FURTYSOMETHING
Meeting pop stars can often be a bizarre and contradictory experience. Too often the chubby-faced, football-playing, rock idol turns out to be a child molesting filth fiend. The wisecracking backing vocalist on charity records steals your wallet. And, commonest of all, the black-clad vampire poets are nearly always from the
Midlands, their minds raddled not by the Black Arts, but by Kestrel lager.
Bizarrest of all is Richard Butler. Millions know him as the rasp-toned, wraparound-shaded beanpole of post-punk guitar dance melancholy. In fact, in the average pub quiz, the beaming host has only to enquire, "Who is best known as the rasp-toned, wraparound-shaded beanpole of post-punk guitar dance melancholy?" and even the man who has come to empty the fruit machine will bellow "Richard Butler of The Psychedelic Furs!" So who is this lanky Home Counties hayseed with the machine gun laff and a face like Jim Dale in Carry On Sid & Nancy? It is Richard Butler and, as we seat ourselves in an empty office and he potters about with the kettle, laughing like a drain, no, like a complicated system of sewers..the thought crosses my mind. Have I come to the wrong office?
Hurriedly I test this possibility out with a convincing journalistic question. Is The Psychedelic Furs' new LP, 'Book Of Days', an attempt to return to their unpolished past, given that Furs LPs have become increasingly smooth and dull lately? Butler pauses and sighs. He is a proper pop star. "Not really," he moans in Camel-addled tones. "It's not an attempt to do anything. The last album shouldn't even have been made. We were confused and a bit directionless, so for this album we decided the best thing would be that we just went in and played and didn't worry about if it had a single on it, which I don't think it does, or whatever."
'Book Of Days' has a delightfully raw sound (raw by chart standards, readers, they're not Inspiral Carpets) and is a trillion miles better than the stadium nightclub blah of their most recent product. So does Richard think his band had a big period of being... crap? King Gloomo of Glum? Nah, it's laughing boy Butler. "Arf! Snarf!" laughs Richard. "I think the closest we came to crap was on 'Midnight To Midnight ' -arf! arf! -but I don't think we were actually crap."
So there you were in 1983 or so, quite good. And then there you were a bit later, "not actually crap" (ie crap). What happened? "I really don't know. I haven't got a clue," he sighs, adding thoughtfully, "Having that compilation album really helped; just looking at what you do best gave us some kind of perspective." Said compilation album enshrines the veritable nadir of Psychedelic Furness; namely the abysmal remake of the previously marvellous 'Pretty In Pink' for the John Hughes movie of not dissimilar name. It’s awful, isn’t it?
"Wa ha ha ha!" bellows Richard. "It's one of those things. If it's going to be used in something, you think 'why not have a go at rerecording it'. You have to do it, then you realise it's a mistake to go back. I was pleased for the attention it got from the John Hughes film. Although..snarf!..I didn't really like the film, wa harf harf ha!" We move on. Why should anyone expend any effort in rock music on anything? Richard reins himself in, briefly.
"There really isn't any point," he muses, glumly, and then explodes again. "It's like the question, does the world really need another Psychedelic Furs record, snarf wa harf snarf ha! I don't really sit down and get nailed to the wall by anything... ha ha snarf! I used to spend a lot of time listening to Bob Dylan records and I was one of those people who wanted to know what the words meant, but I don't think anything rivets me quite like that anymore."
Is this because you are 34 or because music is crap now? "Na ha!" answers Richard. "When I was in my teens it wasn't just the record, it was what the person represented. I was a fan of the whole package and now I'm not. I don't give a shit what people look like. When I put a record on at home I don't care if they're
wearing spangly f-ing T-shirts and a pair of shorts, arf!" Richard Butler is certainly not wildly image-conscious. Although his vids present him as a cool black-clad hipster, today he is dressed like John-Boy Walton, only with a tattier haircut. His lack of nostalgia for spangly T-shirts is, curiously, matched by a failing of interest in the music that got him signed, punk. Or, as Richard puts it, "Sham 69! Snarf!". He is Mr Cheerfully Underwhelmed. Yo! Dick! Does anything worry you?
"Coo... what doesn't?" says Richard (and yes, he really did say "Coo") "The list is endless. The world isn't in too good a shape, nobody mentally is in too good a shape, I can be mentally disillusioned with the human race, including myself. Pretty much everything, I think." Oops. Mood swing ahoy. Richard's brow furrows. Soon he will draw the blinds and put his shades on. "Somebody was once telling me that depression is not an unnatural state..." Suddenly the tape stops. Side One is over. I flip the tape and Richard stares at it, caught in the act of defining depression for a trillion young people. Not being a weird kind of glum Bono, he becomes self-conscious. Side Two begins thus. "SNARF SNARF ARF ARF HA!”
"Er...somebody was telling me that depression is not an unnatural state to be in, when our natural conditioning is removed, that it's a sensible reaction to everyday living," says Richard, rallying. "And there is a quiet despair that we cover up with optimism." Nevertheless he looks more optimistic than despairing at the moment. However, most Butler press depicts him as King Gloomo of Glum, whereas to me he seems a jolly chap. "Yeah!" he chirps enthusiastically. "I don't think I'm exceptionally glum. I don't feel suicidal...Um...I slip in and out. I don't really know. I guess I'm just not. Not too depressed, anyway. I guess underneath it I am. I was certainly depressed when I was making this record. I was on the phone to my girlfriend all the time ha ha ha!"
Oh well. We shall presume that Richard is depressed. This presumably explains the often, er, depressed nature of the product. Richard agrees, loudly. "Arf arf arf! Yeah I think it does. Then again it's not something I do self-consciously. I don't say I can't have anything happy on this record. It's probably the other way around, you know. I would like to make music with a lighter feel to it." He sighs. "But it's not what happens when you sit down with a pencil and paper, the images that come up tend to be very melancholic."
It is, of course, what The Psychedelic Furs do best. And it has to be pointed out that the best of their records, 'Love My Way', 'Pretty In Pink', name your fave, tend to emphasise the beauty of melancholy, rather than the unlit Regulo Seven aspects. "I don't feel like writing 'We Love You' again, that punk energy stuff..."muses Richard. "I think hitting a chord or a snare will automatically get an energy kick, but it's superficial, it's like... sugar. I like something that broods a bit more, that's somehow darker than that, more sombre than that, and that's the kind of music I like to listen to.”
"And I don't find that sort of music depressing. Something like 'All Tomorrow's Parties', I think is one of the prettiest songs ever written. It's very sad but it's also very beautiful and it doesn't make me depressed at all." And how much of it can you take, oh most unSonia-like of men? "An infinite amount! HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR!” Richard Butler is the Laffing Cavalier of rock melancholy and a diamond geezer to boot. No contradictions.
