Behind the Albums: World Outside

A selection of quotes from The Psychedelic Furs on World Outside, their seventh album, released in 1991.

Richard Butler: "It's been ready for a while. We recorded it early this Spring so it's just waiting for it to be released." (120 Minutes (MTV) 1991)

Tim Butler: "This time actually was written really quickly after the end of the last tour [for Book Of Days]. We had the urge to go pretty much straight back in and start writing songs and getting it together." (120 Minutes (MTV) 1991)

John Ashton: "There are a couple of songs on this album that are total performance, we had riffs that were part demo and part idea, and then we just walked in and started playing." (B-Side 1991)

John Ashton: "We've found out that our music isn't something that you can push. You can put pressure on it, and we have put pressure on it and it's worked before. Like Mirror Moves was a lot of pressure in the studio. But this record was easily the most enjoyable record to make. Everyone knew what we wanted, we had a very strong direction and working with Stephen Street, we haven't used the producer as the producer for a long time. The last two albums were co-produced." (B-Side 1991)

Richard Butler: "Some bands strive for perfection, but in that kind of squeaky clean kind of way. And we've gone through quite a bit in our career so we know what we want. And I guess this album is as close as we've got. So far." (B-Side 1991)

Richard Butler (on making World Outside): "This one was easy, much easier, in fact. We enjoyed playing together again, we could sit in the studio as a band and work as a band and put all our ideas in, and have lots of immediate feedback from each other. And we had a lot of ideas, and we had the majority of the material written before we went into the studio. And with it being a band where the chemistry now feels really good, we wrote songs in the studio as well. So it was a pleasure making this record." (B-Side 1991)

Richard Butler (on the songs being relationship-themed): "I didn't intend it that way, but the songs were all written within a four-month span as one relationship I had was breaking up and another one starting.

"When I work on any song, it starts from some personal spark, but then it becomes a matter of, 'What does the song need to work as a piece of music?' You're not thinking about how you can work your personal life into it.

"In many ways, the songs on Talk Talk Talk were just as personal, but it did take me slightly aback when I listened to the final mix of this record and recognized that all the songs were about this one thing.

"What's more satisfying is that the emotional content is there, because I don't write stories or narratives, I write about emotions." (Chicago Tribune 1991)

Richard Butler: "Basically we just wanted to get in and not have too much production going on. We wanted to get in and get out of the studio as quickly as possible, because we spent too long in studios before. All the enthusiasm goes and the spark goes when you spend too long on something. So we just wanted to get in and get it as natural sounding as possible. We wanted to have the band base, which meant that the band was playing live in the studio, and then do overdubs on top of that. It had more of a live feel to it." (Cleveland Scene 1991)

Richard Butler: "We were toying with the idea of not having any title at all and just having a tambourine on the cover. I wanted it to be referred to as 'the tambourine album,' but the powers that be wouldn't go for that. They were saying, 'No, it's too difficult for people to order it and all that.' But I was into the idea of having an album without a title." (Cleveland Scene 1991)

John Ashton: "The songwriting has come together and the sound is much more cohesive. The reaction (to the new material) has been great." (Courier Post 1991)

Richard Butler: "A lot of the album ended up seeming to be about relationships, either starting in one, being addicted to one or leaving one." (Melody Maker 1991)

Richard Butler (on being asked if it was a coincidence that while writing for World Outside he went through former and current (at the time) relationships): "I honestly wasn't aware of that until I sat down and actually listened to the whole record and then I thought, 'Jeez, they're pretty vitriolic songs.'" (Melody Maker 1991)

Richard Butler: "What did worry me a bit when I came to write this album was whether I still had anything to say. I mean, when you start out with a band, you've got ideas that you may not have heard before and it's all new to you. But there must come a point where you think, 'I've heard this before. I've said this before.' Then you realize that there aren't any great truths to tell anyway, there never have been. You're just restating little truths all the time, re-examining little truths." (Melody Maker 1991)

