also involved with one of the members. She quoted us a price which we agreed to and she left." Vicious, isn't it? The ins and outs, the ups and downs of a rock group. I'm surprised Richard can count his friends on one finger. Actually, he comes across as quite a pleasant chap. He's grown from a nasty middle-class brat to a wiser, quieter middle-class thirty three year old chap. He imposes his clean-living on the rest of the band and his brother Tim tends to fall into line. Apparently, this is just gossip of course, other people in the Furs circle have nicknamed the brothers Dick and Dim. I hope Richard will remember telling me that he "enjoys reading all the myths about me, they make me laugh."
Is there any truth in the myth that he's terribly vain — always sucking in his cheeks and worrying about wrinkles etc.? "I would say that I'm a very vain person. Not in the way that I think I'm God's gift to women or I'm the handsomest guy ever to walk the face of the earth, but I tend to be overly fascinated by the way I look." Surely the fact that Richard's girlfriend looks just like him and they wear each other's clothes say it all.
Noel Coward once said: "Strange how potent cheap music is"; throwaway lines often ring true — what does Richard think about these acerbic observations? "I'd have to say about 99% of what goes on the radio is rubbish. It makes me think of that bit in the film 1984 where all the songs are written by machines — trite recycling of the same boy-meets-girl type themes... I don't think The Furs' music is cheap because it's not easy to write, we don't write them the easy way which is to listen to the radio and decide to do a song like a chart hit. The way we write is like a battle, but on the other hand I don't think that rock music is going to change the world. That's not what it's for." When Richard Butler was at art school in Epsom he was in a performance art group with Bruce Maclean called Bruce Maclean's Pose Band. Richard's contribution was chief mirror-holder: "I think Bruce Maclean was the only art teacher at college that had any effect on anyone really. He was the only person who gave it any excitement, with a sort of boots and braces approach. He wasn't pretentious at all and I got really taken in by his personality. He doesn't spell art with a capital A. He's got some bollocks." Talking of art, I thought Richard was particularly brave taking on 'The Alabama Song' on the Kurt Weill Lost in Stars album: "I first wanted to do 'Mack the Knife' because I think it's a good vicious song but they wanted me to do 'The Alabama Song'. I was a bit dubious at first because Jim Morrison had done it before very well and David Bowie had done it not so well. I was a bit wary of the comparison. But I liked doing it, I think my voice sounds like my voice and if anyone wants to make any comparisons they can shove their head up their arse! I think David Bowie's a really boring old fart and can't act for shit."
Hear hear. But touchy, an answer to an un-asked question. It's become obvious that Richard can't take criticism at all. Also, he's highly-strung and paranoid, just the fact that he absolutely refuses to answer the phone ever confirms this, plus, he complains: "When I'm on tour, you get a certain amount of outlet on stage, when you're stuck at home (New York, Mott Street) suddenly without that outlet every night, I tend to get very edgy around showtime — I get very bored. It takes me a while to get used to not playing, I get very bad-tempered when I get bored but it's a flash temper. My girlfriend has problems coping with it."
Since 1983, New York has been Richard's home: "We've found more success in America and it's always nice to be surrounded by your own success, that's why I'm not particularly fond of Europe... also, I get a vibe out of New York that I don't get out of any other city. There's so much energy there, it hit me the minute I got off the plane." Now that The Furs are enjoying a revival, mainly since the film Pretty in Pink (written by John Hughes around the five year old Furs track) was so successful, the coffers must have swelled a lot since the re-release of the song: "Quite a bit but I'm a real wastrel. I'm lousy with money. I spend what I get. I feel I've been very lucky. Going into this business is like taking a bet, you don't go into it for guaranteed money. The stakes are high and I've had a good dose of luck." His insurance company think the stakes are high too, a few weeks ago a life insurance policy was drawn up and, after taking Richard's medical reports and lifestyle into account, they added ten years weighting. This is really preying on his mind, and he's more worried about the significance of his estimated insurable age than about sales of the new album or the tour. However, his parting shot proves that you can't keep a dead man down: "I'll carry on until can't jump up and down on stage anymore." Odd? Or not?
