A selection of quotes from The Psychedelic Furs on the song "Love My Way".
Richard Butler (on Forever Now): "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've just done a video for our new single, 'Love My Way,' and because it's a really airy, spacey kind of song we thought we'd get cloud machines and project them all over the place. Then we thought it'd be nice to use water as another reflective surface. I think you can see we're meant to be walking on it, but it tends to look a bit more like we're paddling. It's quite good actually." (Record Mirror 1982)
Richard Butler: "I think [Forever Now] will be successful [in England]. We've been quite successful as an albums band but never as a singles band.
"But I've got high hopes because 'Love My Way' is doing pretty well at the moment and we'll release a follow up when that starts going down." (Record Mirror 1982)
Richard Butler: "'Love My Way' is also about sex. I wrote it to say that whatever way you love, it's okay. If you're gay or anything else, I was saying just go for it. It was written for two girls I knew who were sharing a flat in London." (The Rocket 1982)
Tim Butler: "'Love My Way' is like, if you're gay, or lesbian, or whatever, so long as that makes you happy, then don't bother about anybody else but love your way, or my way. Don't give in to what the mass says is happiness." (Unknown source, 1982?)
Richard Butler (on the music video): "Oh, it's great, I love it. The Psychedelic Furs walk on water! You see we were all on tiles in the water. Dangerous. It's hard dancing on the water, 'cause if your foot drags you go off to the side, which at one point I did, and toppled over. I grabbed onto a lighting trolley. Someone came and grabbed it or the whole band would have been electrocuted." (Boston Rock 1983)
Richard Butler: "It is a political song, if you can consider love songs political, which I think you can. Sexual politics. People being told they're deviants, whatever – homosexual, lesbian – I'm just saying 'don't worry, go after your own way, it's just as valid.'" (Boston Rock 1983)
Richard Butler: "It's basically addressed to people who are [__] up about their sexuality, and says 'Don't worry about it.' It was originally written for gay people." (Creem 1983)
Richard Butler: "'Love My Way' should've been the last track on Talk Talk Talk as on that album I was asking myself what love was all about. The songs were about love as opposed to love songs and I think I answered the questions on that album with 'Love My Way' which is telling people not to worry about the way they love or how they love, it's love that's important. It was written for two girls I knew in Muswell Hill that were, y'know, gay. And one of these girls I had been going out with for about five years previously and she just decided that she had fallen in love with this other girl. I wrote it for her because they were really worried about it. I was singing don't be sad about it, just love your own way." (Rip It Up 1983)
Richard Butler: "I think it's nice to take an audience through a kind of variety of feelings, you know? Like, you might sing 'Love My Way' which is the kind of tender song, and you might sing 'President Gas' which is a really angry one. And you want the audience to feel like – say, in 'Sister Europe' you want them to feel that kind of sad, sort of melancholy, and then in 'India' you want them to feel angry, you know? It's like you want them to... you want to take them through a whole spectrum of feelings." (La Edad de Oro (Spanish TV) 1984)
Richard Butler (on performing live): "My voice is pretty shaky for the first few numbers. On the last tour we were opening with 'Love My Way' which is a bad one to start with because I have to actually sing. If it was an uptempo rocker I'd stand a chance, but on that, quite often I'd be really shaky." (One Two Testing 1986)
Richard Butler: "'Love My Way' is a political song in terms of sexuality; it's written about somebody I knew who decided she was gay. She'd been very close to me and it was a worrying thing for her to be going through and it was my way of saying, 'Try not to worry about it'." (Winner Magazine 1986)
Richard Butler: "Seeing [David] Bowie in the audience in Australia mouthing all the words to 'Love My Way' was quite a buzz." (Melody Maker 1987)
Richard Butler: "I still feel Talk Talk Talk was a brilliant album that was massively underestimated in its time, and I feel kind of resentful about that. On the other hand, you feel 'How can we get ourselves across?', and that's probably how you get a song like 'Love My Way' coming through. Todd said 'the radio will love this if you just sing it' and I thought 'Yeah, that's what I want, I want the radio to like it and for it to get played.' That's where the pressure comes in, but in a way it's a healthy pressure." (Rock Express 1987)
Richard Butler: "'Love My Way' was originally written around like two notes on a little Casio. And I got up one morning and I was incredibly hungover. And I had to go around to John's place and say I had written a song [inaudible]. So I just started playing with these two notes on a Casio. The words – all of them – came within about ten minutes. I wrote it and I loved the song a lot you know, straight away, and I recorded it on those little [inaudible]. And I went around and played it to John and he couldn't understand what was going on and he hated it." (Interchords 1988)
Richard Butler: "['Sister Europe'] happened in the most surprising way. I'm not a musician, but I sat down with a guitar and started playing these notes, and within hours I had the chord and the lyrics worked out. The only time it happened that quickly before was with 'Love My Way', when I sat down for four minutes with a little keyboard and it was written." (Melody Maker 1988)
Richard Butler: "It's apparently one of David Bowie's favorite songs. So what, right? I remember being really hungover and going round to John Ashton's and enthusing over my three notes on the Casio and John wanted to play this guitar thing that sounded really boring!
