PSYCHEDELICATESSENCE
Duncan Kilburn trying to flag a taxi down in the middle of Times Square. And though he's not having much sucess, Kilburn knows how to do it— step one or even two lanes out into traffic and make yourself a large and as visible as possible, which for Kilburn is an easy job. For not only is he a big man, at the moment he's pretty frustrated: frustrated by schedule that leaves the Psychedelic Furs— the band he plays sax for— as little free time as possible, frustrated by the clear, hot, and bright weather, frustrated by the photographers' demands.
Behind him trail five other band members, two publicists, a reporter and a photographer. The procession stretches and straggles for nearly a block, a few clustering by a wig shop here, two others standing over a subway grating there, some more getting mixed in for a theatre queue. Sometime later, in the beige and red bar of a posh and impersonal Holiday Inn about fifteen blocks north and west, Furs drummer Vince Ely comments over the noise of few nearby conversations, clanging hors d’ouevre plates, and overload cocktail muzak that: “You have to realize you become part of a traveling circus.”
Bassist Tim Butler, a bit cocky with four
Heinekens inside of him within a relatively short pace of time, chimes in: “But all rock bands do it, and vou wouldn't be in a rock band if you didn't know this sort of thing happens.”
So, the essential conflict of The Psychedelic Furs: they’re mildly amusing traveling circus masquerading as art! The Psychedelic Furs have always been glaringly one dimension. The first LP was new punk, a commercial and an obvious side of the sort of area Killing Joke and Theatre of Hate explored so much better, loud, black and green day-glo, empty whining ‘n’ boring and tired philosophy about the 'system.’ Good impersonation of a good record, a bad— though not failing— impersonation of an important band.
A year later, 'Talk Talk Talk'. Like its sleeve, it's full of flat and obvious sheets of colour and melody, more black and white music with a quick and artificial wash of tone over it. Like, say, The Teardrop Explodes it doen't seem so sure as to whether to exist as art or bubblegum, but unlike Teardrop, who can at least make a passable stab at being the former and do quite nicely with the latter, the Furs try to fake art and end up producing bubblegum.
And, at times, quite decent bubblegum. at that. Much of 'Talk Talk Talk' is at the same level as The Undertones' 'Positive Touch', rather than being an equal product to either of the two Bunnymen LPs. We're talking New Psychedelic here. Though none of these bands are doing honest Psychedelia, the way Robyn Hitchcock, Cabaret Voltaire, Colin Newman, or Flipper (from America's West Coast) are doing, the variation these bands are working on is quite nice, really: The Great 60's Psychopop that doesn't really sound like anything from the 60's, that imaginary cross between the Velvets or the Doors and that tuneful 'Revolver' or 'Association'-type stuff.
The Bunnymen seem to have found it perfectly, Teardrop Explodes do well at it on a more ligthweight and more exploitable level, the Undertones temporarily and successfully pass through it, and the Psychedelic Furs... the Psychedelia is passing through a band that's trying to decide to be the P. Furs.
They're not so much dishonest as naive and not aware of their naivete, grasping for labels and grasping for the credibility that might come with them. A band trying to find themselves, their niche, and their audience, failing, but occasionally being entertaining if a bit annoying-while failing.
The Furs are a band grasping for credibility and honestly thinking they've attained it. The Furs are here in America for two months, and if America will accept and support them, The Furs will be quito hanny Unlike The Fall who are currently in America to break new ground, The Furs are here to exploit their old ground, and hear it applauded.
The Furs are well over an hour late for our initial meeting. Why? They've been down at The Factory, the headquarters of very well known artist and trendy Andy Warhol, meeting with the man himself, from whom they (admittedly) lifted the front cover of 'Talk Talk Talk', a courtesy allowed them by Warhol's (admittedly) lifting the back cover of their first LP for the cover of a recent book of his photographs. (Furs' guitarist John Ashton on Warhol: "He was quite nice, really. He just sort of says 'hello' to you and takes your picture.")
Whether it be Warhol, or David Bowie (who almost produced the second album), or Todd Rundgren (who's probably going to do the third), or David Byrne (who got the Furs some larger hall supporting dates with his Talking Heads last Fall), the Furs do tend to keep fairly good company, which in turn gives them a sort-of credibility-by- association.
"Richard's sort of into Warhol's ideas", Duncan Kilburn notes, his long legs stretched out on the desk of a twelfth floor CBS office, various Furs milling about in mild confusion around him, "but to us he was just another famous person to meet. With all these people he's been going around with, I think Richard's becoming a bit of a famous person himself."
