Rocker Still Raucous at 40 : Richard Butler Is Making Fur Fly With New Band, Love Spit Love

Take heart, graying new wave fans.

At the age of 40, Richard Butler is still snarling with the proudly arrogant, adenoidal whine that made the Psychedelic Furs a mainstay of the alternative scene from the late ‘70s into the early ‘90s. With a new band, Love Spit Love, and a new album, Butler’s sound and vision remain basically unchanged. Even as he eases into middle age, Butler still produces music that any purple-haired, alienated teen-ager can relate to.

“I guess I still have the soul of an angry young man,” Butler said, laughing, in a recent phone interview. “My father is like 73, and he’s still an angry young man.”

Love Spit Love, which appears Sunday at the Coach House is a group that should please mourning fans of the Furs, who went the way of most rock ‘n’ roll flesh after the end of its Spring ’92 tour. Along with Butler’s icy, love ‘em or loathe ‘em vocals (inspired in no small part by Johnny Rotten) remain the layered, droning blankets of sound that characterized the Furs’ style and the disaffected, consciously vague lyrics for which Butler is known as well.

“I think the sort of things I’m writing about are basically the same,” Butler said. “I don’t intend to write boy/girl sort of love songs. My lyrics tend to be about, like, being godless, not believing in romantic love and looking for something to believe in, which we’re doing all the time, I think.”

One thing that sets Love Spit Love apart from the strictly stylized Furs is that the group takes a few more musical chances and spreads itself a bit more. Compositions on the recently released “Love Spit Love” album range from the aggressive, punky “Seventeen” to the acoustic guitar-based “Codeine” to the psychedelic, raga-like “St. Mary’s Gate. Butler stressed that his leaving the Furs was a direct result of a need to spread his musical wings.

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“I decided at the end of the last tour that I didn’t want to do another Furs record,” he said. “I wanted to do something that would go in different directions, something that I didn’t know what it was going to sound like ahead of time. I felt I wanted to be with something where I could change directions without (band members) going, ‘That’s uncharacteristic,’ or ‘That’s not a good idea.’ When a band’s been around for like 10 or 12 years, it’s like you know what to expect, and I didn’t want to do that anymore. We don’t pull back from the sort of things that the Furs would pull back from doing.”

Helping Butler achieve his goal, in no small part, is guitarist Richard Fortus, a lyrical and versatile powerhouse of a musician who is as effective at painting delicate, journeying sound photos as he is at cranking out the aggressive crunchers. (Love Spit Love is rounded out by drummer Frank Ferrer and bassist Tim Butler, a Furs alumnus and Richard’s younger brother.) It is Fortus’ contributions, more than anything, that seem to flesh out the new group’s more ambitious designs.

Fortus and Butler met when Fortus’ group, Pale Devine, opened for the Furs on its final tour. The two became fast friends, and, according to Butler, that friendship was more important in Fortus’ selection as his new guitarist than was his musical talent.

“I was picking people for this band that were nice people,” Butler explained. “That took priority over being a great musician. There’s no use starting up a band that’s going to fall apart in two years time because everyone decided they hate each other.”

Butler grew up in London during an era that produced a plethora of legendary English groups, such as Cream, Jethro Tull, Traffic and Led Zeppelin. Still, Butler found himself drawn to the dark musings of America’s underground scene rather than the better-known and more celebrated music being created in his own hometown.

“I listened to the Velvet Underground a lot,” he said. “The Velvets were especially influential on a lot of the earlier Psychedelic Furs stuff. They really got cacophonous, and I think the Furs got a lot of ideas from that.”

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Echoes of the Velvets’ sound reverberate in Butler’s music to this day, darkness and estrangement being themes he seemingly never tires of exploring.

Feedback for Love Spit Love from longtime followers of the Furs has been unanimously encouraging, according to Butler, who just might be hissing his venomous vocals into the 21st Century.

“The response I’ve gotten from Furs fans has been great. You know, ‘I was (ticked off) when I heard the Furs had broken up, but I really like this record’ seems to be the consensus. But musically, I think this group is a lot more dynamic, and I’m looking forward to taking a lot more chances with it.”

* Love Spit Love, along with Factory and Gigolo Ants , appears at 8 p.m. Sunday at the Coach House, 33157 Camino Capistrano in San Juan Capistrano. Tickets: $15. Information: (714) 496-8930.