Behind the Albums: Forever Now

A selection of quotes from The Psychedelic Furs on Forever Now, their third album, released in 1982.

Richard Butler: "The lyrics tend to be a bit more cohesive and less wildly surrealistic and the last album [Talk Talk Talk] was basically songs about love whereas this one isn't, this one's about... personal freedom?

"I mean, 'Love My Way' is a song about sexual freedom and a political song like 'President Gas'... I suppose if you're hitting out and saying 'Don't believe in anything', then you're hitting out for personal freedom." (Melody Maker 1982)

Richard Butler: "We had a meeting with [Todd Rundgren] before we made the album, and he said 'Listen, I can make you sound like Meatloaf, I can make you sound like Patti Smith, I can make you sound like Hall And Oates, I can make you sound like anything... I need you to tell me what you want.'" (Melody Maker 1982)

Richard Butler: "Todd produced the record and helped us by playing the keyboards and he also arranged some of the horn charts, but the recording itself was basically cut-and-dry. All of the songs were already written before we ever got into the studio, so our 'sound' wasn't affected greatly." (Public News 1982)

Richard Butler: "That wall of sound still comes through in a couple of places - it's almost a trademark, if you like - but we're not doing it to the same extent. We just thought it was time we got a little cleaned up, bring out more of the melody.

"That was part of the reason for using an American producer, because we'd like to do well in America. People over here tend to listen to music through much higher quality systems, even the car stereo systems sound really good. Todd's drum sound is even bigger than Steve Lillywhite's. Steve goes for much more - I don't mean to insult him of a mushy sound; the snare is a bit trebly, and the bass drum and toms are a bit muddy. Steve wants things felt as much as board, and the bass went very much in with the drums. That's our sound and he does it on purpose. Todd goes for a much rounder, deeper, fuller tom sound much more separated and the bass is much cleaner sounding, which can actually make the music sound more powerful. Todd said that when the album came out people might think it was he who'd augmented and directed the change in our sound, but we'd already done all the arrangements with cellos, marimbas and things before we came to him. There were some horn section arrangements Todd helped us with, but because the material was sounding exactly like the first two albums, we figured we needed to change, which is why we got rid of the saxophonist (Duncan Kilburn) and the other guitarist (Roger Morris). We'd gone along long enough, and it just didn't work anymore." (Record Magazine 1982)

Richard Butler: "It took us about two months in all, and we were living right next door to Todd [Rundgren's] studio in Woodstock, a boring town about three hours drive away from New York City.

"But we chose Todd because he'd done some covers of The Beatles stuff and we heard 'Strawberry Fields' while we were touring round the States and we thought anybody who can get all those sounds down that accurately has got to be good for the sounds we want.

"And it's worked out great. We used a lot more instrumentation. Cello, synthesizers, a horn section and backing vocalists." (Record Mirror 1982)

Richard Butler: "I think this album will be successful [in England]. We've been quite successful as an albums band but never as a singles band." (Record Mirror 1982)

Richard Butler: "I'd heard that Todd was very dictatorial in the way he worked, but he's actually very receptive to our ideas. When he first heard our demo tapes, he did some horn arrangements and he would mix a track and then get us all up and say 'hey, what do you think of that?' And we'd say, 'this is good,' or I'd say 'well, I don't like all these bells in that part, and I don't like this dubbing and stuff like that. And he'd go, 'Ok, come back in half an hour' and he'd have it redone. It was like that, so we did have absolute control over the mixing." (Unicorn Times 1982)

Richard Butler: "We did two albums with Steve Lillywhite (producer) before, and it was too much of a wall of sound thing - not enough separation. I think the songs on Forever Now are much more melodic so we needed somebody to get a lot of separate kinds of sounds. Hence, the synthesizer and cello players." (Unicorn Times 1982)

Richard Butler: "A lot of people have said our new album is more commercial. Pop? No! We didn't say, 'let's get commercial.' It might have happened because we all like a bit of a dance beat ourselves." (Boston Rock 1983)

