Fake Furs Strictly For Fun
British product Psychedelic Furs offer themselves to the American marketplace - but will they be left on the shelf?
There are times when that well-worn music biz incantation "to break" a band in America can seem grimly ambiguous in its meaning. The endless, disspiriting slog of the job, the mind-numbing enormity of the task, the sheer frustration and time-consuming effort involved in the task of penetrating the consciousness of that vast and sometimes somnambulent country. all these factors have conspired in the past to prove the undoing of British acts.
Whether it's the havoc that touring schedules can wreak upon the internal chemistry of a band, aggravated by the massive expenditure of effort for little or no obvious reward, or else the dangers attendant on neglecting a previously secure home base (think of Slade, or even T. Rex), the ritual assault on rock's most glittering prize, the US market, can be as damaging to the would-be conquerers as it is potentially lucrative. Small wonder that English musicians such as Paul Weller are coming more than ever to question the whole adventure, even to dismiss it as simply not worth the bother and either confine themselves to the more immediately sympathetic New York/West Coast axis, or else divert their attentions entirely to the growing markets of the European mainland and Japan, coupled with wistful thinking and speculation about those hitherto uncharted regions of the globe like the Third World and Iron Curtain countries.
But for the time being, anyway, it's still the New World, the land of Manilow, Kiss and Kansas, that constitutes the number one priority for any UK band that's bent on translating the modest rewards afforded by domestic success into the style and status of mega-stardom.
Latest in this procession of hopefuls are The Psychedelic Furs. Courtesy of their British and American sponsors, CBS, I'm lured over to New York to find out how they're faring. We meet up before the Furs' performance at Trax, an uptown, upmarket club venue where the clientele are reputedly as keen on watching each other as watching whoever happens to be playing. Rumours as to who'll be showing up that evening seem to take in just about everyone bar President-elect Ronald Reagan (who probably prefers local redneck hangout The Lone Star anyhow, come to think of it), though in the event Led Zeppelin are about the only celebs to be firmly guest-listed, much to the Furs' bemusement.
Last time the band were in town, four weeks and a million gigs ago, they were paid a backstage visit by one David Bowie, currently on Broadway in his guise as The Elephant Man of course. "He just came round afterwards and said 'Hi, I'm David'," recalls singer Butler Rep. "And I just thought 'Christ! I know who you are. I'm Richard Butler!" "
In the convivial discussions which followed, it appears that the Scary Monster expressed his interest in producing future Psychedelic Furs product, a suggestion, as Butler reflects, that he's said to have made to many others in the past, such as Devo and The Human League. The offer, in any event, comes too late to be practicable in the case of their second album, as that's due for recording almost immediately. “But what was good was the simple fact that he took the trouble to come back and tell us how much he'd liked the show," the frontman concludes, transparently chuffed to receive such endorsement from one of his personal heroes.
But such unexpected morale boosters are few and thousands of miles between when you're engaged in the task of "breaking" a continent that looks entirely content to remain complacently unbroken. The Furs' progress has, by all accounts, been a source of satisfaction to the powers-that-be, with sales of the band's debut LP-only recently released in the States-achieving levels that have persuaded CBS to step up their own commitment to the group's promotion. This support can sometimes take disturbingly inappropriate forms, like the issuing of 'furry badges' in a sickening range of psychedelic colours, but it would be virtually impossible to do without.
In fact Butler confesses that he's never quite seen the reason for many bands' distrust of and hostility to large record companies, adding that his own experiences of CBS have been for the most part benign. "The advantage that we've had," he explains, "is that we signed for a low amount, so CBS don't feel under lots of pressure to recoup their investment quickly. They've let us get on with developing in our own way, without too much pressure. I mean, if they ever tried that, telling us what to do, or what to wear, there's at least three members of this band who'd just walk out."
