SLEEP COMES DOWN
"I don't believe that I believed in you"-"All
That Money Wants"
Butler regained his doubt. Thank goodness for that.
There was a time, believe it or not, when we fell out. After
five years of buddy-buddy grand debauchery in which I was convinced that, along
with Japan, The Psychedelic Furs were unique as a band who had never made a bad
LP, I happened to opine that the "Midnight To Midnight" album lacked
dimension and purpose. We sulked apart a while.
But Butler's back in Britain recording, with brother Tim,
John Aston and Vince Ely, the Furs' original drummer, a single with
Smiths/Morrissey producer Stephen Street. It's called "All That Money
Wants" and, oh joy, they've stopped making sense. What the hell happened?
"To be polite to 'Midnight, we tried to make it
accessible. I knew it wasn't the most adventurous writing, lyricwise, that I'd
done. But I wanted something people would easily relate to and, having done
that, I think it was our biggest mistake as a band. "I got sick of people
saying 'Oh, what's this lyric about?' and not quite understanding so I thought
I'd make a really simple album that people could quite easily digest."
A large part of the Furs' beauty to me was always the
uncertainty, the wondering what the lyrics were about, the personal
interpretations.
"Yeah, and I enjoy writing them so that meanings appear
and you can follow that lead instead of setting out with something in
mind."
But you lost your ability to torture a cliché-such a shock
after "Mirror Moves" which was very nearly perfect in its gleaming
melancholy. That album was like a Venus Flytrap-so gorgeous you were enticed
inside and then-snap!-dangerous as f***.
"Yeah, I enjoy lyrical twists. We did get lost on
'Midnight To Midnight' but, recently, we've been getting back in touch with
what we do best."
It's funny, pop history's full of people who lost their way
through over-indulgence in drink and drugs, yet it's tempting to suggest you
lost yours through abstinence. Your records have become more and more normal
since you gave up drink and drugs. Do you honestly struggle to recall or re-impose
the stimulating perspectives and dimensions being wrecked bestows? Were you
marooned in normality? "Yeah, I was. It was a big change in my life from
being an English drunk to suddenly living in America being very straight."
Did you become a bit born-again?
"No. I know people tend to. Like, people who give up
smoking can't stand to be in a room with people smoking cigarettes but I'm not
like that. I'm all for people recreationally drinking and things. It used to be
a huge enjoyment for me."
Your writing process is presumably different now, yet
"All That Money Wants" seems to be some sort of reversion back to
confusion.
"Well, what I'm trying to do now is not control things
too much because that's what I've been doing. I don't have to look at every
line and go 'Oh, I dunno, I could change that around...'Y'know, it's just a
matter of getting it done and letting it flow, being a bit more free about
it."
At the start, The Psychedelic Furs were in context in that
they were deliberately out of context, they went against the grain from the
name right through. There was, for want of a better word, a reason for the band
existing, a vision, a cause. That's all gone now hasn't it? The longer a band
goes on, it becomes a career doesn't it? You went to America and made one
brilliant album and one iffy album and they both just came out like...uh...a
Bryan Ferry album comes out.
"It's interesting you should mention Bryan Ferry
because I was just thinking about him. Bryan Ferry is an example of trying to
control something too much. He's got into such a state of mind that, when I
listen to his records now, I feel he's trying to control it so much and he's
got it so refined down that there are no breaks to let any humanity or even
passion or genuine feeling in.
"I think that's the way I was going but now I'm just
letting Richard Butler come out."
But what I'm really asking is, is it relevant? Or, is it
important that it be relevant?
"Um...I think it's relevant, yeah. I think it's
relevant in that it has something to say and, as long as music has something to
say, then, yeah, I'll carry on doing it."
Roughly, your peer group is U2, The Bunnymen, Simple Minds,
maybe New Order later and you've become less successful than some and more
successful than others. You're kinda mid-table really-you're not gonna be
relegated but you're not gonna win the league. Could you have ever done either?
Is it galling that U2 have become so big?
"No, not really. It seemed that people wanted U2 to be
this huge world-breaking band and I think U2 wanted that too, whereas it never
entered my mind to be something like that, I mean, we would have been really
perverse to have wanted to be like that, making the records we made. Ha ha! I
mean, if I play U2's first album and our first album, I think ours is the more
uncompromising by a long long way.
"When we first started out, it wasn't 'Let's be the
biggest rock 'n' roll band in the world!' Because we hated all that and I still
kinda do. That's not what I'm doing it for. I want a bit more excitement than
that. U2 have always had this very particular sound that hasn't changed
dramatically from one album to another whereas we've always consciously tried
to make developments and changes in our music as it goes along. Neither way's
right-it's just the way we've chosen to approach it."
