ALONE AGAIN OR
"PERHAPS DEPRESSION ISN'T DEPRESSION AT ALL. Perhaps
it's actually seeing things as they really are. Once you look on the sad side
of something, you can't go back again."
Richard Butler lights another cigarette and ponders why a
guy like him, a guy whose just been on holiday scuba-diving in Jamaica, a guy
who's as fit and healthy as he's ever been, a guy who's quite well off, thanks
very much, after renewing his contract with CBS in America and signing a new
deal with Warners worldwide, a guy who's kicked the bottle, has a beautiful new
girlfriend and a great big apartment overlooking a park in New York should have
just made such a melancholy record as "World Outside".
He scratches his head, sips his coffee and laughs.
"Beats me! Hahaha!"
Maybe he's just a miserable bastard.
"Yeah, maybe..." He laughs again. "I dunno.
When I was a child, I was really happy and the days went on and on because I'd
known so little before that. I never thought about death because it was
something that happened to people a million years older than me and I was never
gonna be that old. But one day I turned around and I was that old and I had to
come to terms with the fact that my time is finite..."
Jesus Richard, maybe you should lighten up.
"Yeah." His laugh's kinda nervous, as if it might
crack into tears. "I guess I always look on the darker side if that's what
you mean. Like, take any relationship, I'll think: This is great but it's not
gonna work'. I'm definitely like that. I'm not one of those people who falls in
love and is walking on air and all that bollocks.”
"I think a lot of it's trying to stop myself falling
too hard. Y'know, when you fall over, you don't want it to be too hard so
you're kinda bracing yourself all the time."
That's a very fatalistic approach, especially as they say
that, if fall from a great height and you're very relaxed, it doesn't do you as
much harm as if you're all tensed up. And what if you've got it all wrong
anyway? What if you waste 10 years worrying about a relationship not working
out and all the time it's okay?
"Well...at least you get to make some good records.
Hahaha!"
The Psychedelic Furs are back making Psychedelic Furs
records. After a nightmare flirtation with the American dream in the
mid-Eighties, Richard Butler says he's now back on course, in touch with what
satisfies his muse. The vapid big bright disco rock of "Midnight To
Midnight" has, he says, been exorcised by 1989's deliberately dark,
autumnal "Book Of Days" LP and now, with "World Outside",
he's re-discovered his special purpose. Producer Stephen Street, who first
worked on the "All That Money Wants" comeback single, has taken the
band-which still comprises the nucleus of Richard, brother Tim and John
Ashton-back to the harsh, raw sound of their "Talk Talk Talk" days,
insisting Richard put that rasp in his voice, pushing for a harder edge.
Consequently the gorgeously wistful "Until She Comes" is balanced by
the seering sarcasm of "Get A Room" and "Don't Be A Girl",
vintage Butler savaging of blind optimism.
"A lot of the album ended up seeming to be about
relationships," he says, "either starting in one, being addicted to
one or leaving one."
Surely it's no coincidence that Butler was going through the
trauma of trashing one longstanding partnership and the bliss of starting a new
one while he was writing the album? "Well, I honestly wasn't aware of that
until I sat down and actually listened to the whole record and then I thought,
'Jeez, they're pretty vitriolic songs." What made him so angry?
"I dunno. Just people wanting something that you ain't
got y'know? It's like, in relationships, it's always the old thing that, once
you're in a relationship, the person always wants to change you around a
bit."
What, like they meet you and are attracted to your wild
ways, your free spirit and then, after a while, it's precisely these qualities that
they want altered. What they liked you for is what they end up hating you for?
"Yeah, and you end up thinking, 'I ain't the right
person. You wanna find someone totally different." Butler was so shocked
at discovering how personal World Outside" had turned out that he toyed
with the idea of calling the album "Close". He never thought he'd use
a record to so blatantly rid himself of emotional baggage. He also never
dreamed he'd make a record that so successfully solved another abiding worry.
"Awhile ago, I was going through this thing about time.
I was thinking, 'Should I be doing this at my age? What should I be doing? I'm
in my thirties. Is that too old to be making rock music? But I don't really
think it is. If I was, like, dressing up in flares and trying to appeal to
15-year-olds, then I would be. But I'm not. All I want to really appeal to is
people who can emotionally relate to it and so, if you think of it like that, I
could carry on until... whenever."