Richard Butler: "When we were making up these songs we realized it was a different step for us. We were making up songs with stronger melodies, and we figured if we were going to change the sort of tunes we were doing, we might as well change the production – use Todd Rundgren, who would give us a clearer sound, as opposed to Steve Lillywhite, who on our first two albums tended to make us sound a bit murky." (Boston Rock 1983)

Richard Butler: "Oh, we aren't dropping the 'Psychedelic' from our name, that was just the [USA] artwork on Forever Now. People have suggested we lose it, but I think the 'Furs' sounds a bit dull." (Boston Rock 1983)

Richard Butler: "Now we don't play 'We Love You.' It is a punky sounding song – not that we ever were punk, but closer to it than now. We don't sound like that anymore. We sound like Forever Now. That is where the band is, and I don't think there is anyone doing what we are doing." (Boston Rock 1983)

Richard Butler: "I figured if [Todd Rundgren] could reproduce all those different sounds, he could probably do the sounds we wanted, too. He was really into the project. In fact, he paid for a lot of it because we went over-budget. (Creem 1983)

Tim Butler: "When we got to the third album, we decided that we wanted a totally different sound. We didn't want a rhythm guitar all the time or a sax on every track so we parted company with the rhythm guitarist and the sax player. We did demos in London with a cello player, a sax player and a keyboard player and we sent them over to Todd. So now, working as a four piece writing team means that you can write a song and for any one track you can bring in anything you want. You don't have to have a sax on it. If you had a sax player that was a permanent member and you had a song, he'd always want to play sax on it. So now you don’t have to have a sax on every number, you can have anything you want. It widens the scope of the sound you can get." (Island Ear 1983)

Tim Butler: "With this album we need a crisper, sort of better production, which Todd has done." (Island Ear 1983)

Richard Butler: "At first, because we were sort of 'underground', the English critics really raved about it, and then as soon as we started getting a bit popular with Talk Talk Talk, they tried to put it down again. They like to build people up and try to knock 'em down. Nobody in the band really gave a [__] anyway. The critics are pretty ineffectual, generally; they're imbeciles for the large part. And with Forever Now, they've gone for it again, so I'm a bit dubious." (Musician 1983)

Richard Butler: "For the time we made the first two albums [Steve Lillywhite's] production was great but when it came to making the third album and we had thrown Duncan [Kilburn] and Roger [Morris] out of the band and John [Ashton], Tim [Butler] and myself were writing much more melodic tunes, we needed a producer that could handle that much melody and Lillywhite wouldn't have been the right choice." (Rip It Up 1983)

Richard Butler: "With Forever Now, it was great working with Todd Rundgren and it was great to step away from the first two albums, but in as for the actual direction, it was a bit of a cul de sac. We could have developed the album's sound but I think it was a sound that could tend towards self indulgence if we weren't careful with all those songs and stuff." (Aquarian Arts Weekly 1984)

Richard Butler: "Some of the old songs were almost impenetrable whereas I don't think these ones [from Mirror Moves] are and it's purposely so. All the albums have had their difference. The first one was really just angry, the second one (Talk Talk Talk) was the most complicated lyrically and possibly the deepest, Forever Now was half way between that one and this one and Mirror Moves is definitely the clearest and easiest to understand yet." (Melody Maker 1984)

Richard Butler: "I wasn't singing as much as chanting on the first two albums. But starting with Forever Now, I wanted to be more melodic. We wanted to be more accessible, though not to the point where we would be trite. But as a lyricist, I have something valuable to say, and it seems I should say it to a lot of people."(The Miami Herald 1984)

Richard Butler: "On Forever Now, we wanted to emphasize synthesizer and melody, so we hired Todd Rundgren." (The Miami Herald 1984)

John Ashton: "Forever Now was a psychedelic sort of eccentric production, dance pop with weirdness. Our older stuff was weirder though." (The Morning Call 1984)

