Suede: The Insatiable Ones (2018) - full transcript

Suede's arrival in British music in the 1990s was a phenomenon. Fated as 'The Best New Band in Britain' before they had even released a single, their debut album was the biggest selling for a generation and their emergence and dominance heralded Britpop. Made with full access to the band and their unexpurgated, incredible archive, Suede: The Insatiable Ones is documentary-feature that tells their story with brutal honesty, humour and dignity. Pulling no punches, the film eschews a linear form for a themed journey through Suede's intense career, and its creative and personal highs and lows. Through five chapters it explores: their roots and identity; the rush of success and immediate, infamous internal power struggle and schism, which few thought they could survive; the subsequent commercial apogee and significant international success; the resultant excess and substance abuse; their 'slow painful death' and split; and - ultimately - their recent, brilliant, acclaimed artistic rebirth. Frontman Brett Anderson and the band are joined by a wonderful cast that includes founder member of Suede and Elastica, Justine Frischmann, Suede's early manager Ricky Gervais, early Suede drummer and ex-Smith Mike Joyce, alongside friends, family and collaborators including Richard Osman, iconic designer Peter Saville, and others.

(ORCHESTRA PLAYS)

I once described

the history of the band

as being like a pram that's been

pushed down a hill.

There was always a hint at the back

of my mind

that our journey could be quite

twisted.

I've always wanted us to just be a

band on our own.

Sometimes that's worked and sometimes

it's worked against us,

but it's just the path we've chosen.

Suddenly, we were everywhere.

Animal nitrate...

There was just a sense of how far

can this go?

We were much less in control of it

than people might assume.

Suede started, really, when Simon

was in the band

and Bernard was in the band.

And, oh, if you stay...

In the back of my mind, I wanted it

to be about songwriting -

this is what I wanted to do before

I met Brett,

before the band evolved.

I did realise that we were on a kind

of collision course,

that he was always going to leave,

and there was nothing I could do.

They invited me for an audition,

but I didn't think they'd offer me

the job -

that was never gonna happen.

And then it did.

Here they come

The beautiful ones

The beautiful ones...

Well, I don't know why they've

decided this,

but apparently Suede wanted another

member.

There was always a kind of red

button of self-destruction

which has "do not press" above it,

and everyone's going,

"That looks nice."

Simon did always seemed to have a

camera in his hand

in the early days.

At the time, I hated it.

Go away!

But when you see the high points,

and when you see the low points,

I'm really glad that we had it.

When we suddenly appeared,

it felt like it was this very fast,

overnight phenomenon.

But there were many years of horrible

struggle.

It did feel like the longest ever

overnight success.

I don't think four years is a long

time at all

for any band to kind

of find their way.

Sometimes it can be quite immediate.

I mean, The Smiths, for example,

it was six months later.

I was in a band when I was at

college - I was 20, 21 -

and we were signed,

and it was all over in six months.

I don't think we even gigged.

My experience in Elastica

was that it came together so fast -

the sound came together really fast,

it was really easy.

Suede was the opposite -

it was years of nothing quite working

and things not quite falling into

place.

I don't think we've ever had a plan.

I think we had an idea of a band,

but we didn't really know what to do.

There was a real quite love and

respect

in Mat and Brett's relationship,

for sure.

The reason Suede has gone for so long

is because of the strength of their

relationship.

I mean, they are like brothers -

they've known each other forever.

I suppose it began back behind our

shoulders there

in the college that we both went to.

I always wanted to be in a band,

from as long ago as I can remember -

just it seeming the most natural

thing that someone should do.

Mm.

But never seeing anyone who lived

where I did

who could have been in a band,

you know.

You didn't even see people who

looked like they were in a band. No.

Mat had this kind of mystique, kind

of a bit of an aura,

which I kind of noticed from afar.

He sidled up to me and we started

talking about music one day.

You were a goth, really, weren't you?

I don't think there's any way of

getting round it.

There's no beating around the bush,

you were definitely a goth.

You used to have backcombed hair.

A paisley shirt.

And a paisley shirt.

Brett looked like, I don't know,

a '60s B actor.

Well, I had that lemon yellow suit.

I got it in a sale in Topman down in

Brighton.

I think I described myself as looking

like a cut-price Cliff Richard.

Which is probably more accurate!

He was like a rare peacock that I'd

never seen before.

When he walks in, you think,

"OK, this is different to something

I've seen.

"I don't know what I'm seeing, but

it's certainly different."

Somewhere over here there was a sort

of portacabin,

and Mat asked me to be in his band,

which was called Paint It Black.

Music, to me, was absolutely

everything -

it was what I thought about, it was

what I wanted to do.

They were very, very much part of a

gang - they self-identified.

They were the cool kids.

I can remember being intensely

jealous

of people like Echo and the Bunnymen,

and The Smiths,

who had these roots,

even if they fought against the

roots.

It's like, "You can't really have

your roots here."

And even though Haywards Heath

doesn't have an identity that we were

proud of,

we used the drabness, the mundanity,

the dead-end nature of it

to inspire what we were writing

about.

It became about documenting... this.

But a kind of escape from this,

as well.

That sense of frustration

is borne from being brought up in

places likes this.

You're always peering up the railway

tracks,

you're always looking to the horizon

for something,

cos it's not there for you.

It must have been very

claustrophobic for them,

I see that, and they couldn't wait

to get to London.

I remember seeing Brett

the day that we were all signing in

for our student IDs at UCL.

He had sort of a long flick,

and he had a pair of earrings and he

had a handbag -

I mean, it was a lady's handbag -

and I had this moment of thinking,

"Is that a boy or a girl?"

And just finding him devastatingly

attractive.

But I just knew that we were gonna

be together.

Within a few weeks of meeting Brett,

he took me back to his house in

Finsbury Park,

and there was six guys living

there - Mat was one of them.

Justine, I met her as Brett's

girlfriend,

before we ever kind of made music

together.

And he brought back this incredible

girl -

just so smart and so funny.

Justine was a huge,

huge influence on me,

in terms of who I became as a person.

If I hadn't have met Justine, I

possibly wouldn't be sitting here,

and absolutely, definitely, in terms

of what Suede became,

even though, when we were first

appeared, she wasn't in the band.

She pushed Suede really hard.

It wasn't a band at that point.

You know, it was three of us messing

about in a bedroom.

But I'm pretty sure I was a big part

of trying to get it out of the

bedroom

and onto some sort of stage

somewhere.

We'd put an advert in the NME and

we'd met a couple of people.

I remember there were a stream of

really improbable people turning up,

who were either 55,

or full-on punks with huge Mohicans.

And Bernard came over, and he looked

really, really young.

I can remember him asking how old we

were, and saying, "Oh, we're 23,"

and him being kind of like, "Well,

you better get a move on, then."

He sat and played the guitar, and it

just poured out of him.

It was one of those really obvious

moments,

"Well, we don't need to look for

anyone else."

That was the moment where it seemed

like we could be really good.

From the very start...

I mean, there's a whole phase before

making the first album,

when we were sort of a different

band, really, and not very good.

They're quite fey, the very early

Suede songs.

It was kind of like, "We really

need a drummer."

I think we thought it was gonna be

really easy.

Justin Welch, who ended up being the

drummer from Elastica,

he was in the band about three weeks,

then we found out that he was in six

other bands.

Mike Joyce contacting us and coming

for an audition

was one of the strangest things that

ever happened to us.

I remember actually sitting in a

lecture,

and Brett coming up to me with a

handwritten note, saying,

"Mike Joyce wants to audition for

the band."

(LAUGHS)

The way that Bernard and Brett and

Mat worked together,

you know, that was the foundation of

something quite good.

We went up and did

some demos with Mike.

It never would have worked -

we would have been Mike Joyce's new

band.

It was there,

it was just a matter of getting the

right pieces of the jigsaw.

To me, Suede kind of nailed that

with Simon.

I was selling tickets at ULU, at the

box office there,

cos they used to have gigs on up in

the student union bar upstairs,

and my manager there was Ricky.

It's very strange that Ricky Gervais

was involved in any way.

I was always friends with Simon,

though.

I think that was probably a bigger

connection

than me "managing" Suede.

I was a failed musician myself,

and I thought, "Oh, at least it's

doing something to do with music."

And I think literally the only thing

I ever did to help Suede

is I sent the demo tape

to a few A people.

But I remember saying,

"Oh, I'm rubbish at this,"

and the band agreed.

There was no tears.

I was in an OK job in a student

union, helping putting on bands.

Simon was already working in the

ticket shop.

I was in the office making some

posters -

I think Nirvana were playing there -

and they said, "Come and have a

listen to this tape.

"What do you think?"

"Oh, this is fantastic,

this is great,

"but why have you got a drum machine?

"You need to get them a drummer."

I asked if I could get an audition,

and he said, "No, because you don't

wear flares

"and you haven't got a fringe."

(CHUCKLES)

Which I was a bit pissed off about.

Simon replaced the drum machine.

So the tightness and the rhythm

took a hit,

but the hair was much funnier,

because the drum machine

had normal hair,

and then this freak comes along,

who can't drum, but has got fucking

funny hair.

Do you remember how to set up your

drums?

I do, actually.

I know you have people to do it.

It's pretty easy. I haven't done it

for quite a while.

I just wanted to present this to

you, Simon.

This is the man whose job you took.

- So, are you feeling guilty about that?

- Terribly guilty.

He had a wife and two little drum

machines to support.

Two tom-toms.

This is the contraption that used to

break down in the middle of gigs,

and we did those gigs at...

