Our tour with the Psychedelic Furs in May/June has bumped them to the top of the Great Ape queue, not that they needed the help. Keith does this Furs classic proud, and there is much to discuss, but first, a quick note to let you know that prince Sean McVerry will join us on tour in April for the European 20th Anniversary shows. As he is expert at doing, Sean will both open the evening with his own sublime set of songs, and then join us for our second set, mostly to play triangle and koto on all the songs we foolishly loaded down with triangle and koto years ago. 👍 Thank you, Sean!
(This will be a person named “Sean McVerry”’s first time playing Ireland, guys. Think about that. Is stuff going to burst into flames??)
Now, let’s talk The Psychedelic Furs.
CHRIS: Keith, we’re a couple months out from our tour supporting The Psychedelic Furs, and I worry that’s why you chose their 1984 song “The Ghost in You,” from the album Mirror Moves, as the latest Ape. You can be a harsh judge, and that side of your personality I greatly respect. But you can also be a degenerate nepotist, and for Keith Murray the nepotisto flagrante, I simply do not have time!
How you came to this song, I remain uninformed. But you could not have chosen a greater ape if you had stumbled into the Cave of the Pre-Obligate Bipeds and asked to speak to their leader. The Psychedelic Furs are among the greatest confluencers of punk, rock, and pop that has ever stalked the earth, a bass guitar, saxophone, and snare drum slung over their backs. I make them sound very old — they’re not; The Rolling Stones could be, and for all I know in some cases are, their parents.
In 1977, the Butler brothers, Tim and Richard, formed this act, along with two, and then four other members, all of whom would ultimately fall by the wayside. Tim was the bass player, Richard the singer, and aside them played a drummer, saxophonist, and two guitarmen. From the outset, they positioned themselves as adjacent to punk, but other. “Psychedelic” was meant to contrast with the ‘pistols’ and ‘clash’ and ‘slits’ and ‘wire’s, and hearken back to bands of their youths. Dylan and Roxy Music were always mentioned in early interviews, as were your favs The Velvet Underground. The Stooges, sure, but Hank Williams, Bowie… this, like all great bands, was a complicated soup.
Their first record, S/T, came out in 1980, and did very well in the UK — “Sister Europe” is a song most will know. But 1981’s Talk Talk Talk blew them up bigger, especially in the states, and introduced the world to “Pretty in Pink.” The filmmaker John Hughes seems to have heard it and decided to make a movie? Indeed, it took him 5 years, but he did make a movie. The Furs re-recorded their tune for the soundtrack, and it did well in the UK and US charts. But first, and of utmost importance to those gathered here today…
1982 brought Forever Now, a wonderful album recorded with Todd Rundgren in upstate New York, less than a thousand miles from where I type this right now. (I say that knowing that my NYC apartment is just under 1000 miles from Indianapolis, so, VERY safely less than 1K from wherever Todd Rundgren’s 1982 studio was.) Forever Now birthed a synth-forward classic called “Love My Way,” which aliens will probably be DJing at birthday parties 500,000 years from now. Just another towering hit for The Furs, and not the subject of today’s convo.
No, we’re here for “Ghost in You,” track one on 1984’s Mirror Moves. 1984 was a big year. To name only the Great Apes that The Furs were up against, you had Steve Winwood’s magnificent “Higher Love,” and Hall & Oates’s “Out of Touch.” There were of course many other songs, but I’ll mention a few by name since I think they could conceivably be Aped in the future: “Jump” (Van Halen), “Looks That Kill” (the Crüe), “Rebel Yell” (Billy Idol), and “You Might Think” (The Cars). I’m choosing not to include “We’re Not Gonna Take It” by Twisted Sister, “I Wanna Be Somebody” by W.A.S.P., and “Sister Christian” by Night Ranger because those songs must not be considered for coverage in the Great Apes series.