"To begin with, the lyrics were shouted and it was a really aggressive song. Back then it seemed like I shouted most of the stuff. I was very drunk and it was very late one night when we were recording 'Sister Europe' and I remember our producer, Steve Lillywhite, saying, 'Sing it like you were picking up a telephone and it's four in the morning and you're just speaking down it'. When we did 'Love My Way', Todd Rundgren said, 'Richard I think this is a really beautiful song with a beautiful melody if only you would stop destroying it. Just try singing it.'" (Melody Maker 1988)
Richard Butler: "That's another one from Forever Now. I think that was our first hit single in America. I'm totally drunk on the video. [Laughs]" (MTV Europe 1988)
Richard Butler: "If we had been a very pop oriented band and come out with our first album and had a lot of hit singles, then we would have immediately been stuck into that train of thought. But it wasn't like that, it was a slow developing as a career, if you like, we were never seen as being a pop hit singles band. People were surprised when 'Love My Way' hit from our third record. To be on your third record and to be surprised by the moderate success of a single... We see this as a long term project, which makes us very lucky." (B-Side 1991)
Richard Butler (on artists covering The Psychedelic Furs' songs): "It's not just Live and Counting Crows. Elvis Costello did a version of 'Pretty In Pink,' and Annie Lennox did a version of 'Heaven.' And I believe Marilyn Manson were talking about doing 'Love My Way' at one point. I would have loved to have heard that... I'm quite proud of the [Furs]." (Billboard 1997)
Richard Butler: "'Love My Way' started out as a two-note song on a cheap Casio. It wasn't until Ed Buller added the marimba part and Todd Rundgren suggested that I not shout the vocal that anybody thought it might be a single. This song was something of a commercial breakthrough for us and changed the whole picture." (Should God Forget liner notes, 1997)
Richard Butler: "That came across to [Todd Rundgren] as an angry sounding demo. He said 'Why don't you actually sing it, this could be a good single. If you don't like it, you can go back to the way it was.'" (iJamming! 2001)
Richard Butler (on using backing vocalists on Forever Now): "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. They're on 'Love My Way' most noticeably. As soon as Todd heard 'Love My Way,' he saw that as being the single." (iJamming! 2001)
Richard Butler: "It's interesting how that came about. John and I were working together, and not wanting to go round to his place with no ideas - I'd supposed to have been working on a song which I hadn't done - so on the morning I was going round to his house I had one of those stylophone things and I had this 'dadadadadadanananananan', just those two changes. I think I'd been listening to [David Bowie's] Scary Monsters, that must have informed it a bit, and came up with this vocal melody and all the words within the space of about an hour, and he absolutely hated it and didn't get it. We put it down and then Ed Buller, a friend of ours, came round with his keyboard and put the marimba part on it, by which time John went 'wow, this sounds great now' and we sent it off to Todd who said 'well the vocals sound a little bit angry, why don't you try singing a little bit more,' and having been through that already with 'Sister Europe' I was like, Yeah, okay." (iJamming! 2001)
Richard Butler: "'Love My Way' was getting pretty heavy rotation on MTV. We did a video for 'Sister Europe' with Don Letts, but how much exposure that got I'm not sure. Certainly by the time 'Love My Way' came out there was a lot." (iJamming! 2001)
Richard Butler: "A lot of people think that 'Pretty In Pink' was our biggest hit, which it actually wasn't. It got a lot of recognition for us because of the movie, but actually, as a single on the charts, before that we had 'Love My Way' – which was a bigger hit, and certainly 'Ghost In You' was a bigger hit." (Ink 19 2002)
Rich Good: "We got some rather heated responses when we didn't do ['Love My Way'] for the first dates of 2009. I believe violence was threatened... You can't please all the people all the time." (Interview from a now defunct unofficial PFurs website (Burned Down Days?), 2009/2010)
Richard Butler: "It was actually sung aggressively at first. Todd Rundgren said, 'I want you to try to sing this a lot more gently.' He said, 'I think this could be the key song on [Forever Now]. If you don't like it, we'll go back to how you were singing it before.'" (Metro Times 2010)
Richard Butler: "The defining moment in terms of our career would be when 'Love My Way' became a hit out of Seattle. It was a hit in Seattle first, and then it spread down the coast to L.A. and then it became a hit, ... that was a big moment." (Metro Times 2010)