It was at The Bull and Gate,

wasn't it?

It wasn't a lot of competition,

to be honest.

You were slightly better than

the drum machine.

I got the job, there you go.

Yeah.

Well, thank you, drum machine.

You had your own drums, didn't you?

I did... Well, these are...

These are the drums I had.

It took me two years to buy these

on HP.

And I cleaned toilets in

Stratford-on-Avon for two years,

literally cleaning shit off walls.

I always thought Simon

was a very, very underrated and

slightly ignored element

in Suede's development musically, you

know, what he brought to the picture.

With a different drummer,

Suede could possibly have gone in a

different direction.

You brought in the punky, straight

rocky sort of thing.

Suede started, really, when Simon

was in the band

and Bernard was in the band.

In the back of my mind, I wanted it

to be about songwriting -

this is what I wanted to do before

I met Brett,

before there was any band involved,

and it took about a year and a half

after actually meeting them

for that to evolve.

I went round to Bernard's flat out in

Leyton, in East London,

and he kind of opened the door,

and he had this kind of slightly

wild-eyed expression,

and he kind of ushered me in

and he played me a demo

that he'd made,

and it was basically The Drowners.

The Drowners are supposed to be

children of the revolution -

that's where it came from for me.

Something with big block chords.

I remember rushing back

with this cassette

and working on the song all day and

all night.

So-o-o-omeone

Give me a gun

And

Well, it's for my brother

Well, he writes the line

Runs right down my spine

Say, "Oh, do you believe

in love there?"

I remember when he first played me

The Drowners,

and we both went, simultaneously,

"Yes! That is the song."

You're taking me over

It was like,

"OK, that's a great pop hook."

You're taking me over

And I'd always understood the power

of the hook,

but understanding it and being able

to do it

are very, very different things.

We'd opened a door that had

previously been closed to us

when we wrote that song

... taking me over

I remember waking up in the morning

and running over to the typewriter

to see what was on it a lot,

and often being amazed by this whole

world that was in Brett's head.

He used words that weren't rock

words.

You know, "paracetamol", "leotard",

"loony".

Although it could be quite

fantastical,

it was real life at the heart of it.

You're taking me over

And so we drown

The sexuality in the lyrics was a

really important thing.

You're taking me over

I always wanted to talk about

sexuality

in the same way that Lucien Freud

paints the human body -

this sort of, like, stark realism,

slightly uncomfortable,

but kind of, like, very, very real.

Sort of candle-coloured skin under a

fluorescent light.

I remember being at the Premises,

trying it out there for the first

time.

Everything happened at the Premises.

Suede rehearsed here.

That's where I met Damon,

at the Premises -

that was the first

time I ever met him.

We were in this weird and horrible

situation,

that Brett and Justine had split up

and she had met someone else,

but she was still in the band.

I don't think it ever would have

worked.

Eventually, Justine left.

I don't know how many months it was,

but it was pretty awful.

Just this heavy feeling in

rehearsals,

and, you know, Brett was really

having a hard time.

To lose a relationship that's not

just your lover,

but it's someone you're working with,

someone who you're making art with.

At the time, it was very painful,

but it was possibly the best thing

that ever happened to me.

It kind of gave the songs...

... a direction.

Things like Pantomime Horse, you can

hear it in that song.

I was born as a pantomime horse

Ugly as the sun

When he falls to the floor

I was cut

From the wreckage one day

This is what I get

For being that way

I think Brett is very, very good

at not shying away from hard and

unpleasant emotions

in yourself.

When they split, I think you can

hear that.

It kind of enabled me

to tap in to something very primal in

myself -

this sense of loss and grief and

frustration, jealousy,

and all of these things,

which are very, very, very, very

powerful things.

When I look back at what I was doing

as a lyricist in those times,

I was trying to reflect the world

I saw around me -

this sort of broken, disaffected

world

of squats and roundabouts and dole

queues.

And that was the world that I found

myself in

after me and Justine had split up.

But at the same time, it was very

much an escape from that.

At that time, we were sort of quite

different,

and I think that sort of fed a lot

of these weird songs.

But, you know, at the end of the

day, they're not weird songs at all.

It's not really until you go and

play it out in London,

when no-one is making records like

that at all,

that you're suddenly kind of like,

"Oh, right, we're quite strange."

And there was that kind of crossover

period, where we were writing

all these what I thought were pretty

fantastic songs,

things like He's Dead, and Moving.

But still playing to two people in

pubs.

Shame on me

Well, I had the beast, you see

And if he can't take it, I can take

him home with me

When I was saw Suede,

I wasn't thinking, "You're

playing to four people,"

I was thinking, "You're not gonna be

playing to four people for long."

And when we go lassoing, you get

lassoed

All of you

We had three years of struggle.

It was a long time until we got

noticed.

Moving

So moving

I think it was because we were so

against the grain.

At the time, all the other bands were

indie dance.

Trying to join in with the crowd,

you have to be quite good at it

to assimilate.

If you're not, you have to really

set yourself apart,

and we weren't very good at fitting

in with the crowd that was there.

We'd been passed on by everyone -

people really, really weren't

interested.

It was this odd phenomenon,

where I think lots of A

that had come to see in the very

early days,

they'd seen us, and decided we were

rubbish,

so when we came back and started

playing these songs,

they'd already passed on us.

And if you can't take it

I had been doing A record labels

and had lost my job at RCA,

and was thinking about starting a

record label,

which was a particularly crazy idea.

So I was going out, seeing lots of

bands.

Saul Galpern, he came to see us at

The Venue in New Cross -

we were doing an NME gig, which was

called On For '92,

and I think we were second on,

I think.

And they came on, and I was

completely blown away.

Oh, oh-oh

What you do in your head

You do in your head

Oh, oh-oh

If he is dead

They were completely out of step

with everything that was going on at

the time,

and that's what attracted me to them,

was the fact that they were

unfashionable.

All these A

no-one had even bothered to watch it.

I spent the whole weekend thinking,

"Have I just seen, like, something

that's earth-shattering?"

One person called me up, and that

was Saul.

He told me that nobody else had

called them -

I was the only person that had rang

them.

So, that was quite a relief, really.

Saul Galpern, he was like us,

I think -

he felt like he had great ideas and

he wasn't being listened to.

Hello? Yes, Phil.

So we signed a deal with Saul's

label, Nude,

and we started recording

The Drowners,

and then just suddenly...

... the Melody Maker came out,

and were on the front cover.

It was actually that cover of Melody

Maker that changed everything.

I remember seeing it - walking down

the street with Mat

and seeing our faces on the cover,

and it was this shocking moment.

And to put a new band on the front

cover,

who hadn't released a single yet,

was quite a thing,

because it meant the whole industry,

and everyone in the media,

had woken up to, "Who is this band?"

It was literally 0-60,

just like that.

You can measure success really,

really simply if you're in a band -

people come to see you who you

don't know.

It really was.

It was from nothing to loads of

people.

Then it's wild.

People started pushing themselves to

the front -

it was really physical.

It went from 3 people to 30 people

to 100 people to 300 people.

Painted people

Get you going

I'll smother that pig in a holy scene

It ain't too hard...

I remember going to see them play

after I left,

and it was just four boys on stage,

and it sounded amazing,

and it didn't have me muddying up

the sound

and kind of confusing the look.

Suddenly there was Morrissey there,

suddenly...

Suggs.

And Kirsty MacColl.

Youth and looks, sexuality, rock and

roll, great songs.

These are people

who've been in bedrooms like ours

and jobs like ours,

who just suddenly... something

clicked with them.

There was a bit of a regional divide.

Scotland, it was legendary,

where they pretended to have

Scottish accents,

rather than get beaten up in the

toilet.

The first single, The Drowners,

charted at 49,

and the second, Metal Mickey, went

in at 17.

Oh, Dad, she's driving me mad

Come see

"Oh, Dad, she's driving me mad,"

has got to be one of the great

lines ever in a pop song.

And suddenly you're thinking about

Anthony Newley,

you're thinking about Vaudeville,

and even Carry On films,

where they'd say things like that.

It is, I think, a great one of those

early Suede singles,

and that is saying something.

Where all the people shake their

money in time

The next single went in at No. 7,

which was Animal Nitrate.

I heard this rumour, an apocryphal

rumour,

Kate Bush's The Man With the Child in

His Eyes was about masturbation.

What a brilliant thing,

to sort of smuggle this kind of

Trojan horse

into the fortress of the mainstream.

And that's what I wanted to do with

Animal Nitrate.

Now your animal's gone

Well, he said he'd show you his bed

And the delights of the chemical

smile

I wanted to kind of write this song

that was about sexuality

and abuse,

but to sort of frame it within a kind

of pop context.

Oh, what turns you on?

Oh, oh, oh

Now he has gone?

Oh, what turns you on

Oh, oh, oh

Now your animal's gone?

And I loved hearing it on mainstream

radio and on mainstream TV.

Even the title, you know, how did

they miss that?

It seemed to be so overt

that it was almost, like, hiding in

plain sight.

What does it take to turn you on

It's poppers -

it's this weird stuff that you sniff

and it makes your head go funny.

In the '90s, it was very much

associated with the gay world.

My use of gay imagery

is something that I think I got

criticised for a lot at the time.

People misunderstood what I was

doing.

There's a very famous quote of mine,

where I said,

"I'm a bisexual man who's never had a

homosexual experience."

I need to clarify where that came

from.

I was talking about songwriting

at the time.

I was talking about how I approach

songs.

