PSYCHEDELIC FURS
The Psychedelic Furs’ adenoidal frontman on booze, hypochondria and coming back.
With a new LP imminent, Richard Butler reflects on going uncommercial, elaborate stage sets and his old communist dad George.
CALLING FROM upstate New York, Richard Butler has just returned from Miami, where The Psychedelic Furs’ singer has his latest show of paintings. He isn’t neglecting rock’n’roll; Made Of Rain, the group’s first album since 1991’s World Outside, is a spiky restatement of their new-wave tropes topped by Butler’s familiar rasp, and arguably their strongest since 1982’s US breakthrough Forever Now. More career-defining, of course, was John Hughes’ 1986 movie Pretty In Pink, which enshrined an earlier Furs song title. “I’d written the song about a girl who felt empowered by being promiscuous,” laments Butler, “but the film was basically about a girl who wears a pink dress to a prom. So that’s what we became known for!” Time, then, to redress the balance.
What does painting have over rock’n’roll?
I went to art school and I’ve always enjoyed painting. I love the solitude too: you’re not relying on anyone else, unlike a band. Being on tour too, it’s exhausting.
Why a new Furs album now?
When we started touring again [in 2000], the line-up wasn’t solid, but we’ve been stable for a while. Playing the old material is still exciting, but I needed to play something new, and everyone started contributing ideas. A few people have said it sounds like World Outside. It’s certainly not the commercial, sheeny side of Mirror
Moves [1984] and Midnight To Midnight [1986], God forbid.
You’ve expressed bafflement about that era’s hydraulic stages and fringed leather jackets.
We were playing increasingly larger shows, and our lighting designer said he wanted to build a stage, so we had these hydraulic lights and weird ramps. It felt wrong. I got quite ill from it, actually, the stress gave me heart arrhythmia. After World Outside, I needed to try something else, which was to form Love Spit Love. We did two albums, and I’d started painting by then, but the Furs were offered a tour with The B-52’s and I thought, Hang on, this might be good, and we found we approached the songs with a degree of excitement and freshness again.
Why call the album Made Of Rain?
It’s a tip of the cap to Irish poet Brendan Kennelly who, after a heart operation, wrote The Man Made Of Rain about a vision he had while hovering between life and death. Has the album a unifying theme? Only that I’m a miserable bastard! I’ve always been attracted to loss, melancholy, anger, sorrow.
You and Tim have played together since 1977 – an admirably long time for brothers.
We’ve always got along. I had another brother who died, and we never conflicted either. Maybe because of how my father was, us brothers stuck together. He was a communist and an atheist, and very strict. Like, if I wore a black shirt, he’d say it was like the Nazis. Chewing gum was too American. He was pro-Russian – he gave lectures in Russia, he spoke Russian, had friends from the embassy come over; I wondered if there was something going on, like [super-spy] Kim Philby! He loved to argue, which I think engendered a love of argument in me. We used to be a very argumentative band. Lots of alcohol involved, and egos. A couple of the band left [in 1982] because of the feuds.
The Furs were initially a thrilling mix of punk energy and nuanced new wave – with prominent sax.
The Clash and Pistols were big influences, but we didn’t want to throw out everything: we loved Roxy Music, Bowie, the Velvets and Dylan. Though my dad was anti-American, he played Dylan, and Muddy Waters too. We weren’t first-generation punks anyway – our first album came out in 1980. Tell us something you’ve never told an interviewer before.
I’m a fairly chronic hypochondriac. At school, I thought I had cancer. The condition passed until my thirties, when it came back, to the point that my doctor would say, “What are you dying of this week?” I don’t know why it happens. Maybe it’s fear, and then the release in finding nothing’s wrong. Maybe the arrhythmia triggered it. I’m on medication for it. Even climbing the stairs can make me out of breath. Though it doesn’t affect me on-stage, where I feel fairly energetic.
The Psychedelic Furs’ Made Of Rain is out on Cooking Vinyl on May 1. The band play the Royal Albert Hall on May 14.
“I’m a miserable bastard!” RICHARD BUTLER