Two Way Mirror
What’s it like then Richard? I mean, God, how did you do it? Was it hard? What am I saying? It must have been hard!
"Uh...well, at the time I didn't think it was. I thought my outbursts of bad temper and stuff were just a natural part of me, what I'd always been like. But when I look back, I was losing my temper a lot, blaming other people for things that weren't their fault so I guess it came out in different ways ...yeah, I wouldn't say it was particularly easy, no."
Butler's been off the hard stuff for a year or more now. Hasn't touched a drop. How? Why? His brother Tim laughs: "He nearly killed himself in Australia, that's why." "Yeah," Butler accedes. "I was going a bit over the top."
Did it scare you? "Well, no, it didn't scare me at all but the tour manager at the time said to my girlfriend, who I’d just about met then, that he didn't think I was gonna make it through the tour and when she told me, I just thought it was a laugh. What! I didn't realise, though, was that a few other people were saying it too and she convinced me. I mean, she doesn't drink or do any other kind of stuff and I just saw her shining example..." he laughs. "And so I decided to give it a try."
No more calls at four in the morning that next day Butler can't remember making. No more drunken lunches over bottles of plonk. No more mighty binges like the time Richard Butler, Tim and me polished off 14 bottles of champagne down the Kings Road. I mean, much of that sort of mayhem seemed to fuel the Furs, didn't it? Where are the thrills coming from now? Where's the energy?
"Oh, Alpen, Weetabix, the occasional apple and vitamins. Brown rice...I dunno."
Richard Butler laughs again. He laughs a lot these days. He looks better than I've ever seen him and he sounds better too. Oh, and something else; he's got a hit. The Psychedelic Furs are back in Blighty for a string of dates to promote their new album, Mirror Moves". It's the first we've seen or heard of them for more than two years. Way back then they plotted world domination from Muswell Hill and when the "Forever Now" album and the much-acclaimed "Love My Way" single didn't do the absolute business, the band packed up and toured the world, eventually settling in New York. The Americans them, of course, unblinkered by the prejudice that always seemed to hound them here. It was almost as if we never forgave them for reading a few books, listening to Bob Dylan, liking Andy Warhol and taking the piss out of punk.
Strange, then, that out of the blue, "Heaven" should hit the Top 30. "Very strange," Richard Butler concedes, delighted. First, a few things you should know: The Furs are three now - Richard, brother Tim and guitarist John Ashton. Phil Calvert, the drummer they picked up when Nick Cave booted him out of The Birthday Party, is gone on the advice of producer Keith Forsey who, having engineered with Giorgio Moroder, is fanatical about sound and couldn't give a toss about bands.
The Furs chose Forsey for exactly that reason; his work with Billy Idol (mega in the States) and on the phenomenally successful "Flashdance" Soundtrack revealed a man who knew a backbeat when he heard one. His sharp radio sense was something The Furs were after following Todd Rungren's eccentric production of "Forever Now" and "Mirror Moves vindicates the risk. It's California clean but it's them all right, even if they are singing love songs.
Now then: was Butler in love when he wrote it? “That's a bit of a personal question isn't it?" he laughs, defensively. Well, it's a hell of a personal album. "Uh...okay...yeah...well, I still am."
So the album's autobiographical?
"Yeah, they all are."
But "Mirror Moves" offers a different perspective from anything the Furs have attempted before. It's softer, saner, stimulating in other ways than the confusion of interests that rifted "Forever Now" between the desire for accessibility and the whim to appear enigmatic "I feel much clearer and calmer these days." Butler confirms "And, in the next year, I will more so. I think I know what I'm about these days and more what I wanna do with my life than I did before, definitely so."
Which is?
