Rock’s Guardian Angel
Always in the shadows never in the limelight, Richard Butler
explains why The Psychedelic Furs are more than a paragraph in rock's story
book.
“I never really liked the name Richard Butler," he
says. "I think it sounds a bit ordinary. But I'm stuck with it. I'm not
changing it to something stupid. I'd hate to be called Billy Idol at 40! Richard
Butler, sometimes known simply as Butler, is 30. He hardly looks it. There are
no airs about Butler: he is growing out of his era quite gracefully. The
awkward, insecure singer of The Psychedelic Furs still looks in need of hot
food and sympathy; he has the timid eyes and sallow face of a neglected boy.
But he meets promotional chores with a shrug. His attitudes aren't likely to be
shaken. Butler, like his group, is a post-punk relic that looks sure to
survive. Think back to what you know about him it's not very much. He's
released himself sparingly on the greedy marketplace. As he says, The
Psychedelic Furs have never "churned themselves out" to a quickly
bored audience. Their small numbers of records are an unambitious paragraph in
rock's storybook.
Now there's an imminent LP, Midnight To Midnight- with the
single, Angels Don't Cry', taken from it, out now-to add to the list, and its
blend of sharpness and grand gesture sounds like a very confident flag stuck on
a so far unclaimed 1987. This year, perhaps, Butler comes back. He was never
very conspicuous. Like him alongside lan Mac, Jim Kerr. Peter Murphy, Siouxsie.
Howard Devato, Bono, Butler is the one with his face turned away. He talks quite
a bit about "mystery" and "edge", but the quality that Butler
best suggests is reticence. The paradox comes in setting this against the loud
locomotive noise that the band thrash out. Almost alone among their
contemporaries, the Furs have stuck by a trashy, dense rock band sound that the
more cosmetic Mirror Moves' hasn't destroyed
I still think the band's off the wall," he says.
"You definitely hear more of that on the new record than on "Mirror
Moves. I don't think the production there did John (Ashton, guitar) justice.
All that weird chording... he doesn't play like anyone else I've ever heard.
Tim's bass playing is very driving-simplistic, maybe, but I don't think anyone
does it better than him. "That's what I mean by personality For me to try
and be melodically clever would be a lie. I tend to write lyrics with a certain
beat to them." What quality does he bring to this Furs personality!
I like to think I bring a certain edge to it all, a certain
sarcasm. However sweet the music becomes, I like to think there's this neurotic
side to it. The smoother songs like Sister Europe' have always had this part
which refuses to be polished." Polish ain't easy to escape. "There's
just something in me that won't sing smooth-sounding songs, or trite songs. If
somebody gave me a song like ‘Touch Me I Want To Feel Your Body’ and they said.
Record this and you'll have a number one around the world and be a rich man for
the rest of your life- I couldn't do it" Why not?
"I'd feel disgusted." he says, face lit up with
surprise. "I wouldn't be able to have a pride about myself. When people
saw me in the street they'd say, ‘Oh yeah, it's him, Touch Me!’ I like it when
people say, you're Richard Butler and I can go. ‘Yeah, I'm the guy who recorded
Into You Like A Train." This is a hankering after a place in posterity! "Nah
I'd probably have more of a chance if I took the first course. I've got to have
a personal pride. I want to be able to defend something and say it's great. Or
else I've got nothing" Richard lays off and lights another cigarette: he
can't stop smoking. Then he sits back, with his pointed elbows and small feet,
drooping shoulders, unkempt hair. His voice sounds like a man who isn't sure if
he should be affecting an accent or not a quick, shrill laugh goes with each
serious phrase. When he sings there's a suave, crusty tone that his speaking
voice has no trace of.
Look at him he's all bones and shyness "I don't go out
to clubs to be seen and all that bullshit. It's very difficult when you run
into other people from bands The conversation seems to be very forced and
superficial. I like to keep away from the trite end of things. "I don't
sleep very well. I wake up in the night with ideas for bits and pieces" This
year’s bits and pieces have been organized into Midnight To Midnight, a record
that shapes the old Furs racket into fax, orchestral splendor. The sound has
lost some of the hard glamour of Mirror Moves John Ashton's guitar tears the cool
veneer off the tunes, and the disco directions are mostly squashed.
"We wanted to go in and make a band album, as opposed
to Mirror Moves which sounded like a studio record. It was done immediately
after a tour of Europe and before a tour of America" Was there no
temptation to repeat and refine the successful formula of Mirror Moves? "I
don't know. I listen so 'Mirror Moves and I like it a lot but it's not the way
I'd like to hear the Furs presented I'd like to make the ideal album that we
could make, and our personalities didn't come through very clearly on that
record. I miss the edge of the earlier records. It was probably as near to a
commercial-sounding LP as we'll ever make.’ Yes, although that commercial
streak isn't exactly abandoned by Midnight To Midnight
Maybe there are no great Furs albums only great tracks-Into
You Like A Train, President Gas- moments when their clotted rock motion
suddenly finds its own distinct shape Midnight To Midnight probably does it
more consistently than their other LPs, and it still makes use of the technical
sparkle of lace-'80s pop, in 'Heartbreak Beat', 'Angels Don't Cry' and a few
others. The Psychedelic Furs hammer out fragments that are as bright and sharp
as chilled steel. They are finally developing on the legacy of Roxy's Country
Life, the record that must have spawned them.
