The Psychedelic Furs
Why has it taken this group six long years to have a hit single (the rather brilliant "Pretty In Pink") I think it could have something to do with the fact that their lead singer wears his girlfriend's frilly, knickers, carries a velvet ball filed with sand around with him and is maybe not the most, erm, sane person ever invented...
Take pity on poor old Richard Butler— lead singer of The Psychedelic Furs; for throughout his life he has been dogged by… dodgy lips! "One side curls up and one side curls down.” he says, "especially when I laugh. I fell on some steps when I was five and cut my lip open. I mean, it doesn't look that bad... you don't come away saying “God! Did you see that guy's mouth!" or anything like that...I don't think!"
On second thoughts, readers, don't take pity on poor old Richard Butler- for at least he's felt "very privileged" to have been the inventor of just about the best group in the entire cosmiverse. And to think that it's all thanks to the "magic" of the Sex Pistols.
"They changed my life," he states boldly in his grainy London "croon". "After I saw them play in 1976 1 realised that it was possible for me to be in a band too- I didn't have to be a great musician or a great anything. And I was so excited that I couldn't wait to get out and play- I didn't even bother writing any songs! I just got a group of friends together, we went out and played wherever we could and I just made up the words as I went along. the first thing that came into my head— songs about religion, sad songs, angry songs. For some reason I found it fairly easy...er, well I don't know if I did really-I just didn't care!"
For two years Richard and his buddies (including his brother Tim) "farted about", some being thrown out in the process "for not being able to play well enough", but by 1979 they'd found replacements who could play and six of them finally became "a proper, serious band". And in 1980 Richard's made-up-on-the-spot songs became their first very brilliant LP. "The Psychedelic Furs".
Then there was an almighty explosion (or something) and The "Furs" were whisked into the mountainous spiral of post-punk pop cultdom then sweeping the nation. They became a bit more famous and at the beginning of 1983, they disappeared completely. Off to America where, for the next three and a half years, they became very, very famous and "much more than a cult band". In the meantime, though, some film bloke called John Hughes decided he rather fancied the title of a song Richard had written in 1981 called "Pretty In Pink" for a rather funny 'n' handsome film he was making about teenage lurve in America. The group reckoned it was a pretty good idea too, re-recorded the song and ZWING!! it's at last become a very big hit all over the world.
"Pretty In Pink' is actually about a girl who... er, how shall I put this...who has a lot of lovers and, you know, thinks that makes her really good and that everyone's in love with her. But the fact is that they don't even care. It's more about the boys' attitude than the girls', really. You hear guys talking sometimes and you feel so sorry for the girls because they think they're a really big deal to some guy and they're not at all. Guys who are like that are basically afraid of real feeling they pretend they don't feel anything when well, they do!"
Such "meaningful" matters are rather close to Richard's heart-he likes to think of his songs as quite "thoughtful". “I really hate happy songs," he pipes happily. "I don't like songs unless they're moaning! When someone sings a sad song or an angry song I feel it much deeper. A happy song is just like candyfloss. The amount of time you spend in a day actually happy and smiling is a very small part. I mean, when I go home and put on a record when I'm by myself, I don't skip around the room laughing and disco dancing Er... I'm not miserable, though!”
It's true- 30 year old Richard ("don't mention that!") (haw haw) doesn't seem, on the whole, to be a particularly doomsome individual. Perhaps he is, though, just a teensy bit
sensitive...
"I don't know if I'm even that," he insists, after pondering over the matter for a rather long, silent time. "I try to analyse myself as little as possible. If you start analysing yourself and you come across what you think is a problem, the more you look at it the bigger it becomes. Like, there's a big thing in America about going to analysis, and they go through their childhood and remember what happened to them and they reckon that has a bearing on what they're like in later life. So you meet people who are running around complaining that their mother said the wrong thing to them when they were four and a half and they end up hating their parents because of what the analyst has told them, whereas before they might have got on perfectly well! And the more they think about it the worse it gets!" And Richard should know because he wasn't a very well chap himself at one point...
"Yeah, I went for analysis when I was about 16. I was really severely depressed, manically depressed. I had to go and see a psychiatrist and they tried to blame it all on the people that were around me. I wasn't interested in that- I went about twice in the end. I didn't even know what I was depressed about at the time... well, it's a difficult time when you're 16, isn't it? But I got better! You know," he confides with a shudder of horror, "I really thought I was going mad then!"
