Fur Trapping
The six-member Psychedelic Furs have come all the way from
London to tell me that they are neither psychedelic nor furs. Rather, they are
just a rock band, simultaneously sending up '60s hippies and 70s punks on their
Steve Lillywhite and Martin (Joy Division) Hannett produced debut, with a wall of drone that has
been compared to rare Roxy, vintage Velvets or seminal Seeds. Live, the group's
much maligned lead singer, Richard Butler, offers a hilariously mincing parody
of Satanic Majesties-era Mick Jagger as he casually puts his arm around his
brother, bassist Tim, and wails the litany of "We Love You." the
Furs' three minutes of unquestioned transcendence. "I'm in love with Frank
Sinatra... I'm in love with bodies that scream, I'm in love with Bridget Bardot...
I'm in love with the factory. I'm in love with the BBC I'm in love with the
nuclear bomb....
The scene is set. The six Furs are seated around a long
table in CBS' version delicatessen, a fancy executive's meeting place known as
American Charcuterie. The helpful publicist is orchestrating a game of musical
chairs, with a different Fur facing me every five minutes. Two other writers
wolf down free meals and make fun of my tortured queries. I'm getting dizzy and
hoping one of the P. Furs will slip me a tab of acid. No such luck. The band
has nothing to do with psychedelic or the philosophy behind Psychedelic
drugs." explains drummer Vince Ely’s reaction to that
"Yeah, we chose the name as a reaction to the punk
scene also." echoes bassist Tim Butler. "We used to play the Roxy
club in '76, and you'd see all these punks who wouldn't know what to make of
songs like "We Love You. We still have the same attitudes and ideas as in
the '60s, but we don't sit around with headbands and long hair talking about
it."
So, what you're saying is punks and hippies are just two
sides of the same coin- followers of fashion. "Everything is
fashion," states Vince unequivocally. Even English rock 'n' roll bands?
"Probably.”
Are you aware of violently different responses to the group?
"People usually love us or hate us." agrees younger brother Tim,
"though most of the ones who come to see us tend not to be violent toward
us, they just sort of watch. Before we signed we got great, over-the-top
reviews in England. As soon as we signed to CBS the English music press just slagged
us down. It's always the same with them-build 'em up and knock 'em down.”
For me the Furs are rescued from their pretensions by a
winning sense of humor. The band refuses to take itself too seriously. "Does
anyone take themselves seriously?" asks Tim. "Roy does." answers
the CBS publicist.
“Anyway, everything else in the world is serious.” states
Vince. The whole point about music for me is to get away from reality.” “Music
is to enjoy, not to analyze," offers Tim.
There goes my job, I thought. What's the inspiration for
"We Love You"? "Just taking the piss out of all those '60s concepts
like peace and love, man," jokes the red-headed bassist, flashing me a peace
sign "You understand 'takin' the piss?”
I should hope so. The band seems adept in poking fun at pop
culture images. They had to have been rock fans to satirize it so accurately. "We
listened to music like everyone else did." agrees Vince, "except we
had the misfortune to become musicians." At this point, soft-spoken,
mirror-shaded guitarist John Ashton pipes up “People take it for granted that,
as a member of a band, you have a special knowledge or power and you do, to
some extent. But it only comes with maturity learning to write, learning to play
together, learning to tour, learning to do interviews, the whole thing.”
Do you think giving interviews is important for a young band
to help communicate ideas? Twenty-seven-year-old lead vocalist Richard Butler,
complete with subtle traces of eyeliner and suave demeanor, is now slotted
opposite me. "We haven't gotten used to the press yet," he admits
"We haven't done enough interviews yet to know how to present ourselves.
"Do you mean we're a bunch of naive limeys? shouts his
brother accusingly. Well...
"We want to be accessible," interjects Vince.
"We want our audience to think they could do what we're doing. If more
people picked up guitars and formed bands, the world would be a better
place." I'll drop acid to that.
“It’s really difficult to talk about what we're trying to
do," says guitarist Ashton. "Because we basically just got up and did
it, without asking ourselves why. We still don't know why we did it.” "Or
what we're doing," adds Tim.
"We decided to be a band before we could play,"
says Richard. "It's probably to easier to do that in England than here. There
are a lot of places for bands who don't know how to play to perform over
there." Which says a lot for the English rock scene.
Is the Psychedelic Furs' music more about satisfaction or
despair? "I think it's optimistic," insists Richard. "The first
album asked a lot of lyrical questions which the second album I will answer. I
felt the first record put a lot of things down- I mean it's so easy to be
negative, it's much harder to be positive. There's lots of positive things.
It's a great thing to be alive. I still believe in falling in love and all that
business. There's loads of things to be up about and to enjoy. You can't be
pessimistic all the time or nothing will change."
Listening to the band play the trancelike strains of
"Sister Europe" at Hurrah last week, I finally pieced together what
the Psychedelic Furs were all about. They are not a revival of '60s psychedelia
or "70s glitter or fashionable '80s nihilism. They are not, like Roky
Erikson or Syd Barrett, harbingers of an LSD utopia. Seeing the audience, in
John Mitchell's immortal words, "twisting slowly in the wind," as
people boozily bobbed and weaved to their wacky wall of sound. I flashed on the
fact that the P. Furs are the perfect group to guzzle beers and get wasted to A
band even Jimmy Breslin could love a good drinking hand, I guess we things
never change.
** Original interview referred to Tim as “Chris” so I fixed
it for you to avoid confusion.