A BRET of FRESH AIR

OVER THE last five years, things seem to have turned full circle on the ridiculous swinging roundabout of Britpop. It might be remembered that in the suffocatingly dull doldrum days of 1992, in a pop landscape dominated by talents barely worthy of the name (do I need to remind you?), Suede s effortless gallop to the top seemed to be a glorious re-affirmation of the power of pure pop.
Taking their youthful adoration of the glam-punk era as a stylistic blueprint, the band churned out a series of simple, fetching singles that were as infectious as measles, and suddenly the likes of Ned s Atomic Dustbin realised the game was up. The result? Instant media attention, overnight colonisation of the charts, and hundreds of adoring fans trying to rip Brett Anderson s shirt off. Suedemania, they called it . . .
A matter of two years later, with the Britpop explosion that Suede more than anybody else had helped to generate in full swing, attitudes towards them changed sharply: as soon as they were no longer the Newest or Biggest Thing, they had outlived their usefulness to the bloodsucking parasites who populate the offices of Britain s most influential music papers. Suddenly, they were dated. Yesterday s men. One-trick ponies. Effete poseurs with unhealthy Bowie and Bolan fixations. The departure of their guitarist Bernard Butler was gleefully seized on by the press as a surefire harbinger of their imminent demise: now, surely, they were finished . . .
However, the hacks had overlooked one tiny little detail: Suede have more flash, trash-passion and pure heart in one gloriously overblown chorus than the likes of Cast or Menswear could summon up in a double album. Proof arrived with the release last autumn of Coming Up, the band s third LP, which firmly, finally and deservedly copperfastened their position as one of the most ambitious, relevant and stylish bands British pop music has seen in the last couple of decades (and sold pretty handsomely, too).
You won t hear them gloating, though, never mind resting on their laurels. Any suggestion that the LP s success also delivered a flying two-fingered salute to the band s detractors is dismissed out of hand by Brett Anderson, who also appears relatively unimpressed by the magnitude of the album s sales figures. Much more important, in his own mind, is the fact that his friends and family liked the record, and that his taxi-driving father has been known to play it in the cab. He s a big fan of yours, then?
Yeah, he loves it, smiles Brett, well, he prefers Liszt and Mahler and Tchaikovsky, but yeah, he quite like some of our stuff, he thinks it s great the way everything s gone . . .
Was it ever thus?
Oh, he was always pretty happy about it . . . at least, once we made it. He wasn t all that thrilled about it in the early days, when we d be rehearsing in the bedroom, he used to come upstairs and tell me to turn that fucking racket down, he d tell me I couldn t sing properly. But then again, I was trying to sing like Steve Ignorant from Crass (laughs) who probably wasn t the best singer you could model yourself on.
The revelation that young Brett actually got his first musical thrills from Crass, of all people, stops me dead in my tracks. It s a bit like finding out that Carcass grew up on a steady diet of John Denver.
I loved Crass so much, he confirms, they were the first band I was really, really heavily into. I though there was something about them that was really mysterious and really cool without trying to be, know what I mean? The funny thing is, I was playing their records at the wrong speed for about a year: you know the way their records are LPs but you play them at 45? Well, I d be playing them at 33 and it sounded like (sings in demonic Exorcist-style voice) DO THEY OWE US A LIVING?/ COURSE THEY FUCKING DO!! Crass lost a bit of their greatness for me when someone tapped me on the shoulder and said, you know you re listening to that at half speed , I stuck it on and it was . . . (sings the same song in the manner of Orville of Keith Harris fame) I was really gutted, the stuff lost a bit of its mystery.
Personally, what I really loved about Crass was the way they remained completely true to the original tenets of punk, while at the same time savagely ridiculing punk s transformation into just another pathetic conformist genre.
Yeah, it was completely punk, but it was totally aware of the fact that punk was dead, Brett assents, punk as rebellion, anyway. And it was taking punk to a new level which was something much more political, much more underground and much more real. If you listen to the records, half of their songs are about the emptiness of punk as fashion, they were completely aware of that.
Would you say they woke you up politically?
Definitely, yeah. (pause) I m not sure if it was just them, y know? I think everybody was pretty politically aware anyway back in the early 80s. It wasn t until the late 80s that disillusionment set in; but a few years beforehand, most music was highly political. Even the chart stuff like UB40 and the Specials was incredibly political. Why it s changed, I m not sure, but politicism in music tends to be a bit tokenistic now, it doesn t have half of the anger or bite or vitality it did back then.
Why could that be?
I just think back then, people were really pissed off with the way things were changing, and now they ve sort of got used to it: they just aren t as angry any more.
Do you remain politically conscious?
Very definitely, Brett responds, looking vaguely horrified that I even feel the need to ask, while keyboardist Neil Codling nods vigorously in agreement.
