Castles In Spain
The lanky shape of Richard Butler stepped out into the afternoon sunlight and held his eyes bockstage shielding his eyes
(?)
"How are Sigue Sigue Sputnik doing?” Well, we're taking bets on how high it’ll go. "And how about Patsy Kensit? The Melody Maker’s other main preoccupation these days?” Glad you're still reading the rag, Richard. He stumbled off for a lie down. "We're just doing this tour to remind ourselves how to play again, so be gentle with us.” His throaty chuckle hung in the air as he vanished.
The Psychedelic Furs were in the middle of a brief jaunt through Spain (to be followed by Italy) to get a few creative juices gurgling again. They'd hoped to escape undetected by the press, but the Spaniards had greeted the band like long-lost sons and the Maker had flown out as the guest of Valencia's Zig Zag Records, which imports a lot of British indie releases and is beginning to nurture some local Spanish talent too.
The Furs' last album was '84's "Mirror Moves", produced by Keith "Breakfast Club" Forsey, and a piece of work which brought the Furs on appreciable step closer to an American breakthrough. The group regard it as a trifle smooth, looking bock, though "Heaven", "The Ghost In You" and the drifting "My Time" focused a lyrical, atmospheric side of their music, and the remix of "Heartbeat" became a clubland stople. Not much crunch in evidence, though.
It's probably perfectly fair to describe the Furs as a bunch of lazy sods, even though they spent some nine months on the rood with the "Mirror Moves" songs. They're planning to start recording a sequel in Zurich about now. When it appears, it will be two years on from "Mirror Moves". They didn't do a lot in '85, by the sound of it. "The last album was a very emotional experience for me, to get it done on time," chortled Butler in his dressing room before the Valencia show, lighting the latest in a chain of cigarettes. "We've taken some time to write songs for this album, getting ideas together. Also, a guy called John Hughes who made The Breakfast Club is doing another film called Pretty In Pink. Molly Ringwold the actress played him our song, Pretty In Pink, and he wrote a film based around it. We had to rerecord the track for that.”
"You probably get more exposure from having a song in a movie like that than you do from a tour in America especially, it's just like having a huge video for your song. And it's also very flattering to have a movie based on your song, especially by such a prestigious screenwriter as John Hughes." It does, indeed, sound suspiciously like a recipe for superstardom. The Furs American tours have found them steadily increasing their audiences they were up to about 12,000 a night last time round, though "Mirror Moves", as far as Butler knows, only sold about half a million, not a lot in Stateside terms.
"We released the wrong single," he shrugs. "We went with 'Ghost In You' which was too soft. It should have been Heartbeat. Then we ummed and ah'd about which single to bring out second, this was in America... we haven't had a massive hit, we've had lots of minor hits, but it doesn't seem to affect us too badly. It seems we've got a reputation as a live band now and audiences seem to double in size every time. We tend to be pretty financially secure because of how we do there.
Butler, despite the sort of tousled Englishness which suggests he could be the scion of a long lasting strain of aristocracy, now lives in New York has done, in fact, for three years. He finds England grey, predictable and a difficult place in which to make a living, its politics don't appeal to him either.
"I don't see that the Labour party is necessarily an alternative," Butler mused. "There's been a Labour government within my lifetime and the country's still going down the tubes. I think it's going through a massive economic crisis that it's going to be very hard if not impossible to turn around. I’m not politically astute enough to be able to say 'We need to do this and this party's doing that', I'm not that politically aware. I'd be a politician if I knew that stuff. A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. I don't know that much politically, and I'm not interested in knowing that much."
So is New York really a better place to live? "I'd always had this big image of New York as this place where Andy Warhol was always happening and the Velvet Underground and the great cop shows on TV and I built up this picture in my mind, and when I went there I found it was actually like that. It wasn't like an illusion of a place, when you got there it was all real."
And the drinking, Richard? You had a..."drink problem," Butler wheezed. "Yeah. I just gave up. I was drinking myself sick really, and other things as well, and it was just getting boring. My girlfriend who I started going out with at that time didn't drink at all and it was just like she was getting bored with me dragging her round bars and sitting there watching me get senseless, and start talking more and more drivel as the evening went on, getting out of control. It was making me ill really and I didn't feel healthy, so I gave it up three years ago or something.
"And," he added with mock seriousness, "I feel better for it! I feel more in control. I can make choices for myself, I was never in a condition to make choices. The choice was made by how I was feeling that day.”
The Furs' live show, Eurostyle, consisted basically of their greatest hits plus a trio of new songs. The most finished of these was "Boys And Girls" (an effort to pinch some of Bryan Ferry's royalties, perhaps) which Butler brackets alongside "Heartbeat". It already sounds pretty good, but will no doubt be bashed about considerably when the group get into the studios. The other two new songs are unfinished and untitled, and Butler describes them as "a bet verse chorusy", in other words, they need a few extra twists and tums to make them more interesting, as well as lyrics. "Lyrically, it doesn't matter when you're in Spain 'cos you can sing the same verse over and over again," Butler explained scientifically.
The Furs played at a venue called the Auditorium Pocho, which in the post hos hosted shows by the likes of Simple Minds and New Order and has a capacity seemingly limited only by how willing the punters feel to be squeezed flat. The place has a bewildering computerised lighting display not unlike the Camden Palace, and of weekends the local kids gyrate underneath it to a mostly British soundtrack.
Although the Furs' Madrid show had been lambasted on the radio the day before for containing almost all old material, the Valencians seemed enraptured by the songs and by Butler's florid theatrics. They still play stalwarts like "Sister Europe", "India", "Into You Like A Train" and "Love My Way" as well as most of "Mirror Moves", and Butler's peculion rotating on the spot routine is in fine fettle. After imposing performances of "Heartbeat" and "President Gas", it was only a pity that the lost few numbers careered downhill into a morass of almost heavy metal.
Backstage, the Furs were cooling off. I wandered in and Butler looked up blearily. "Would you like a cup of tea?" he inquired, every inch the Englishman abroad. Thought you'd never ask. After a couple of drinks in the club's upstairs bar and an exchange of views with the locals and Alan Vega, in town for a gig the next night, the Furs were off on an overnight drive to Barcelona. Doesn't seem a bad way to earn a living, frankly.