Les Mills Interview

	Les Mills Interview Interview date : May '92
	Les Mills could perhaps be called the unsung hero of The Psychedelic Furs. He was the man in the background who took care of The Furs contractual aspects as well as being a friend and confidant. As manager of The Furs since there humble beginnings in 1979 he, along with Tony Linkin, helped guide the band through their career. Back in 1992 I was fortunate enough to interview the man just when the first mutterings of "the split" were happening. Many thanks to Les for his time.
TFFY	I know that you "stood in" on drums when The Furs had personnel problems, but were you ever actually in a band?
LES	No, I was never strictly speaking in a band. Although, I rehearsed and hung out with friends and talked about forming a band. In 1977 it was the done thing.
TFFY	When did you first start managing bands and how did it come about?
LES	The first band I managed was The Furs, in 1979. Prior to this I had around two years experience assisting Siousxie and the Banshees as friend, roadie, and eventually in their office. It was the classic case of being consumed by your hobby! I just loved music and wanted to be part of it. When I realised I couldn't cut it as a musician, management seemed like the only alternative.
TFFY	When and where did you first see The Furs?
LES	At first I only wanted to help out, John Ashton had been a friend for a couple of years and kept pestering me to see this band he was thinking of joining. At the time (late 1978), The Banshees wre preparing to write and record the follow up to their critically acclaimed debut album, The Scream, and I was commited to their cause. As a favour to John I would lend this fledgling band some of the Banshee's equipment and one fateful night in May 1979 at The Music Machine in Camden Town I experienced The Furs for the first time. They were supporting a mediocre band called The Flys and it was a complete shambles. Both guitarist's broke strings in the first song and neither had a backup instrument! By the end of the set Roger Morris was playing one string and John three, needless to say I was definitely underwhelmed. Six weeks later I brought along some journalist friends to see the band at the same venue, supporting a band called The Boys. This time everything gelled and the sound was like nothing I had ever heard before. This was a revelation and there in the middle of it all, like a mad conductor, was Richard Butler in whiteface make-up, intoning words with afury that seemed to drive the music, I was hooked. At the time the band were managed by John's girlfriend Tracey Collier. It was agreed that I could bring a greater degree of experience to the management side and I became Tracey's partner.
TFFY	Was there anything in particular that attracted you to The Furs?
LES	If anything attracted me to the band at that time it was probably the raw, unstructured power. The seemingly random element that made each live rendition of a song unique. Basically the whole band would take its cue from Richard's adlibbing. Until the band began to record, Richard never sang the same way twice. Sometimes he would change a word here or there. At other times he would laugh off at a tangent, spouting stream of consciousness words or read directly from a newspaper or book. At other times he would writhe around the floor and simulate masturbation, whatever he did commanded attention. This, allied to the sonic power and distortion of the guitars and the groundswell of the bass and drums had to be seen to be heard. Here was the band of my dreams, the possibilities were endless.
TFFY	Looking back at old music papers I noticed that The Furs were linked with a person called Jock MacDonald. Can you shed any light on this?
LES	Jock MacDonald was a legacy of the Tracey era. Jock was a flakey London promoter that ran a club called Billy's which was part of the gig scene back then.I suppose you would describe Jock as a loveable rogue but not a man to get on the wrong side of. We kept our distance and probably played for him two or three times which I think he felt gave him the right to mouth off in the media on a couple of occasions. He is cheifly remembered for misspelling the bands names more badly than anyone else. And that's saying something.
TFFY	In 1982 Richard did a show at Camden Palace. How did it come about and what did it involve?
LES	Richard's Camden Palace escapapde is memorable for all the wrong reasons. Our old haunt, The Music Machine, had been given a facelift as well as a name and, in it's new incarnation as a trendy nightclub, had latterly begun to attract the Butler brothers as a new hangout. The owner, Mick Parker, was the same man that had given the band some of its earliest showcases when the club was primarily a music venue. Now Mick was a persistent man who felt The Furs owed him a favour for their early break. He seemed to have forgotten how much money we had made for him. One night Richard, certainly the worse for drink, promised Mick that he would play for him. The Les Mills interview (continued) next day Richard called to tell me what had apparently transpired. I immediately embarked on a damage limitation exercise and got Mick to agree that he could only have Richard performing four songs to a backing tape and that the performance was to only be promoted inside the club. Come the day of the "appearance", with Richard already having severe missgivings, I was tlelphoned for a comment about an ad in the music press announcing that The Furs would be playing the Camden Palace that night. a hurried call to the club established that the ad had been a "mistake". To ensure that there would be no confusion, it was agreed that a disclaimer would be posted at the entrance to the club. In the event all went well, despite Richard being physically sick with nerves before he went on. In fact so good was his vocal performance that one girl at the front of the crowd tried to rest the microphone from his hand because she thought he was miming! After his performance Richard vowed that he would never get up on stage without the band behind him again. A promise he ha kept to this day.
TFFY	The Furs of the "Talk Talk Talk" period sticks out in my mind as being a very special and "magic" time - is there any particular period that you recall in a similar way and why has it done so?
LES	You speak of the "Talk Talk Talk" period as seeming like a very special period, a sentiment with which I would have to agree. I believe that this album is undoubtedly the pinnacle of the bands recording career. Although I would have to say that the excitement probably began immediately I got involved officially in about July 1979 and continued unabated through to the conclusion of touring Forever Now in the summer of 1983. Initially the most intoxicating thing was the element of novelty. We were all learning as we went along. The perception was that anything was possible. This novelty diminished as the pressure of increased expectation meant that the band had to continually stretch the limits of their creativity. This they did, from the flawed but still magnificent debut album, through the near perfection of Talk Talk Talk, to the reductive psychedelia of Forever Now. However, if ther is one particular period that stands out it has to be the release of Forever Now through to the completion of touring in the summer of 1983. The whole thing just grew and grew. It suddenly seemed that Love My Way was opening all doors for us all aroung the world. We had toured the USA from October until early December, finally holing up at the Gramercy Park Hotel in New York for Christmas. Then after shooting a couple of experimental video's and doing PR, it was back on the road again for a week in sunny Florida to acclimatise for the ultimate road trip...Australia. In fact we flew from New York to Aukland, New Zealand where the band headlined the first night of the Sweetwater festival in front of over 60,000 people. Apparently, Love My Way had been New Zealand's second biggest selling single of 1982 topped only by Barbara Streinsands Evergreen! After a three day stopover we arrived in Sydney on 29th January. It was the middle of summer and in a few days the Aussies were to elect a Labour government after years of suffering under incompetent Tory rule. Here again Love My Way was storming up the charts and the next six weeks were as close to heaven as it is surely possible to get. When we flew back to the United States, touching down in Los Angeles on March 6th 1983, we were welcomed by the news that the new cable TV channel, known as MTV, was starting to influence the cautious programmers at Commercial Radio. The Love My Way vidoe had been in heavy rotation for months and was finally triggering a response. This was all the more surprising as MTV was still not available in New York or LA and had less than 3 million potential viewers. Yet it was undoubtedly having an impact. It rapidly became obvious to all concerned that we coulb soon be having our first American hit single. The second leg of the tour went on to be the most successful yet. the single eventually stalled just outside the Top 40. However, it was the crucial breakthrough. When the tour ended we all parted for a well earned rest. So it was that a magical period came to an end.