The Psychedelic Furs song inspired by Bob Dylan and David Bowie
Although brothers Richard Butler and Tim Butler formed The Psychedelic Furs in 1977 at the height of the UK’s punk wave, they were always bound for something more kooky and original. When the band released its eponymous debut album in 1980, they presented a moody, refined post-punk sound characterised by Duncan Kilburn’s droning saxophone solos and Richard Butler’s raspy, snarling vocal style.
The band prevailed through the 1980s with a more chart-conscious formula, striking knock-out blows with the singles ‘Pretty in Pink’, ‘Love My Way’, ‘The Ghost in You’ and ‘Heaven’. The first of these remains the band’s most famous hit to date thanks to its hefty role in John Hughes’ 1986 movie of the same name starring Molly Ringwald. The song was initially released on 1981’s Talk Talk Talk but re-recorded for the platinum-selling movie soundtrack.
Elsewhere on the Furs’ second album, Talk Talk Talk, was the less commercially successful single ‘Mr. Jones’. Richard conceived the song with the intention of posing Mr. and Mrs. Jones as quotidian characters who get deceived by a missold cultural ideal of love and romance.
“Mrs. Jones is 17 and 6 and 24 moderately pretty/ She is all the girls you know/ We are going far away, we’re going for a ride/ Mr. Jones has got a plan if you just come inside,” he sings in the first verse.
“It’s basically saying that advertising and radio and pop songs sell you an idea of what love is and what it should be like, and it’s largely idealised and very difficult to realise in the real world,” Richard said of the song in a past interview with Songfacts. “It was a criticism of that, really. Movie stars and ads define romance, don’t they?”
Of course, Jones is an exceedingly common surname in Britain, fitting Richard’s concept like a glove, but his choice was guided by two musical heroes. Firstly, as a quirky frontman of his time, Richard was hugely inspired by David Bowie, whose real name was David Jones. However, Mr. Jones was also a character in the perfectly elusive Bob Dylan song ‘Ballad of a Thin Man’.
Released on the 1965 album Highway 61 Revisited, ‘Ballad of a Thin Man’ appears to augur the emergence of Bowie’s late 1970s alter ego, The Thin White Duke. The impenetrable lyrics read, “You walk into the room with your pencil in your hand/ You see somebody naked and you say, ‘Who is that man?’/ You try so hard, but you don’t understand/ Just what you will say when you get home/ Because something is happening here, but you don’t know what it is/ Do you, Mr. Jones?” in the first verse.
Although ‘Mr. Jones’ couldn’t compete with the success of ‘Pretty in Pink’, it has since become a fan favourite and a common presence of live shows. Watch The Psychedelic Furs perform the song live in Berlin in 1981 below.
