1981 and we were going out almost every night of the week. Maybe not Monday but definitely Tuesday's onward starting with some underground club in the city where they played a lot of early Stevie Wonder. I was gigging with the band most weekends and hitting the clubs other nights. Mod clubs and more commercial ones like Inflation and The Underground.
This album was like the soundtrack to going out. A great big wall of sound leading off with the perennial favourite "Pretty In Pink" and then all these wild discordant sounds with Richard Butler coming across like a cross between Bowie, Rotten and Steve Harley. And though Pretty in Pink was the big single the track we begged them to play at the Underground was "Into You Like A Train" which was a storming rewrite of Dylan's "All I wanna do". When they played it only me and James danced to it.
It was a hot summer. We'd walk home in the early hours of the morning through a city that wasn't even awake yet. Just the street cleaners patrolling the streets. Some days I would have about one hours sleep before going off to work. Sometimes it was too hard to get the eyeliner off your face so I'd walk in looking pretty ghoulish and all Day of The Dead. They were the bad days when all you wanted to do was get back home and lay on the couch. I was driving a Mazda with the most comfortable seat covers ever at the time. I can't believe I made it home cos as soon as I sat in those bucket seats I was almost off to neverland before I even started.
The clubbing didn't last long. Winter came and Little Murders started playing 4 or 5 times a week and rehearsing more and really club life... it was messing me up. And the Furs got really commercial but I did get to see them live at the Prospect Hill Hotel. The guitarist was a little out of shape and the sound was a mess. But that was The Furs. Brilliant!
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