"Oh God... let me think... I'm getting more positive for one thing as opposed to pushing things down. "Heaven' is quite a positive. uplifting song. I mean, the chorus is actually saying that heaven is commitment...not that Richard Butler's found religion or anything like that." He laughs. "I'm just taking better care of myself and I'm more aware that there's something spiritual going on in my life. It's not God or anything like that but there is a sort of spirituality that goes on in your life that I didn't think used to exist at all. It's just a feeling you get and I'm still coming to terms with it. It's a really hard thing to explain but it's a feeling I'm getting nowadays that I haven't had since I was in my teens- y'know, you walk out and you feel like you're part of everything because of the way you're seeing it. Y'know, the day comes through you instead of you being outside, looking at it. That's what I call spirituality, things working through you as opposed to you looking at them going on."
Richard’s always been a dispassionate observer and the sarcasm inherent in his deadpan delivery engendered much of the Furs' mystique. His exquisitely bored monotone often called into question both his relationship to the song and its subject, but I find he's changed. Today, he's fully committed.
"Yeah, my approach was not to be involved in it at all, using the third person all the time. I wouldn't say I wasn't committed to the songs I spent a long time working on them and I believed in them- but I didn't want to be seen to be aligning myself to that...or anything." His reluctance to be associated with the emotion of a song was both calculated style and instinctive reaction, he was clever and scared simultaneously. To stand back from a song and observe his own feelings was to pass comment upon them, granting the lyrics myriad depths and meanings. Now his approach is much more straightforward. He sings.
"I have feelings besides sarcasm y'know." Butler laughs again. But isn't it hard to make something comparatively positive sound exciting? "Oh yeah. It's not nearly as exciting as being negative by a long way and it's hard to put it over without being wimpy. A lot of people put over a kind of semi, half-baked positivism and it just sounds slushy."
The Furs don't but I still wonder do they really exist anymore? When they were formed way back in the days of the Pistols, their name itself was a teasing challenge, a refusal to fall in line, but there's a hint of a desire to conform which seems to take precedence over any notions of disorientation. The Furs have never musically aligned themselves with anything in the past but now they're uncomfortably close to sounding aligned.
"It's not a shift in attitude, it's kind of experimenting. Butler assures me. "I mean, I don't think you could say the Psychedelic Furs are a pop group just because we've go a hit. We've got a history that says we're serious. We didn't set out and say 'God, it's time we made a commercial album here guys otherwise things are looking pretty grim for 84.”
"It's just saying, 'Let's try and get over to some people who might not otherwise be listening to it.' What I'm saying is that some of the old songs were almost impenetrable whereas I don't think these ones are and it's purposely so. All the
albums have had their difference. The first one was really just angry, the second one ('Talk Talk Talk') was the most complicated lyrically and possibly the deepest, 'Forever Now' was half way between that one and this one and 'Mirror Moves' is definitely the clearest and easiest to understand yet.”
"I’m still trying to come to terms with the fact that the words aren't as involved as they were on Talk Talk Talk. For me, that was the album where you had to untie this knot and then you found there was another little one down there. There was no end to it almost."
"Talk Talk Talk" was, in many ways, his masterpiece, a cut-up collage of other people's quotes, meaning things in the immediate context of the songs and rippling with reminders of where they came from. So many perspectives! In comparison, "Mirror Moves" is dead straightforward, a collection of clichés, cleverly used.
"I wouldn't say they're clichés," Butler disagrees. "I'm just trying to deal with accessible words and when you decide you're gonna write songs that more people can understand, you're bound to be dealing with more loaded, accessible words. Songs have always been written like that. It sounds corny but even wandering minstrels... the songs that have lasted through from then to now have always been really simple."
Some would say it's kind of convenient that the Furs have reached this conclusion now that the charts are full of nursery rhymes. Aren't they tempted to keep up with the Howard Joneses?
He shakes his head vigorously.
"When I last left England, there were a lot of young people who were intolerant towards pop whereas now I find that it's an admirable thing to be. The charts are full of Gilbert O'Sullivans with synthesizers and funny haircuts. My position remains the same towards it now as it's always been pretty much: I don't really align myself to it and I don't see this band particularly aligned to it. I don't want to sound preachy or anything but I think there's still something to be gained from listening to a song where you can sit back and think about a lyric that isn't put over idiotically and there's something to be learned from bands who think carefully about the language that they use. I feel like an old English teacher saying 'There's something to be gained from the joy of language' but, really, it is like that."
