In March 2020, the Psychedelic Furs were eagerly awaiting the unveiling of “Made of Rain,” the band’s first album since 1991.
Striving to make music that could stand alongside their classic 1980s albums, British brothers Richard and Tim Butler and their bandmates had toiled over the project since they reunited in 2000.
In the 1980s, the Psychedelic Furs released the hits “Love My Way,” “Heartbreak Beat,” “The Ghost in You” and, the song that inspired the 1986 Molly Ringwald movie of the same name, “Pretty in Pink.”
But the coronavirus pandemic dashed the Furs’ big plans for 2020. The band postponed the album’s release as well as a tour that included the Apollo Theater in New York and a homecoming show at the Royal Albert Hall in London.
Although the Furs belatedly released “Made of Rain” in July 2020, the Apollo and Royal Albert Hall shows were twice delayed, pushed all the way to last year.
“It was extra frustrating because, after all these years not having any new material, we were excited to play the new stuff,” bassist Tim Butler said from his home in Stanford, Kentucky. “The pandemic came along and shut us down.”
Because touring was off limits, phone interviews were about all the Butler brothers could do to promote their new album. “Made of Rain” nevertheless made high debuts on multiple charts in the United States and United Kingdom.
“It got great reviews,” Tim Butler said. “It was up on to the best albums of 2020 in Mojo and those sorts of magazines.”
And when the Psychedelic Furs played, at last, the homecoming show at Royal Albert Hall, the experience did not disappoint.
“Awe-inspiring to be in such a famous building,” Tim Butler said. “And it was great to finally go out and play the new material. Especially in England, because we’d done a little bit of touring in the States (before the pandemic), but in England we hadn’t.”
On the road again this year, the Psychedelic Furs will perform Wednesday at the Manship Theatre in Baton Rouge. That show is sold out, but tickets are available for the band’s Friday, May 12, performance at the House of Blues in New Orleans.
The Butlers have dwelled in the United States longer than they lived in their native England. They moved to the U.S. following their “Forever Now” tour in 1982.
“I consider myself an honorary American citizen,” Tim Butler said. “I’ve never actually been sworn in, but I have a green card and I pay taxes.”
From a touring perspective, moving to the U.S. made sense for the brothers.
“Over here, because it’s so big, you can tour, if you want, year round,” Tim Butler explained. “Whereas, you can do the whole of England in three weeks. And English audiences are fickle. You can be flavor of the week one day, but a couple of weeks later you’re being brought down by the press.”
In the U.S., Tim Butler said, “we have audiences that have been with us since we first came over here. And they bring their children. Audiences 16 to 60.”
Next week’s Psychedelic Furs show at the Manship Theatre is the group’s first appearance in Baton Rouge since 2013. It should be a relatively calm affair compared to the Furs’ truncated appearance at a Baton Rouge club called Trinity’s in April 1983. Midway through that performance, now ex-band member John Ashton threw his guitar at the back of Tim Butler’s head and stormed off the stage.
“We went offstage and we couldn’t get back on,” Tim Butler told The Advocate in 2011. “The audience rioted and six or seven police cars were called.”
The April 15 edition of The Morning Advocate’s Fun section reported “the crowd was incensed and demanding its money back.”
At the Manship Theatre, the Psychedelic Furs will play the band’s hits as well as songs from the long labored upon “Made of Rain.”
“Because of our nerves about this or that song being good enough, we had lots of songs come and go,” Tim Butler said of the album that was 20 years in the making. “When we’d finally gotten an album’s worth of songs which we thought were great, we recorded them really quickly. It’s a Furs album, but it stands up alongside anything that’s new, at the moment, on the rock side of things. We’re not stuck in the ’80s.”
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