Book of Days Tour – 1989

November 12th 1989 – Leicester Poly

This was another exciting day, having been a Psychedelic Furs fan for a few years now, they had announced a surprise gig under their cover name of “Book of Days”.

I don’t think this happens anymore, but a few times in my teens, bands did this, Naz Nomad and the Nightmares being the notable other one for me, which was The Damned.

It added an extra level of excitement to a gig and a few of us went along to Leicester Poly Student Union for this one. A fave venue.

The Furs were touting a new album to be released called “Book of Days”, hence the easy cover name. We expected all the album to be played as a warm up to bigger gigs. We got this, but interspersed was an amazing collection of their best tracks to date as well. These test gigs could often be a bit shorter, but this one was a good length and great quality.

Always exciting seeing a band for the very first time and I’d been wanting to see The Furs for a while now. “Forever Now” was my favourite song, I would however be disappointed at this gig as it wasn’t played, but hearing “President Gas” live showed the guys had a different edge live to record.

The band was mainly a three piece with others who came and went. Richard Butler – vocals, John Ashton – guitar and Tim Butler – bass. Tim and Richard being brothers was reasonably unusual in bands.

Richard was a showman with a distinctive voice and I’d put The Furs mid way between pop and rock and somewhere slightly New Romantic, with a bit of punk, but never quite fitting into any genre……intriguing.

Kicking off with “Dumb Waiters” immediately got the crowd on its feet. At the time, I wasn’t listening to anything else that compared to this sound. A real mix of out of tune (yet strangely in tune too), swirling noise and weird vocal. Straight into “Pretty in Pink” (which was a big hit in the 1986 film of the same name)……half the audience had come to hear this!!

Then a mix of tracks from the new album, split up nicely with a few classics, just in case the crowd weren’t taking to the new stuff….most of them were fine with it.

Up to now, the album “Mirror Moves” had been the most accepted work of The Furs, so to only hear “Heaven” was surprising, but this left time for older songs which were more appealing to the real fans.

Great concert, quite a bit of hip swaying rather than pogo dancing, but real good fun.

Set List

• Dumb Waiters
• Pretty in Pink
• Entertain Me
• Book of Days
• Sister Europe
• Should God Forget
• Shine
• It Goes On
• Heaven
• Sleep Comes Down
• Love My Way
• President Gas
• House
• Highwire Days
• We Love You
• No Easy Street
• Encore: All of This and Nothing, Into You Like a Train, Torch