Richard says he admires Costello's word play but wishes he'd write something poppier. He also rates Morrissey, of course; envious of the Smith's ability to make any old jumble scan a line but suspicious of his "schoolboy philosophy."
What else does he listen to?
"Well, having said all this, the last two albums I bought were piano music and Japanese folk songs." We all laugh. Perhaps his reading matter's changed? I recall one particular day a couple of years back when Richard, then very much on the bev, was most impressed with this book he carried around and declared, in all seriousness, that he was thinking of becoming a vampire. He also admired Martin Amis, I believe.
"Uh... what's the last thing I read? Ingrid Bergman's biography. Uh... I don't do as many crosswords these days." So? "Seriously. Doing crosswords had a lot to do with the way I wrote, it really did." He goes on to explain how "kisses" in the impenetrably political "President Gas" and the heady new "Highwire Days" are a clue for votes - "X" being the symbol for both. "Sometimes I stop and think 'Hey Richard, you sure you're not getting a bit abstract here?"
There are less wordgames on "Mirror Moves" though the language is still among the most potent you're likely to hear this year. “Highwire Days" is a precociously vivid image of the exalted and/or intoxicated intelligence. Precarious and yet thrilling, the protagonist can see clearly and yet might fall any minute. Richard says it's mostly about newspapers but I'm clinging to my romantic notion that it's got something to do with sanity being a balancing act between agony and ecstasy.
"Here Come Cowboys" also bristles with double entendre. The cowboy is a cockney wideboy, a crook, a character, the President on TV and, of course, the cavalry that save the day. It doesn't matter what it's about, there are more meanings here than in an album full of "Karma Chameleons." We're never in doubt that Butler's obsessed with the media and its ability to distort but there's a new emotional quality to his voice that registers pity as well as anger. Some of these songs are far gentler than anything the Furs have done before and Richard hits and holds the notes okay. I wonder if he can carry it off live?
"Oh yeah, I'll just have to become Frank Sinatra for a minute, crooning away," he laughs. "I like that. I never claimed to be a singer as such but I feel I maybe ought to consider myself one quite shortly." It's not evident on "Mirror Moves" but there are certain aspects of the Furs new-found warmth and optimism that I find troubling. Listen to this: "I don't really like the English attitude towards music and musicians. You can go down the Camden Palace and see somebody else in a band and they'll just turn their nose up at you and you'll do likewise because they're not in a kind of band that's cool, whatever that means.”
So? Sounds pretty reasonable to me. Surely that's what pop's all about, a disdain for others and a belief in yourself. That's what the Furs thrived on when they started out. "Yeah, but that's because we'd been brought up in that environment and didn't know any better. In America, it's not like 'Oh, you're a rock musician of this variety, I won't talk to you'. Over there it's more like 'Hey, you're a musician too!' It doesn't matter whether you're from Rush or REO Speedwagon."
Sounds disgusting to me: Typical America - the whole backslapping fraternity of everything- is-beautiful-phew!-rock-'n'-roll. Nothing ever moves on that way, it all gets clogged up. "No, I don't find it so at all. Instead of just talking to people who think like you, you're talking to people who don't so the strong points of your raison d'être are reinforced and the weak parts are edited and rethought."
If this was two years ago, with Richard in my place listening to himself.. "I knew you were going to say that. There was a time when I thought I knew what was right and what I was saying was right and that was the only way to do it but nowadays I think I'm accepting that maybe there are other ways and maybe other people are also right.” Extraordinary! I was beginning to think the Furs may have lost perspective altogether but it's okay. Listen to this:
Why "Mirror Moves"?
"Because it gave me a perfect excuse to have a vain picture on the front."
Perfect. No problem.