Richard Butler: "When we've written songs for an album, we always talk about the particular sound we have in mind for that album. For the third one, we knew we wanted to use synthesizers, so we went with Todd [Rundgren]." (The Record 1984)

John Ashton: "Todd Rundgren, who did the third album, just used to say 'Well, how do you want this to sound, I can make it sound big, I can make it sound small. Sixties, what do you want?' and then we'd go 'We dunno, what do you think?'" (International Musician 1986)

Richard Butler (on the song "President Gas"): "I think it's probably my favorite of the songs we did with Todd Rundgren, who did that Forever Now album." (MTV Europe 1988)

John Ashton: "The third album became a bit more mainstream, because we wanted a new approach." (Fort Worth Star Telegram 1990)

Richard Butler: "I think a lot of people have said that the band really changed when we moved to America, and that's just not true. I mean a lot of people perceived Forever Now as an American album, and it wasn't, it was written in London and we recorded it over here." (B-Side 1991)

John Ashton: "When we were making Forever Now with Todd Rundgren we were looking for a sound looking at what the Beatles had done, their use of other instruments.

"The cello seemed to be right. We had only one guitar in the band at the time and we needed to augment it." (The Burlington Free Press 1991)

Richard Butler: "We wanted to record with Todd Rundgren in his studio at Bearsville, to make a more psychedelic album. People said that when we worked with Todd, he put the cellos over everything, but in fact they were there on the original demos we sent him." (Q Magazine 1991)

Tim Butler (in response to the interviewer saying that the mood of World Outside is similar to Forever Now): "I think that the reason that those two albums [Forever Now and World Outside] are similar is the use of the cello. Forever Now before [World Outside] was always my favorite, and now the two albums are favorites. I can't really put a finger on why, maybe because of the construction of the songs and the way they're recorded." (Northern Colorado Mirror 1992)

Richard Butler: "Todd was a great guy. I heard horror stories about him just before we went to work with him. Horror stories like he was very dictatorial and he would go in the studio and play guitar parts when you weren't there and that he would insist on his vision being followed right through to the end and all that kind of stuff. And that may be true with other bands, but our experience with him was we wanted Todd Rundgren for a reason. We wanted Todd Rundgren because we liked the records that he had done and we liked the sound of him and that was the sound we wanted. So we had no problem with the way he worked. I mean, he made John our guitarist work harder than he'd ever worked before, cause John tended to be a bit lazy sometimes and would not have a proper guitar part, but would put down one very simple guitar part and then another one on top of it so you got this textural thing happen. And Todd wouldn't allow any of that to happen. He said, 'You got to have one strong guitar part going all the time, then you can fool around in the other stuff.' So he made John work really hard but he was great fun to work with. It was a very quick album to make, and he let us mix it virtually. It was like, you'd do a mix and then he would say, 'Come back in 15 minutes and listen to it.' And then we would come back and he'd say, 'Well, do you like it?' We'd say, 'Well, can we have the drums a bit higher and more cellos in the middle part?' And he'd go, 'Okay, come back in 10 minutes.' And he'd do it, so he was great." (Interview with Ken Owen, 1994)

Richard Butler (in response to the interviewer saying that Forever Now's a great album): "Yeah, it's one of my favorites." (Interview with Ken Owen, 1994)

Richard Butler: "When we worked with Todd Rundgren, we decided, 'Yeah, we want to have cellos on it, and we'd like horns on it and we'd like marimbas on it,' and so we chose Todd as a producer because he knew how to do all those things. But before we made that choice, we didn't know quite what it was going to sound like. We'd try some cello on stuff and we'd tried a marimba sound, but we hadn't tried backing vocals or horn section or anything." (Choler Magazine 2000)

Richard Butler: "I sometimes wonder what would have happened or how we would have sounded if we had been the same group of people [the original six]. I don't think there would have been the radical change that there was with Forever Now. There would have been some sort of change but how radical it would have been I don't know." (iJamming! 2001)

