After Almost 50 Years Performing Live
is Still a Thrill for the Psychedelic Furs
Story by Matthew St. Amand
Photography by Matthew Reeves
It is an improbable journey leading from the front room of a family home in Surrey, England, circa 1977, to the stage of the Colosseum at Caesars Windsor July 3, 2025. Over the last forty-eight years, the Psychedelic Furs have demonstrated incredible staying power as they continue blazing their singular trail through pop culture and the music world.
It all began with brothers Tim and Richard Butler:
“We went to see the Sex Pistols at the Hundred Club in 1976,” Tim recalls, “and both of us were so knocked out by seeing them—realizing you could learn three chords on a guitar and be in a band. Before then, I never thought about being in music. I was just finishing school and thinking of becoming a veterinarian! Richard talked about forming a band with me. I said I’d want to be at the bottom end—bass or drums—but I couldn’t afford a drum kit. So, Richard said: ‘Buy yourself a bass, learn to play it and we’ll form a band.’”
From their inception in February 1977, the Psychedelic Furs forged their own place in music. They chose the word “psychedelic” as part of their band name in an era when Johnny Rotten roamed London wearing his famous “I Hate Pink Floyd” shirt.
“The names of bands were so vicious,” Tim recalls. “The Sex Pistols. The Clash. The Stranglers. We thought if we went in a different direction with our name, someone looking down a gig list would look at all those bands and then see ‘The Psychedelic Furs’… and they would wonder: ‘What the hell is this all about?’”
In the earliest days, the band was both inspired and humbled by the response it received from their audiences. Their very first audience—the Butlers’ parents—kicked them out of the front room because the band played too loud. Richard and Tim did not take this as a setback.
“That was OK,” Tim says, “We moved into a rehearsal space and started getting gigs. We ended up being signed by a record company after just forty shows. That is ridiculously quick. We were lucky—because of punk, the record companies were looking for the next big thing.”
As the Furs gained momentum, they remained as frenzied as the scene in which they found themselves. Singer Richard Butler told the Guardian in 2020:
“The Psychedelic Furs were very chaotic when we started… You could get on stage and make whatever noise you wanted. When we played the Roxy, in London, we had a vacuum cleaner in the lineup, which sounded awful, but people seemed to like us and kept coming back.”
As their first producer, Steve Lillywhite, noted: “Their catchphrase was ‘beautiful chaos’, and the first album encapsulated that. Punk was a rebellion against the music that had gone before… The Furs’ six-piece lineup made a meandering, more psychedelic noise possible.”
As other bands flailed away on distorted electric guitars, the Psychedelic Furs welcomed a saxophonist into their lineup. The band was known for its “wall of sound,” which was more accident than plan: each band member worked to carve out their own sonic space within the songs. Their aural identity was further helped by a lead singer whose vocal performance was more a mood than a sound.
The Furs’ first four albums, The Psychedelic Furs, 1980, Talk Talk Talk, 1981, Forever Now, 1982, and Mirror Moves, 1984, are at once an evocative tour-de-force of the 1980s, while at the same time defy category and remain ageless. It is no wonder their music is so singular, with influences ranging from Roxy Music to the Velvet Underground, the Doors and Frank Zappa.
“Our idea was to combine the energy of the Sex Pistols with the strangeness of Roxy Music,” Tim explains.
Each album forged a new direction, opened up the Psychedelic Furs’ sound, and gave music fans unforgettable hits, such as “Love My Way” and “The Ghost In You.”
It was in the mid-1980s when the already-successful band saw its popularity go stratospheric.
The Furs’ 1981 song “Pretty In Pink” was featured in the hit movie by the same name. Actress Molly Ringwald was a fan of the Psychedelic Furs and asked director John Hughes to craft a movie around that song. Hughes did, and a re-recorded version of the song appeared on the Pretty In Pink soundtrack. “They wanted a different band to re-record our song,” Tim remembers. “They said the guitars were out of tune on the original. So, we said: ‘Well, if our song has to be re-recorded, we’ll do it.’”
The song enjoyed a second life as a big hit and brought hordes of screaming teenaged girls dressed in pink to Psychedelic Furs shows.
Following the release of their 1984 album Mirror Moves, five more Psychedelic Furs albums came into the world in subsequent years. Their most recent release is 2020’s Made of Rain, which has enjoyed rave reviews from fans.
In recent years, a new generation of music fans has encountered the Furs’ music in movies and TV shows. “The Ghost in You” was featured in the Netflix series Stranger Things, and “Love My Way” was heard several times in the Oscar-nominated film Call Me by Your Name. YouTube is rife with Furs’ performances. Beneath a video from 2010 of Richard Butler and Rich Good performing an acoustic version of “The Ghost in You,” a viewer commented: “In a sea of great vocalists, Richard floats above the rest. Spine tingling.”
Guiding and surviving a multi-decade career in music verges on the miraculous, particularly when the foundation of the band is a pair of British brothers. Family dynamics are tricky enough in ordinary times, add success, notoriety—and a media insatiable for “gotcha” moments—into the mix can make for a volatile situation. There are notorious stories about the Kinks’ founding members, Ray and Dave Davies, brawling on stage during shows. Liam and Noel Gallagher, the Oasis brothers, are also famed for their acrimony toward one another.
“We’d have arguments like all brothers,” Tim says, reflecting on his collaboration with Richard, “We’d get over it quickly, though. Blood is thicker than rock ’n’ roll.”
After nearly fifty years of performing live, the thrill remains.
“There is nothing better in the world than being on stage, seeing people in the audience singing your lyrics back to you, enjoying themselves,” Tim says. “Some of them have come out since the very early days, and now they’re bringing their kids and grandkids.”
The Psychedelic Furs will appear at the Colosseum at Caesars Windsor on July 3 at eight p.m. with special guest The Chameleons. For more information about the show, or to purchase tickets, visit caesars.com/caesars-windsor/shows.
Published in the Summer 2025 edition.
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