Keith, History’s violent mind is tempered by a straightjacket of Patience. 1984’s listeners thought “Heaven” was the big single off of Mirror Moves, but that’s because they wouldn’t be able to watch Stranger Things S2E3 “The Pollywog” for another 43 years. I’m just kidding. Although that usage is cited online as a reason for “Ghost”’s popularity, it’s pretty funny to watch the scene and imagine that it converted more than a dozen listeners. Unlike Kate Bush’s big Stranger Things feature, the Furs drop would be easy to miss (it happens just after 27mins in if you want to check it out for yourself).
Well, today you’ve added more post facto justification for “Ghost in Me”’s inclusion in the top tier of Psychedelic Furs songs. What did you think about this song, before covering it and after? Two observations from my side: these lyrics are splendid — if they lack a truly unforgettable line, they make up for it with a plainspoken poetic approach that “kicks a lot of thus-flattened ass” (quoting Thomas Hardy, 1867). And: Richard Butler has a decent range! I hadn’t really thought of it before, but hearing you, whom I know to be “a fair accomplished warbler” (Hardy, 1870) really hunch to get those verses out — well, that drew my ear to Butler’s accomplishment.
KEITH: Chris, it is true that I am widely regarded as one of music’s great vocalists. People call me a “genius,” a “god,” a “living god,” a “god in an industry of pig people,” etc. What almost nobody calls me, though, is a “bass.” I’ve got what the military classifies as “a pencil-neck,” a throat structured strictly for producing a range of sound lying somewhere between “birdsong” and “teakettle.” I just can’t really get down there in the mud with the bass vocalists, try as I might. I hunch, I crouch. I close my eyes and channel bullfrogs. But my voice remains that of a pre-teen girl. Many people think that the reason I didn’t join the Pud-Tones, Pomona College’s a cappella squad, was because I didn’t want to take the mandatory vow of celibacy, but really it was because I couldn’t deliver the booming bassline required for their signature song, a cover of Candlebox’s “You.”
Jesus. You know how, especially as our catalogue has expanded, we’ve made a point of giving our songs titles chosen to promote differentiation? So, for example, a song whose most frequent refrain is “don’t change” gets called “At The Mall In My Dreams,” not just because it’s a more evocative title but because We Are Scientists has already released a song called “Don’t Change” (see our INXS Great Ape). Well, Chris, on their first quadruple-platinum(?!) album, Candlebox decided to call a song “You.” Granted, they say the word “you” a lot in this song. Also granted, it’s a terrible song that deserves an innocuous, throwaway title. Other singles from this — I repeat — quadruple platinum(?!) garbage dump of a Candlebox record? “Far Behind,” “Change,” and “Cover Me.” I’ve never listened to the full album (just the abhorrent radio singles), but I assume that it must be difficult to hear the actual recording above the yawns of the assembled listenership, if those song titles are any indication of the depth of creativity those chimps bring to the table.
Not so with The Psychedelic Furs. “Love My Way,” “Heartbreak Beat,” “Pretty in Pink,” “Sister Europe” — singular titles for singular songs. There can’t be more than a small handful of bands with a song called “President Gas,” right? And so the trend continues with “Ghost In You.” The only other song I’m seeing with that title on Spotify that isn’t a cover of the Furs’ classic appears to be Siouxsie and the Banshees’ tune from 1991, which makes up for the decade-late unoriginality of the title by being (as far as I can tell) the basic template for the entirety of Yeah Yeah Yeah’s (very cool) late-career output.
But Psychedelic Furs are on their own creative trip. It’s funny that the combination of my familiarity with their early 80s radio hits plus the John Hughes connection always made me couch the Psychedelic Furs in the “Pretty Synth Pop” category of 80s hit-makers, a cohort that includes, say, OMD or Human League (both of whom I love). But listening back more closely since we’ve booked this tour, I am hearing a very cool edginess — that cited Velvet Underground influence doesn’t strike me as simply credibility-baiting PR. There’s something dark and scuzzy in these songs, even as the music and melodies embrace the hazy warmth of those 80s teen films. These guys seem to me to sit more happily in the world of Bauhaus/Love and Rockets/Sisters of Mercy, but their devotion to pop songcraft puts them a cut above that crew, in my book.