Richard Butler, famous person to be, seems very naturally - almost pleasantly - aloof. In fact, he's intelligent, well mannered, fairly open, quite well spoken, and at the same time sort of careful about what he says. He's wearing loose- fitting black pants, a black jacket over a large Psychedelic Furs T-shirt, and black shades which he flips on and off.
He sits in the Holiday Inn bar next to his younger brother Tim, who's tall, stringy, and just a little awkward looking. Tim wears a pink paisley shirt that buttons up to his left shoulder. When older brother Richard isn't around, Tim tends to try to dominate the proceedings (getting more bombastic as he gets drunker), which essentially is what happens on stage as well.
But like the rest of the Furs, he's essentially fairly nice, and - at least when sober - reasonably easy to get along with.
The older Bulter orders a tomato juice with Worcestershire sauce, and repeats the second half of the order a few times to the departing waitress, but Richard still seems doubtful that it's been heard. Are they optimistic - as they probably should be - about America?
Richard: "I think maybe we've got a lot of American influences, if you like, stuff like the Seeds or the Doors, maybe people take to us because of that." Tim grunts in agreement: "I don't know, it's an impossible thing to talk about, really, because we don't really try to figure out what will succeed in America and what won't, we just do our own sort of music, and so far we've been lucky. We haven't sat down and memorized it or anything.
"We started out at the time punk rock was going. We admitted those influences immediately, which is like 1977 or something, we were the first band to be admitting in the midst of punk rock that we were influenced by 60's bands. Very, very uncool at the time."
Tim: "Yeah, like Joy Division, too."
Richard: "No, but Joy Division weren't so much influenced by 60's bands as much as they were influenced by The Doors."
Tim: "Yeah, lan Curtis's voice."
In his presence, at least, Tim is quick to defer to Richard's judement.
How does the elder Butler respond to criticism that he and the Furs - and especially him, as the frontman - are a bit effected, a bit over- influenced?
"When you're standing on stage in front of about two thousand people and you've got the Psychedelic Furs behind you wacking out music at about six thousand watts you don’t really feel like you're walking down the street getting breakfast," Richard states. "It tends to make you feel a little bit different, and you act accordingly.
"It's very good to say you're supposed to be yourself on stage, but there's no way you're going to be yourself with six thousand watts of very heavy music, and, um, two thousand people. You do become something else. I don't know how I become the person that I become on stage, but when I get out on stage that happens. It's not worked out, it's ... pretty spontaneous.”
"Everybody's a product of their influences. I mean, the reason I speak the English language is because my old lady used to hang over my cot saying 'mama' and 'dada'. The whole world has copied, there's nothing intrinsic. I don't think any kind of art isn't plagaristic, it has to be. All that I find slightly pathetic is that people pick out references that are wrong, meaning inaccurate, and a lot of the time irrelevant."
And has Richard's persona changed on the new album?
Richard: "The new album is more personal. On the first album I was hitting out at institutions a lot I had to get that out of my system, if you like. I got that out on the first album. On the second album, I wanted to write about something in particular, and I chose the subject of love. Trying to look at it from different angles. There's a song about lust, 'I Wanna Sleep With You', there's a song with a lot of tenderness and regret She is Mine' is saying that, like, when you have a lover and you realize that everything you're doing with them has been done before by so many people, there's a lot of sadness in there."
Tim Butler sits at Richard's side, staring into his beer, staring at the tape recorder, occasionally nodding in agreement. As soon as Richard departs and Vince and Roger Morris sit down he'll pipe up again, as he did before Richard joined us, but for now, he remains very nearly silent.
What about the Furs' choice of producers? Todd Rundgren?
"He's good," says Richard. "He's been into us for a while. He approached us a while ago, and there's a couple of guys in the band who are really into his stuff, like Vince and John - I'm not particularly into it."
Bowie?
"David Bowie was too busy, he was too busy doing Elephant Man on Broadway when we needed the second album to be done, so he couldn't make it. Also, we sort of had second thoughts in a way, 'cause when you think of things Bowie did before, he did Mott The Hoople, Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, and people have tended to buy those albums because they were produced by David Bowie, and then the band tends to dissapear a bit after that.
"I think the guy's a great producer, but I'm not the guy's biggest fan in a lot of other ways, and people always think 'Oh yeah, Richard Butler's really influenced by David Bowie', which isn't true." And Steve Lillywhite, who did the first two albums?
"Two albums with one producer is probably enough. Not because we don't enjoy working with him and not because it hasn't been sucessful, simply because a producer tends to add an extra point of view, and we've had Steve's twice now."
So we develop a picture of the Psychedelic Furs as jet-setting glory boys, less transient then a Spandau Ballet or a Secret Affair because they're more adaptable. I have little doubt that the Furs will be annoying us - and keeping us slightly amused - years and trends from now. But always being followed by a certain amount of derision and wariness, a lot of it coming from the press.
