Charisma takes many forms, such as Lemmy’s gruff, Marlboro-tugging twinkle, or the kind that Justin Furstenfeld of Blue October has. Bounding on to our Zoom call, the Texan singer is the livest of livewires; a heavily inked puppy dog with a voice from Saturday morning cartoons, who barely needs prompting to spark a 40-minute screed pinballing from his kicked cocaine habit to London’s high-end perfume circuit (“Penhaligon’s is the best!”).
Furstenfeld’s almost indecent quotient of X-factor is just one reason why his modest but obsessed pocket of UK fans cheered Blue October’s return last month. The other is that the band played their classic Foiled album front-to-back – which they never managed to do here back in 2006 – for its 20th anniversary.
The story doesn’t start in London, although Furstenfeld clearly wishes it did. When it’s suggested to him that a young Houston band setting out circa 1995 might have cut their teeth on the blues, he pulls a ‘vomit’ face. “Urgh. No. If you stick your head into UK music as a child, you’ll never leave. I’m sorry, but UK music hands-down kills American rock’n’roll. I was listening to The Smiths, The Cure, Cocteau Twins, Peter Gabriel… I’ve visited everywhere that Joy Division ever went, sat outside and smoked a cigarette. I’ve got the British flag tattooed right here [slaps chest].”
Identifying with the oddballs of indie and alt, Furstenfeld was wary of the major-label deal that led to Foiled.
“I remember telling the people at Universal that I never wanted to be signed to them,” he says. “I wanted to be signed to 4AD/ Elektra, which was Cocteau Twins, Red House Painters, Pixies, This Mortal Coil – the weird shit, y’know? But I was like: ‘Well, if y’all want to put a million dollars into this shit, then okay, that’s your bad.’ Like: ‘Hey, I know how fucked up I am in the head. And you’re putting a million bucks behind it? You’re crazy as shit!’”
(Image credit: Chris Barber)
Those Universal dollars paid for album sessions in LA. It was a time of boundless creativity, Furstenfeld remembers, where for once he was left alone by the suits.
“On one album, I remember turning to this producer and going: ‘Have you even fucking listened to the demo?’ He was like: ‘You don’t talk to me that way.’ And I was like: ‘Fuck you. I don’t care who you are. You’re fired.’ But on Foiled I had this freedom to write whatever I wanted to. About spirituality and being godless. About loneliness.
“There’s a hidden track called It’s Just Me, and it destroys me when I listen to it, because you can tell I’m trying to figure out the world,” he continues. “I never thought I’d make commercial music. But I sure am happy that it was commercialised about depression, suicide prevention, drug addiction, real things like that.”
Furstenfeld knew his subjects. Foiled’s standouts hint at the headspace of an artist who was by then “not a happy boy”. Angst anthem Hate Me was inspired by a “sweet” former girlfriend “who should probably get away from me because I’m not a good seed, I’m an egomaniac and a piece of shit”. Into The Ocean is “about this dude jumping off a ship to kill himself, thinking it’s the most beautiful thing in the world”.
During the Foiled sessions, the singer managed to contain his issues (“I was definitely addicted to a lot of drugs, flirting with a lot of danger. That’s why I never left the studio, because LA’s crazy and I didn’t want to get arrested”). The album made it over the line and sold brilliantly.
“At that time, all I wanted to do was beat that band Bright Eyes,” he admits. “They were the cool thing, and I wanted to smash them in record sales. And we crushed ’em!”
Furstenfeld’s new profile made him a talisman for the dispossessed (today his fan base is so fervent that many book him to officiate their weddings).
“People looking up to me,” he considers, sounding a little awkward for the first time, “I’m not even gonna go there, because musicians who feed into that end up having their ego destroy them. I’m just as confused and insecure as any other person in this whole world. I see rock stars thinking that what they write on social media matters. It fucking doesn’t, bro. You still piss, you still bleed, you still eat a burger.”
Rock stars break too. In October 2009, news reports spoke of Furstenfeld suffering a public anxiety attack. He gapes, and for a moment it feels like he’s about to tick us off for dredging up one of the darkest chapters of his personal life. But no, he feels our terminology doesn’t adequately reflect his mania that day.
“Anxiety attack? Shit, man, I blew up in an airport. Talkin’ about killing things and stuff. And you can’t lose it in an airport in America, because then it becomes a federal thing. Oh my god. I would call it a little more than an anxiety attack. I was not coherent. All I kept saying to the police was: ‘Call my dad, he’s a cop.’ And they just said okay, we’ll help this kid. So they took me the mental hospital. And it was good that they did that. Because it was at the height of my addiction, and the height of a very toxic marriage, and a very hard time of not being able to see my daughter. It was destroying me.”
Unlike most artists, Furstenfeld is happy to disown whole stretches of his back catalogue from that troubled period. “If I play Any Man In America [2011], I’m like: ‘Urgh’. And Approaching Normal [2009] is the worst album Blue October ever made. I was all wild and crazy and the songs weren’t there. It’s like: ‘Holy shit, I’ve got nothing to write about, except for the sadness!’”
Fortunately, he says, releasing the honest and often excellent material of the band’s subsequent seven albums was worth far more than clinging to the A-list (“Once you start thinking you got to sell millions of records to make everyone happy, you’re so fucked as an artist”).
Now, he says, beaming, he’s relishing the prospect of taking the Foiled songs on the road and basking in the success that his demons ruined first time around.
“I should have enjoyed it more back then, because Foiled was such a good album. But I made it so dramatic. Everything was about me. And these days I’m like: ‘Life is so good.’ Like: ‘What was wrong with you?’ So I’ll be more proud of the songs this time. I won’t just be regurgitating the pain. I’ll be like: ‘These are special songs. And they’re the reasons I am who I am.’”
The US leg of the Foiled World Tour begins in Abilene, TX, on October 22. For full dates and ticket links, check the Blue October website.
(LouderSound)
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