Inside The Fur Trade
He doesn’t bite his nails; that's a myth.
He does chainsmoke, and he does gesticulate expansively and laugh nervously to qualify anything he says. that hints at the impractical, the dare we say it deep, the more than matter-of-fact (There's not enough of this and the fault could be mine, or his, or Monday afternoon's). We pass the time of day. And when it's done something very odd happens I can't open the door. I can't get out I pull it again, again, but it won't. We both find this, I mostly know, partially assume, initially disconcerting eventually revelational.
There are more florid and intimidating symbols in the average day than there are worthwhile events. How sweet it is to be beyond. "I think the most beautiful times are when you feel happiness and sadness together. I'm not a spring kind of person who runs around looking at all the little lambs… I prefer autumn because it's beautiful and it's the end of something for something to resonate property within me it has to have a sadness. Or an anger.”
Are you a symbol! (I'm trying). “I don't really know" (He's trying) A brooding enigma, then!? "Oh yes, definitely! And there's a lot of arrogance. But I guess you wake up some mornings and go, Wow! Great!! “Yeah, it's still… like… not quite real somehow.”
Yes Anyway... The Psychedelic Furs have been recording their fifth album in Zurich and Berlin with Chris Kimsey and will be applying the finishing touches in Woodstock (which is in America) after a break to play Glastonbury and other dates. There wil be a fut tour before the LP is released in mid-September. A single will happen in July and a revamped version of Pretty in Pink is sprouting to tie in with the release of the soundtrack album of the fim of the same nine. Those things.
Three years ago actress Molly Ringwald told the man who'd written The Breakfast Club: "Listen to this song. Really listen to it. I want you to write me a film like this song.” That's a nice story, isn't it? Five years ago (the research is exhaustive) Richard Butler said "Ideally I'd like to think we're making people think a bit and look at things from another point of view.” Coming from the mouth of The Psychedelic Furs' singer and lyricist this is as close to searing honesty as when a footballer says, "We'll be looking for a result (topical or whatever). It's making chaos an ally, an alloy. It’s not the whole truth.
I'm convinced subversion quivers and scratches somewhere underneath (well, where, who!) so I ask him about it on the surface. “Oh, a lot of music does that though, it’s not any big thing. You just use it to get into a different frame of mind. I don't think lyrics are poetry anyway.” Did you ever? “I kind of did, yeah, at the beginning. I thought of myself as a bit of a poet and all that kind of stuff. I think it's very clever what people Elvis Costello and Bob Dylan have done, they'll be teaching it in schools anytime, but it's a bit overthought and self-serious.”
I had the impression you were succumbed by the fatuity of the everyday struggle, that your persistent feeling that everything’s been done and said before, that we’re banging our heads into a brick wall. He looks away from me, he looks at the floor, which is carpeted. Did you change your mind about that? “No, no I still think that.”
But he takes a safe tangent. The question is rated by the instinctive (or professional?) grace with which the body waves it. "I don't think there's any such thing as originality, really. When you first start out in a band you take reference points, and mine, I guess were The Velvet Underground, Iggy Pop, David Bowie… that was simply what I was into. You end up with this mash of stuff that's a bit of all of them. And then so you make your next album, you develop from that, you look at your own strong points and weak points. Funny… if you take Captain Beefheart and The Velvets, and make something out of that, people say, “God how incredibly original,” whereas if you took Duran Duran and Sade, the same people will say, “Oh that's so hack!” But it's the same process, neither is original. It’s just taste.
Taste is something The Psychedelic Firs exhibited in raging torrents on their first two (beter, twisted, sparing, frequently glorious) albums, in velvet and carafes on Forever Now, in friendly (polite) diamonds (girls do seem to prefer this one) on 84’s 'Mirror Moves’. As a band we've become more and more commercial as time's gone on. There's a lot of changes between the first and fourth records But we want to keep changing and yes, we do want to get it across to a lot of people. We don't want to be poets in a garret, or whatever it is, y’know!"
So, whence cometh inspiration these days! (I'm sorry, this just flounces out) “Oh God knows.” I consider commencing on this but decide to act my age just in time. “I always have a really hard time.. I have bits and pieces of ideas I've written down throughout the year, but not always fitting ones I work best when the pressure's on, when time's limited." Pressure? “There is a pressure to be commercial and balanced with that there’s an inside pressure that says, don't wimp out. I couldn't do something I didn't believe was good. Everybody feels those pressures. The work's hard enough if there wasn’t the excitement, it'd be impossible.”
So this new work; will it surprise us? “In the same way as the dance mix of ‘Heartbeat' was surprising. It all sounds like The Furs still but we've gone out on a limp a bit.” Is there much angry cacophony? "Cacophony? Not so much. There's more of band feel than on ‘Mirror Moves’, this is something Chris Kimsey's gone to great lengths for.” Is there any tender melancholy! "Oh yes! A few of these, ha ha ha! There's one which is contemporarily called Angels Don't Cry: I’m trying to figure out title or not. I think it might be worth its way through.”
Oh surely it'd only be wimpy if they did cry? (I know of the right things to say) Richard Butler laughs the laugh of slightly distant man. “I read an interview where somebody asked in regards to rock and roll, I don't like it unless it’s moving, I knew what that meant.” Other new song titles like ‘Boys And Girls’ and ‘It's Like Torture’ (though it may end up as ‘Every Word Of The Law’)
Richard Butler’s idea of heaven (without subtitles) “I was talking to a woman recently who was dead on arrival at the hospital. She was in car crash, she had about three pints of blood left. She said this thing about going up into a tube. At the time of the accident all her life had flashed before her and all that, but when she was actually "dying’ the different parts were going past her in reverse order. So, recent events would go across her eyes and then peel off to make way for earlier events. And the more things that peeled off, the higher up this tube she went. She said all she had was a feeling of joy and happiness.. and all that kind of thing. “I guess that maybe that was heaven, I don't know. But maybe that feeling would've ended, and faded to nothing I don't know.”