So, when I was writing those early

songs,

I was often occupying the perspective

of gay men,

housewives, third parties,

and writing songs from different

perspectives.

It kind of kept it fresh for me.

I walked down the road with Brett,

people would think we're boyfriends.

We lived on Portobello Road,

we wore fur coats, leather trousers.

It wasn't a gay thing,

it wasn't trying to get any Brownie

points from the press,

that was our look.

The rest of the band members took on

that look.

It's part of the unity of hanging out

with each other.

The more you hang out, you sort of...

"Oh, I quite like those trousers.

Quite a good jacket, I'll get one."

Or borrowing stuff, as well.

You develop this sort of band

identity.

What looks like a sort of

preconceived "look",

it actually kinda comes about by

accident.

Once we'd recorded Suede's debut

album,

I felt that it would be an album, at

that point,

that would speak to a generation.

It was great when it went straight

in at No. 1.

That was a fantastic week.

I mean, there's an element of

vindication, as well,

because it'd been so hard to get

where we got to on the first record,

and we were completely out on our

own - there was nobody like us.

Then it turned into this snowball of

press profile.

There's Brett from Suede.

They were on the front cover of

something like 40 or 50 magazines

over a period of 18 months or

something -

it was something insane.

The thing about the press is, it was

dragged along behind it.

They were on the front page of every

magazine,

and we used to go to our local shop,

and we'd go there every night,

and we'd go through all the magazines

and put them on the front.

It was just like, "Wow, it's

actually happening."

I think you lose control of it, as

well, that's the thing -

the context changed when you've got

200,00 people buying those songs.

Britpop!

Oh, God!

I think I first heard the word

"Britpop"

the same time everyone else did, on

the Select front cover,

with Brett superimposed onto

a Union Jack,

with "Yanks go home" on it.

When I invented that phrase and

wrote that magazine,

I did not mean Britpop to be what it

later became.

When I hear people say, "Britpop,"

I think of Tony Blair

shaking hands Noel Gallagher.

I felt partly responsible for it.

You know, it's like kind of giving

birth to some awful child.

(LAUGHS)

If we'd known at the time, we would

have run screaming.

Britpop, it was about a particular,

probably English sensibility.

It's not big city music, it was

suburban music,

it was the revenge of the suburbs.

Pulp, The Auteurs, Denim, and Cud,

Suede the biggest of them -

that literate art rock element of

Britpop,

which is what I was interested in -

they all had that particular English

outsider, suburban aesthetic.

I think if you're Northern, if

you've got an accent

and you come from Moss Side, people

under you're working class.

If you're Southern and don't have an

accent and come from Haywards Heath,

people don't get it.

It's much... sort of leafier and -

It's just greener, I think.

... than I remember.

I remember it as being a bit barren.

All these hedges just used to be

chain-link fences.

See you

In your next life

So that window there, that room,

that's where I was born.

Right. I was born in the same room

that my dad died in.

My upbringing was a strange

combination

of marginal and extremely ordinary

that millions and millions of people

were brought up in houses like that.

Far away

We'll go far...

It was about that context,

that lumpen American domination.

Write songs about going down to

Worthing

and flogging ice creams and all that,

it was like, "Yes! Somebody's

writing about the things we do

"and matter to us."

That immersion in English culture.

Not about taking Ventura Highway,

because we don't do that!

See you

In your next life

When you finally know what

you're doing,

where you move into this phase -

it's called an Imperial Phase -

where literally everything you do is

kinda gold dust.

If you've gone through your life not

really being anything,

and then people start telling you

you're the saviour of the music

industry, it does affect you.

Because we're young

This is boring!

Because we're gone

I felt like there was a platform,

and that we could use the platform,

then.

And we could, to a certain extent,

although we couldn't use it anywhere

near as much as I thought we could.

I thought we could do what the fuck

we wanted.

Suede was always a balancing power

which was almost like a nuclear

reactor -

it could go wrong at any moment.

But it didn't, it just stayed in

this stasis.

Until it went wrong, and then it

blew up.

One of the problems that Bernard had

is that when everything was about

the music,

then he was kind of the leader.

I'm Wendy, and I run the fan club.

Once you're out in the world,

a band isn't just about the music.

And then immediately Brett become

the focal point,

and, you know, I think Bernard had

a problem with that.

And I don't think it's necessarily a

problem with Brett,

I think it's a problem with the

musical aspect of the band

being diminished.

The press, the adulation

and the things that bands need to do,

like photo sessions and make videos,

which he didn't find particularly

creative or of interest.

He became quite disillusioned quite

early on

with our relationship with success.

If there's differences between you,

it'll pull at those differences

and magnify them.

We went on an American tour just

after Bernard's dad had died.

I mean, I look back on it now, and

it was insane.

If it were to happen now,

I wouldn't want to be around a bunch

of people partying all the time.

This is getting too much.

There's something about touring,

it's a bit like being on holiday.

Bernard eventually started

travelling with the Cranberries

on their tour bus,

which was a pretty big sign that

something was going on.

We started, I think, having our

arguments through music.

We would never sit down and talk

about things.

It's difficult to know how to deal

with these things

when you're young men -

you just don't have the emotional

tools to deal with these things.

That's when most of these things do

happen.

You know, very few people go out

there, pick up a guitar age 52.

Normally, it's when you're 18 or 19.

Dangerous. Very dangerous.

Bernard was obviously unhappy,

and that tour went very badly,

I think, for the band.

By the time we made Stay Together,

it was obvious

things really weren't the same as

they were on the first album -

the mood of the band was very, very

different.

And then you get Stay Together -

it's basically a battle between

Brett and Bernard,

and the most vital part of the song

is the bit at the end

where Brett's vocals are buried

under this squall of guitars,

and you can't really tell what's

going on.

And there's a kind of incoherence to

it that we'd never had before.

The relationship between Brett and

Bernard was definitely changing,

it was getting more fraught.

Then, obviously, we had to get round

to pushing them

to make the second album.

When it came to writing Dog Man Star,

we'd write much more separately.

We kind of communicated by post.

Everything that we became defined by

in the first record

drove me up the wall.

I wanted to destroy it.

I was writing stuff at home,

and I just recorded endlessly,

day in, day out,

and then took them round to his

place in Highgate.

Woke every day

I'd give him a four-track with eight

pieces on it or something,

and a few days later he'd have

overdubbed vocals,

and then I got it back.

... through the astral plane...

Yeah, it was a strange way of

working.

We wrote by post,

and then we recorded separately.

The whole period of making Dog Man

Star was very, very, very prickly.

It was plain there was a lot of

tension in the room.

And it just stayed like that.

I don't ever remember being in the

studio all together.

Possibly once or twice.

It was almost like

shift work going on.

The shift pattern was basically

Bernard didn't wanna be in the

studio with anybody else.

He tolerated me, because I was still

required

to operate the equipment.

As I open the blinds in mind

Ed, he's a musical producer.

He was with us from the first single,

and kind of grew with us,

and was very much part of the band.

He was almost one of us.

And, oh, if you stay...

You feel like you're part of the

family.

He's the stable dad to your errant

sons.

Oh, the room smells much better now!

I think at some stage Bernard was

asking Ed

to sort of teach him how to produce

a record.

These faders are at zero.

Bernard was immediately at home in

the studio

and wanted to learn everything -

every dial that was turned, every

lever that was pulled.

My memory of Bernard is getting on

with him really, really well,

until it all went wrong.

He'd had a rough year -

his dad had died,

which was just

as brutal as it can get.

And he was just dreadfully,

dreadfully unhappy.

And I think the pressure of having

to deliver this record

that everybody was waiting for,

plus... his awakening realisation

that being a guitar player in this

fantastic band

wasn't what he thought

it was gonna be,

there are other components that he

wasn't comfortable dealing with.

Lying in my bed

Nothing much to say

So I listen to the man

He said that it could

be the two of us

The song The 2 of Us,

it was very much, I think,

a song about mine and Bernard's

relationship.

Superficially, it's a song about two

successful brokers,

or something like that, working in

the City,

making loads of money,

but being quite lonely within that

relationship.

But the kind of subtext of that is

that, I think,

it's about loneliness within success.

Alone but not lonely

You and me

Alone but not lonely

You and me

Alone but loaded

Oh, oh, oh

Alone but loaded

Oh, oh, oh

I think I found myself treading on

eggshells

and hoping that it would go away,

it would sort itself out.

Oh, oh, oh

But no, it just sort of got worse

and worse and worse.

Oh, oh, oh

I must admit, I was pretty blind to

quite how bad things were.

It was no problem to me if Bernard

was like,

"OK, this chord moves this way,

blah, blah, blah,"

whereas when he started telling

Simon what to do,

Simon was kinda like, "I'm the

drummer, I know what I'm doing."

Yeah, like that.

Just really soft.

Really rolling, soft.

There was a situation where we were

rehearsing,

and I think we were doing

New Generation.

There was a roll at the end of it.

What about the bits just before that?

And Bernard was adamant that it

shouldn't go there,

it should go somewhere,

and I was adamant it should go here.

He said, "Do your job!"

And that really pissed me off,

so I picked up some drumsticks and

just chucked them at his red guitar.

And that was the point where me and

him sort of...

He'd gone through the whole of the

band,

and I was the last one, it seemed,

that he fell out with.

I was very aware that something bad

was happening.

I was very desperate, you know -

I had an idea in my head, and

unfortunately, at that age,

I didn't really have the emotional

or the social skills

to deliver what I needed...

You know, the diplomatic skills to

deliver what I needed to do.