Richard Butler: "With the last two albums [Book Of Days and World Outside], we decided not to go into the studio until we had enough songs written, while with Mirror Moves and Midnight To Midnight, a lot of it was written in the studio. I think you tend to lose some of the excitement, the edge and the feel when you spend too much time in the studio. We didn't want to spend too much time on Book Of Days and World Outside. You can examine music too much, and then you tend to have a harder time making up your mind about things. If you go in and put down what you first feel, you're usually right." (Music Connection 1991)

Tim Butler: "Lyrically, I think this album is the most personal one we've recorded. It caught the essence of the Furs." (Northern Star 1991)

Tim Butler: "We're better at writing and we now know our limitations. World Outside is the best polished album, song-wise." (Northern Star 1991)

Tim Butler: "We did three or four takes on each songs and picked the best one." (Northern Star 1991)

Tim Butler: "We think the new album contains the most personal and revealing songs we've ever done and will redefine what the band is all about." (Pittsburgh Post Gazette 1991)

Tim Butler: "For this album, we ignored the radio and listened to the music that was in ourselves." (Pittsburgh Post Gazette 1991)

Richard Butler: "[World Outside] is better because it wasn't just the three of us but an entire band in the studio being able to contribute." (Rock 'N' Roll (?) 1991)

Tim Butler: "This is actually the first album since Talk Talk Talk where we've gone in as a six-piece unit and played live in the studio. We've used very few overdubs. You can hear that. It's got more of a live-band vibe about it. It's the first time we've done that since the days of the original band." (St. Louis Post Dispatch 1991)

Richard Butler: "I like being associated with a certain quality, a certain integrity, a certain intelligence of songwriting.

"It's good to be dependable, but you have to progress. This is our most complete album. It has gotten our college fans listening again. Bless 'em. That's the following that's always stuck with us and we appreciate 'em so much." (The Tennessean Sun 1991)

Tim Butler: "It's good that we've got a permanent band again. Pretty much everything that's on the album was done in one take, with very few overdubs. Everything is raw and live — which was always our sound, anyway, before we started getting into the heavy production of Midnight To Midnight." (The Baltimore Sun 1992)

Tim Butler: "When it comes to writing this album, it was a lot quicker, having a band that knows your music and knows the sound you're after, and it's even the same sound and the same influences." (The Central New Jersey Home News 1992)

Tim Butler: "I think World Outside is a return to our earlier sound and a progression from [Book Of Days]." (Fond du Lac Commonwealth 1992)

Tim Butler (on the extensive rehearsing): "It meant when we went into the studio we could play the songs all together with very few overdubs. There was more energy than if we'd spent six months polishing it all up with a high production gloss. Some tracks were done in just a couple takes." (Fond du Lac Commonwealth 1992)

Tim Butler: "Our sound is still on this record you know, like in the early records which is pretty much a guitar-driven sound. But I don't think it's similar at all to earlier records." (Modern Rock Live 1992)

Tim Butler: "We're all very pleased with it which is why we're enjoying playing live so much on this tour."(Modern Rock Live 1992)

Tim Butler: "This album and Book Of Days were actually recorded as a six-piece band live in the studio, so I think it makes a more live, energetic...more of a human feel to it. You can tell it's six people working with each other in a studio as opposed to someone going in there and over-dubbing their part separately. It's more of a live feel of an album." (Northern Colorado Mirror 1992)

Tim Butler: "This album and Book Of Days both took eight weeks to record and mix, which is really quick. We did pre-production before going into the studio and just bang (the songs) down without rehashing them too much. I think the more you play over and over a song in the studio you tend to sterilize it a bit so I think the songs on Book Of Days and World Outside are fresher sounding." (Northern Colorado Mirror 1992)

Tim Butler: "I don't think [producer Stephen Street] had that much of an influence on the mood of the album. We had the songs in the direction we were going in. I think he probably helped us get it together, which a good producer does. A good producer is one who doesn't leave his trademark on you. A lot of producers have trademarks that you can tell from one album to another that it's a certain producer. I think a good producer, like Stephen is, helps you and puts in ideas that don't leave a trademark. He just helps you get the best out of your band, which I think Stephen did on this album." (Northern Colorado Mirror 1992)

