Around The Fur

Album: Around The Fur (1997)
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Songfacts®:

  • According to Deftones vocalist Chino Moreno, "Around The Fur," the title track from the band's second studio album, is "basically about being infatuated with the dirtiness of life."

    He told the Washington Post, "I'll do anything to try to get into it and understand it, because I want to see where everybody's coming from. I'm hoping that people don't take it as a sexual reference, because it's not about that at all."
  • The Around the Fur album was laid down at Studio Litho in Seattle, the recording space owned by Pearl Jam's Stone Gossard. "We did that really quick," Chino Moreno told Revolver in 2025. "There was something about catching lightning in a bottle with that record."

    "To this day, it's one of my favorites, maybe the favorite," he added. "There's this unbridled energy we managed to capture right then and there. That record has really stood the test of time, and I love it for that."
  • Around The Fur was produced by Terry Date, who later returned to helm Deftones' 2020 record Ohms.
  • Photographer Rick Kosick captured the album cover during a late-night party in Seattle, not far from where Deftones were recording. The image, a spontaneous, unposed shot of a woman, caught the band's attention, and they decided it perfectly matched the raw, impulsive spirit of Around the Fur.

    The only problem? Kosick didn't know who the woman was. The band had to do a bit of detective work to track her down and secure her permission, which she ultimately gave. The mystery woman turned out to be Lisa M. Hughes, a friend of guitarist Stephen Carpenter.
  • When Lisa M. Hughes first crossed paths with Deftones during their Seattle stay, she had no idea who they were. "I was kind of oblivious," she recalled to Jenkem.

    Hughes was a familiar face on the local after-hours circuit, someone who routinely followed nights out beyond last call. "We would always go to afterparties after the bar closes down it was never, 'Let's go home.' It was always, 'Let's keep doing it.' So I just kept running into them at their afterparty," she said.

    One night, the party migrated back to the band's condo, where Hughes hopped into the Jacuzzi. The same evening, Rick Kosick, a photographer for Big Brother magazine, was on hand shooting images for a feature on Deftones. Kosick briefly crossed paths with Hughes while documenting the night, unknowingly capturing a moment that would become immortalized in rock trivia.

Comments: 2

  • Luna Loud from Royal Woods, MichiganAccording to genius.com, Chino's using fur coats as a metaphor for shallow people. Fur coats make look beautiful on the outside, but it the inside is just dead and ugly skin. So a lot of people can be good looking and beautiful on the outside but just be terrible, ugly people on the inside.
  • Zero from The Abyss, NjSounds to me like he's infatuated with a prostitute and he'll do anything to be with her even though it's more like lust and he can't understand anything about what makes her tick or why she's into what she's into. She doesn't necessarily have to literally be a prostitute, she could just be a really hot chick who tends to get a lot of action because of her looks, and I think if "Fur" is not a sexual reference, it could be what she's wearing (fashion), like she's a rich popular girl who like to wear expensive clothing. IDK, that's just my interpretation, tell me what you think.
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