John Ashton: "Love My Way' was the single that the record company were looking for, but they never saw it when we had it. They were, like, 'Well, we need a single. We're sending you over to America, and these songs are very good, but we need a single.' And then we had 'Love My Way' come along, and we lumped that in with the demos that we were doing, and none of the record companies saw it. They saw 'Aeroplane.' They saw a version of 'Alice's House' that we did that they liked a lot, which came later. 'Alice’s House' never made it to Forever Now. But they never saw 'Love My Way.'" (Popdose 2012)
John Ashton: "That's a song that... I remember Richard calling me up one night from the wine bar where he was drinking, saying, 'I've got this great song, it goes like this...' And I couldn't make head or tails of it. [Laughs] But when he did a demo of it and he brought it to me, I really just remember him doing the verse part of it. Then...I had hooked up with this guy, Ed Buller, who incidentally did not play on the record, but he did come up with some of the keyboard lines for Forever Now, including 'Love My Way'. (Popdose 2012)
John Ashton: "There was a music store called The Soho Sound House, and there was this guy, this young kid working in there named Ed Buller, and he was a really good keyboard player, so I invited him 'round. And he ended up working on a lot of the demos of the songs that we presented to the record company, and 'Love My Way' was one of them. He played the marimba-type keyboard part for it on that and actually helped pull that song together. Todd played a real marimba on the song, but Ed was responsible for that riff." (Popdose 2012)
John Ashton: "You know, every time I hear 'Love My Way', I really love it, but I think at the time I was just, 'Ah, whatever.' I didn't really get it right away. But then as soon as I heard it recorded, it was, like, I think I was hooked. As a song, from a guitar point of view, it's very basic. It's really just a very basic guitar part, and the actual song itself... it's a very simple song. But it's the melody that's really so catchy, and the counterpoint between the marimba melody and Richard's vocals is pretty amazing." (Popdose 2012)
John Ashton: "I don't think it hit me straight away that it was such an enduring song. But definitely over the years it never ceases to amaze me that it really is kind of a classic." (Popdose 2012)
Tim Butler: "I don't think there is guitar on there. Live, we used to put guitar in it." (Westword 2013)
Tim Butler (on being asked if he used a fretless bass in 'Love My Way'): "No, it wasn't a fretless. I think it's just that when we were in pre-production, Todd said, 'We can make your bass sound like anything you want to. Do you want it to sound like crystalline like The Byrds or a rubbery sound?' I said, 'Yeah, that sounds cool. Let's try that.' I think that's where the smooth sound comes from." (Westword 2013)
Tim Butler (on the keyboard sounds in "Love My Way" and "The Ghost In You"): "Those were both written by Ed Buller who was our keyboard player at the time. He did those keyboard parts off the top of his head. I think he thought they captured the atmosphere and the lyrics of the songs. Those are the most memorable parts of those songs." (Cleveland Scene 2014)
Tim Butler: "It's crazy that a band like Korn recorded a cover of 'Love My Way.' It's weird. Their music is totally different from our music." (Cleveland Scene 2014)
Tim Butler: "Our big break was when 'Love My Way' came out in the early '80s and we started to get heavy rotation on MTV and the audiences started to get bigger. That was when we discovered that we had something that people liked." (Ticket Alternative 2014)
Tim Butler: "We were already hitting the charts before the re-release of 'Pretty In Pink'. 'Love My Way' was top fifty and 'Ghost In You' was a top forty hit." (Jubilee Cast 2017)
Tim Butler: "I guess the greatest thing that happened to us was when we first heard 'Love My Way' on the radio and then the video was in heavy rotation on MTV. When you start up a band you never expect those things. You just want to have fun with your friends, maybe have a few beers. You never ever think that you're going to make a mega-hit record – let alone a living that has lasted for forty years." (Jubilee Cast 2017)
Tim Butler: "We get weird cover versions, like Korn recently did a cover of 'Love My Way', and then we might get some Korn fans coming along to a Furs gig. The song is strangely similar to the original, not the heavy metal that I was expecting! Maybe they're getting a bit soft in their old age!" (Outline Magazine 2017)
Tim Butler: "Basically [Love My Way] was from jamming around. It was one of those jams that we weren't too sure of. We played it over and over. We played it to Todd, and he said, 'Wow, that should be the first single off of Forever Now.' The keyboard player, a guy called Ed Buller, came up with the marimba part, which was originally on keyboards – keyboards sounding like a marimba. That was basically it. That was the big hook. On the rhythm there's no guitar, it's just got marimba, which I think made it stick out from a lot of other stuff. People hadn't really been exposed to the marimba before, and to hear that and to see the video of Vince [Ely] playing it, it piqued their interest." (Music-Illuminati 2018)