People don't seem to care so much about pop music any more
though, do they? It's more of an accessory than an essential to most people's
lives. Do you think pop music's run its course?
"No. For a time everybody thought it could change the
world but I never believed that, although I do believe it can change the way
people think about things. I still hear songs where I think Yeah, that person's
saying something to me that is really relevant to my life, it really means
something' and it can polarize my own thoughts. I can be not quite clear on
something and somebody will write a song that really points a finger somewhere
and I'll think Yeah, they're right about that. Yeah, that's how I feel about
it."
But you're in your thirties now and there are kids half your
age making pop records too. How does that make you feel? What I'm getting at is
that pop is adolescent and you're not. Look at Morrissey-in order to achieve
success, he's pickled his adolescent traumas in aspic. He's a retard, like a
character from an Alan Bennett play.
"But I don't think you have to put your adolescence in
aspic at all. I don't think your feelings change as you get older. I think your
way of dealing with them changes but your feelings basically stay the same. I
still get angry at the same things that have always angered me y'know,
ignorance probably being the primary one."
Doesn't it become more and more difficult not to see pop
music as absurd?
"Yeah, the machinations of it become more and more
stupid and, to genuinely survive with your sanity intact, you have to love
making music. If you do that, you'll be alright but if you go into it expecting
any degree of fame is going to be any good or is anything worth chasing after,
you're going to end up bitterly disappointed. And if you think that the fame
you have at any point is lasting in any way, then you're also going to be
bitterly disappointed.
"Ultimately, you have to try and accept the way you
are. It's funny, I've been going to an analyst lately, just because I wanted to
try and get a handle on the way! think about things. I went to this guy and I
said 'One of the things I'm curious about is why I'm here? What exactly can you
do for me? Can you actually change my personality? Do I want to change my
personality? Are there things that make me fly into a temper and go kicking
furniture around my apartment? Do I really want to get rid of those? Isn't that
what makes my personality work? Isn't that what makes my writing work? Isn't
that something that's essentially me?"
"And he said, Well, yeah, it is. You can't really
change those things. You can learn to exercise a little bit of control over
them by understanding where they come from, by understanding why you feel that
way. But you'll never be a person that doesn't feel like kicking the furniture
around the place."
"I thought that was a very honest admission for
somebody who makes their living talking to people." Are you still going?
"I've been about four times and it is good. You do get
a chance to externalise. It's like, if you sit at home and do some writing, it's
very different to when you
actually expose that writing to somebody. I can sit at home
and write lyrics that I think are okay and I can stand in the studio and the
band are playing and I'll start singing my song and I'll feel 'How can I have
ever written that? That's embarrassing!' Yet I didn't feel that when I was
sitting at home. And you can get the same perspective by talking to somebody
about your problems. I mean, you can't talk to somebody who's in your circle of
acquaintances on a really, really honest level-you'd be too embarrassed to look
them in the face whereas an analyst is really just a paid pair of ears.
"It helps you externalize and then you can say, Well,
that's not such a big problem as I thought or you can say to him 'Is that a
regular way of feeling?' and he can say Yeah, well you feel like that probably
because of this and this. Have you ever had any experiences in that?' And I've
found it helpful in understanding myself although analysts are incredibly
over-priced."
Doesn't it just make you incredibly self-conscious and work
against the forgetting process you were talking about?
"I think it's down to how curious you are about your
emotions and feelings. One thing I saw that made me think twice about analysis
was some programme about John Cleese. I remember looking at him and he had
suddenly become this very self-satisfied buffoon and he said he owed it all to
analysis whereas ! thought he seemed to lack the aggression and bite he'd had
before. I thought he had given it all away and, not only that, he was waving it
goodbye with this idiotic smile on his face. I think that's the worst that can
happen and he's deluding himself."
And, just to prove my point, he's stopped working. "But
he must have virtually brain-washed himself into wanting to be changed that
much because, like I said, the guy said to me “You can't be changed that much'
and I don't want to change myself. I'm a very temperamental, bad-tempered
person. I'm prone to fits of depression and that's me and, to be quite honest, I
feel quite satisfied being depressed a lot of the time. It suits me. I'd hate
to be walking round like I'm lobotomized, y'know?"
What does this teach you about your writing? "That it's
probably an exorcism. You sit down and you start writing and it always turns
out that your obsessions start coming out on pieces of paper and you can't
really stop them. It's just that what comes out is inherently you and I have to
change a lot of l's to you's and me to them because I really don't want people
to see that I feel like this or that."
Doesn’tit strike you as strange that, at the very time
you're trying to let your songs go, you're becoming more mentally and
physically and chemically aware?
