Highwire Daze
"As a cross-section I think it's pretty representative of what we've done. I don't think it misses anything important. Anyone who thinks we're only about 'Pretty In Pink', 'Mirror Moves' and 'Midnight To Midnight' can pick this up and think, They're different to what I thought. It provides more of a whole story. That's what I want, more than the record to sell a lot of copies. It gives people who want it, a general picture of what we do."
PRESIDENT GAS
"Open up your eyes just to check that you're asleep again"
"It’s one of my favourite songs. Although the Furs aren't considered to be a political band, this is a very political statement.It's a sneer at politicians and the way they get around people and inspired by going to America. We arrived at the time of the first Reagan election campaign. I took ages labouring over the words. All those puns, which now seem a bit trying. The punning gives you a bit of distance. I love the cello in the middle break. That was an inspired idea. We did it live on The Whistle Test' which I think was the first time we'd been on TV. I was too drunk to be scared or bothered about it at the time. I've seen it since and all I can remember is coolly walking up to the mike stand, and the mike dropping down as soon as I touched it. Not the most promising start."
ALL THAT MONEY WANTS
"Painted lies on broken lips..."
"We wanted to release a new single and also wanted something new to be on this album. I think it fits in better than tracks off 'Midnight To Midnight'. The mood is very much like a song from the album 'Forever Now, which is why it follows President Gas' and feels right. I don't think I have a happy voice and uplifting songs like 'Heaven' aren't the type of song I feel we do best. It's a good song, but a little too poppy to be one of my personal favourites. I prefer 'All Of This & Nothing', 'Sister Europe' and the more down songs. We've decided to write the next album really fast. This is one of the three songs we have for it at the moment. When you rush yourself, when you force yourself into that position, that's when the music works best."
IMITATION OF CHRIST
"See the cowboys fat and reeling dancing underneath the ceiling"
"It was one of the first songs the band ever wrote. It goes very much hand in hand with 'Sister Europe'. They're both very lyrical. As I look back on all our albums, with the exception of the last one, 'Midnight To Midnight, I'm still proud of what we've achieved. I'm never daunted by our history. I think I can still write as well now as I did then. I haven't written any love songs recently, though. If you feel your life is in order and everything is going pretty well, that's when you come up with you're shittiest songs. I'm going through a pretty bad period at the moment, which I suppose bodes well for the next album. I've been badly depressed for a year, a year and a half. I desperately want to find or adopt some kind of religion because the thought of death terrifies me. The thought of ageing terrifies me as well, but to accept religion is a cop out. Religion was invented out of people's fear of the infinite, out of people's fear that we're just a tiny little spark in endless, endless darkness and darkness will always win. I'd love to believe in something. Who knows, when I get old and feeble-minded I may be able to do it, but for the moment I really can't."
SISTER EUROPE
"Lonely in a crowded room the radio plays out of tune so silently.”
"This song happened in the most surprising way. I'm not a musician, but I sat down with a guitar and started playing these notes, and within hours I had the chord and the lyrics worked out. The only time it happened that quickly before was with 'Love My Way, when I sat down for four minutes with a little keyboard and it was written. I spent a lot of the time drunk, which is something I really miss. Whatever people tell you, if you're used to writing when you're drunk it's impossibly hard writing sober. Although I still live in New York, one thing I've discovered is that we have to write in England. In America you never feel real or connected to anything. Mediocrity is shoved down your throat 24 hours a day. I thought of moving back to England recently, until I came back. I don't want to sound insulting, but when I come here there's a kind of weight put on me and I find it depressing. There's no optimism, and you get laughed at for trying."
LOVE MY WAY
"You can never win or lose if you don't run the race"
"It’s apparently one of David Bowie's favourite songs. So what, right? I remember being really hungover and going round to John Ashton's (guitar) and enthusing over my three notes on the Casio and John wanted to play this guitar thing that sounded really boring! To begin with, the lyrics were shouted and it was a really aggressive song. Back then it seemed like I shouted most of the stuff. I was very drunk and it was very late one night when we were recording 'Sister Europe' and I remember our producer, Steve Lillywhite, saying, 'Sing it like you were picking up a telephone and it's four in the morning and you're just speaking down it. When we did 'Love My Way, Todd Rundgren said, 'Richard, I think this is a really beautiful song with a beautiful melody if only you would stop destroying it. Just try singing it. I had a nervous breakdown right after recording it. The strain of working, drinking and taking all those chemicals finally caught up with me. The worry as well. I just managed to keep myself together and get the album finished and then cracked completely. It was the worst time I've ever had. Before then I used to glamorize madness and how cool and great living on the edge was.
Now I'm really scared. My father has had a full-scale nervous breakdown and temperament-wise I'm very similar to him. I'm sure I've got that coming anyway. I had a taste of it and I hated the taste. It's a horrible, clammy no man's land of a place. I had three days when I couldn't actually tell what was real and what wasn't. I was staying at a friend of Todd's and I remember reading this magazine and feeling I couldn't get to sleep. So I walked to the window and saw the plane that was dropping the big bomb. So I went to phone my parents and even though I was crushingly depressed and felt my guts being pulled out, I just couldn't think of anything to say to them. I realised they couldn't help me. No one could make me feel better.
Then I remember being introduced to someone who shook hands with me and just wouldn't let go of my hand. I had to get someone to help me get free. I remember having a vicious argument in the kitchen and lying in bed singing a backing vocal to a song and someone came in and I got really embarrassed that I got caught singing. I said, 'It may sound crap now but you have to hear it with the rest of the song. Todd's friend said that I had woken him up. The next day I finally slept and then I apologised for waking him up. It turned out I hadn't been singing, I hadn't woken him, and I hadn't been introduced to anyone. That feeling of being so disassociated with everything is like taking LSD, but at least when you take acid you know that it will go away. When you breakdown you don't know whether it will pass and there's nobody that can help you. It's the most terrifying feeling to be so alone."