Presumably, then, you re looking forward to the imminent political burial of John Major and his mates . . .
Yeah, definitely. I was really distressed in 92, cos I was really sure they were gonna lose. It was horrible, really horrible that night, he reflects with some understatement. The reality of it actually sunk in, that they d got away with everything. They d made sure the people who hadn t paid the poll tax weren t entitled to vote, and this was enough to give them the majority. It wasn t until that night that the medieval reality of it all set in, fucking hell, we ve got a dictatorship here that you can t get rid of cos of some poxy rule they ve made about voting them out.
Assuming Labour win, then, do you hold out any hope whatsoever for actual concrete change in the way the country s run?
Yeah, I totally do, he opines, whether it s even a matter of politics or something more intangible than that: a nation taking on someone that, whether they do it or not, looks to the future. There s a sense of positivity about the Labour Party that wasn t there before, basically borne out of the fact that they can win.
You know, politics is kinda like pop music, you know, is pop music about songs, or is it about the way you look? he explains, cutting right to the heart of the matter. And it s the same with politics: is politics about your policies, or is it about your charisma? Lots of the greatest politicians throughout history haven t been great politicians on paper, you know, but someone like JFK was a great politician because he was a great figurehead for the country.
His political beliefs and convictions thus outlined, Brett goes on to reassure all his fellow Crass fans that he won t be using them as song material: I ve always had a problem with lyricists who wear their politics on their sleeve. I m not into Dylan s political songs at all, but I think his love songs are incredible cause they ve had a strength apart from just cleverness.
Have you always been a fan of his, or is this a recent development?
No, not really. He was one of the first things I was into after punk I got into punk really early, when I was about 12 or something, and I just lost interest in it. I was starting to play the guitar, and Dylan s a real inspiration for people who wanna pick up the guitar and think they ve got something to say but aren t too sure how to say it. That s where his genius lies: there was something incredibly simple and natural about what he did, the craftsmanship all came from inside, it was nothing to do with chords.
There seems to be a recurring fascination with rave culture in your lyrics. How much is it part of your lives?
It s something we just couldn t ignore, it was everywhere, replies Brett, even though we re making rock music, it s definitely something I ve been into looking at. But I wouldn t say it s affected our sound in any way, know what I mean? It s important to make music that you feel for and I can listen to dance music, I can appreciate it, I can get something out of it, but I can t feel for it. (sniffs) I ve got nothing against it, I think some of it s great and a lot of great things have come out of it, but it s just not the sort of music I can make: I m a singer, and singing for me is about conveying emotion, and dance music does the opposite. Although what I love about dance music is that it doesn t convey an emotion, I love the pure physicality of it, but I can t do that as a singer, I can t not convey emotion.
Several of your songs seem very ambiguous on the subject of whether or not E is a good thing: there s no Cranberries-style preaching, but it ain t exactly The Shamen either, with lyrics like We take the pills to find each other hinting at the essentially transient and shallow nature of ecstasy s effects, enjoyable as they are. Given that most of your mates spend their weekends binging copiously on the stuff, are you at all sceptical about the long-term/personality-altering effects of E?
Well, I m certainly not sceptical about it, I think mankind is capable of handling the problems it s created for itself. But I do think the whole E culture thing is much, much bigger than anyone really knows yet. The world is definitely moving towards a state of virtual realty, and it s got very little to do with computers, it s got a lot to do with drugs. I think this Internet thing is a red herring, it s like the way in the 50s, everyone thought that in 1997 people d be flying around town eating pills that would give them a whole day s sustenance. It s one of those wild extrapolations of the future . . .
Your lyrics seem a lot more cheerful these days . . .
Yeah, they are. I don t know why, really, because the songs were written at a time when my life had been sort of slightly fucked up, we d been through a lot of shit. But after Dog Man Star, which was this epic of uncontrolled angst, what I wanted to do was control the anger and focus it. Which I ve done with something like She : it s emotional, but at the same time it s got a blankness and a remove about it which I really like.
Without wishing to suggest it was a fluke, I take it you feel pretty blessed to be part of all this?
Oh, yeah. Definitely. I think it s really important not to take that for granted at all; to keep some sort of perspective, to remember that your mates are still slogging away, and to appreciate how much fate has sort of smiled on you. And to use that sense of positivity that you get from being in a sucessful band, instead of turning the other way and going, ah fuck this, we didn t go platinum in America and it s all someone else s fault, we only went gold, this is all bollocks. What WE say to ourselves is, hold on, you ve got a fuckin great opportunity here, we ve got hundreds of thousands of open ears, let s do something with it! I can t understand how people lose sight of that . . .
Does it irritate you to hear people whinging about how vicious and oppressive the whole rock business is?