Richard Butler: "With Forever Now, everyone said Todd Rundgren is the sort of person who'll sneak in and play things himself and he'll push you in this direction and he's very dictatorial in the studio, and we went in and everyone said 'Look what Todd Rundgren's done to the Psychedelic Furs, he's done this and this'... But when you listen to the demos we did for the album back in London before we even met him, there were cellos on it and marimbas. It wasn't that he pushed us in that direction, it was rather that we chose him because we needed up going in that direction and we thought, 'Ah, Todd's a good person to use for that.'" (iJamming! 2001)

Richard Butler: "We wound up in Woodstock bored out of our minds! We had to be seriously reprimanded a couple of times by Todd for our behavior in the village. He pulled us aside one time and said 'You've got to be careful what you do around here, you've got to calm down, I want to finish this record and have it be a great record, I don't want you to ruin it by your boredom...'" (iJamming! 2001)

Richard Butler: "The mixing was pretty easy. As opposed to Steve Lillywhite, who would have us all around this huge desk and we'd be all lined up by the faders, with the marks on them, Todd would mix it all in the studio and then he'd say, 'Come and have a listen.' Then we'd say 'Well, can we have the vocals up here and take the cello out here,' and he'd say, 'Okay, come back in ten minutes.' So we still had the same degree of control." (iJamming! 2001)

Richard Butler (on using backing vocalists on the album): "I wasn't that keen on the idea at first. [Todd Rundgren] wanted to use Flo and Eddie who had worked with Frank Zappa and also done a bunch of stuff with T Rex. He was only bringing them in for a couple of days; he said 'They're very quick workers, if you don't like it, don't use it,' and it's hard to argue with that. So we tried it and liked it." (iJamming! 2001)

Richard Butler (on the songs that stand out to him lyrically on Forever Now): "I always liked the mood of 'Sleep Comes Down' a lot, that was always very dreamy. 'No Easy Street' I also liked a lot. And there was a track that never made it onto the album, called 'I Don't Want To Be Your Shadow,' which I always loved the feeling of as well." (iJamming! 2001)

Richard Butler (on the US album artwork for Forever Now): "I hated it. I cried when I saw it. I remember coming back from a convention in England at Torquay or something where CBS had their convention, and our manager hadn't shown us the cover for on purpose - because he didn't want me to be all [....] at this convention - and then he showed it to me on the train on the way back, and I actually cried when I saw it. Because I loved the Barney Bubbles cover that we had done. And I had worked on it with Barney. And to me it just seemed like the artwork for Forever Now was this horrible botched attempt at doing another Talk Talk Talk type album cover only really badly." (iJamming! 2001)

Richard Butler (on summing up the first three albums): "The first album was our introduction to our music and any kind of public. And our second album in a weird way is a goodbye to England. And Forever Now is hello to America." (iJamming! 2001)

Richard Butler (on when he moved to America): "It was around the time of Forever Now. We recorded Forever Now while here for six weeks, then went back to England. Pretty quickly after that came out we were back here touring again, and at the end of that tour, I said to Tim [Butler], 'I don't particularly want to go back, I want to stay in New York.' And he said, 'Yeah okay, I'll stay here too, let's get a place.' So that literally was our hello to America." (iJamming! 2001)

Richard Butler: "I don't know whether we thought [an album] was going to stick around, but I certainly remember with Talk Talk Talk and Forever Now saying 'this is great,' going down to the pub and collaring people and saying 'You've got to come back and listen to our new record,' and sitting people down and playing it to them, and just thinking 'Yeah!.' You can write a song and think, 'Yeah it's great,' but you actually sit somebody concrete down and play it, it's like, 'No, this sucks.' With someone else being there you almost put yourself in their shoes when you listen to it. And sitting people down with Talk Talk Talk and Forever Now, I remember thinking 'Yeah, this is great.'" (iJamming! 2001)

