The Psychedelic Furs: The Butler Did It
There's a scene in David Cronenburg's The Fly where a baboon gets zapped, beamed from Point A to Point B, and reassembled as simian upsidedown cake – a scene that is as good a definition as any for "psychedelic fur."
Metaphorically speaking, it fits. Since 1977, singer Richard Butler and fellow Furs Tim Butler (bass) and John Ashton (guitar) have been skinning pop alive and staking its hide out to dry. Early efforts The Psychedelic Furs (1980) and Talk Talk Talk (1981) pitted the band's honeyed swirl of pedaling bass, lockstep drumming, heavily-flanged guitar and dreamy, free falling saxophone against Butler's Cockney croak and Beckett-ish lyrics. The outcome, epitomized by songs like 'Susan's Strange' and 'Pretty In Pink' (the loosely-taken inspiration for Breakfast Club director John Hughes' latest feature), was a ground glass gumball few could resist.
A turning point came with 1982's Todd Rundgren-produced Forever Now, which yielded an unexpected Top 40 smash in the haunting, hooky 'Love My Way'. 84's Mirror Moves dealt from the same hand, leavening the chainsaw buzz of vintage Furs with newfound technopopisms ('The Ghost In You', 'Heaven', 'High Wire Days'). 'Heaven' cracked England's Top 30, and the album charted high on both sides of the ocean.
Success, however, can be a platinum albatross around a band's neck. The Furs (augmented by ex-Thompson Twin Roger O'Donnell on keyboards, guitarist Marty Williamson, brassman Mars Williams and Clarence Clemons' sideman Paul Garisto on drums) are currently embarked on a grueling tour which will see them across the States and around the globe, returning to the U.S. in early '87. Dragging heavily on a menthol cigarette, Richard Butler weighs the success of past chart-toppers against the band's latest offering, tentatively titled Midnight to Midnight and due on the racks October sixth.
"I think we've achieved a lot that we set out to do," he asserts, "and I think we've got a lot more to achieve. I just worry sometimes that too many people judge us by Mirror Moves because it's our most successful album and (they) think that it's representative of the band. Although it is an album that I'm proud of, I'd like people to look at all the strongest points of our career and judge us by that.
"I don't know how much commercial success is a valid goal for anybody. If you've got a good idea and you think you have anything to say, to get through to a lot of people is very important. For us, it's a question of not so much compromising but doing songs that people can understand easily in order to pull them into the songs that they don't understand. A lot of people have picked up on us through 'Pretty In Pink' (and) I'm glad that it means they're coming down to the shows because we're not presenting just 'Pretty In Pink' or Mirror Moves, we're presenting stuff that goes way back, like 'India' or 'Sister Europe', which I think are important songs."
On the other hand, muses Butler, "To get a lot of people to listen to you – if you think it's important to have people listen to you, which I do – you have to attract peoples' attention, which means getting played on the radio, which means that you have to take some of the edges off yourself." A moment to stub out a smoldering butt, and then: "When people get used to you, you can start putting the edges back in!" Flashing a vulpine grin, he adds, "That's what we're in the process of doing at the moment."
One of the sharp-edged ingredients in The Furs' new nail soup is producer Chris (Rolling Stones, Killing Joke, Marillion) Kimsey's gritty mix. "I like the feel of the albums that he did with (the Stones)," Butler informs, "it sounded like a band. On Mirror Moves, we used a lot of drum machines and the feeling was very much of a studio album and we said, "Well, how do you want to make this next album different?, and thought, 'More guitars, more of a band feel'."
Likewise, Butler and brother Tim's foster home of New York has added sandpaper and spit to the new record. "I'm hoping that the feeling is very urban, very nighttime," suggests Butler. "It's my interpretation of being in a place. There's a song called 'Heartbreak Beat', and it's about that feeling when you walk through Washington Square Park and you've got all the boxes going and it sounds like this huge phase-shifter. New York has definitely affected the feel of the songs. I very much pick up on what's around me, steal things, phrases, the feeling of being out at night in New York."
Slipping arsenic in with the old lace comes naturally to Butler, and much of the new record's "edges" owe a debt to the vocalist's patented death rattle. "I don't think I'm a great singer in terms of the history of singers," he concedes. "I haven't got a brilliant range. I think what I do I get away with because I have an original-sounding voice and my phrasing is original...I think probably the things that are most characteristic about my voice are the things that I do wrong. If I took voice lessons, I'd probably come out sounding like everybody else. I think I've gotten back to that (earlier style) on this album; it's not so sweet." Coupled with guitarist John Ashton's mosquito drone, the result should satisfy like a length of lead pipe right between the eyes.
