Listen: Heaven / Psychedelic Furs PsyFursHeaven.mp3
It was the Christmas break, 1979. Corinne and I went to stay with Howard in London for what turned out to be a Christmas to remember. He really did it up right, as always had countless things planned, on the go go go, especially hitting all the record shops. Went to see The Birthday Party at The Venue. Fuck they were, um, great. I did not appreciate it fully at the time, but in hindsight – yes, pretty great. And then there were the traditional English holiday parties. Not industry parties mind you, but family ones, like John Anthony’s Mom’s. That spread was fierce and her homemade trifle…..well we still talk about it to this day. The nights we didn’t eat our way through a party or see a band were just happily spent playing records in HT’s front room. The floor was literally covered with 45’s, row after row leaning against the moldings. An endless trove to flip through and pick from. Hours would just fly by, never a dull moment. And he had everything, all the latest releases – and there were many. Don’t forget, loads of great records were still coming out weekly. It was the tail end of punk turning into whatever the next thing was called…I really can’t remember actually. And often Richard and Tim Butler would be by. Howard had just signed them to CBS, and they were beaming about their first single ‘We Love You’, which Howard had just gotten copies of. In fact, they kept playing it over and over and over. But hey if they didn’t, we did. It was the start of a friendship that lasted years and brought loads of fun times. I realized only recently that The Furs were a really good singles band. I mean they have so many. I was very into TALK TALK TALK, not a bad track in my book, so always thought of them more as ‘albums’. But lately I’ve been rotating a bunch of the 7’s on my ipod and indeed – they were a solid singles band. I’m not sure many people rate ‘Heaven’ as one of their best but it sure is. I ran into Richard on the street about a month ago. He’s lived in NY for years. Picked up right were we left off, as if mid-sentence. We were shocked to think it’s been 29 years since that Christmas. Pretty amazing considering we’re both still 35.