HIGHWIRE DAYS
"You put on your prettiest face and wait for the news we made..."
This was about the first song I wrote after I'd given up drinking. It's my favourite to do live. People say we're not very good at reaching out to an audience, but of the songs we do, this is probably the most successful. The chorus isn't exactly happy, but it seems triumphant. Despite the fact that in my own songs I tend to distance myself by writing in the third person, at the end of the day I think they're all personal. You have to listen and they will draw you in rather than beat you over the head.
We were originally going to release a live album, and recorded two shows. We were going to make it a double album: one studio compilation and one live, which would cover 20 songs. We decided against it in the end. Putting crowd noises on a record is the weirdest feeling. I decided it would be better to underplay it and record something in a smokey kind of theatre. It's very flattering to be able to play to 12,000 people in LA, but it's not necessarily where we want to be. Next time we'll play smaller places and strip the band and the lighting right down to the essentials.
DUMB WAITERS
"He has got it in for me. Yeah I mean it honestly"
“A lot of people thought it was a really cheesy sax riff. I remember one review which said it was one of the worst songs ever written. Not just the worst song we'd ever written, but ever written in pop, full stop. I was quite flattered actually. I think it's quite a good song now. It's only recently I've come round to liking it again. I think I was being stitched up by a woman at the time. A relationship was falling apart. It seems I've always got a relationship that's falling apart. Some songs make a really clear and obvious sense to me afterwards but 'Dumb Waiters' never has. I know I was angry at the time, but for me to sit back now and try and talk about it would be like Jackson Pollock trying to analyse one of his paintings."
PRETTY IN PINK
"The one who insists he was first in the line is the last to remember her name..."
“This is the original version because it's better. When we first heard about the film project, it looked as though Aisha or someone like that was going to record it because there was a problem between our record company and the company that had the rights to the soundtrack. To his credit, the director John Hughes said he didn't care if it was the original or a reworking, so we redid it, but in retrospect the original was better. There was a lot of criticism at the time that we had sold out by allowing it to be used for a movie, but! think it did us a lot of good. I almost didn't put it on the album because it's been released on so many albums already. But then this is supposed to be an album of our best songs, so I had to ask myself if it was one of our best songs. The answer was yes. In the States it's the only song some people associate us with. We were touring around the time the film was released in the States and everyone was using it as a catchphrase. Fashion magazines and porn magazines all used it as a headline. I had invented a catchphrase! I was quite pleased Elvis Costello did a version of it at the same time. He rearranged the words a bit, but what the hell."
THE GHOST IN YOU
"Angels fall like rain..."
"If I was to do the song again I'd like it to have a coarser sound. The magic songs like 'Imitation Of Christ' and 'Sister Europe' have is in their fragile nature. It's what I love about some Velvet Underground songs, or Prince's 'The Cross'. They're very fragile and only just hold together and I think that adds something. The Ghost In You' is too bright and sturdy. It's about being haunted by someone inside, someone you can't get out of your mind. Ending a relationship is bad, and having it ended for you is worse, but the worst is when it's mutual, because it's then that everything gets fought out to the bitter end. It's the longest and saddest way. I've only recently discovered that the worst times in my life were when I was most creative. I've never manoeuvred myself into such positions because I've never had to! My personal life is pretty much in shambles anyway."
HEAVEN
"There’s a hole in the sky where the sun don't shine..."
"It was really funny the way that worked out. We were a song short for the album 'Mirror Moves'. The lyric was originally written for 'Heartbeat, but seemed to fit 'Heaven' much better. I was really surprised it was a hit. The charts have always been something we've managed to live without. What I've had to accept is that we're really not a Top 20 band. In fact, we're not really a pop band. Our worst work is when we deliberately try to write songs that are radio playable. Some bands are good enough at songwriting to say, We'll make a credible album and have a couple of pop songs tucked in there'. We're not that good at it."
HEARTBREAK BEAT
"And it feels like love, but it don't mean a damn"
“Lyrically I think this is weak. I can sit and listen to it and see why the band like it, but it's very one-dimensional. There's no mystery. It's not so bad that I cringe when I hear it. The only good songs we've written have been created when the band's energies are working in tandem with emotions. Outside that we fail almost every time. The two emotions I do best are the really sad and sombre and the really angry and shouting. That's my voice and I've only recently accepted it. Living with an album you don't really like is the hardest thing to do. You're only as good as your last album and it's not much fun when you last album isn't very good. It's a mistake we won't make again."
ALL OF THIS AND NOTHING
"Now I'm left with all this. A room full of your trash."
“I can remember sitting in a pub and writing this list for a song I was supposed to be doing. It was this list of nonsense, but then it seemed that they were all things that could be left in a room. Then I thought, 'How can I get myself out of this corner I've put myself in?' And the easiest way was to do the chorus: 'You didn't leave me anything that I can understand.'I meant that all the things in the verse didn't have to make sense! People sometimes get upset when they find out how a song is arrived at, it shatters their image, but some songs have a sense in spite of you. That's it, really. There will always be songs people think should or shouldn't be on here. John really wanted 'India' on the album, but Tim hates it. We were having almighty fights about what should be on the record and Tim just said, 'I don't want "India" on it, I think it's a dirge' and with that he pissed off back to New York. Out of respect for that, we left it out. What we've ended up with is an album which people will hopefully listen to once and say, 'How can I not play this record over and over again?"