But... I didn't really give a fuck

at the time,

I'll be really honest with you.

I did feel like I had something

there and it would work,

and I kind of had to get it across.

I'm full of apologies now, but

that's how it was.

So, I wanted it to be, where there

was drums,

they were gonna be extraordinary,

and where there weren't gonna be

drums,

it was gonna be extraordinary, cos

there weren't drums.

Bernard's gift for music was off the

scale.

We all knew it, there was no debate.

But he did not like any other

musical interference

in his vision at that point.

And that's why something like

Asphalt World

became so problematic for him.

Right, let's go.

Because we were kind of fighting a

little bit,

you'd sometimes come into this ghost

of a song.

I remember that with Asphalt World,

totally.

Normally you'd build stuff up from

the rhythm section,

but I know with Asphalt World,

I hadn't played on it,

and I came in and there was just

this serpent of guitar.

As a musician, it was literally

like...

"... All right!"

It was always quite a contentious

song.

It somehow encapsulated the

differences in the band.

I have a very distinct memory of

delivering the vocal to that song

after having read an interview that

Bernard gave to Vox Magazine,

where he was quite critical of me as

a writer and as a musician.

Brett was livid, but was also

disappointed.

Feeling quite hurt,

and trying to almost, like, channel

my feelings of anger and frustration

into the kind of iciness of the vocal

performance.

With ice in her blood

And a dove in her head

Well, how does it feel

When she's in your bed?

When you're there in her arms

When you're there in her legs

Well, I'll be in her head

Cos that's where I go

And that's what I do

And that's how it feels

That tension was actually becoming

quite poisonous,

and I think it was difficult for

Bernard particularly,

cos he was not comfortable in that

environment,

and him and Ed didn't see eye-to-eye,

and they had quite a lot of

disagreements.

What we're gonna do is do all the

drums and bass,

and go back and redo all the guitar.

So the power shift

really was that Bernard was

exercising more and more control

over every aspect of the band's sound

and how the record was made.

And, you know, he was still giving

me my space to do my job,

but I was mindful of the fact there

was three other people in the band,

and I was trying to get the best

possible record for everybody.

Everything not to go out completely,

just drop right down.

I think Ed was pretty much the last

person on Bernard's blacklist.

When he went for Ed, he went for Ed

in a big way.

And when it went wrong, it happened

over a weekend,

a very short period of time.

I'm not sure whether that's to do

with the two of them,

or it would have happened with any

producer.

Suddenly we found ourselves in this

position

where he was making an ultimatum and

saying, "Either we get rid of Ed

"or I'm going."

It's not about him or Ed,

it's about issuing an ultimatum.

It doesn't work that way.

It was OUR band.

It wasn't your band, it wasn't your

band, it wasn't your band,

it wasn't my band, it was OUR band.

No-one has absolute power.

I felt as though I couldn't give in

to that.

There was a lot of agonising and

what ifs

and, "How do we deal with this? And

how do we make it right?"

It wasn't possible to make it right

for everybody,

and there needed to be a resolution

about which probably not everybody

was gonna be happy.

We got a phone call from our lawyer

saying that Bernard officially said

he's left the band.

People loved us, people followed us,

we were in the midst of a record

that sounded amazing.

Now I look at it and think,

"If you wanted to leave that kind of

situation,

"something as good as that,

"you must have been feeling terrible

about us and what we were doing."

And now I look back on it and think,

"I should have been thinking of him."

I would have done anything to have

kept Bernard in the band and happy,

but the fact was, he wasn't happy.

I was amazed that Bernard didn't

leave sooner -

it was so volatile from day one.

It was unbelievably volatile.

Decisions that are made can't be

made lightly,

because you're talking about, you

know,

"Is this a good thing to do? Is it a

bad thing?"

You'll never know until it's too

late.

You roll the dice.

But when it doesn't work, where do

you go?

What do you do?

What about the kids?

What about the rhythm section?

I can remember thinking it was for

the best,

and it only being when music

journalists started turning up

outside the studio,

realising, "Oh, this might be

"a bit of a bigger deal than I think

it is."

We're gonna go...

Da, da, bum, bum, bum, bum

In between trying to get the strings

done for The Wild Ones

and Still Life I think we were doing

in the CTS studios...

Issue a press statement separate

from Bernard.

... we were having this band meeting

with Saul

and the press office on the phone

to try and get some sort of

statement out.

This still life

Is all I ever do

We're not great at talking to each

other,

so in a situation like that,

I think it's quite possible that

we're all sitting there thinking,

"This is so fucked up. What are we

gonna do?"

But no-one's gonna say it, so you

just keep on going.

It's the best decision for everybody,

and we go on to say that the show

will go on,

the album is amazing, the band

will continue.

Oh, can I write, "The show will go

on," in mine?

No. I've done mine.

What have you written?

"Roll on act two."

I guess I was sort of hiding from

everything.

Hiding behind this sort of cliched

rock star person, you know,

wearing my Aviators in the control

room, you know.

I do remember feeling incredibly sort

of...

... you know, bruised by it.

At the heart of it, it was the loss

of a friend,

and that was very sad.

He was obviously heartbroken,

but he hid it,

and was like, "I'm not gonna get

upset about this."

It's almost like his business head

took over.

Everything comes in there, anyway.

I was bluffing it out,

but I was absolutely terrified that

we were over.

I think 99% of the world thought that

we were over!

Including a part of me.

How were we gonna carry on?

I knew we had a great album

- Dog Man Star was amazing -

but we didn't have a guitarist.

I think it's a great record.

You can hear the darkness, a bit

like The Beatles' White Album.

The reason Dog Man Star was so unique

was because of the white hot

chemistry.

Sometimes the grit in the oyster

makes the pearl,

and I think some of that darkness

and difficulty

gets into Dog Man Star in a good

way, for me as a listener,

if not for Suede as a band.

There was breadth to it,

and such a wide range

of emotions to it.

My favourite Suede record, the one

that just has everything,

is We Are the Pigs.

Well, the church bells are calling

Police car on fire

"Police car on fire" -

the menace coming off that record.

... say, "Stay at home tonight"

I say we are the pigs

We are the swine

We had this amazing record,

and I wanted the world to hear

this amazing record.

One of the things that's really

remarkable about Suede

is the fact they managed to keep

going.

We just continued with, kind of, a

bit of insane belief in our hearts.

And then we put an advert in the

paper,

like we were 17 again.

Yeah, I-I-I guess I was just praying

that we'd find somebody else

who could be equally as good as

Bernard,

and the band would carry on.

Never worried me, cos that band was

always Brett and Mat.

To me, in my head, I was thinking,

"Bring in another guitarist.

"You can be 17 years old from Poole,

fine."

Does anyone ever have these problems,

apart from us?

We're the only band in the world

that has these problems.

Very quickly, when we had a

conversation,

they said, "We're gonna find

somebody else

"and we're gonna find somebody new

and we're gonna put an ad in the NME

"and we're gonna find somebody,"

and everyone was confident this was

what was gonna happen.

And it wasn't even a challenge.

It was like, "They grow on trees,

we'll find a guitar player."

You wouldn't entertain this thing

of, "Bernard's irreplaceable."

"Fine, we'll find another guitar

player. Not a problem."

As the weeks went on,

I think it started to look a little

bit more desperate.

It was like, "If anybody thinks they

can do this job,

"send a cassette to this address."

So one day I just thought, "Well,

I'm anybody."

Most of them were just awful.

There was a couple of fantastic rock

guys with vests

and pointy-headed guitars

and tattoos,

shredding over the top of Suede

tracks -

they were brilliant.

And then there was Richard's.

The letter I sent them was quite

cocky, and sure of myself,

which I, in reality, was not.

I put the cassette in, expecting to

be underwhelmed,

and I wasn't.

I kind of heard this very, very

eloquent, powerful,

technically proficient guitar

playing.

He was playing a version of

My Insatiable One,

and he played it beautifully.

I said, "What's this?"

He said, "This is a tape from an

auditionee."

I went, "Well, it sounds great."

It was the first time I'd heard

anyone play something of ours

and really do the guitar part

justice.

I didn't discover the guitar until I

was about 12.

The same time I discovered punk

music.

The way the punk bands like

The Buzzcocks, The Clash

and The Sex Pistols used to write

songs

was something I instantly understood

at a very young age.

I remember the first time I went

round to Richard's house.

I'd told him that I played the

guitar,

and he handed me a guitar and said,

"Show me what you can do,"

and I did some really, really basic,

bad strummed chords,

and he laughed.

He couldn't believe it.

So I handed the guitar back to him

and said, "Show me what you can do,"

and he just did this amazing 12-bar

blues thing,

and I was blown away.

I think at that moment I knew that

he was a very talented guitarist.

But I think when you're that young,

you don't really think of it in

terms of somebody being a prodigy.

I knew how to put chords together

and to write songs in that way,

simple songs,

and so I was doing that from that

age, as well, 12, 13.

That's when I joined my first band.

Yeah, Richard and I were in a band

up until about a year before

he joined Suede,

and Suede were one of several bands

that he was enthusiastic about

at that time.

And I wouldn't even say it was the

main band.

Well, this is also where I saw my

very first gig,

which was Suede in May '93,

and they were doing their first

album tour,

and they were No. 1 at that point,

I think, so it was a really busy gig.

Poole Arts Centre is not really on

the regular touring circuit

for a lot of bands,

and so a band we liked were playing,

so we were obviously gonna go and

see them.

Pete says that he remembers me

saying something to him

along the lines of, "I could

probably do that."