Needless to say, there are other musicians who'd give less glowing accounts of their dealings with the majors, but for now The Psychedelic Furs are prepared to play ball rather than risk missing the kind of breakthrough they seem to be on the brink of. Tolerance doesn't always come easy, however, when the demands of the promotional circus go to the farcical lengths of Butler's appearance on the NBC Live At Five TV programme, when the bewildered singer found himself hauled out of bed and dragged into a studio to be confronted by questions like "How long does it take you to get your hair that way in the mornings?" and "What do your songs mean?" as well as that old favourite "So tell us, are you 'punk rock'?" There's a long, long way yet to go.
After four weeks continuous touring, during the course of which the band travelled in a massive circle around the country beginning at New York, it would be an understatement to say that the strains of fatigue were beginning to tell. Particularly destructive of the band's spirit is the practice of constantly adding "one more date" to the itinerary, a new spot on the map to be tried out, a return engagement somewhere else. "It's not even like going through a tunnel," says drummer Vince Ely mournfully, "cos you can never see any light at the end of it. The end keeps getting farther away, and you don't know what you're doing it all for."
So it's more like being on a treadmill? "Yeah, that's it exactly, a treadmill. If they tell us that this is the way we've got to do it, to get anywhere in America, then I'll go along with it. But I don't have to say I'm enjoying it." When one of the Trax club's endless parade of well-wishers comes up to ask him how he's finding it over here in the States, he replies, "Well, you've heard of the Iranian hostages, we're the English ones."
Always uppermost on the Furs' collective mind is the need to get back and reestablish themselves at home, which means, in particular, getting to work on the new album. Before that can be done, however, the vexed question of producers has to be settled once and for all. Although Steve Lillywhite is considered to have done a fair job with the first record, nobody seems to feel that The Psychedelic Furs' real sound has been captured on vinyl so far. "When I'm thinking about producers," says Richard Butler, "I'll say 'Let's use the guy that did 'Forever Changes' by Love, or something, not thinking that that was years ago, and nowadays he's probably driving a bus or whatever." Some sessions were done a while back with current wonderboy Martin Hannett, but the partnership didn't work out.
"It's not that I want to slag him off, cos obviously he's been right for a lot of the people he's produced. But it's always a 'Martin Hannett sound'. He's like John Wayne: no matter what the film was, John Wayne could only ever play himself, and be John Wayne. It just wasn't our sound." One result of the collaboration can be heard on 'Susan's Strange', B-side of the present single (the A-side, 'Mr Jones', was produced by one of the Furs' earliest partners lan Taylor), and although it's an impressive effort in its own right, the finished product is quite unlike the Furs noise as a few of us have come to know and love it.
Not that I've been completely uncritical of The Psychedelic Furs in recent months. Their last London appearance, at the Lyceum, seemed little short of dismal, hampered by the abysmal sound of the place but also characterised by an excess of posturing coupled with an apathetic lack of commitment. The band themselves attribute that to a weariness with the old set, now substantially a few years out of date, and an impatience to get to grips with the new material that should herald a new era in the band's career and development.
The Trax gig, although subject to all the same problems as I'd encountered at the Lyceum, did demonstrate that the band are as capable of the old magical alliance between mystery (in the material) and attack (in the playing) as ever they were of the unrecorded songs 'Soap Commercial' and 'So Run Down' (the latter about the group's experiences following the police raid during their gig on the last night of Liverpool's Eric's club) seem especially likely to prove themselves as worthy inheritors to the beauties of 'Imitation Of Christ', We Love You' and 'Sister Europe'. Certainly, the reaction from the Trax crowd was favourable enough. Although the suspicion was voiced that it's all too easy to be hailed in New York as this week's sensation from England, and then be forgotten two weeks later, the prevalent air of Anglophilia seemed strong.
Eagerly, I found myself quizzed on the state of affairs over in London: "Like, do the kids have a lot of bars and clubs there?" "Yes," I answered, "but they generally get confiscated on the door." Blank incomprehension suggested that I might as well have saved my breath. There really is a long, long way to go.
