Richard Butler Talks Psyche
If Richard Butler seems like an untouchable enigma, let it be understood that it is no fault of his own. Since 1977, the year of the Psychedelic Furs' inception, an alarming amount of ink has been set creating an image based largely on only one part of his personality. Both critics and fans alike, view him as some dark, artsy character an exotically nihilistic perfectionist striving to make the ultimate musical statement. In reality, he does incorporate all of these characteristics, but they are definitely not the beginning and end of his personality.
It's a Monday afternoon in New York City. Here, in a photographer's basement studio near Soho, Richard Butler seems like anything but the brooding, mysterious image he has so often been equated with. Instead of contemplating modes of alienation or scanning the poems of Oscar Wilde, he is in a feverish wrestling match with the photographer's bulldog and is, surprisingly, losing. He makes conversation with ease and throughout the day remains calm and self assured, never overly cocky just a plain, ordinary guy that happens to be a musician. At times, it's hard to picture this innocuous gentleman crooning into a microphone in front of thousands of fans.
When prodded about any possible differences between Richard Butler the performer and Richard Butler the individual, he makes his opinions quite clearly understood, chain-smoking all the while.
"I don't think I'm at all different on stage than I am in person. A lot of artists have spewed out this bullshit about getting confused between their stage personas and what they are in real life. What I am on stage is ME. I'm not pretending to be anything I'm not because it would be too much of a pain in the ass to sit down and write. I think it's hard enough already to write a good song so it must be even harder to do it from somebody else's point of view."
Butler's personal point-of-view, is clearly defined through both his songwriting and vocals. His voice is extremely recognizable- a gravel pit of emotion fed solely on a diet of Marlboro Lights and within the lyrics lies his subconscious, for all the world to see. It creates a situation Butler sees as unavoidable, but not deliberate. "The songs always wind up meaning something but it's never intentional. I sit down and I put bits and pieces together and they make a small amount of sense and they gradually make big sense later on. When I go back and listen to albums I've made- even three years ago I can immediately tell what sort of frame of mind I was in and what was absorbing me at the time. My subconscious comes out in the songs."
Most people would find such an open situation unnerving, but Butler ultimately finds it more honest. "I think it's phony if you listen to something you did two years ago and you're not able to tell what the hell was going on. I'm sure people write like that. I'm sure those people who write love songs all the time aren't able to look back and tell what was going on in their lives. At least with the Furs you're able to tell what we were really thinking about and what was really going on.'
The affect of music on Butler's overall personality does not end with his work on record. Every facet of his life as a musician has a direct influence on his daily routine. "Performing live is definitely my own personal psychology. I find when I get off the road, I can't handle the feelings I have just sitting around at home. I'm also incredibly bad tempered. I don't sleep too well, but I'm a really bad insomniac anyway."
"It's a psychological release when I go out on stage. Who needs group therapy? I can go out there and sing and get rid of all my anger," he pauses, killing yet another cigarette. "It's sort of like the blues. They say if you've got the blues, then the best way to get rid of them is to sing about them and I guess what I do is just a modern version of that. It's all a matter of externalizing your own feelings." Anger, as aforementioned, is an integral part of those feelings. "I am an angry person. I fly into temper very quickly and fly back out again very quickly. I'm not schizophrenic, it's just that my anger is very fast. I think that the people around me find it very difficult to cope with because, I'll get everything that I'm pissed off about out in the open and then I'm calm again. People around me tend to be rather jangled because of it. They don't know what to expect next." Indeed, anger does come into play when cross-examining Butler's psyche, but the extent of its affect on him is not overwhelming.
On the other end of the spectrum, Butler sees himself as a romantic; not surprising when you discover that he's had a one-on-one relationship with the same woman for the past four years. His overall views on relationships, however, might seem a bit different from the average 'romantic' norm, and therefore, have had a profound affect on the way he writes. "I think being in love gets in the way at first. It's difficult to write when you're in love with somebody because you feel too easy within yourself; your mind is somewhere else. You're too busy trying to be happy in this little family unit or whatever. Too much of your attention goes to actually being in love.'
He stops to sip his tea and throws a rubber bone to the bulldog, who has been patiently waiting for close to a half- hour for some attention. "I think after a while it gets to be okay after the preliminary love shit wears off. I think the relationship gets better. It becomes a bit more realistic."
"I'm not the kind of person that likes running around writing songs about being in love," he continues, "I just don't like the sound of it. I think the world has got too many songs about that as it is. They sound too cliched and who needs to hear it? I know I don't want to hear it- I hear enough of it." His feelings towards contemporary music in general, are quite similar. "I think most modern music has always been shit, it just gets worse from time to time. Rock music is sup- posed to be about rebellion, or at least a little bit of attitude. It shouldn't be made for middle-aged radio programmers. I think we're in a time at the moment like the mid-Seventies...where everything is very 'poppy.' Music just doesn't seem to have any teeth."
There must be exceptions to such a rule, unless of course, Butler would care to lump what he and the Furs do into the same category of 'toothless' music? Indeed, he would not. "I think the listener gets a certain feeling of spirituality from (Psychedelic Furs) music. I like the fact that you can listen to a Furs album and come out of it in a particular space. I think that proves you were listening to something with a cer- tain amount of originality. It means it has a bit of honesty about it, in that it doesn't jump all over- being a bit of this and a bit of that. That is our space; the Furs' space. It's not contrived, it's just what I feel happy with. When something sits right and feels right, then that's a Furs song. It will have that kind of atmosphere about it."