Tim Butler: "My personal favorite [PFurs album] is Forever Now. Musically I think those songs have extremely interesting arrangements and use both horns and strings very inventively, while still maintaining the energy and attitude of the earlier albums. And the lyrics are the best, from the best." (Ear Candy 2004)

John Ashton: "It wasn't until Forever Now, album #3, that we started using keyboards as an added voice. From then on, touring was reliant upon keys. Though we also used cello and sax, we eventually became dependent upon keyboards extensively." (Modern Guitars Magazine 2005)

John Ashton: "Recording Forever Now, we used keyboards, sax and cello. It was a total departure from the two previous albums, which were much denser sounding." (Modern Guitars Magazine 2005)

Richard Butler: "When we had done the first two records, we'd said, 'Let's make this next record sound very different.' It was a decision we made. It wasn't Todd's decision to put cellos and all that stuff on Forever Now. That was a decision we made back in London. We kind of knew what we wanted to sound like, so Todd Rundgren was the ideal person for that album. So that was a shift in sound." (Metro Times 2010)

Tim Butler: "It's a different sort of songwriting. It's more ups and downs and more structure to it. There's anger and energy in Talk Talk Talk, but there's much more melody in Forever Now. Particularly from my point of view, playing-wise, I prefer Forever Now." (The Advocate 2011)

Tim Butler: "I think albums like Forever Now and Talk Talk Talk and even the first album still sound strong. I mean, bands could be playing songs like that and still sound up to date." (Kentucky.com 2011)

John Ashton: "With Forever Now, we were kind of like a new band, almost." (Popdose 2012)

John Ashton: "We wrote the songs that basically ended up on Forever Now prior to coming out to Woodstock to work with Todd. They were rough. I mean, they were in demo form. But they were in place." (Popdose 2012)

John Ashton: "We rehearsed for two weeks, probably, when we came out here, and Todd… he had a guest house, and there was a double garage there that was… It was early spring, and it was just about warm enough to work in there. [Laughs.] I mean, there was still snow on the ground. But I think we managed to heat it up enough. We rehearsed in there. Especially Tim and Vince [Ely], who rehearsed a lot together, working a lot on the rhythm tracks." (Popdose 2012)

John Ashton: "Working with Todd was amazing, but it was a very, very big change for the group. Personality-wise, membership-wise, sound-wise, approach-wise. We started incorporating more keyboards from the writing point of view." (Popdose 2012)

John Ashton (on the US album cover): "Long story short, the English cover was substituted for this horrible new-wave-looking generic cover for the States. And in the long run, people always came back to the English cover, 'cause it's a work of art. The other thing was just kind of, like, a couple of pictures slapped on with a silly name looking over it. If it's supposed to emulate the design of Talk Talk Talk, then it was a really bad imitation." (Popdose 2012)

John Ashton: "I felt personally that the best songs that we had written for Forever Now had been written when we were still a six-piece, part of that original band. If memory serves me well, 'President Gas,' 'Forever Now,' and 'Only You And I' were songs that were around when [Roger Morris and Duncan Kilburn] were around. Only maybe in a very early stage, but they're outstanding songs because the orchestration is so different, the way the songs start and then the next part. The dynamics of the songs are very different than, say, 'Merry Go Round' or 'Danger' or a couple of the others." (Popdose 2012)

Tim Butler: "My favorite album was the one Todd produced (Forever Now). If anyone could be called a musical genius, I think Todd is." (That Music Magazine 2013)

Tim Butler: "[Todd Rundgren] is really cool. I think he's the best producer we ever worked with. Before, with Steve Lillywhite, he would let guitar players track as many tracks as they wanted to. In mixing, they'd have to form one cohesive part from a lot of tracks. Whereas Todd was like, 'No, you can't do that. I'll let you do about three or four tracks, and then we'll find the guitar part you wanted to do with the song, and then you can play the whole thing on one track.