That's what all the old fellers say to justify continuing
their careers.
"Maybe," he laughs. "But let's be honest, pop
music isn't exclusively for young people anymore. You'd be a fool if you
thought rock was rebellious now. Even the new bands like Ride, their approach
is like The Velvet Underground and I'm sure they're aware of it. Sonic Youth -
the same thing. There's only so many things you can do with guitars and they've
already been done.
"But that doesn't worry me at all. What I'm more
concerned with is putting emotions and feelings across. I mean, look at
R.E.M.-they're very old-fashioned in the format of their music, but still I can
hear 'Country Feedback' and think, What a f***ing great song! I feel great
having listened to that!' What did worry me a bit when I came to write this
album was whether I still had anything to say. I mean, when you start out with
a band, you've got ideas that you may not have heard before and it's all new to
you. But there must come a point where you think, 'I've heard this before. I've
said this before'. Then you realize that there aren't any great truths to tell
anyway, there never have been. You're just restating little truths all the
time, re-examining little truths."
The trick, I suppose, is in the telling.
"Yeah. It's like painting a picture. It's how it's
painted more than what the picture is of itself. I mean, Madonna could sing a
song about love and it would leave me absolutely cold, Neil Young could sing
one and I'll think, 'F***ing hell, that's 's great'. It's just the imagery that
he uses and his voice and the melody he goes for those things make me feel it.
He could sing in Arabic and I'd probably feel it, y'know."
Richard Butler is a rare survivor of a breed that usually
self-destructs. Where others have succumbed to the needle or the bottle, he can
happily romanticize suffering after a daily game of racquet ball. That's what's
so unique about the Furs, they're Peter O'Toole or Dylan Thomas on a health
kick, without the slightest urge to come over all born-again evangelical. Butler
understands what blights great talent and he celebrates the struggle.
"All the best moments in life are sentimental," he
says. "There's heroism in recognising that nobody's that great, in
realising that there's no such thing as greatness."
That sounds awfully nihilistic.
"Oh, I don't know. think it's uplifting, somebody
telling you that life isn't what it ought to be or that life isn't what you're
told it's gonna be. I mean, everybody fails. Everybody hopes for happiness and
success but it's rare, if not non-existent, that you ever get the two. Look at
Pablo Picasso, he was successful yet he seems to have had a miserable life.
"I mean, why do some people drink so much? They drink
because everything hurts. Why does it hurt? Because they've seen it for what it
is. I think that's the romanticism of it- somebody who sees too much or feels
too much."
Shouldn't we celebrate those who see it and face up to it
like a man?
"Maybe it isn't possible to face up to it like a
man." People think of Butler in this way. People think of him as a
romantic hero, someone who's been there. The word nicotine is seldom absent
when people write about him. And they always mention the booze, even though he
quit eight years ago. This is because, at his best, he still writes with the jaundiced
perception of a hangover.
"I don't consciously romanticize it though. It's just
that happy songs always sound so f***ing trite. A lot of the new wave of
psychedelia sounds really trite, y'know, like something one of those bands you
get on kids' programs dressed up as teddy bears should be singing. That just
doesn't seem very real. I'm just not interested in how happy some bloke is with
his new girlfriend. That happy love thing just isn't true. It's naive. It's
just not knowing the rest of the story. The big illusion about love is that
you're gonna share everything with somebody but you don't; right in here
somewhere, you're always absolutely by yourself. Consequently, I'm more
interested in how miserable the bloke is because his relationship ain't working
out. Hahaha."
Sometimes I think Richard Butler thinks too much. It's great
for his records and all that but sometimes I wish he'd just go with the flow.
"I've often thought that," he says, laughing
again. "It's usually when I'm going under gas in the dentist's chair. I
kinda think, Why do you worry so much? Why don't you just let life happen to
you? It's a beautiful thing? Then I come round and I've got this nagging
toothache."
Tragic. Utterly, beautifully tragic.
"Until She Comes" is out next week on Warner Bros.
"World Outside" is released in late June.