Nevertheless, they sound in the end at if they're trapped in
rock. The mystery that Richard Butler lusts after isn't sustained by these
records, which refuse finally to take wing. Butler's lyrics decorate the rock
heartbeat but they never truly transcend it. He isn't poetic the way Lou Reed,
Iggy Pop and Tom Verlaine are more like the unlucky disciple who can't quite
reach Olympus. It's that exalted zone that the Furs aspire to a performing rock
tradition, where the players want their art to imitate life, not some abstract
pop romance.
My influences, like Iggy Pop and Suicide, are all very much
part of the rock tradition. When I think of that phrase I think of someone like
Bruce Springsteen, and I don't think we're part of that but we in a rock
tradition. We've pushed a tie bit at different boundaries, but we're a rock
band" Butler gulps down some smoke and thinks about. His new record sounds
right for a stronger radio.. but today? “If you depended on the radio now you'd
be in deep trouble. Three or four years ago it seemed like some good stuff was
getting through to the charts, but I've been reduced to going back and buying
things the second time around- Suicide. Velvet Underground, even Led Zeppelin. Ugh
the aid rack strikes again don't think it's even a revival," he smiles
with a cavalier wave of the arm There's always been rock bands People just get
bored with everything else it must surely herald a good time for the rockin’
Furs
"Well.” he replies, not much excited. "There's
always a place for a band that's honest with its own sound It's really easy for
bands to get too involved in trying to get on the radio. You just lose your
identity, end up doing music you don't like, get successful for a while and the
next thing you know, you're dropped People respect a bit of character."
People mostly like tunes. "Not for long I don't think that good tunes are
really what it's all about. It was just tunes, ABBA would still be the greatest
thing since sliced bread There was nothing profound going on there. It was all
boy-girl," Well that was good enough for Cole Porter and Larry Hart. But
this is teasing. The point is Butler's sung wisdom sounds frequently like
neat-sounding nothing. What is this intelligent man on about!
After some laughter, he says. “I’m on about feelings. The
songs I like have a feeling of mystery about them. If you were to ask me what ‘Visions
of Joanna’ was about, I'd be stuck for an answer or ‘Scary Monsters!’ I don't
have to know what those songs are about. What's important is a sense of depth,
something that strikes me more viscerally than common sense.” Did he go into
all this with the idea of creating those deep-set songs! “It's something that
just happened. I put phrases and ideas together that I liked I could say
something and then pass over it and move on to something else. A Iist of things
I felt angry about would be a song “India”. A list of things that make me feel
isolated would be 'All Of This And Nothing’. When I've been simpler, like in
Pretty In Pink, it's been less mysterious. I can listen to some things and
think. Wow, did I say that? What was I getting at?”
What is Richard Butler getting at? He calls himself "a private
person.” In Furs tunes, his lyrics are sometimes ingenious but distant. The
stories are brittle inhuman ‘Pretty In Pink’ is meant as a kind of tragedy, but
the girl in there is just a pop song person. Butler might actually be afraid of
the sort of self-exposure that put the blood into his heroes work. He recorded
a version of the Brecht/Well chestnut Alabama Song for A&M's Lost In The
Stars LP, and even in that theatrical piece he sounds self-conscious, perhaps
terrified. "I was pleased to do 'Alabama Song because a lot of people have
said my voice is like David Bowie's. They've only got to put that version of
the song next to his to see how much we do sound alike.
“I’d quite like to do a duet with Marianne Faithfull,
because I think our voices would sound great together. I'd like to do a solo
album" Would it be very different! "That's what I'd like to find out.
It wouldn't be that different - I wouldn't run off and make a funk album. It
would still be driving rock." At least Butler and his Furs have stuck to
that rock. "Mirror Moves must have given them the option for dogging on
towards a stadium role. But...
"Is it something you aim at? What does a stadium band
sound like? Who's filling stadiums! Phil Collins, Tina Turner! There's very few
who can do it. You're talking about 50,000 people. "It's always rock
bands, because rock bands are exciting live. Pop bands aren't. Rock bands are
more traditionally performers."
All those buzzwords again. Butler, the mystery man, isn't
quite so elusive. The pale, gentlemanly fellow thinks benignly about what
should be a prosperous year ahead. "I don't think what we do is going to
fade out tomorrow." he says, gathering up his matches. "I've put a
body of work behind me that I like, but yeah, the best is ahead. We still
haven't made the record where we can stand back and say Yeah, that's what we've
been on about all these years. That's perfect.
"We've probably come closest to it. that toughness, on ‘Talk
Talk Talk' and this new one. As the moment, it's bits here and there." If
such perfection could be made, there'd be no more need for The Psychedelic
Furs. "Yeah! I wouldn't be happy until I had done it." Meanwhile, the
rock still rolls.