"It's a lot easier to mix. [Because of] little things like that, I think he was just a great producer for us -- not that the other ones weren't great. But my favorite album is Forever Now. I think it encapsulates what I would like The Furs to be remembered for. I think Richard's favorite album is Talk Talk Talk. That's my second favorite." (Westword 2013)

John Ashton: "I had always loved the voices of Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan and it had been many years since they had sung on the Psychedelic Furs album, Forever Now which was produced by Todd Rundgren. Prior to that, I was a huge fan of their work on the T-Rex & Frank Zappa's records." (Officially A Yuppie 2014)

John Ashton: "The third album, Forever Now, we took a departure in sound. We added cello. There's a little bit of saxophone. There's not the interplay of guitars that Roger and I had on our first two albums." (Veer Magazine 2015)

Tim Butler: "When we went over to record with Todd, we had all the demos of the songs and 90 percent of arrangements already written. Working with him was great. We wanted to move into using strings and had recorded with a cello player on the demos. We'd heard his album, Deface The Music, where he does covers of Beach Boys and Beatles songs and did all of the cello and string parts of the original songs himself. Plus, we were big fans of Todd's and thought he'd be a perfect producer for the album. And he was. It's my favorite of all our albums." (Memphis Flyer 2016)

Tim Butler: "By the time we got to the second and third albums, I think we had learned how to write songs, how to structure them. We were a bit more melodic." (Music-Illuminati 2018)

Tim Butler: "Todd is a great disciplinarian. Before, with Steve, our guitar players might go in there and do three guitar parts apiece, and then in the mixing they'd put them together. But Todd was like, 'No, no, no, I'm not going to do that. You can record three guitar solos or three guitar parts, and then pick out of the three the parts you want to use, and then record those on one track.' Because it would make it easier for him in the mixing. It made us a lot more disciplined." (Music-Illuminati 2018)

Tim Butler: "By the time we got to my favorite album, Forever Now, we'd got the art of songwriting down better, but still maintained a certain sort of anger and strange way of writing songs – not the normal way." (WriteWyattUK 2019)

Tim Butler (on his wife): "She's been a fan since that album, when I think she was 14 or 15. We'd both been married twice before but finally talked to each other on MySpace. You remember that? Ha ha! Yeah, I guess that was a pivotal album for her." (WriteWyattUK 2019)

Tim Butler: "My favorite album has always been Forever Now. I'd put [the upcoming Made Of Rain] somewhere between Forever Now and Talk Talk Talk." (Yorkshire Evening Post 2019)

Tim Butler: "I remember back in 1983 playing the Aragon Ballroom [in Chicago] on the Forever Now Tour. It was so packed and hot the security were throwing ice cubes into the crowd to help cool them down. I remember thinking at the time 'wow, we've made it.'" (Chicago Concert Reviews 2020)

Tim Butler: "I think the sound [on Made Of Rain] is maybe a cross between Forever Now and our first album from 1980, which were dark and atmospheric. I think it is back to our roots." (Cryptic Rock 2020)

Richard Butler: "I remember coming back from recording Forever Now and just being thrilled with what Todd Rundgren had managed to do with our sound." (Magnet Magazine 2020)

Tim Butler (on Richard Fortus producing Made Of Rain): "The good thing is, Richard Fortus, who co-produced it with us, was an old-time fan. So he guided us into what was the best part of The Furs and steered us away from what was maybe the worst part! That was really healthy for us, because we were all over the place as to what period of The Furs was the best. Richard [Butler] has always said he thinks Talk Talk Talk was the best and my idea of what was the best was Forever Now. But with this, we got a cross between the two, but brought up to date." (Music Week 2020)

Tim Butler: "I know [Made Of Rain] took a long time. When we were playing live, we were very nervous that we wouldn't be able to put something out that would be on par with our back catalog. But I think Made Of Rain is way up there. My favorite album by the Furs has always been Forever Now. And I think Made Of Rain is up there with Forever Now." (Tower Records 2020)

