Furs and Last and Always
Richard Butler and his Psychedelic Furs have stepped back from the brink of stadium life to lash us with a harder Furs sound and a new single 'All That Money Wants'. Steve Lamaqc walks out with the Crown Prince of The Shadowland and hears about the man's hates, tempers, moods and music.
Richard Butler has disturbing nightmares. In fitfull bursts of sleep he believes he might turn into a diplodocus. "Phil Collins. Yes...all those people that crawl out of the woodwork - I'd like to think that all the things I hate about them, I can steer clear of.”
"We came as near to those bands as we're going to get with 'Midnight To Midnight'. We saw we were heading in the dinosaur direction and thought 'hey, hang on'. We didn't want to turn into something f—ing turgid.
"The last thing I want to see is a spikey haired kid with a T-shirt saying 'I Hate The Psychedelic Furs!'" It's time for reflection and time for change. Disappointed by last year's 'Midnight To Midnight LP and the subsequent promotional chores on their nine month world tour, Butler realigned the Furs and has brought them steaming back with a superb new single 'All That Money Wants'.
'Money', with its accompanying almost Mary Chain-esque video, is the best Furs single in three years. It seethes like all the good Furs records you can remember. Its claustrophobic atmosphere is Butler's notice to his growing number of fans that the band aren't about to roll into their coffin and die in an elegant flourish of dance mixes.
He has reinjected the band with the vehemence that made them one of the most important post-punk bands to emerge after the new wave fizzled into power pop. The single regains their integrity, the sense of rage that burned through their early releases, when they offered a biting alternative to the final fling of Two Tone and the crazed style-consciousness of the New Romantics.
They were the lyrical worries of glum young men long before Morrissey teetered onto the scene with his uncertainties. Only The Cure's Robert Smith could match Butler's instinctive work then. But after three brooding albums and the polished fourth LP 'Mirror Moves' the Furs started to limp. By then, better known than ever following the film Soundtrack success of 'Pretty In Pink' and a string of gorgeous pop hits, they were becoming lost. 'Midnight' compounded the followers' fears, just as it did Butler's.
But with the release of 'All That Money Wants' and a retrospective LP, 'All This And Nothing" -a 12 track compilation from their nine year history- Butler has brought the imagination and importance of the band streaming back into rock's consciousness.
For Butler, who currently lives in New York, it's a time to tidy up the past and assess the future. If anything, the enigma who cast himself as the prince of shadowy pop, is even less willing to compromise now than he was when the Psychedelic Furs stormed into critics' hearts with their eponymous debut LP. Haunted by his own self-critical analysis, he knows the Furs' true strengths-the raw meeting of lyrical mystery and claustrophobic melody-and that's what's most precious to him. He fidgets regally, plonks his feet on the table in our little West End interview room and laughs more than you might expect.
"I turned round during the last tour and realised that I didn't like the album that we were promoting and I didn't like the direction the band was going in. We knew something had to be done."
Butler hadn't been asleep at the wheel but he certainly didn't know which route the Furs should take. ‘Midnight to Midnight' enforced their growing American following, but it lacked the ferocity and gripping glory of 'Talk Talk Talk and the barbed 'Forever Now’ Butler, realising this, pulled on the breaks and slapped the band into reverse. Pausing only to pick up old drummer Vince Ely ("He just dropped into the office, so I asked him back"), the Furs headed for the studio with Morrissey's recent cohort Stephen Street.
The result is a nail-biting pairing of the curt 'All That Money Wants' and an even angrier Butler tirade 'Birdland'-both sides aching with the atmosphere of 'Talk Talk Talk' while employing a fresh arrangement and width of ideas that Street has induced.
"I liked some of the sounds that he got on The Smiths' album," explains Butler. "And we got talking to him and he was a fan of the band- his idea of the Furs was
exactly what we were feeling, so he seemed like the right bloke.” The vocals are very submerged. "I don't like them being too high; I don't like to be out there up front hollering. I told Stephen, on your scale of acceptable vocals levels, I want to be right at the bottom.”
"All That Money Wants' is about dissatisfaction with America. 'Birdland' is just me being bloody-minded. Birdland's where Miles Davis got beaten up, where Charlie Parker used to play."
ALL THIS AND SOMETHING
The Psychedelic Furs have never adhered to movements, never slotted themselves comfortably into any rock sphere. It's their almost 100 per cent obtuseness that's given them a continual edge over the counterparts they grew up with. Butler's intimate lyrics and mystery work on a completely different level to the whooping cries of the stadium-ites. Over the course of their five LPs he has fluently built up a rapport with his audience that steers clear of overblown anthems.
He denies it, but somewhere in his ribs is the punk rock problem child that didn't want to conform. Skipping through the tracks on 'All This And Everything' is like flicking through a captionless picture book. He's the archetypal 'read what you want into it' writer. Whether it's 'Pretty In Pink' or 'President Gas' the characterisations are shadowy, intriguing and sketchy. Mournful, as a savaged poet.