Christ, yeah. Especially when they start bloody singing about it. I think as a writer, you should be able to write beyond your niggling little thing about whether you can get a car to come on time, or whether you can get a vegetarian meal on the plane. It s just not reality, and anyone that starts getting obsessed with a side of life that only they know, that 99% of the population have no conception of, it becomes really self-indulgent. It s like when you hear people like Prince or George Michael rabbiting on about how hard done by they are, you just think, oh, fuck off, you know, there s people starving, get a fuckin grip .
Do you find it annoying that so much so-called pop music seems to celebrate anger and gloom and angst as a matter of course?
I don t think there s anything wrong with angst, you know, once it s directed in a certain way. But you get the impression with a lot of these bands that they re not even sure what they re angry about, but they think they might as well be cause they ve read a couple of biographies of Ian Curtis and Jim Morrison who obviously were tortured souls so they think that that s the way to act, it s like some morbid tribute.
And I ve always been really wary of that, of never feeling like I have to act to any kind of rock n roll blueprint, know what I mean? If I want to go to bed at 10 o clock with a glass of water, well that s cool, and I do sometimes. And if I want to go on a fuckin five-day binge, I ll do that, but I won t do it because Jimi Hendrix did it on a certain day in 1966, know what I mean? I think living your life by someone else s rulebook is really pathetic.
Are you impressed with the sort of yobbish rock-star populism that seems to be back in favour these days? I inquire, gesticulating in the direction of The Coach And Horses jukebox, which just happens to be spewing out Don t Look Back In Anger . . .
Nothing wrong with it, I think it s a good, healthy thing, smiles Brett. I think people have come out of a period of music (the early 90s) which was really uninspiring and pretty inward-looking, especially in Britain. It was basically people making records for each other and a couple of journalists, and this Lad thing is a definite attempt to regain touch with real people, to make music that vast numbers of people will enjoy . . .
Of course, you can take it too far and end up rewriting Small Faces B-sides,which is pretty pointless, he concedes, staring at the jukebox.
Suede s success pre-empted the whole Britpop renaissance, yet you managed to remain completely apart from everything that scene implied . . .
I think it was great that we managed to keep out of that, observes Brett, although looking back, it was quite frustrating at the time. Cause we had definitely kicked off that renaissance, then people completely ignored us, but I had a feeling that was going to happen, cos we d been on the front cover of every fucking magazine when we d barely released any records, people were bound to get sick of us. What can you do, though? All you can do is keep making good songs: there s no point getting stressed out trying to figure out what s going to be flavour of the month tomorrow.
Were you hurt by the viciously spiteful and personal nature of those recent hatchet-jobs?
Nah, cause I m quite thick-skinned, really. In a perverse way, I enjoy reading that stuff now, I just think it s better. You read something like that and you get a bit worked up about it for five seconds, and you just laugh and say fuck that , you put it down to some sad bastard just looking for a convenient target. Which is totally what it was: some people just need someone to kick around all the time , he shrugs.
And the fact that we d lost Bernard (Butler, the band s original guitarist, who departed in the summer of 1994) meant there was this huge chink in our armour that was just inviting people to give us a kicking, after all the confident statements we d made and all the ambitious music we d made. The mere fact that we were ambitious just seemed to annoy people, it was like, don t get above your station . And it was all totally unfounded anyway, none of it was based on any logical grounds, it was all based around the fact that I looked like a wreck, cos I couldn t be bothered with my physical appearance at the time, I didn t give a fuck about that, cos I was just interested in writing songs.
This is one of the things that amuses me so much about the pop business, and so-called serious journalism: it pretends to be about music and it s not, all its really concerned with is fashion, it s obsessed with fashion, no matter how much it refuses to admit it.
The whole androgynous image that was your defining characteristic in the early days: was that entirely natural, or did you cultivate it to any extent?
Not really. Well, maybe so. I dunno, lots of it was quite natural, and lots of it was gauging a reaction from people and then wanting to go even further. And it was much less referential to the past than a lot of people thought: like, when I made that bisexual quote, I later found out that Bowie had said the same thing, and people thought we were doing all this as a deliberate recreation of the glam era or whatever, which just wasn t the case.
You know, you live your life in a certain way, and you don t realise that other people have lived their lives a similar way. And then if you re suddenly accused of posing, if you can see that it really irritates some people, it s really tempting to keep going even further.
Some of it was just winding people up, but there was never anything dishonest about it. You know, I d just spent three years on the dole with no money, and all of a sudden I was in every magazine I looked at, my songs were on the radio, and I was lovin it, know what I mean? I thought, right, now I m gonna be a big pointy star, I m gonna stick my face in front of everyone and go This is me . I enjoyed it a lot, you know? n