"Well, to be able to change your state of mind
chemically is quite good fun but then you can also get pissed off with
something else having control over you. It's like, you go down the pub and have
a drink if you want to celebrate; you go down the pub and drink if you want to
drown your sorrows-there's a drink for every occasion and you can use drugs the
same way.
"In a way, you just skim the surface of your emotions.
If you're feeling depressed, you drown your sorrows. If you don't drink, if you
can't drown your sorrows, if you don't smoke cigarettes or if you don't eat
yourself into a coma, you have to actually go through that depression and learn
how to handle it. "And going into that depression instead of skating over
the top with a few drinks is actually learning more about yourself and it gives
you more wealth to write from if you like.
"I've learned a lot from the fact that there's no
escape from your problems except to come face to face with them. It's been very
difficult and I've only very recently been able to live a normal life. I mean,
you could get very lonely in England if you don't want to go down the pub. It's
the same with cigarettes- would write a verse or a chorus or something and then
I'd sit back and have a cigarette and see how it read. I used cigarettes like a
reward and the motivation for actually doing something is totally different
when you don't have a reward. You almost feel "Why the f should I sit down
and do anything if I don't get the reward for it?""
I suppose when you're sober, there's no escape from the
biggies either? I bet you can't forget you're going to die.
"Oh that terrifies me. It seems to me that, prior to
the age I am now, I thought death was something that happened to other people,
but you suddenly wake up one day and you look at yourself in the mirror and you
realise that it's happening to you. I never used to think about it but now I
tend to be obsessive about death... and faith. Where do people get faith from?
How do people learn to live when they're 40-plus? Why do they want to live?
What reason is there to live when you get to that age? That's one of the
reasons I've been going to see an analyst-why do I want to live?" I don't
think you ever think you're old.
"My old man says that. He's 60 and he says he feels the
way he's always felt and he can't move his body as fast as it wants to move and
stuff like that. Death is scary...I'm just hoping that I'm so f-ing bored by
the time I die, which is a distinct possibility."
Oh no, that's the worst thing. That's just finding an
excuse. You've got to come to terms, to somehow reach some sort of wisdom or
instinct whereby you understand and accept it as the natural thing to happen to
you.
"But that doesn't sound like a very realistic thing. Ha
ha ha! What you're talking about it having all your enthusiasm for living and
yet being willing to let go of it and I can't see that ever happening."
It's called religion Richard.
"That's another thing about the realization that death
is going to come; I know, instinctively, that that's why people invented faith.
I know that's why people invented religion. I've known it for years but now
that I'm getting to a position where I realize it's going to happen to me, I'm
more frightened of dying than I ever have been before and I start looking to
faith and I have to stop myself. It's like slapping myself on the hand
constantly. It's like 'Don't believe in that, you're falling for the trap'. You
almost want to have faith though you know it's not true. You almost want to
believe just to fool yourself that it's not going to happen to you. It's such a
glorious ignorance!
I think you have to bear in mind constantly the warning
signs. It's like what made music us and them? What was it about them that we
hated? What am I going to do to make damn f***ing sure that I never become
them? You just have to keep those things in mind. You have to say 'It's not
just talk, I'm actually going to do it. And I am. I'm not going to become
closed-minded. I'm not going to become politically conservative. I'm not going
to become religious because I'm afraid of dying."
So you're determined to be terrified on your death bed are
you Richard?
"I will be, yeah."
You may be reincarnated.
"I think that's preposterous, don't you? I mean, how
many people can be Cleopatra? Somebody should take Shirley MacLaine out, tie
her to a stake and shoot her. How come these people were never something really
dull, leading a very ordinary life? That's what I can't understand. Y'know,
they were always a hand-maiden, they never say, 'For the last God knows how
many centuries, I've been totally insignificant." What if you could come
back as somebody else? "I wouldn't want to, but, if I was forced, I think
it would have to be Pablo Picasso. Creatively, the guy was a giant. He just
went from strength to strength to strength. He just breathed it, y'know. When
he didn't have to do it anymore, when he could have sat around and squandered
his millions and had any woman he wanted, he was still going out there and
painting six, seven paintings a day. He did some incredible lithographs at the
end of his life and whether you like him stylistically isn't the point. The point
is that he was a giant in that everything was an outpouring for 80 years and he
loved it every minute and it shows in his work. His must have been a really
rewarding life."
What would you like heaven to be like if there was one?
"God, that's difficult. It would be very boring if
everything went perfectly, wouldn't it?" Not if you didn't have the same
notions of boredom as you have now.
Yeah, but I don't think one of the prerequisites of heaven
is you get to brainwash yourself and take away notions such as boredom. I mean,
it would be like, 'Stepford Wives' then. I think it would have to be a place
where I could exist with my senses intact."