Richard was at that gig,

looking at Bernard as a lead

guitarist on stage,

and thinking that he had a strong

ambition to do the same thing.

So he was able to make these quite

intricate demos,

but at the same time

he was also recording versions of

songs that he liked.

What it feels like to me is just

lucky - I was really lucky,

I was in the right place at the

right time.

I was still at school,

but, you know, to get to actually...

I mean, it was a real punt sending

them a tape in the first place.

We gave Richard a call, and the

story's quite famous.

He was actually still at school at

the time,

and I think Charlie called.

The first thing my mum said was,

"You do know he's only 17?"

We were like, "Oh, my God!"

So my cover was blown.

But we still invited him for an

audition.

We thought, "Well, if he can play

like that, why not?"

We were seeing people, so, you know,

come one, come all.

I don't know, later this afternoon

we've got Ed coming down,

our producer.

Ed will like you.

He's coming down to check out this

song, this new one.

In walks this little, smallish kind

of kid, you know,

quite unassuming.

Suddenly, as soon as he plays the

guitar,

he becomes a different person.

He didn't play it like a 17-year-old,

he played like he'd been doing this

all his life.

Made it...

... clear what a kind

of prodigy he was.

They invited me for an audition,

but I still didn't think they'd

offer me the job -

you know, that was never gonna

happen.

And then it did.

I said to Mat and Brett,

"He's obviously the guitarist."

I think the fact that he was 17

didn't really make any difference.

To read that again and again,

especially throughout my career,

"He was 17 years old when he joined

the band."

It's such a Suede thing -

taking a big risk, getting a

17-year-old guitarist.

I had immediately, obviously, mixed

feelings about it

on a personal level,

cos I was just about to lose my best

friend.

I had to give up absolutely

everything here.

It was like severing a connection.

So I went back to the sixth form a

couple of weeks after that,

and somebody said,

"Oh, where's Richard?"

And I said, "Oh, it's a funny thing,

actually - he's joined Suede."

They just laughed at me and said,

"Shut the fuck up."

The first thing he actually did

was pose in a video for

We Are the Pigs,

which is just such an odd thing.

And then we started touring, and

it's, like, two months or something.

And introducing a brand-new face -

Richard Oakes.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

It's ridiculous how quickly it

happened.

But you can see that he grows into

it really, really quickly.

I hadn't really done any actual gigs

until I joined Suede,

and it was just,

"We're gonna go on tour."

I think the first

date was October 4th,

so it was just after I turned 18.

It's down to the fact that he can

really play,

so it doesn't hold any real fears

for him, I don't think.

Despite what the press were saying

at the time,

they were saying the band are over,

so we were reading feature after

feature

where they were saying, "They've

lost the key member,

"how are they gonna recover

from this?"

Despite all that, we knew we would

do a good tour,

at the end of it, people would say,

"Oh, they can still do this,

"they can still play."

It was a fantastic thing, cos it

meant we were starting again.

It felt, for me, like a new band.

It had all the joys of being a new

band.

So who do you think you are kidding

Mr Hitler

If you think old England's done?

Brilliant!

That's fucking brilliant. Well done,

Rich. Do it again.

Suddenly, I was on stage playing and

surrounded by girls,

and I had no idea how to even talk

to them.

Do you know what I mean? I had no

experience at all.

I was the most non rock and roll

person to join a rock and roll band.

Philadelphia was a good laugh,

I enjoyed that.

Washington was the first gig we did.

Simon, stop... Simon's filming me.

Simon, don't, please.

We went to Asia for the first time,

which was amazing.

We sort of hadn't experienced

anything like it before.

We turned up and I think the first

one we did was Bangkok,

and I think Charlie got a message on

the plane

there may be a couple of kids there,

there may be a camera crew there.

Fucking hell!

There's thousands of them!

There was camera crews everywhere,

there was police everywhere,

and it was absolute chaos.

We sort of toured Japan -

couldn't leave the hotel without

being chased by kids.

That was mind-blowing for us.

(SCREAMING)

But can you imagine what it was like

for Richard?

If I was him and I was thrown into

that,

I don't know what kind of person

I'd be now.

Reading about yourself for the first

time is a very strange thing.

When you read a journalist's

perception of who you are

and where you've come from and your

place in the band,

and just describing you,

it's really, really odd.

It's like looking in a very

distorted mirror, you know?

Of course, there was then the

concern about the third album.

The only thing we didn't know was,

"Do we know if we can write any

songs?"

Proving ourselves, that we could

write another record

was a different thing, obviously.

Coming Up would have taken much

longer to write

if I hadn't had this period of

finding my feet,

which was touring Dog Man Star for a

whole year.

In terms of whether we had something

to prove...

... hell yes.

... diesel and gasoline

Psycho for drum machine

Shaking tits to hits

Oh, drag acts

Drug acts, suicides

In your dad's suits you hide

Staining his name again

Richard turned up with a cassette

one day called Dead Leg,

and me and Alan were in the middle

of one our parties,

I seem to remember,

and Richard had a cup of tea, while

I was sort of, like, swaying

and trying to focus my eyes.

And I ended up kind of going to work

on the song...

... and listened to this riff he'd

written, which is...

(HUMS RIFF)

You know, it's like,

"Oh, wow! That's really good."

And I sort of started weaving this

song around the riff.

"High on diesel and gasoline, psycho

for drum machine,"

bits torn out of the pages of my

notebook.

That microphone's not working, is it?

Yeah, it is.

First verse is exactly the same.

Here they come

The beautiful ones

The beautiful ones

La, da, da, da

Here they come

The beautiful ones

I kind of started to piece this song

together,

a song about my sort of marginal life

on the edges of proprietary.

And I called it Beautiful Scum -

that was the original title

of the song.

"Here they come, the beautiful scum."

It was this sort of, "Here I am,

this is my life, deal with it."

And I thought, "OK, this is really

good, but 'beautiful scum'?

"No, it's a bit silly, isn't it?

"Let's change it to 'beautiful ones',"

and that was the song.

There was this very funny afternoon,

completely off our faces,

and I was just singing the song,

sweating in this little tiny orange

room.

Oh, high on diesel and gasoline

Psycho for drum machine...

What are the fucking words?

"Shaking..."

(MUMBLES)

Sorry. Start again.

Here they come

The beautiful ones...

It's short, isn't it?

Hasn't really got it.

It hasn't.

That is not a single. Sorry.

It's definitely not a single.

If that's what you want the song to

be, fine, I think that'll -

- Don't need to blackmail, mate.

- It's not blackmail!

Here they come

The beautiful ones

The beautiful ones

La, la, la, la

Here they come

The beautiful ones

The beautiful ones

La, la, la, la, la

"OK, bring on the expectation, this

is gonna be great."

Because I think we knew it was good,

and it didn't sound like

Dog Man Star.

We wrote far more as a band

after Richard joined.

We spent a lot more time with the

band, kind of arranging things.

He was really comfortable with that.

He's never been precious about his

song.

You know, cut them up, move them

around, if it's better for the song,

if it's better for the band, then

he's fine that way.

Oh, isn't this nice, everyone

together, eh?

It's lovely, innit?

I very much wanted it to be a band

again,

sort of work together and to write in

the same room,

and, you know, to try and do all

those things

that I felt we'd missed out on with

Dog Man Star,

that we kind of drifted into this

weird state.

And then we accidentally became a

five-piece.

I was lending Neil a suit,

cos I think he was going for an

interview for a job in London.

He'd just come down from Hull, where

he was at university.

So I thought I'd kind of borrow a

suit off Simon,

who's the only person I knew who had

a suit.

"Yeah, pop along to the studio

tomorrow."

Simon neglected to mention

that his cousin was actually a

pretty good musician.

I don't think I knew he was a

musician at the time.

He was just my cousin, Neil,

from Hull.

And that was it, I had no knowledge

that he was gonna sit down and play

the piano.

I remember, I think it was the first

day you turned up,

and Simon was videoing you playing

the piano,

and you had "sign on" written on

your hands. Yeah.

A few days later, Simon said, "Oh,

come hang out some more."

And that's how it happened, really.

That's how he became in Suede.

We weren't looking for anybody else.

I actually seem to remember me

saying to Brett,

"Are you sure about this?"

He kind of cared about music,

and he had a passion and an

intensity, as well.

And I just sort of knew he should be

part of the band, really.

(SIGHS)

I think erm... there was a shrug of

the shoulders

when Simon's cousin was introduced.

Yeah, Charlie was a bit suspicious

at first.

I went round to his place in

Islington,

and he said, "Well, I don't know why

they've decided this,

"but apparently Suede want another

member."

You know, if it had been John from

Camden or something,

there might have been less of a

shrug,

but there was something

about the fact

that someone's relative popped in

the studio and now he's in the band.

But it wasn't like that, it was a

slow process of osmosis.

He turned up a couple of times, did

a couple of things,

and then just became a little bit

more present.

And musically, there was definitely

something he brought to it

very quickly, indeed.

But I think Mat was quite difficult

to get to know early on.

He didn't speak to me for about six

months.

I like four-piece sets - they look

right to me.

All of those doubts, all those

possible problems

were negated by the fact that we

made a great noise together.

We were playing the songs and they

sounded brilliant.

Nothing really matters if that's

right.

That's it.

It got quite confusing for Ed - he

didn't know our names early on,

he couldn't distinguish between us.

I think he used to call Richard

"New Boy",

me "New New Boy",

because he was scared of calling me

"Richard" and Richard "Neil".

Yeah, it is true.

Nobody else in Suede is like him.