Tim Butler: "Songs like 'Love My Way' and 'Ghost In You' are the only light songs. And they're not particularly light, but they're not as dark and, dare I say, rock 'n' roll-y as most of the set." (Music-Illuminati 2018)
Tim Butler: "Our song 'Love My Way' is in Call Me By Your Name, and pretty prominent in that movie, so that's been another pleasant surprise. It's been 30 years since it was released and to end up in a big movie like that is very satisfying." (Ventura County Star 2018)
Tim Butler (on the time Todd Rundgren asked the band if they wanted to use Flo and Eddie as backing vocalists during the Forever Now sessions): "We said no, they were in The Turtles, a couple of old hippies. But Todd said, 'I don't want to use them as normal backing vocalists, I want to use them as another sound, another instrument.' 'OK, we'll give you a chance.' So he used them on 'Love My Way' and after hearing that, the rough mix, we were like, 'Well, can we use them on something else?'" (Classic Pop 2019)
Tim Butler: "In the early 80s, when we first toured, MTV was in its very early stages. It wasn't even in every market over here, but when MTV pretty much took over was when 'Love My Way' came on heavy rotation, which means a kid somewhere in Nebraska can watch TV and see you, and see what you look like and hear what you sound like, even before you come by anywhere close to there. Your music gets to more people quicker." (Classic Pop 2019)
Tim Butler (on The Furs touring with The B-52s and The Go-Gos when they got back together in 2000): "It was fun. Those songs we'd sort of got burnt out on doing – "Love My Way", "Pretty In Pink" – playing them, they seemed fresh again." (Classic Pop 2019)
Tim Butler: "When you hear 'Love My Way' in Call Me By Your Name, or 'The Ghost In You' in the background of Stranger Things, you think: 'Wow, these songs still mean something, they still stand up'." (Portsmouth.co.uk 2019)
Tim Butler: "Recently, 'The Ghost In You' was used in Stranger Things on Netflix, and the film Call Me By Your Name (2017), used 'Love My Way' quite a lot." (WriteWyattUK 2019)
Richard Butler: "I've always been fairly melancholic I suppose. Along the way, I guess there have been certain songs that were celebratory, like 'Love My Way' and 'Heaven'." (Hot Press 2020)
Richard Butler: "I absolutely loved [Luca Guadagnino's use of 'Love My Way' in Call Me By Your Name]. You go from John Hughes – who, God bless him, totally got the wrong end of the stick – to Call Me By Your Name, which was so perfect for the song it could almost have been a long-form video. It's such a great film too." (Hot Press 2020)
Richard Butler: "[David Fincher] just approached my manager and said, 'I'd really like Richard to sing a cover of 'She' by Charles Aznavour' [for the Gone Girl film in 2014]. I was thrilled, and it's funny, David Fincher was very much involved in the whole process. He was in the studio when I was doing the vocals, and he kind of knew what part of me he wanted – he wanted the more melancholic, huskier part of my vocals from a song like 'Love My Way'. He actually mentioned that song." (Hot Press 2020)
Tim Butler: "I remember hearing about 'Love My Way' being on Call Me By Your Name so I went to see it, and it was in there two or three times! There's actually a scene where people are talking about having gone to a Psychedelic Furs concert and saying, 'Richard Butler's great'. It was like, 'Wow, whoever wrote this film is a huge fan'. It was very gratifying, it makes it all worthwhile to know you've made a lasting impact on people." (Music Week (2020)
Tim Butler: "I went to see [Call Me By Your Name] at the cinema and I was surprised how much the song was used. I also liked how when the teenagers are talking about how they went to see us live and how Richard Butler was great. It felt like a big advert for the band!" (NME 2020)
Tim Butler: "I always find it weird and flattering when heavy metal people are fans of ours, like Korn doing a cover of 'Love My Way'." (NME 2020)
Richard Butler: "The song 'Love My Way' became a hit in Seattle. It was kind of a West Coast hit, it never really caught on that well over on the East Coast. But in Seattle we did an in-store, and when we left the in-store we had a problem getting to the car that we were all driving in. And there were people pounding on the top of the car and then when we got going – we were staying at the Edgewater Inn, I think. And we had to run traffic lights to get back to there without being tailed back by these people. It felt like as close as the Psychedelic Furs ever got to anything like Beatlemania and it was a very strange thing." (Out Of The Box (Q104.3) 2020)
Tim Butler: "Being in a series like Stranger Things or 'Love My Way' being in Call Me By Your Name definitely brings you back to people: 'Who's that? Let's check that band out.' That's why, since we got back together, we've been getting younger and younger new fans who are just discovering the band because of that.