"I don't want to make a big point out of it, for one", Richard says, obviously not wanting to dwell too long on the subject of the press.
"I think it's perfectly fair for a reviewer to hate an album, obviously he's not some sort of god who can judge everything equally, a reviewer has taste. All that did worry me a bit or upset me a bit was that a lot of the things being said were so inaccurate.
"Like, a guy saying we're middle class, and we're not middle class. I mean, we've got a guy in the band who's been inside - we're not middle class and not sexist, the songs are written more from an overall point of view, they're not necessarily written from a man's point of view, some are written from a girl's point of view also. I mean a girl can listen to these songs and get off on what's being said.
"The only thing we preach or what I preach, I should say, lyrically is don't be told by anybody what anything means, make up your own minds. The last album is talking about love on that level. Don't be told that love is like a toilet paper advert, where everybody drifts around in pink dresses holding hands and giving each other flowers it means different things to different people. Think for yourself, that's all I'm trying to get across."
With that, Richard Butler is hustled off to another interview. Vince Ely and guitarist Roger Morris enter the bar and take Richard's place. Tim remains, progressively getting drunker, in a neat red leather jacket, string tie, mirrored glasses, and accurately razor-cut hair. Vince is the sharp member of the Furs. He has a sly, big smile, and his conversation is fast, friendly and easygoing: I immediately took to him, particularly since we both share an affection for Robyn Hitchcock, the ex-Soft Boy on whose debut solo LP Vince drums on three tracks. "Yes, Robyn is definitely going to make it big one day he's going to be a star in Britain soon", Vince notes, going on to say "Please give him a good word in your piece - don't go on too much about him, but give him a good word."
Vince seems to be able to be fairly objective about the Furs, and fairly open to various criticism and ideas about them, for what it's worth. Roger is quiet, has a big, empty, friendly face and is a noted contrast to Vince's gregariousness and flash and Tim's gooniness.
By now, the conversation has turned quite easygoing and rambling. Once again, we touch on the Press.
Vince: "The newspapers in England have been very unkind to us.”
Tim: "Especially one in particular, that shall remain nameless."
Vince: "Yeah, very, very narrowminded. The actual reviews have been silly, Yeah, that's a fair word, silly really very silly."
Tim: "I'd just like to say 'hello, Dave McCullough'."
The Psychedelic Furs live is where the lines between art, facade, and circus really become obvious. What they get away with on record - the pretty good pop made almost by accident - falls flat on its face live. On stage, the Furs are all pose and faked cool, basically a higher key version of what's bad about their records, only more offensive.
No matter what Butler says, he's (consciously or unconsciously) stolen more moves from Lydon and Bowie than most people could count. The other Furs play their parts as expected/demanded, and play them pretty much in the background, remaining more or less stationary and more or less Butler's, backing band, some trying to show off a bit (Duncan and Tim), others detached and/or tense (Roger and John). And the lighting and blocking is pretty much well, not pretty much but exactly as you'd expect. Butler and co. have obviously studied the live photos on the 'Velvet Underground With Nico' LP, and tried to image what those pics would look like if they moved - It's all shafts and slabs of green, pink and black lights, and Warhol-esque back projection.
It was clearly one of the worst things I've seen this year, but here's the rub - unlike a lot of the other really bad shows I've seen. I had no real desire to leave this one: the end result was that the surface entertainment was entertaining, the material was pleasant and amusing enough to keep you listening (if not watching), and the spectacle was spectacular, enjoyable on that level.
'Talk Talk Talk' isn't the best album of the year, but it's not the worst - as some people would like to picture it - and it'll spin on my turntable fairly often. Because the Furs have done some good songs, even if they've done them for bad reasons, because I'll be humming 'Pretty In Pink', 'Into You Like A Train', or 'Mr Jones', because I won't let lyrics like "If you believe that anyone/like me within a song/would try to change it all..." bother me, or the visual image of the almost unbelievably affected Richard Butler bother me.
And the same is true of the first album: It's silly, repetitive, breaks no new ground, but I still remember - and quite like "India", "We Love You", or "Susan's Strange", don't I?
You feel bad for slagging the Furs, because they're not hurting anyone - fooling some, but they're essentially just more harmless and slightly effective pop stars, passing through our ears and minds, even if they personally would like to make a more lasting impression, even if they're occassionally laughable while trying to do it.
Vince Ely: "I can remember listening to records when I was 18 and sitting there and smoking things and thinking 'God, this is really intense', and now I look back and think God, I wasn't supposed to feel that way at all but I did and it gave me something to think about, at least.”