You know, Suede is a band of

individuals at the best of times,

but Neil's unique,

and he's actually turned into a

very, very good foil with Richard -

the two of them compliment each

other perfectly.

Oh, fuck off!

Neil appearing as he kind of did,

and starting to tinkle on the piano

along with what we were doing

just felt like part of that

evolution into a new band.

We're going out tonight

Around the time that Neil started

appearing,

we were writing songs like

Saturday Night.

Oh, whatever makes her happy

On a Saturday night

Oh, whatever makes her happy

Whatever makes it all right

Lots of people thought that Richard

couldn't replace Bernard

as a songwriter.

You couldn't have two more different

experiences,

you know, writing Dog Man Star, then

writing Coming Up.

We were such a close-knit unit,

and that was a new thing for Suede.

I think there's been a lot of

separatism

when they were recording

Dog Man Star.

We were a little family again,

and we were a little gang again, and

that was a lovely thing,

I'd really missed that.

Coming Up was a collection

of incredibly precise, concise pop

songs.

It was definitely an attempt

to stamp a new identity on the new

band, the new line-up.

I've always been into punk and

post-punk,

and that very distilled style of

skewwhiff style of pop music

that punk brought along.

And I think I sort of woke up that

up in Suede a little bit.

She-e

She-e

She-e

She...

When we came to write things like

She, and Filmstar,

they weren't punk songs, but they

really had that sense

of... brutality and simplicity

behind them.

She...

Saul still thought we were missing

the anthem,

the kind of definitive song for the

album.

You need a first single, you need a

flagship statement.

You know, you had We Are the Pigs

last time.

There was a song called Pisspot that

kind of...

... I must have liked

something about.

But I didn't like the chorus,

I got Richard,

"The verse is all right, but change

the chorus."

He wrote this chorus, and I was like,

"This is great,"

and I wrote this thing.

Oh-oh-oh, you and me

We're the lovers on the street

We're the litter on the breeze

And I thought,

"OK, that's really good."

We're the litter on the breeze

Ed had been telling me on the phone,

"You've gotta come and hear this,"

and I went to the studio and they

played me Trash.

And I was like,

"Oh! This is amazing."

Maybe, maybe it's the clothes we wear

The tasteless bracelets and the dye

in our hair

I wrote the song

as a song about the band

and this group of people

and what our values as people were.

By extension, it's about the fans,

as well.

It was an incredibly important song

for Suede, Trash.

Maybe it's our looseness

For the first time, it defined, for

me, my tribe.

And my tribe was something that I was

looking for all my life, I think.

From childhood.

When I was a child, I never quite

fitted in,

my family never quite fitted in.

I think I was looking for that.

Songs like So Young,

and We Are the Pigs,

and all these sorts of things,

I'm looking for a group of people

I could identify with.

With Trash,

I think I was defining it.

This slightly lost group of people

that weren't connected

geographically,

but connected in terms of who they

saw themselves as.

(BEEP)

A pop star type limo will be picking

you up tomorrow.

This is to take you off to

Top of the Pops

to do your pop star No. 3 hit.

Have fun!

(BEEP)

We're tra-a-a-sh

You and me

We're the lovers on the streets

We're the litter on the breeze

Yes, tr-a-a-ash

Me and you

It's in everything we do

It's in everything we do-o-o

The period, for me, feels...

"Joyous" is the right word.

It was one of the most fun records

I've ever made.

It was such an optimistic record,

and that was a side of Suede that

nobody had heard yet.

The band had survived, they'd made

an amazing record -

the songs were fantastic,

there was a happiness to it,

the artwork by Peter Saville, super

technicolour,

and that just felt like the mood in

the band at the time.

Peter Saville was this incredible

designer

who did all the great artwork for

Factory Records -

the Joy Division records,

New Order album sleeves -

is regarded, probably, as one of the

greatest designers.

There was a process of, you know,

lots of trips to Peter's house,

where... (CHUCKLES)

... he would walk out in his robe.

I'd come at about 2:00 in the

afternoon,

3:00 in the afternoon, in breaks

between recording,

and you'd always be in your dressing

gown,

and you'd sort of, like, wander down

the stairs,

- blearily yawning and asking for coffee.

- Yeah.

Like some sort of character in an

Evelyn Waugh novel, you know.

- It was all.

- In a way, that is what it was

for a while.

You'd left one day, I was thinking,

"Oh, what does he want?"

And I went back and looked on the

bookshelf,

and I found this.

Paul Wunderlich.

There were things in this that were

just so terrible,

that they were interesting.

There was this weird kind of

psychedelic surreal quality

- that this had.

- Perfect for Suede, then.

- I loved it.

- It was sexy.

I like the surreal element of it,

and I love the sexuality of it.

I like the garishness, as well.

We talked about what

we were gonna do -

there would be three people, and

they would be in the studio.

What should they be on?

And what I was thinking was that in

lots of the Wunderlich pictures,

there were things like zebra skins

and tiger skins and things,

so I was thinking, "Should it be

some kind of rug?"

And then you went, "Well, it's a

mattress."

I was like, "Oh, my God.

Too many drugs."

Then you said,

"You know, like in a squat."

And, of course, we found this

amazing striped one.

The mattress makes it.

The mattress is what gives it this

kind of cultural demographic.

The mattress is brilliant.

I think it was incredibly satisfying

making that record.

Mat's talked about the importance of

revenge

as a motivation in making music, and

he's absolutely right.

"You can't keep us down. We're back,

we're trash,

"but, you know, we keep coming back."

I think the press, some of them were

slightly disappointed

that we didn't fall flat on our

faces, you know.

And, kind of, we came back

with what was commercially our most

successful record.

It just seemed to be growing and

growing and growing,

and it certainly got a lot bigger -

the fan base got a lot bigger.

You and me

All we want to be

Is lazy

And the five singles that we took

from that album all went top ten.

We had five top ten singles from

Coming Up,

which was unprecedented.

You and me

All we want to be

Is lazy

Was Filmstar the last...

I think it was the last single.

Cos this is Peter...

... sitting in the back of a limo.

Yeah, Brett decided that I was a

suitable casting

for this sort of slightly

past-his-sell-by-date actor.

The lush playboy.

Yeah, maybe British guy, a little

bit lush,

who'd ended up in Hollywood.

Peter did it,

so that's him in photo.

Past his prime.

Maybe it's our sweetness

I remember feeling just...

... utterly bulletproof,

feeling just indestructible.

The Roundhouse shows were absolutely

brilliant.

I remember loving every second of it.

We were at the absolute peak.

We'd done a few months of touring by

that point,

and it'd been good - we'd been going

from strength to strength.

It's in everything we do

It's in everything we

At this point, when we played the

Roundhouse in '96...

... that period playing here

was almost like a little pinnacle,

wasn't it?

Yeah.

Everything felt very rosy at that

point, didn't it?

It was, like, 6 months into a

16-month tour

that we did for Coming Up, so it was

in the middle of it.

It felt fun, though, didn't it?

Absolutely.

It was like playing here was a real

moment, I think.

Just everything really loud,

everything really fast,

never any gaps between songs,

just pummel them for an hour and a

half and then go out.

Filmstar propping up the bar

Driving in a car

It looks so easy

Filmstar propping up the bar

Driving in a car tonight

After the Roundhouse, we played

another...

... nine months of shows.

What made Coming Up so amazing, and

that tour afterwards, was...

... I mean, it was a party in every

sense.

There was that fantastic thing that

doesn't happen very often,

when you feel like

the band's really good

and everyone wants to you be really

good.

Play the game again

Yeah, yeah, yeah

Filmstar, an elegant sir

A Terylene shirt

It looks so easy

Filmstar, an elegant sir

In a Terylene shirt tonight

You've always got to remember that

happiness is fleeting -

it's just a moment in your life.

You just have to grab hold of it, and

it's gone like a puff of smoke.

Towards the end of '97, towards the

end of that tour,

thing were taking a downward turn.

The punk attitude that existed

within Brett

meant that it was quite easy to say,

"It's going well, let's ruin it."

The Coming Up touring period was,

looking back on it now,

overly long.

It was a victim of its own success.

You know, that record was very

successful.

We toured literally for a year and a

half, we were pretty knackered,

not having any time off whatsoever.

Looking back at it, that wasn't good

for us, at all. It was disastrous.

It kind of broke us in lots of ways.

Once the Coming Up tour was over,

I remember kind of retreating a bit

and just trying to centre myself

and make things normal again,

because that tour was so long,

just living in this kind of cuckoo

clock of...

... excess.

We took a lot of drugs and partied

and did what we wanted.

You can't just turn that off.

Once the tour was over,

that's when, I think, the line

blurred

between leisure time and work time.

Moving on from Coming Up to

Head Music,

we'd moved houses,

and it became darker.

There was... darker drugs,

there was...

... if I could say it, there was a lot

crack cocaine and heroin.

And that changed the whole climate.

The whole atmosphere changed.

Yeah, so it changed. It changed.

I know that sound so well.

(CHUCKLES)

It was kind of horrible, actually.

I hated it.

I remember scurrying up and down this

alleyway at various...

... ungodly hours.

I bought this place, I think it was

at the end of the Coming Up tour.

It's an odd place,

and it's unobserved.

It felt like you didn't have to abide

by the usual laws of society.

So we didn't.

When it comes to excess and

addiction and using,

people expected that,

especially of him.

And that's not a good position to be

in, where people are going,

"Go on, fuck up," and that's what

they were doing.

And he kind of did.

I can't use words like "drugs",

cos I just find it hard to talk in

those terms.

