Behind the Songs: Into You Like A Train

A selection of quotes from The Psychedelic Furs on the song "Into You Like A Train".

Richard Butler: "On the subject of 'Into You Like A Train', in England a lot of people have thought it to be somehow connected with sexuality or being sexist [inaudible]. Whereas in fact, it's not. It's just saying we don't want to change anything. There's been so many political bands around and political songs don't change a thing. All it's saying is if you're living an imaginative type of life we're into pretty much everything." (WCUT-FM Radio 1981)

Richard Butler (on this song and "I Wanna Sleep With You"): "Those are lust songs. Actually, 'Into You Like A Train' is a lot less lewd than it sounds." (Star Hits 1984)

Richard Butler: "I remember when I came up with the title 'Into You Like A Train,' they said,' You can't do that, you can't write that song! People will consider it sexist.'" (Musician 1987)

Richard Butler: "There's just something in me that won't sing smooth-sounding songs, or trite songs. If somebody gave me a song like 'Touch Me I Want To Feel Your Body' and they said, 'Record this and you'll have a number one around the world and be a rich man for the rest of your life' – I couldn't do it.

"I'd feel disgusted. I wouldn't be able to have a pride about myself. When people saw me in the street they'd say, Oh yeah, it's him, 'Touch me'! I like it when people say, you're Richard Butler and I can go, Yeah, I'm the guy who recorded 'Into You like A Train'." (Sounds 1987)

John Ashton: "A really furious version, some really cool backwards reverb taken from the end of the song and spliced on as an intro. This was always a great live song." (Should God Forget liner notes, 1997)

Interviewer: "I asked your brother once how 'Into You Like A Train' came about, and he thought perhaps it was the result of jamming at a rehearsal. What are your recollections of writing that song?"

Richard Butler: "As I remember, we were working on the record at St. John's Wood. Weirdly enough, I was riding on the subway, and it just came to mind. I was looking for an 'Into you like... something,' and maybe the fact that I was on the subway made me think of 'train.'" (Ink 19 2002)

Tim Butler: "Richard always used to be writing stuff down on pieces of paper – whether he was in a bar or a dressing room or sitting at home. He'd suddenly pick up a piece of paper and write something down. He'd have notebooks with bits of napkins in it, etc. Sometimes he'd just be hit by a lyric. We'd just be jamming along at maximum volume, and he'd be sat listening and if he liked an idea, he would say hold on, that's cool, now we need it to go somewhere else – a chorus or a middle eight. Sometimes we would go into rehearsals in the morning and come out with pretty much a finished idea, like 'Into You Like A Train' – that was jammed and the rough idea for the lyric came out of that." (The Quietus 2010)

Interviewer: "Talk Talk Talk was slated at the time by critics. There were objections to sexism in the lyrics – specifically the robust carnal longings of 'Into You Like A Train', and lines like 'I don't want to give you flowers, I just wanna sleep with you'. It always seemed to me that you dealt with sex and romance in a very functional way."

Richard Butler: "That was a little surprising. I didn't find there were any attitudes on there written as a male that couldn't also be felt as a female. If I were to posit the idea that I didn't want to have a romance with somebody, I just wanted to sleep with them, I was accused of sexism? I think that's a fairly commonplace way of thinking for males and females. Not every time a girl has sex does she want to get married and have babies with the person – you know? It seemed a curiously old-fashioned way of looking at it all, and in a way, reverse sexism." (The Quietus 2010)

Interviewer: "On 'Into You Like A Train' you have some lyrics that get a bit meta, where you say, 'If you believe that anyone like me within a song is outside at all, then you're all so wrong.' Can you talk about that?"

Richard Butler: "Yeah, it was saying that just because you're a singer in a band doesn't mean that you're going to be able to change the world, and that you might not even want to change the world. Though I suppose in a lot of ways I do want to change the world because I'm very critical of it, and if you would count critical as wanting to change something, then I suppose, I have wanted to change things. But it's saying that I'm not outside of it all, I'm not in a position to be able to judge you because I'm here in it all too."

Interviewer: "Did you get the sense that people were looking for answers from you?"

Richard Butler: "Oh no, I didn't get that at all, especially at the time I wrote that, and even since. That would be the kind of thing Bob Dylan would be more able to feel.

"Yeah, nobody was looking at me for answers. They might think I know more than I actually do, but I don't think anybody was looking for answers from me." (Songfacts 2020)

Photo: David Corio