Tim Butler (on how the songs were created): "What happened, for this album, is that we had written the songs — Me, [Richard Butler], John, Knox [Chandler], and Joe [McGinty] —on the band's sixteen track studio setup. We go around and lay the songs down on a sixteen track, then we all got together on the pre-production and what we do is jam around a song and work on it that way. Rich always has notebooks, bits of paper with lyrics and stuff written on them. So when he hears a song he'll look through his book and find the lyrics that most fit the mood of the song." (Northern Colorado Mirror 1992)

Tim Butler: "Joe and Knox have been with us since the Book Of Days album. Joe actually joined us right at the end of the Midnight To Midnight tour, so he's been with us the longest out of the three new guys. It's pretty much the same lineup, except the drummer on this album is Don Yallech who joined us while we were writing this album after Vince [Ely] left again (laughs). We had musical and personal differences." (Northern Colorado Mirror 1992)

Tim Butler: "This album I listen to more than the oldest of them. This one's the only album of ours that I can listen to from beginning to end and like every track. Looking back on the past albums, there's always certain things that make you sort of wince and you think 'Oh, we could have done that one better,' or 'That one is a bit of a clanker.' This album I can sit down and listen to it and still enjoy it. Being so close to it, playing songs every night and having been in the studio recording it, that's quite good to be able to sit down and listen to it in your own private time." (Northern Colorado Mirror 1992)

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 this album 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: "When we made Book Of Days is when we got back on track. Lyrically and musically. [World Outside] is better because it wasn't just the three of us but an entire band in the studio being able to contribute." (The Province 1992)

Richard Butler (on being asked how he looks back on The Psychedelic Furs): "We did some good stuff.... I really liked the last album [World Outside]. But after 12 years, I just didn't want to do it anymore." (Asbury Park Press 1994)

John Ashton: "World Outside was tinged with melancholy, aptly so. The last tour [for the album] was a realization that we had all come a long way, but at the same time had not reached our final destination." (Should God Forget liner notes, 1997)

Richard Butler (on being asked if the first three albums were his favorites): "Yeah, but also the fourth (Mirror Moves), and the seventh (World Outside)." (iJamming! 2001)

Tim Butler (on the band members never blaming each other for their changing fortunes after Midnight To Midnight): "It tends to pull you together. It was like, 'Well, we made a mistake. Let's turn it around.' There was never a blame game going on. It was down to us all. We'd had a bit of soul-searching about what we should do, and those two albums [Book Of Days and World Outside] made us believe in ourselves again." (Chicago Tribune 2014)

Tim Butler: "When we came out with World Outside, I think people were just 'nnnhh'." (WriteWyattUK 2019)

Tim Butler: "[Grunge] was one of the reasons why after we put out World Outside we took a break – which turned into a really long break! But I realized we were the old school. Grunge was in and our sound was no longer hip and we needed to take a break, rethink and recharge our batteries." (NME 2020)

Richard Butler: "I'm very pleased with World Outside. We felt we'd redressed the balance. Sadly, the great graphic designer who I worked with on the cover, Vaughan Oliver, passed away a short while ago. He was a lovely guy. Did some very fine stuff with 4AD." (Record Collector 2020)

Richard Butler: "I came off [the Midnight To Midnight tour] and just did not want to be in the band anymore at all. I was very depressed about it. And John and Tim said, 'You don't want to leave on a low note. Come back and make a record that you feel honestly reflects the band.' So we did. We came back and did Book Of Days and World Outside, and we toured for those and I didn't want to write songs with that same lineup again. It just didn't seem right, so we took a 10-year break." (Tidal 2020)

Tim Butler: "[Richard Fortus's] an old friend of the band, right back to when his band, Pale Divine, supported us on our last tour for the World Outside album in 1992." (WriteWyattUK 2020)

Tim Butler: "By the time World Outside came out people thought we'd dropped off the face of the earth." (WriteWyattUK 2020)

John Ashton: "Our last studio album – prior to the new one [Made Of Rain] that just came out earlier on this year – came out in 1991 to not great reviews." (Everyone Loves Guitar podcast 2021)

Photo: Sheila Rock