"It's great. It's always good to hear. When I heard about Call Me By Your Name and I went to see the movie, ['Love My Way'] is used two or three times in that movie. Every time it played, it sort of gave me shivers down my spine to think, 'That was me, playing on that track. All those years ago, you never thought that you'd achieve this sort of thing.' I mean, it affects people's lives. You've actually made a worthwhile, lasting imprint on music, which is all you can ask for, being a musician." (The Pitch 2020)
Richard Butler: "'Love My Way' was used in the Call Me By Your Name movie not long ago, in a very touching way." (Record Collector 2020)
Richard Butler: "For some reason, when writing, I always seem to tend towards the melancholic. And sometimes, also, anger. There have been very few 'celebratory' songs... I suppose perhaps 'Love My Way,' possibly 'Heaven.'" (Record Collector 2020)
Richard Butler: "When 'Love My Way' was used in Call Me By Your Name, it felt like it righted the balance somewhat. Because I thought that was an excellent use of it, and that song couldn't have found a better place to be." (Tidal 2020)
Tim Butler: "Once I heard Call Me By Your Name had 'Love My Way' in it, I went to go see it. I was surprised the amount of times you hear the song (in the film), and there's that one scene where they're talking about the band and someone says, 'Yeah, we went to England to see them last year. Richard Butler's great.'
"It makes you feel really proud, to be sitting in a cinema audience and hear the name of your band. When you start a band, you don't know where it's going to go or how long it's going to last. You just get it together to play music with your friends and have a few beers at the local club. You never think, '40 years later, I'm going to be sitting in a cinema listening to a song that I helped write.' It's still exciting." (USA Today 2020)
Richard Butler: "As opposed to [Pretty In Pink], Call Me By Your Name's use of 'Love My Way' is the most perfect way I could have imagined a movie using our song. That film actually could have been a longform video of 'Love My Way'. It was so beautifully matched." (Yahoo! 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: "When you form a band, you never think you'll get signed or become really successful. It starts out as fun. You play a show and have a few beers and meet a few girls. Then, it starts to snowball and things get serious. After 'Love My Way' got into rotation in the States, we were playing to packed houses in places we had never heard the name of. There's nothing better than going out and seeing an audience singing along with songs you wrote whether it's four or 40 years ago." (Cleveland Scene 2022)
Tim Butler: "We weren't planning on using ['Love My Way'] as a single, but Todd said, 'I think this is the single.' It wasn't like anything else on the radio, but seemed to catch on with people. We started to go off the rails as far as our original sound—it was a very poppy record." (GoodTimes 2022)
Rich Good (on being asked what were his favorite classic PFurs songs to play live): "'Soap Commercial', 'Sister Europe', 'Dumb Waiters', 'Only You And I', 'Alice's House'… Honestly, there's not really any I don't like playing. I love playing 'Love My Way' – it's such a great song." (Post-Punk.com 2022)
Tim Butler: "The songs we can't get out of not playing are 'Love My Way,' 'Ghost In You,' 'Heaven,' and 'Heartbreak Beat.' Those are the ones that, if you take out of the set, you'll get lynched." (Nuvo 2023)
Tim Butler: "When we had our first sort of hit with 'Love My Way', when it was getting played a lot on MTV, our audience started getting bigger and bigger." (Tucson Sentinel 2023)
Rich Good (on the time he first heard the song at a school disco in the 80s): "I remember I liked that song, but that was all I knew about The Furs until later." (Palm Springs Life 2024)
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