"I think what we do best are very melancholic songs or very angry songs. We're not the kind of band that sing very good celebratory songs," confirms Butler.
"We don't reach out and embrace an audience so much as invite them to take part in what we do. We're very different to Simple Minds” Or The Alarm.
"Yeah, you see I hate all that, all that rallying around sound. I mean, rally round what? What are they rallying around about? Why are they rallying around? What do they want to change? They don't know. They seem to say, 'We will overcome, but overcome what? It's all false. They breed this false bonhomie. It's a con.”
"I think the only things I'm in a position to deal with are my own feelings. That's all I can do honestly. I'm 33 now and that's old enough to be thinking, 'hang on, you're not a kid anymore-you should be doing something that's you, that's stripped of artificial extras!"
Butler shivers at the thought of the size of gigs they've reached playing in Europe and abroad and vows that the next tour will be a more simple show-a "stark" presentation.
"What's more important to me these. days is making a record like and having a show I feel is honest. We could fill Wembley Arena, but we couldn't do it without resorting to all those rock 'n' roll clichés. I want to make a tasteful statement.”
Now you're sounding like a real artist. "Oh no, it's the opposite of that, we're not a bunch of musos." Is that the worst insult you could be dealt? "Oh yeah."
AT HOME HE'S A TOURIST
Butler's ideas may be ever maturing, but his frame is handling the ageing process remarkably well. He'll grow old in the same way that Bowie's done, so the 30s will be a graceful doddle. Maybe it's something to do with the American air.
"I really like it in New York, though I'm not struck by the Americans as people. I think 'when in doubt, talk' is what they do. They think as long as they're talking they're all right. I'm definitely a foreigner in America and while I like that, it's not good for writing. There's nothing around that inspires me."
In contrast, Butler confesses he's enjoying songwriting as much as ever now, garnering ideas from all angles, not least his own jagged personality. The man who wrote such brittle epics as 'No Tears' and 'Sleep Comes Down' is still struggling to balance on his own pocket knife-edge.
Not surprisingly he has difficulties getting his brain behind the workings of the music business machine, the absurd sex symbol status he has had thrust upon him in America and, well, life in general.
"I'm not very settled at the moment," he confesses, whilst fidgeting. "I've been really unsettled emotionally for about a year and a half-going through a really weird time. Which is good for writing, you gets lots of ideas but....I'm a very obsessive person- I have to have an obsession and it's never a good obsession. Recently It's been sickness and death, and I get quite worried about the passing of time and things being meaningless.”
"I tried going to see an analyst in the States about it, to see if you could change your personality. And he said you can't-you can only change how you handle things, which isn't much use to me. But I haven't jumped out of a window yet. This makes it sound like I'm a depressive, but I'm not, I'm just obsessive. My girlfriend gets really pissed off with it."
That's probably 'cos when you're moping round you're a right bastard to live with.
"Yeah...I've got a really shit temper, really bad, explosive temper. I fly off the handle suddenly and intensely. And then it's gone. Everyone else around me is still going 'whaaat the...and I'm saying 'um sorry 'bout that."
Life in the spotlight and all those trappings have lost their appeal. "I used to drink and just get generally out of it 24 hours a day, but that was just something I did for a while. I'm probably lucky to be alive. But I want to stop all that superficiality now.”
"I think recently I've felt really uncomfortable with the music business full stop-especially when I'm forced to be something I'm not. I'm not really a poseur. I run around on stage- because I feel that when you go and see a show the singer should be entertaining to watch- but I'm not like that as a person.”
"It's phoney; it's like being a sex symbol, which has started in the States. We get loads of these teenage girls screaming at the front. It feels f-ing stupid. You think 'You're half my age, what are you doing? Don't you listen to any of the songs?"
IT GOES ON
The Furs return is already planned out for the next two years. The band will be recording tracks for the next 'proper' LP in piecemeal bursts until the end of the year, ready for its release at the start of '89.
There'll be a tour to follow which will keep them occupied until the summer and that'll be followed, if ideas go to plan, by a Butler solo LP.
There's also the possibility of a live album next year after a previous abortive attempt using tapes from two San Francisco gigs on the last tour. The idea was scrapped then because of the band's discomfort with live LPs in general, but the chance of a set reaching vinyl still hasn't been discounted.
In the meantime Richard Butler continues his return to form with his customary wariness, his nonchalant disdain for dullard rockers and his passionate belief in mystery, suspense and agony, and all the worry that entails. "People have said that we sound old-fashioned, but I don't think we are. What are we supposed to do? We'd look like a right bunch of cunts if we started using sampling."
“Do you fear that one day you might get happy and all the songs will dry up? "I actually dread being happy. It sounds like a prescription for mediocrity."
Fur sure.