And I'm not fooling anyone by not

using those words,

but I personally find it really

difficult,

so I have to talk about it in broader

terms.

I think I, deep down, knew I was in

real trouble,

but I think I justified my addiction

by sort of seeing it as part of some

sort of rock and roll mythology

that justified it.

Brett just became a very different

person.

Very different.

Hardly ever saw him, you know.

Never used to go out, never used

to sort of...

... hang out a lot there,

because it was something I wasn't

interested in -

I didn't wanna get in to that.

When we started writing Head Music,

which was only a couple of months

after the end of the Coming Up tour,

living in a different house by this

point,

and I didn't used to like going

there,

because there were various

characters hanging around

who weren't friends of the band,

they were, you know, drug people,

and they were all a bit sinister.

And so I didn't like going to his

house,

so that removed quite a key part of

the human, personal connection

that you need for songwriting.

I'd pop to Brett's, and he'd be off

his head.

You'd just roll your eyes and go

home.

You'd think, "I can't hang around

with these... people."

You know? But you'd go home and

you'd carry on.

I think Brett's main idea for

Head Music

was we're gonna make a Prince

record, it's gonna be groove-based,

with minimalistic musical ideas,

and it's gonna sound quite cold,

as well.

That'll be the Suede part of it -

it'll be cold and icy and dark.

The music that Richard and I were

coming up with

wasn't quite...

... exciting Brett, or pressing his

buttons.

So he started writing stuff himself.

You know, and it was like Ride on

Time by Black Box.

Do you know what I mean?

I was there with Everything Will

Flow, and Leaving,

and these songs that I was coming

with at the time,

and it was like, "I can't do that."

I never said that to him,

but it was the strangest thing in

the world.

"What the hell is this record gonna

sound like?"

(SYNTHESISER NOTES)

He just was, like, into noises.

He was staying up until three

o'clock in the morning.

He had a Juno synth,

and he'd just go...

(WAILS)

... and he'd come to me and say,

"I want a riff that goes..."

(GRUNTS)

(ELECTRONIC BUZZING)

There's notes in there, there's no

tune in there.

It was all about a kind of...

... aggressiveness and attitude.

If I'd have been around, I would

have said, "Dreadful mistake,"

because Suede is a guitar band.

That's what Suede is, a guitar band.

It didn't seem like Brett was fully

himself.

He was in his addiction.

He wasn't...

... able to write in the same way,

there wasn't the same depth.

So gimme this and gimme that,

smother me

And gimme some of that bad stuff

I feel real now

Talking that sugar

And shaking that stuff

Can't Get Enough was almost the

tipping point

between, you know,

"I can't get enough drugs,"

that's what the song's about.

Singing I-I can't get enough

So with this set of quite eclectic

demos,

we went into Eastcote Studios to

record Head Music,

with a new producer.

I remember Brett saying,

"We're gonna try a new producer."

I thought, "That's not a good thing

to do. We should stick with Ed.

"He's always been... you know, part

of the band, really -

"the sixth member of the band."

We changed producers.

Steve Osborne produced that record.

Steve Osborne was known for his

with the Happy Mondays

and dance bands and stuff,

and not really with guitar bands.

Looking at it, it was absolutely the

wrong thing to do,

because Steve, you know,

very talented guy,

but he didn't have the history with

Suede,

he didn't have that kind of paternal

instinct, almost,

that Ed's always had with the band.

Ne-ne, ne-ne

Something like that. Feels like we're

being a bit too literal.

Yeah, but I quite like that.

I know it's a bit corny, but...

He had been told clearly,

"This is not a guitar record,"

so I think he didn't want to kind of

view my contributions to the record

as, you know, a crux, essential

thing, you know,

in the way

that they were for Coming Up,

and especially on the first two

albums,

it was all about the guitars.

You would spend a long time

recording guitars with Ed -

weeks and weeks and weeks.

Steve's much more kind of like,

"Let's take these raw materials

"and play with them," you know what I

mean?

He'd get Richard to come in and play

guitar for two minutes,

and then go, "Right, now we've got

two hours

"turning that into something."

You know, he's a mixer as much as a

recorder.

For me personally, I didn't enjoy

doing a couple of bars

of Can't Get Enough

and then having it looped.

I'd have rather played the whole

song live, like we normally do.

I would kind of sit there in the

control room

and listen to what Steve Osborne and

Ben Hillier were doing,

but be completely unable to

contribute,

because I don't know anything about

loops and synths and grooves.

At least I didn't then.

All I knew about was how to put a

killer guitar line together,

and that was the one thing that

wasn't required.

So I felt like a fifth wheel,

literally.

We didn't feel like a complete unit

anymore.

Brett was never to be seen -

I hardly ever saw him in the studio.

Having established myself as the hub

of the band,

I suddenly wasn't really there,

I wasn't really present,

and so...

... it's like the keystone is missing

in the building.

Everything became slightly atomised,

and I drifted off and Richard drifted

off and Neil drifted off,

and it became this odd record that

was almost made

by Mat and Steve Osborne, in a funny

sort of way.

It was horrible. Yeah, it was really

stressful.

I mean, I don't want to give the

impression

that what was happening was I was

here making the record

because no-one was here,

I was here out of politeness more

than anything,

because it just seemed rude to leave

Steve here on his own

with these satellites orbiting around

and every now and then beaming a

message in.

Mat was there more than any other

member of the band.

That's... a crazy way to make a

record.

I think you two need to sort out

your communication.

Well, I think we can rewind that.

I remember this so clearly -

if he'd been doing crack,

he'd push his hair back so he didn't

set light to his hair.

So if his hair was

up when he came in,

me and Steve were like,

"Oh, fuck it. That's today.

"It's gonna be half an hour of him

rushing around,

"playing this on the keyboard,

playing this on the...

"Then going again."

If his hair was down, then it was

probably gonna be pretty good.

She got flowers in hair

Yeah, yeah

She got savoir faire

Yeah, yeah

Shout

Shout

Shout

Shout

Shout

I can remember doing

Everything Will Flow.

It had been a really grim time in

the studio,

and we hadn't really been able to

rehearse it properly,

cos no-one was here,

and, you know, Brett and Richard

especially

couldn't really talk to each other,

because what they wanted seemed to

be completely different things.

And then we sat and played

Everything Will Flow,

and I think it's the second take or

something, and it sounds amazing.

Oh-ho-oh-oh-oh

And everything will flow

Oh-ho-oh-oh-oh

And everything will flow

The neon lights in the night tonight

Will say "everything will flow"

Well, first of all, there was my

addiction.

Secondly, there was Richard's

marginalisation.

And thirdly, there was Neil's

illness.

He was basically unable to leave his

house for a lot of '98.

He just suddenly couldn't do

anything.

And everyone was kind of, "What the

fuck's wrong with him?"

In my mind, it was connected to the

tour fatigue of Coming Up,

the physical length of that tour and

how exhausting it was.

I don't think that helped, put it

that way.

Somewhere around...

... Christmas '96,

I got glandular fever,

or some kind of virus

that wiped me out.

We were in the middle of this long

tour,

and I just carried on ploughing

through.

And we'd come off tour, and I'd go

out with my mates,

doing all sorts of things -

smoking myself blind, drinking too

much, all the other things.

When I should have been looking

after myself,

to kind of knock this virus on the

head.

And I'd get a little cold and be

wiped out,

and there would be a time where I'd

just spend weeks in bed.

And I don't know whether it was what

you'd call ME,

or some chronic fatigue or glandular

fever or something,

but these waves of being completely

knocked out,

unable to contribute to the band,

or actually get up and make toast or

anything.

It kind of really took it out of me.

Within and around the band, there

was a fair degree of cynicism

about what was wrong with him.

When I look back on it now,

kind of saw his illness as a

stumbling block,

something to be worked round,

rather than ever really saying to

him, "How do you feel?"

I think I was very angry about what

was going on,

and I think that I was immature

enough

to sort of direct my anger at him,

without realising what was going on.

I don't think they understood.

Even now, I don't really understand

what was happening to me.

Richard, speak to Neil.

I'm just doing something.

My main memory of recording

Head Music

is eight months of basically just

me and Mat in the studio.

Neil being on the other end of the

telephone,

being sent cassettes

and phoning up to say what we should

be doing,

and Brett turning up at ten o'clock

at night in an altered state.

I'd like to hear a-a-a more extreme

version of this sound,

with more distortion and more filter.

The low points on it, they're awful.

So give me head

Give me head

Give me head music instead

I said oh-oh

Is it all in the mind?

If we'd had any kind of clear eyes

and clear hearts,

we would have said, "There's half a

great record here."

It's got some of my favourite...

You know, Indian Strings, Can't Get

Enough, Everything Will Flow -

these are as good as we've ever done.

Take a look inside me

Inside my mind

And you'll see

my heart is broken, too

I don't disown that record at all,

I just regret that it wasn't seen

through

with the right kind of conviction.

Down is, I think, the best example

of Brett being nakedly honest

about where his life was at that

point.

Hey-ey-ey

You draw the blinds

And blow your mind away

And there's a sadness in your style

Down's quite a dark song.

I wrote it after a pretty horrific

incident,

where...

... my girlfriend kind of...

... had a...

... kind of overdose, I suppose.

This horrific convulsive fit in the

flat over there.

And I remember, 4:00 in the morning,

leaning over her and doing CPR and

pumping her heart,

and all this sort of thing.

And it was pretty horrific.

That was the low point, that was the

turning point for me.

I suddenly saw...

