A long time ago, in the Summer of 2007, I heard one of The Psychedelic Furs' brilliant songs, "Love My Way," for the very first time. While going for a drive my mom had bought a copy of The Furs' 2001 greatest hits compilation and we listened to the CD in the car. Right when "Love My Way" came on I was completely blown away. The song was unlike anything I had ever heard before and I thought the music was so awesome, I wanted to keep listening to it more and more. Looking back, it's hard to believe that "Love My Way" was 25 years old in 2007 and now, in 2022, it is 40 years old...
I was originally going to post this tomorrow on the 2nd, which was the release date in 1982, but I decided to post it a day early. On this tribute to "Love My Way" I would like to talk about the three main important things that makes this song stand out for me.
1. The Music
The music in "Love My Way" is just breathtaking and is one of the most greatest in music history. The marimba is probably the most famous part of the song and was played by producer Todd Rundgren; although the melody for the marimba was written by Ed Buller, a friend of the band, who composed it on a keyboard. The keyboards in "Love My Way" are fantastic as well, and they have that futuristic '80s sound which I love. During the early stages of "Love My Way" vocalist Richard Butler had been listening to David Bowie's 1980 album Scary Monsters, and "Love My Way" sounds sort of similar to the music on "Ashes To Ashes." It's funny because there were actually some people who thought Bowie sang "Love My Way!"
2. The Vocals
Richard Butler has one of the most recognizable voices in music and he is such a wonderful vocalist. His voice is a delectable blend of silk and velvet and the way he sings in "Love My Way" is just perfect. But that wasn't how Richard sang in the demo, because on the demo Richard was aggressive and shouted out the lyrics. When Todd Rundgren listened to the demo he thought the music was beautiful but felt that the way Richard was singing was ruining the song, and so he instructed Richard to keep it more low-key. The same thing happened before with "Sister Europe", a song from The Psychedelic Furs' 1980 debut. Richard Butler used to sing the song very harshly and producer Steve Lillywhite told Richard to sing it like if he was talking on the phone at three o'clock in the morning. I wonder what the "Love My Way" demo sounds like and I hope it will appear out of the blue someday.
3. The Backing Vocalists
One of the things that makes "Love My Way" and the album Forever Now great are the backing vocalists, Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan (of Flo and Eddie, The Turtles, etc.). And what's interesting is "Love My Way" originally didn't have backing vocals! After when the recording of Forever Now was finished Todd Rundgren made Mark and Howard listen to "Love My Way" because it was chosen as the first single. After listening Mark and Howard loved the song so much that they begged Todd to let them do backing vocals on it. The result was excellent and they even gave it their all at the end of the song. If I listened to the version of "Love My Way" without the BVs it wouldn't be as iconic as the official version, and the choruses and outro would sound empty without Flo and Eddie; they gave life to that song.
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| Photo: Marcia Resnick |
When "Love My Way" first came out it charted at #42 in the UK Singles Chart, which was pretty good, but it deserved to be higher. Over in the United States it peaked at #44, although in my opinion it was more successful in the US than in Britain. The music video for "Love My Way" was heavily played on MTV, and because of that it gave The Psychedelic Furs their first taste of popularity in America. During a 2020 radio interview Richard Butler talked about the song's impact when they were at Seattle, Washington during the US Forever Now tour:
"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."
Throughout the years "Love My Way" appeared in movies and video games, and has been covered by many bands. In 2017 it famously got a lot of attention when it was featured in the film Call Me By Your Name, which gave the song its biggest streaming week ever. It was even one of David Bowie's favorite songs and in 1983 he put "Love My Way" as his third favorite single in a magazine poll.
"Love My Way" is a gorgeous masterpiece and is dear to the hearts of many fans. It really amazes me that the song sounds timeless after all these years, and it doesn't feel dated at all. I remember when I started becoming a new fan of The Psychedelic Furs eight years ago "Love My Way" used to be my favorite PFurs song. Nowadays it's my seventh favorite, but I still love that song a lot.
Happy 40th anniversary to "Love My Way", one of the most greatest songs ever!
"Swallow all your tears, my love
And put on your new face
You can never win or lose
If you don't run the race"