Did the Furs’ association with Pretty In Pink lead you to a similar impression of sanded edges and pleasant production? Am I not giving John Hughes enough credit? I always thought he had tremendous taste in music, but maybe wasn’t steeped in *edgy* music. I mean, maybe renowned weirdo Harry Dean Stanton introduced him to The Psychedelic Furs?
CHRIS: Unhand poor Candlebox, Keith! I was among the many, the proud, the four million, in fact, who savored and treasured that 1993 album, which presaged so much essential Americana, from Creed to Staind to Hinder all the way over to Fuel. Eh… okay, I just listened back, and these songs have not aged well. I’m going to go ahead and stamp out the ember that was just now threatening to burst into a full fledged Gravelly Belter inferno, engulfing S.D.I.R. for months. Canceled!
It’s interesting, what you say about the Furs’ perception. I suppose I thought of them as a little scuzzier than you did, and for me it was not just Richard Butler’s voice but also a certain dinginess judiciously applied to those otherwise pristine synths. Something about the production is just a little darker than your Human Leagues or your OMDs. Sisters of Mercy is a good call, as is of course Candlebox (is that what you were saying?). Echo and the Bunnymen always sit alongside PFs in my mind, but now that I’m studying that juxtaposition I’m not sure it’s fair — I don’t think the Bunnymen claim ties to punk. But yeah, in early Psychedelic Furs interviews like this one and this one (with a very awkward Paula Yates), Richard seems at pains to establish that they should not be grouped as a British punk act, and have deep pre-punk affinities (they say they moved to New York due to Velvet Underground worship). He doesn’t seem at all worried about being painted with the Pretty Pop brush.
As to how a softie like John Hughes came to “Pretty in Pink,” apparently Molly Ringwald turned him onto it! (I hear she also used to savage Harry Dean Stanton at bloody knuckles during downtime on set, and take his money at dice.) It’s funny to hear Richard Butler talk about the “Pretty in Pink” phenomenon. He’s always quick to point out that although the movie was, yes, written “based on” the song, it’s actually a misrepresentation — “I’m not sure if he misinterpreted the lyrics or didn’t think a movie about that would be good for the teen market,” he says, cuz the song is about a person who “looks great naked.” Teenage Chris Cain sure wishes Hughes had stuck a little closer to the damn blueprint.
KEITH: Yeah, I guess it’s the relative chastity of the John Hughes oeuvre that colored my perception of Psychedelic Furs. Even though pretty much all of those movies have at least a sub-plot about some doofus trying to lose his virginity, they’re all generally pretty PG-grade (even in Weird Science, a movie about two guys who create a sex-goddess, the depth of the resultant woman’s depravity is her willingness to take the guys to a jazz club). I guess I just reflexively classed the prominently-featured musical acts as similarly family-friendly fare.
I’ve famously (very famously!) always maintained that, when I do reluctantly get my hair cut by professionals, I prefer that they’d be as unprofessional as possible. My three favorite hairstylists each ended their practices because they (individually, as far as I know) had to leave New York to go to drug rehab. They cut my hair like absolute psychos with nothing to lose, and I loved it. I guess I feel the same way about purveyors of beautiful pop. I consider it a real mark of quality that the Furs moved to NYC in the early 80s, the scuzziest era in the city’s modern history (I guess the Gangs of New York era looked a little scuzzier, at least as measured in buckets of human excrement flung into street). The fact that they did so in fandom of the most famously scuzzy band in 1960s New York is just a bonus. It kinda even seems like their name is also maybe a play on “The Velvet Underground?”
I think I’m gonna get along just fine with The Psychedelic Furs. I wonder if any of them cuts hair?
✂️