That atmosphere Butler speaks of is one of crucial impor- tance, particularly considering that a number of current successful bands cite the Furs Butler, guitarist John Ashton, and bassist Tim Butler - as prime inspiration. Butler admires the situation, but doesn't take it too seriously. "It's very flattering to have influenced someone else, but I honestly think everybody influences everybody in music. I think individuality is a massively overrated commodity. Our influences were punk, Iggy Pop, and perhaps some Bob Dylan. I think you can hear that on the first album but I don't think we've ripped any of them off. We brought their feeling to our music. As time goes on you develop your own style and you don't worry about it quite so much. I'm glad, though, that the Furs inspired some band into making music."
Butler decides that a change of scenery is in order. So, the beverages and cigarettes are gathered and in a matter of minutes, all of New York City is visible from a prime spot on the roof. He gazes across the chimneys and antennas at the bustle of life going on below him. His speech is slow and thoughtful. "New York has got energy and it's got inspiration. I feel at home here. It's the kind of place I like being in and I think that's im- portant for lyric writing. We recorded a lot of Midnight To Midnight [their latest album] in Berlin and that's another place I got on pretty well. It's alot like New York. I know it's a walled city and you're in the middle of East Germany and all that business, but you don't spend your time thinking about that. As far as I'm concerned, for the amount of time I get out of the city, New York might as well have a wall around it."
Although he cites New York as a source of inspiration, Butler explains that the nightlife image most people equate with the city is not what he's about at least not anymore. That's not to say he doesn't enjoy taking in a club every once in a while, he just doesn't indulge. "I'm completely sober now, I don't do anything. I got bored with trying to figure out whether or not I had a good time the night before. My energy level was getting really low and I just got pissed off with it as much as anything else. I really had a problem with it all. I was getting up in the morning and drinking first thing, which I consider a problem. I never got to the point where I made myself thoroughly sick or anything like that - I stopped it before it got that far. He gazes out into the distance and lights another cigarette.
"We were in Australia when I realized the shows were starting to suffer. You can't walk out on stage and try to do a show when you've got a hangover. I need alot of energy to run around for two hours. It's very 'rock and roll' to go out there and party and drink and take lots of drugs but I don't think people want to see that when they've paid their money. You just can't go out there and say, 'I'm so rock and roll and I was out of my mind last night so you're not going to get a very good show.' It's just not right."
The act of performing in front of people is very important to Butler and the Furs. Their willingness to take the incentive and embark on full scale tours has been one of the most influential aspects of their success. Last autumn, the band went out on tour in the States without any product to promote. Their reputation as a live act was so overwhelming that the entire jaunt was sold-out. "We toured without an album and we did well, which was very surprising to me. I'm glad we have a reputation as a live band; I think it's important. We can go out without being all over pop radio and still get great crowds.
Another reason for their success last year came in the form of a motion picture. The film Pretty In Pink and the subse- quent re-recording and re-release of the title song garnered the Furs a new legion of young fans. Even though the new version helped to increase their exposure, Butler has discovered he likes the original better. "Don't get me wrong, I didn't think the new version was shit or anything like that. I don't think there's much you can do wrong with the song. We just wanted to remake it and, having remade it, it took a while to register that I liked the old version better. It has a spirit about it that the new version doesn't...it has more anger. It's no big deal, though. I'm not heartbroken about it." With the success of the single, the Psychedelic Furs
"experienced a very rare occurence; success with the same song at two totally different time periods. Quite a feat in today's musical world.
"I don't think it's because we're ahead of our time or anything," he says very matter-of-factly. "I just think some songs don't really date. If we had made a 'pop' song then, you would be able to tell when it was recorded because pop dates. I don't think rock does. I don't think calling it rock is pigeonholing it or anything because it's such a wide field.' Regardless of the labels on the Furs or their music, they seem to be in a position at the moment of impending superstar- dom; a situation Butler remains somewhat nonchalant about. "I don't know how to react to all of it. I couldn't say I don't think about it — it's something I welcome. Of course I want as many people as possible to hear what we do, but I don't sit down to write a song and think, 'what will people want us to do?' I don't really spend a great deal of time thinking about fame and fortune. I spend most of it wondering how I'm going to pay the rent."
In the music business, success is often followed by disaster; more than one band has folded at the height of their popularity. In contrast, Butler doesn't envision the Furs' demise anytime soon. "We've never thought of packing it all in because we've never made an album where we can sit back a and say, 'That's it. We couldn't make any better album so let's kick it in the head and go home.' We haven't made that classic album that I want to make and that Tim and John want to make. When we make it, then we'll kick it in the head and go home."
For the time being, the Furs aren't kicking anything, op- ting instead for a tour to promote their Midnight To Midnight, which has already spurred the hit single, "Heartbreak Beat. At the same time, there are other projects that Butler is involved in. "I'm writing songs at the moment that could possibly be for a solo album and could possibly be for a Furs album. With the solo stuff, I think it would be alot different from the Furs. I'd like to hear an entire album's worth of Richard Butler instead of Richard Butler, Tim Butler, and John Ashton...just out of curiosity. I'm going to be writing it on the road. Maybe the songs will end up on a Furs album, who knows? I'm definitely not going completely solo or anything like that." It is getting too cold on the roof, so it's back down to the studio and the bulldog. Besides, Butler has to be leaving.
After spending a few hours with him, one realizes that Richard Butler is an enigma, yet he isn't as mysterious as he might be perceived. It is also important to understand that if this particular per- sonality didn't exist, it is very possible that the Psychedelic Furs and their original brand of rock music, wouldn't exist either. The public adheres to that sort of thing and Butler is the first to realize it. He explains, "There's a certain hipness to what we do. We're a very hip band." Very hip, indeed.