Richard Butler’s idea of hell (it’s the way he sells 'em) “I heard a funny story. Somebody went to hell and was told; There's your guitarist. And It's Jimi Hendrix and Brian Jones. And then they're told; There's your drummer. And it's like John Bonham or Keith Moon, etc. And the guy's thinking how can this possibly be hell! This is great! Then they say, Here's the leader of the band; And it’s Karen Carpenter.” That's a funny story, isn’t it?The points of reference, however, surprised me until I had the thought: Ah!Maybe Richard Butler is not an old punk, but just an old rocker!
"Not punk…. in 76, 77, music was a big social factor, it wasn't just that you were listening to the Sex Pistols or The Clash, it was that you were a punk. It gave a lot of people an identity, like I guess ‘Sgt. Pepper’ or ‘The Grateful Dead’ did with the hippies. Now it's all very fragmented, it's just a ‘pop’ era. "We just used the name 'psychedelic’ to get attention at a time when everybody else punk. Bands at that time were denying anything that came out of the 60s, and I personally got a lot out of the 60s. I wasn't about to throw that away. So it was being kind of antagonistic towards the punk thing, just to… not agree.”
And this time the laugh is becoming large. The plot of The Psychedelic Furs has mostly resolved itself before the end of the story. Is that what you would have anticipated! This is supposed to be several niggling questions disguised as one bland one. What do you reckon! Sometimes interviewers wil hang themselves. I have no desire for Butler to do this. Many of his records have been anthems for the less mindless factions of our centreless generation. Besides, I've seen uglier necks.
“Not at all, I never thought of it as being successful in real terms. With it actually arriving, with us being now a ‘successful band.” It’s constantly surprise to me. “To make my living at this is an incredible luxury. And think about the bands that were I going when I started out, and how many of them have just fallen by the wayside. Only a few of my contemporaries have stuck through it all. We're very fortunate, luck has to be a part of it. But one thing I get a kick out of is the respect we get from other musicians- which never expected. The weirdest so-called names seem to love us. And I’m always quite embarrassed by this, at a loss as to what to say.
"The Furs is a part of me but it's not the same Richard Butler that makes a record and does the shopping. When I'm onstage I'm presenting the image that's on the record because that's the only one I feel comfortable putting out in front of all those people. But it's not the real-life me. I feel very vulnerable and awkward sometimes… when I'm not dressed up. I feel kind of caught out, I feel I should say “Hey, I'm not bitter like I am on the records.” Before I go onstage I got the most horrible stage fright. I'd rather be working on a production line at Fords than doing that. It gets really bad sometimes.”
But the image you convey attracts, intrigues & influencesx “I’m not sure. I don't think as consciously about it as say Siouxsie. If I was The Ice Queen and all that business I couldn't go through with it. I just… well it’d be very difficult to stand there with the band blasting out this music and me going “Hi guys! Well I bought some bread and cheese yesterday!” I just do what I would like to see if i want to see somebody performing.”
Sometimes in the daily wisdom of my sanity, I rock back and forth and reflect on how very understanding my white-haired mother was to let me call my first ever cat “Ziggy.” Everyone has to get it out of their system one way or another. The Psychedelic Furs (still) fit a crucial glamour-pop for a lot of people. And this i: a single, really. Even today the first album bites and imagines like I knew yesterday and there was no tomorrow, tomorrow. Show me a more aggressive defeatist pop song than ‘Pulse’ or ‘Fall’ or ‘Wedding Song’ and I’ll point out a mistake. For me, the Furs are purple paranoia, the feverish faux, the ‘Imitation Of Christ’ pose, the awareness of sex as realism and romance as fantasy, the subterranean scared-to-self-destruct stance and style (“biting my nails until sleep come around”) These factors all raged and written exquisitely until the first bona fide hit single ‘Love My Way’ which included the lines "You can never win or lose if you don’t run the race.”
This was something of a turning point. Now they just make classy (and in their own way, durable) mature records. Richard Butler, Tim Butler and John Ashton have surprised themselves, it could be a lot worse. At Glastonbury some of the new songs will juggle their own coming-out ball and we shall see. Richard is worrying already, in his words. “The stress for these 60 or 90 minutes on stage is incredible. I don’t feel like a natural performer. I have to keep reminding myself that the very worst is never too bad.” Ah the demands of success. “Yes.”
He is somewhat embarrassed by the price he pays for living in New York. “I have a very private life at the moment. I can walk to a cafe on Becker Street at 5am, and just sit there with a coffee on summer nights, it’s great, you can just watch the world go by.” Richard Butler’s eyes are triangular. That’s another story, isn’t it?
In closing, we wonder whether it’s just a living or an ‘art’ for fun, or at least I wonder.. or at least I told him I do. “I don’t know what I think of as art anymore. I don’t spend a great deal of time thinking about what’s art and what isn’t. I gave up on that one. But it’s something more than a living, it’s kind of.. making a living on your own wits. Which sometimes is great and sometimes is a great pressure. I had some shitty jobs before I did this!”
Unfortunately, this wasn’t a story about a primadonna and a butcher boy. So how about it, sesame?