A selection of quotes from The Psychedelic Furs on the song "We Love You".
Richard Butler: "As for pressures, [CBS] signed us for the material we're doing. The first single will either be 'We Love You' or 'Fall' and the first album is going to be the material we're doing now. So there's no pressure on us, we do it our way." (New Musical Express 1979)
Richard Butler: "When we got the name, the Psychedelic Furs, we started thinking how we actually believed in the Psychedelic thing. The hippies used to say 'We love everything'. This is just listing the things that you have to say that you love in order to say that, and when you put it down like that, it becomes ridiculous. You've gotta love everybody who does [__] on everybody else, and people who drop bombs, and pretty things." (ZigZag 1979)
Richard Butler: "I'm angry about whatever the song's about. 'We Love You' is sarcasm, because you can't have the old attitude... the old hippy thing was let everything be all right. All that puttin' flowers down guns at Kent State University, and all that business, it doesn't work. I mean 'I'm in love with the nuclear bomb' – it's taking the old psychedelic attitude and taking the [__] out of it. I'm attacking that philosophy. I resent it. I think it's a pathetic attitude to have." (New York Rocker 1980)
Richard Butler: "'We Love You' doesn't get played much on the radio here cos the lyrics are a little bit inflammatory, I think. Things like 'I'm in love with Catholics' and 'I'm in love with Althia and Donna / All that [__] that goes uptown ranking'. You know, if you're thinking about it, that could be construed as a racist statement, which it absolutely isn't. It's just taking the [__] out of other records all the way along cos it says: 'I'm in love with Frank Sinatra / Fly Me to the Moon' and 'I'm in love with The Supremes / Oh,"Baby Love"', so the Althia and Donna / 'Uptown Top ranking' thing is just a continuation of that – saying what a lot of [__] records get put on, really." (Slash 1980)
Richard Butler: "[CBS] signed us because of what we were doing, so for them to change it at this stage would be stupid. We went in and said that we wanted 'We Love You' as the first single cos, as I said, we weren't worried so much about separating ourselves from the punk scene as from the original psychedelic scene, and we thought we'd do it straightaway; and then we said we wanted Steve Lillywhite to produce the album, cos he'd seen us a few times and is really into the band, and we got exactly that. And I designed the singles bag and all the promotion material, and I'll do the album cover, hopefully in conjunction with this poster company called 'Times Ten' so, you know, we've done everything we wanted to really...I can only say that we got a good deal. CBS immediately assigned us to an A&R man – Howard Thompson – to work closely with us. Apparently they're trying to get back to the small company type of thing, and we're the band they're trying it out with." (Slash 1980)
Richard Butler (on the topic of unruly audiences): "That was kind of typical at the early gigs, I think... that when we played the punk clubs... when you got a name like The Psychedelic Furs, and if you can imagine being in 1977 when punk's at its height and everybody's playing at 90 miles an hour and singing about a list of things that they hate, which is what the punk bands are doing. And then you get a band called The Psychedelic Furs going on and playing 'We Love You.' We had some bad reactions then, I think." (Interchords promo interview LP, 1981)
Richard Butler: "That is a list – partly of sarcasm. I've just been singing about things a bit negative, now I'm talking about sarcasm. Yeah, it was our, what, first [single] in England, Europe which didn't do very well. But it's a great song; I enjoy it." (WCUT-FM Radio 1981)
Richard Butler: "People weren't really ready in England for that song at the time we made it. They are now though." (WCUT-FM Radio 1981)
Duncan Kilburn: "['Sister Europe'] was the first single... actually no, it's the second single off the first album – the first being 'We Love You' – which came out about two months before the album." (WCUT-FM Radio 1981)
Richard Butler (on not being bothered by people who miss the point of the lyrics): "It's always the same though. With any band you get idiots listening to it. Like when 'We Love You' gets played in the clubs, people listening to it don't realize the sarcasm. I expect it. You have to. I'm just happy when somebody does understand it.
"But 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." (Boston Rock 1983)
Richard Butler (in response to interviewer Peter Antony saying the first album's from 1979): "No no, we were signed in '79. I think the first album might have been 1980. The first single ['We Love You'] was the end of '79." (Radio Luxembourg 1987)
Richard Butler: "I don't feel like writing 'We Love You' again, that punk energy stuff... I think hitting a chord or a snare will automatically get an energy kick but it's superficial, it's like... sugar. I like something that broods a bit more, that's somehow darker than that, more sombre than that, and that's the kind of music I like to listen to." (New Musical Express 1989)
Richard Butler: "'We Love You' was the first single released by the Psychedelic Furs. It came in an Andy Warhol-ish picture sleeve, with a day-glo radio on the cover, thoroughly garish. We felt that 3 1/2 minutes of withering sarcasm under the misleading title of 'We Love You' was an ideal way to introduce the band." (Should God Forget liner notes, 1997)
John Ashton: "This was the first song I had ever heard by the Furs. It was called 'Cars' then." (Should God Forget liner notes, 1997)
John Ashton: "A lot of [The Psychedelic Furs] was pre-written by virtue of the fact that the band had been around a couple of years. So there were songs there. I joined the band in '78, and 'Sister Europe' was already a song, a version of 'Imitation Of Christ' was there, 'We Love You' was already there. And there were other songs that were coming along, like 'India,' that I brought to the band. 'Fall' was another, and 'Blacks/Radio,' which was just kind of a jam." (Popdose 2012)
Tim Butler: "The only time I really sang was in the early days when I used to do backing vocals on 'Imitation Of Christ' and 'We Love You' and it just got to where it was sounding like Richard in a harmonizer. I decided to give up." (Songfacts 2013)
Tim Butler (on the first song he and brother Richard wrote together): "We wrote the first song together in our parents' front room. There was Richard, myself, Roger [Morris], our original guitarist and Simon my other brother. We were jamming around and came up with 'We Love You.'" (Outline Magazine 2017)
Richard Butler: "It was very sarcastic! But I always loved sarcasm. I loved Bob Dylan's sarcasm and cruelty on songs like 'Positively 4th Street'. Was I really in love with The Supremes? Well, I was probably being sarcastic back then, but now I actually do love them. It mentions Frank Sinatra, too, and I don't really care for him that much. I suppose you have to respect that he doesn't sound like anyone else, and he had charisma, but I've never been a fan." (Record Collector 2020)
John Ashton (on hearing a demo tape of The Furs given to him right before he joined the band): "I put the tape on and I really liked it. There were early versions of 'We Love You,' 'Blacks/Chaos/Radio,' which didn't make it on the US domestic release but was on the original United Kingdom release; maybe 'Flowers,' another one. They were very much of the punk edgy sort of harder songs. Maybe 'Pulse' as well, I'm not sure." (Everyone Loves Guitar podcast, 2021)
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