John Ashton: "The following record, Forever Now, that was our first hit. 'Love My Way,' that was huge." (Everyone Loves Guitar podcast 2021)

Tim Butler: "The new songs [on Made Of Rain] sound like Psychedelic Furs, but it's sort of up-to-date. You can't not be the Furs with Richard's vocals. Musically, it fits alongside with Forever Now. Made Of Rain and Forever Now are my favorite albums we recorded." (Cleveland Scene 2022)

Richard Butler (on being asked if there was a particular reason for moving to America): "Yes, I suppose. I mean, America is a big country and we could tour a lot here. And we'd already started getting decent crowds – albeit, you know, club and small theater crowds – but we could do fairly well over here. And it was an adventure; it was a new place, you know? It was a very exciting country to be in, and going back to rainy London didn't seem that appealing. And we'd just actually done a record in Woodstock with Todd Rundgren, and we kind of liked it over here so we just decided to move over." (Malloy Lecture In The Arts interview, 2023)

Richard Butler: "[Todd Rundgren] brought a lot of ideas to us. We didn't want to have backing vocals at all and he brought in Flo and Eddie from The Turtles, who had worked with Frank Zappa and Marc Bolan. And he brought them in and we were still kind of a... kind of punk rock/do-it-yourself aesthetic and we weren't sure whether we wanted professionals involved. And he said, 'If you don't like it, I promise you we'll take it off.' And it turned out to be – it sounded great so we kept it on." (Malloy Lecture In The Arts interview, 2023)

Tim Butler (on being asked how he ended up living in Kentucky): "I met my wife on MySpace, which was like a precursor of Facebook. She had been a fan since the third album, like 1983 and finally got hold of me, we started talking online and there you go, I'm in Kentucky!" (The Collapse Board 2024)

Tim Butler (on the time Bob Dylan offered the band his song "Clean Cut Kid"): "It had like 15 verses, and he said, 'Oh, tell them what they can cut it down if they want,' but we had enough songs of our own, it was around about the time we did Forever Now. We had enough of our own songs and to have a 15 verse Bob Dylan song was a bit too intimidating." (The Collapse Board 2024)

Tim Butler: "That's my favorite album. If you can ever call someone a musical genius, I think Todd is one of them." (The Collapse Board 2024)

Interviewer: "It took another 20 years from reforming to putting out a new album, 2020's Made Of Rain, and you've talked about whether you could still record something that stood up with your best work from the 1980s. Does that 80s legacy weigh on you as songwriters?"

Tim Butler: "It did until we did Made Of Rain. I think up until then, my favorite album in the 80s was Forever Now but I think Made Of Rain stands up well alongside Forever Now." (The Collapse Board 2024)

Duncan Kilburn (on being asked if the topic of music was included whenever the band would argue): "Not music, importantly. But there was an issue around the production of the third album (Forever Now).

"David Bowie was approached and agreed to an executive production role but could only commit to 10 days of studio time. He was doing The Elephant Man and had minimal time in his schedule. And then there was Todd Rundgren, who was keen to do the album. Vince Ely, the Furs' drummer, was a big fan. Steve Lillywhite also expressed an interest after hearing 'President Gas' and 'Forever Now', which were already in the set.

"The logic shouted at me: 'Go with Bowie at all costs. You'll never get a better chance!' But Richard, and therefore Les [Mills], went with Todd. There was no real discussion about it." (Louder Sound 2024)

Duncan Kilburn (on co-writing some of the songs on the album): "John Ashton and I converted the rear lounge of our tour bus into a studio with a Sony 4-track, drum machine, keyboards, and a practice amp, and we started writing Forever Now on the road. We'd bring tracks to the front of the bus to play to Richard and the rest of the band and during soundchecks to rehearse them up. We'd done 'President Gas' and 'Forever Now' this way, and the system was working, although I never got credit for the songs already written for Forever Now." (Louder Sound 2024)

Photo: Antione Giacomoni