Pretty in Pink: the Psychedelic Furs on how they made a pop classic

Richard Butler, singer, songwriter

The Psychedelic Furs were very chaotic when we started. Often we were very drunk, and the whole scene was a bit chaotic. You could get on stage and make whatever noise you wanted. When we played the Roxy, in London, we had a vacuum cleaner in the lineup, which sounded awful, but people seemed to like us and kept coming back.

We were a cult band – dark, alternative and mysterious – but the recording company believed in nurturing us, so we didn’t have to have a hit out of the gate. Pretty in Pink came about during sessions for our second album, Talk, Talk, Talk, by which time our sound had become more focused. Roger Morris and Duncan Kilburn had gone home and there were four of us left. John Ashton and [Butler’s brother] Tim knocked Velvet Underground-type riffs around and suddenly there was the riff for Pretty in Pink. I sang a melody to it and the song came together that same evening. Then I went home and wrote some lyrics.

For me, Pretty in Pink means someone naked. It’s about a girl who sleeps around a lot and feels like she benefits from it, whereas in reality people are talking and laughing about her behind her back. “All of her lovers all talk of her notes and the flowers that they never sent” – they have no respect for her. The line “she loves to be one of the girls” suggests she’s living the way she thinks society tells her to, but it doesn’t make her happy. I like to think she ended up happily married. The sarcasm, sorrow and general malaise and melancholy are autobiographical.

Molly Ringwald was a massive fan of ours and she played the song to John Hughes and said, “You should make a film based on this.” It was bizarre but very lucky. Pretty in Pink isn’t my kind of film. It gave us a lot of exposure but was a mixed blessing. We had to rerecord the song for the film, and it was a bigger hit the second time, but the original is better. The film had nothing to do with the lyric and in a way it made it trite. It wasn’t about somebody actually wearing pink.

Steve Lillywhite, producer

Their catchphrase was “beautiful chaos”, and the first album encapsulated that. Punk was a rebellion against the music that had gone before, but the Psychedelic Furs were different – they jammed. The Jam never jammed! The Furs’ six-piece lineup made a meandering, more psychedelic noise possible. Nobody fretted that they’d have to divide the royalties by six. Everyone was bohemian and didn’t care about the future.

We recorded it in RAK studios. Pretty in Pink encapsulates the intertwined guitars between Roger – who I only ever knew as Dog - and John, a really great, underrated guitar player. I do remember getting Duncan to play a piano riff that sounded a bit like Eric Clapton’s Layla. We spent most time on the vocals, slightly changing the melody on the third verse. I remember suggesting Richard sing, “Wasn’t she eeee-asy, isn’t she pretty in pink?” in a different scan, and it sounded really good. As the producer, I was the captain of the ship and steered it, but the song didn’t need much by way of decoration. Vince Ely did a great job on the drums. Richard and Tim would argue when they came back from the pub, as brothers do, but that tension fuelled the recordings.

The second [1986] version [produced by Charles Harrowell] doesn’t have a hair out of place. It sounds like Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the USA, or David Bowie’s “Heroes”, which were huge songs at the time. I do like the drop down in the third verse because it gives the song somewhere else to go, but my main gripe is that it doesn’t really sound like the Psychedelic Furs. The vocals are miles better on the original, because Richard doesn’t sound like he was into doing it again.

I didn’t know it was a potential smash, nor did I realise that when I recorded the Pogues’ Fairytale of New York or U2’s New Year’s Day. You’ve got your head up your arse when you make an album. On the first album, I remember counting up the number of times Richard sang “stupid” and it was something like 20. For the second album I said: “Tone down the stupids!” But Richard is a great lyricist. I always say to artists: “You don’t have to tell people what the lyrics are about.” Then people can interpret them how they want.

• The Psychedelic Furs are ambassadors for National Album Day on 10 October. Their new single, Wrong Train, is released on 30 October on Cooking Vinyl. The album, Made of Rain is out now.