Ah, but just before you think what a well-balanced being he turned out to be, he continues in a bit of a spook. deadpan voice... "When I'm by myself for any length of time late at night. I start going a bit... round the bend. I need other people around me to relate to. I hate being by myself. I have to have other people around otherwise I lose grip really easily of what's real and what's not. I keep thinking I'm having a heart attack. And when I think that, I go for a run around the block and I think that if I am having a heart attack. I'll die. but if I make it back I must be alright." Blimey that's a bit of an odd thing to think, is it not?
"Well, I actually get real pains- maybe it's just from imagining them. but you can do anything with your imagination. I don't know whether my imagination is that vivid or not, but it's vivid enough so that I don't know whether I'm imagining something or whether it's real. I often see things...
Oh dear.
"I remember once when I was in my flat in New York and I was awake all night and I got up to go to the window and I saw a plane flying overhead and I knew it was going to drop the nuclear bomb..." Er. isn't this a wee bit worrying? "Ha ha haaaah!" he comments.
Mmn. Apart from these nightly "visitations", however, Richard appears to lead a very normal existence in his rather swanky, white-painted open- plan apartment in one of the quieter areas of New York- going out to "movies", the theatre, reading novels, eating, horse-riding and being with his American girlfriend of four years with whom he's "in love". So much "in love" in fact, that he wears her knickers...
"Ha ha! I had a really embarrassing experience with that a couple of years ago I went round to visit my friend and his step-ladder fell on my head! And I went to the hospital because I had to get an anti-tetanus injection in the backside and well, I just happened to have a pair of her knickers on with little flowers on and frills round the outside. I could hear all the nurses running around telling each other all about it - I was soooo embarrassed. I only had them on because I didn't have any clean ones left. Believe it or not. I'm not really very accident-prone most of the time... touch wood." Ah you're not superstitious are you!
"Er...I suppose I am in a way. I'm not religious or anything like that and I don't carry things around with me actually, I do have a juggling ball that I carry around with me. It's made of velvet and it's filled with sand and it's all different colours and it feels sort of soft and solid at the same time and I just sort of... fiddle about with it. It reminds me of home.
The "home" that a juggling ball for some strange reason reminds Richard of is most definitely New York and not London where he comes from, or Surrey where he was brought up. Why does he think so much of America!
"Well, there's an atmosphere in America," he decides. "that makes you think you can do anything. That anything can happen- anything you set your mind to. Of course I still go back to England to see my mum and dad and all that but I certainly don't miss it.
"There are a lot of things I don't like about America, obviously- I can't stand people thinking that money's everything and in LA. (man) there's all these people obsessed with having the perfect body and they're walking around with their tans and their nose jobs and their body jobs, totally taken in by advertising, obsessed with perfection. But I don't surround myself with people like that anyway and I don't think there's any danger of me being like them!"
Good. How is Richard coping with being "hailed" as a sex symbol these days! "Er...(clears throat) I don't know! I'm very flattered by it but I don't think of myself like that at all. I think a lot of people look at people in bands and call them sex symbols but if they saw them walking down the street and they weren't pop stars they wouldn't dream of calling them a sex symbol. People confuse being famous with being beautiful.
Janice Long fancies you, you know. “Does she? Ha ha! I've met her a few times and she certainly doesn't flirt with me or anything like that!"
Richard proclaims that "The Psychedelic Furs are my life" but for all that he can forsee a time, perhaps not so very far off, when it won't be. “Well, I'm not going to do rock 'n' roll for the rest of my life" he chirps "Oh no- there's a lot of things I've got to do with my life yet I'd really like to write a novel, a best-seller. I might do some acting. I'm a very good artist too! I'm good at drawing naked ladies-I drew naked ladies every day for two years at art school. I don't think I could to that for a living mind you. In fact," he decides, after pondering the matter for a moment. "I'd never do it, never! I'm too shy..." Too shy!
"I am very shy. Still. But I used to be incredibly shy, especially about the way I looked. I didn't like what I looked like or the way I talked or the way I sang. When we started I'd have my back to the audience because I couldn't stand people looking at me. These days, though, and probably for the first time, I can look at myself and say "You're really good at being what you are. You're a great performer Richard, one of the best."
As well as being a bit bonkers? "Ha ha haaaaah!" (Translation: "Yes!")