Asked if he considers his evocative lyrics "poetry," Butler fires up another smoke and considers. "No, I think of them as rock lyrics these days," he decides. "'Poetry' is a bit too ivory tower a label. I think that rock lyrics are specifically written for now, and I don't expect them to make very much sense in the year 2020. I don't think they're eternal; they're written for immediate consumption. But I think the same thing applies to art. I mean, you can go into a museum and look at a Matisse and say, 'Yeah, I really understand what Matisse is about,' but you don't. It used to be that somebody like that created a riot when he first hung his paintings, people cracking jokes about them being hung upside down. It was that kind of polarization that made his work really important, and I think to see a painting that is pretty dull-colored by comparison to the colors that people use now is nowhere near the same effect. So I wouldn't say that the actual intensity of his work has hung on, and I don't think anything really does. It's just relevant to its time."
Probed about the exact meanings of Furs songs, Butler flinches under the dissecting scalpel. "The lyrics come at you elliptically. They're not about any one thing. I've never set out to write a song about this or that, you know; it just kind of flows and I like to see it as a series of separate images."
Pressed, he offers a few insights: "'Pretty In Pink' is about a girl who's morally very lax, you could say. You know, you see a lot of people who think they're very smart and everybody's madly in love with them, whereas everybody's actually saying, 'What an easy lay she is.' It's just a song about a person like that – people don't even remember her name and she's busy thinking she's the greatest thing since sliced bread...'Love My Way' is a political song in terms of sexuality; it's written about somebody I knew who decided she was gay. She'd been very close to me and it was a worrying thing for her to be going through and it was my way of saying, 'Try not to worry about it'."
In many ways, Richard Butler is The Psychedelic Furs' conscience. When the gingerbread gets too tasty to leave a tummyache, Butler stirs in the gravel. When the sampled panpipes and pizzicato strings begin to whisper sweet nothings, Butler livens things up with a splash of battery acid, lyrically speaking. "Another lie for you/another point of view," he reminds in 'No Tears', "How can we believe in them?/Don't believe in anything."
"Honesty, no chaser," is Butler's standing order, and it shows up onstage as well as in the studio. "I find myself in the position of not being a 'natural' performer; I don't think I'm a natural extrovert. I'm a person who likes my privacy a great deal, and to be up there, for me, feels really bizarre. I'm very, very self conscious, and I can't think of anything to say. I remember, in the early days, I'd have to have my back to the audience to be able to (perform), and it's only recently that I've had the confidence to be able to do some moving around. I'm aware that people want some extra contact with a performer; they don't go and see a performer just to listen to the record being sung – they could sit at home and listen to that. They want to know you, and that's the part, if any, that I think lacks in my own stagecraft. And like I say, I can't find the way to make that contact without sounding gratuitous. So I'd rather leave it, leave that mystery there, leave that wall there, leave it as not being a natural position to be onstage. I can't pretend that it is natural."
And what does the future hold for a man who draws a line behind the proscenium arch and dares the world to step over it? A stab at the flicker industry, perhaps. "There have been a few mentions of (movie roles), and there get to be more as time goes by. I tend to be very, very wary, because I don't think it's the same thing, working in film as working onstage, and a lot of people make the mistake of thinking it is. A great actor forgets who he is and gets involved in the part, and rock music is totally the opposite – imagining this person, developing this one very strict pose." Then, a smile slices his gaunt, dustbowlcheeked face. "If I could play any film role, I think it'd be Mickey Rourke's role in Rumblefish. That part was really cool; very understated, very James Dean."
As always with frontmen, the mirage of a solo outing shimmers in the distance. "The idea of doing something solo fascinates me 'cause I'd like to know what Richard Butler's idea of music is...I've worked with (The Furs) for so long that their ideas have probably filtered into me and I'd like to know what Richard Butler does when he has a bunch of musicians to say what to do to."
Nonetheless, The Psychedelic Furs receive top billing on Butler's current marquee. "The Furs just had a two year layoff and I think these next two years are going to be particularly busy. We're touring for the next year, we want to do a live album off the back of that tour, and another studio album coming off that tour and going into the studio as a really hot performing band."
The man who used the word "stupid" on the first Furs album the way The Beatles used the word "love" on theirs shows no signs of mellowing. Asked for a crapshoot on the current pop scene, he ventures, "I think it's a bitter disappointment, to tell you the truth. I think, after the energy that punk had about it, it's gone right back to fluff – which I guess had to happen. It's probably a reaction against it. But I personally can't wait till it's over and the next punk rock, the next reaction to that pop sensibility comes along."
So, in light of the cotton candy clogging current airwaves, can we safely assume that upcoming Furs records will be more, uh, abrasive?
"Oh, definitely," Butler says, with a chuckle.
The sound of a stropping razor is just barely audible.