... what I was doing to myself,

and I saw...

... how I was throwing my life away.

And I saw it with perspective.

And from then on, even though it

wasn't a clean break,

I managed to claw my way out of the

pit...

... and, yeah, get myself clean again,

get myself healthy again.

There was something particularly

hedonistic

about that '90s Britpop era,

in a way that, like a lot of scenes

have,

people talk about the music business,

"the good drugs and the bad drugs".

The music industry eats its young.

It doesn't mind.

It's very happy for Suede

to take a lot of drugs and have a

drug album,

and for them to disappear, because

there's another one in the pipeline.

At least there used to be, in the

'90s, and there's not anymore.

That's why, as an industry, they

sort of disappear,

cos they didn't take care of people.

There's an awful lot of casualties

in the music industry,

in lots of different ways.

I'm not sure we would have listened

to anyone, that's the trouble.

We're responsible,

you know what I mean?

As long as you can learn from your

mistakes,

and we've made so many mistakes

that we've probably

learnt quite a lot.

Drugs were celebrated a lot back

then - it was different culture,

a different time.

It was, probably wrongly,

shoved under the carpet,

and I think a lot of people,

particularly management, record

companies, you know, think,

"Wow, it's a good thing, because it

helps the creative process."

And I think a lot of people got

damaged because of that

later on in life, as we know.

That whole period of my life, when

I think back on it,

just makes me feel so sad that any

of us put ourselves through that.

You know, I think there was this

sort of myth

that taking drugs make you a better

artist, but the opposite is true -

you know, it makes people

caricatures of themselves.

I think that what happened in 1998,

1999,

is pretty much my fault.

(CHUCKLES)

Not to be too, kind of...

... sort of black and white about it,

but, you know, it's my...

... it's on my shoulders, really, what

happened.

You know, all of the problems could

have been contained,

if I'd have had a clear head, I

suppose.

I do feel as though it's my fault,

yeah.

Richard, say something funny.

On the road... again.

Once the Head Music tour was out

of our system,

and we started writing in early 2000,

Brett was clean, but we were

struggling -

we were running out of energy and

struggling to come up with ideas.

And then Neil decided

that he couldn't really face

recording another album

and doing another tour, so he left

in March 2001.

It took seven years to get over it.

And I'm not the same person -

I didn't recover to be the same kind

of person,

have the same kind of energy as I

did before I got sick.

So it did completely change me.

Alex Lee joined pretty much as soon

as Neil left,

and I loved working with Alex,

but we were kind of a sinking ship

by this point.

A New Morning, God.

A slow, painful death.

Musically, we were done - we'd run

out of inspiration.

We really had.

(SCATS)

Even though I made it in a very clean

state,

the shadow of addiction was very,

very present,

and it felt like I was imbalanced.

It was a sort of see-saw - the

mirror image of it, almost.

All the darkness is turned into some

sort of ersatz kind of positivity,

and it just didn't work at all.

And I DO disown that record!

(CHUCKLES)

Unlike Head Music.

I wish we'd never made it.

I wish we'd never made that record.

(CLICKING)

We're in the ICA, cos we played five

nights here in September 2003.

We came here and we played all of

our albums so far,

which wasn't as much of a cliche as

it is now, I don't think.

I remember pushing this through,

because at the back of my mind,

I was thinking

that we hadn't really got long

left, to be honest,

and I wanted to do something that had

a sort of retrospective feel,

that kind of closed...

... that sort of closed the book,

as it were.

I suppose I wanted to celebrate our

career, really, more than anything.

I wanted to sort of say,

"Well, you know,

"the album that we just released was a

disaster,

"but it wasn't always that way,"

I suppose.

But it's down to...

Essentially, it was down to my life

spiralling out of control

that disaster struck, you know.

I think it was my addictions

that meant that I didn't have...

I didn't care enough about the band

anymore, to be honest,

and that's an absolute tragedy that

I didn't care enough about the band,

and I lie awake, still regretting

that now.

I think it's a terrible, terrible,

terribly sad thing.

And I apologise deeply for that.

And...

I-I...

When you're addicted to substances,

you know, nothing else matters,

and that's such a sad thing that

I didn't realise that.

- I think it would have happened anyway.

- Yeah.

I think it's just the nature of Suede

- to push things a little too far, you know.

- Yeah.

It had always worked for us.

We were too young to know that you

can break things like that.

It was only a few weeks after these

shows

that you dropped the bombshell

at the Graham Norton Show,

of all places.

When it came to the Graham Norton

Show, and the decision was made,

for a split second it was a surprise

and a nasty shock

to hear that we were splitting up,

but then immediately afterwards

I thought,

"I should have seen that coming."

I was pissed off that we didn't talk

about it,

and Brett suddenly decided to tell

us at the Graham Norton Show.

I think I was a bit pissed off that

you said, "Split up."

"Split up" is so different from

saying, "Taking a break."

You know what I mean?

It was a final thing.

And I didn't want it to be final.

I certainly wanted a break, but I

didn't want it to be final.

I can't remember what I said.

You said, "It's over for Suede."

Did I?

Yeah. I thought I said something

like, "I can't do this anymore."

- You said, "I think it's over."

- OK. Did I?

Yeah. And then...

So that, for me, meant splitting up.

I can always tell -

And I was quite proud that we'd

actually said,

"We're gonna split up."

I think so many more bands should

split up.

And here's a list!

And here's a list!

Did you think Suede would reform at

that time?

ALL: No.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

Gee!

That was fucking brilliant.

Can't really say fairer than that.

That was fucking brilliant.

- That was, like, the best gig ever.

- I think it possibly was.

What about after Metal Mickey?

What was that?

That was insanity! That's never

happened, surely?

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE CONTINUE)

We haven't finished yet.

I had no intention of reforming Suede

for many, many, many years,

and then the Teenage Cancer Trust

called us up

and asked us if we wanted to do a

show.

And... I just thought, "Mm. Why not?"

Good evening.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

We're Suede.

So I called Mat first.

Literally, if you'd said to me,

"Do you want to reform Suede?"

I would have said, "No."

But he called up and said,

"The Teenage Cancer Trust have asked us

"to play the Albert Hall,"

and it just felt like, "Oh, this

could end it," you know what I mean?

It didn't feel like a beginning in

any way,

it felt like, "This is the end that

it should have had."

Here they come

The beautiful ones

The beautiful ones

La, la, la...

Richard was the only member of the

band that had reservations.

You know the idea of opening any old

wounds was kinda scary,

even up to the actual gig,

so I wasn't thinking beyond that

show at all.

Because you're beautiful

Yeah, I think we were all in

agreement that...

That it was just gonna be one gig,

and then leave and then have this

sort of, like, "Whoa," kind of thing,

and then just away again.

And there was something really cool

about doing something that was gonna

cost us a load of money!

Give money to a good cause and then

disappear -

I think there was a part of me that

thought,

"No-one can say we did this for the

wrong reasons."

And it was very much a sense, that

we'd got off stage...

"... Well, that was too good not

to do again."

It was so, so important to try and

re-establish ourselves

as a creative force again,

not to be one of those bands that

was part of the nostalgia circuit.

Where the band lost its way -

we'd kind of stopped making music

that sounded like Suede,

and I think since we've got back

together,

we've learnt how to do that again,

and I think we can trust ourselves

to make that kind of music now.

With The Blue Hour, we've come to a

point

where we just know

what our strengths are.

At the moment, we're in production

rehearsals

somewhere in... Bedford way.

We've got the sound sorted out, we

just wanna go out and play it now.

That's my favourite part of any

album that we release -

the initial sort of...

Not those five days of hard work

spent actually recording it

that you did.

Three days of hard work.

Can I just point out, me and Richard

and Neil

spent a year and a half writing it.

- Simon flies in for five days...

- Well, you know...

(LAUGHS)

We've relearnt how to make a record

together,

and I think it's quite contrary to

the way most bands work.

These last three albums, especially

The Blue Hour,

we've kind of always been in the

room together,

me, Richard and Brett,

and there's something very fresh

about that.

We've had to learn to almost put all

ego to one side.

If someone doesn't like what you do

or doesn't like an idea you have,

you have to just move on and try

harder and not let it get to you,

which, in the past, it did.

When it all is much too much

Meet me in the wastelands

Make a chain of flowers

Like our ties are severed

There's a kind of purity now

which goes back to the very early

days,

and I think it's taken us three

records

to kind of strip away some of the

flim-flam

and to get back to that really

pure state

of just being a band making records

that you love.

When we came back, Bloodsports had

kind of fizzy pop singles on it,

and things for radio.

This blood is lifting her

This blood is lifting you

I was snowblind

And then we did Night Thoughts,

which was much more knotty and

tangled and difficult.

Don't tell me that you'll change

Tell me you can...

And people loved it, people came

with us.

I think we almost underestimated our

audience.

I think the thing we've learnt over

these three records

is there's a group of people who

will come with us

if we go on a strange path somewhere.

The lessons we learnt from Night

Thoughts were huge.

To make a record which we thought was

quite an uncompromising, challenging,

quite difficult record,

and to realise, duh, that people like

that,

rather than wanting to hear our

version of pop music,

which no-one really wants to hear

anymore, least of all us.

It was a real revelation in making

this record,

and it kind of allowed us to take it

the next level,

further left-field sort of thing,

and it allowed us to do strange and

unpleasant things.

This is the first one we've done in

this trilogy

where I personally really feel that

I know where it wants to go.

(PIANO MUSIC)

Take her cold hands

Place the snowdrops in her palm

I'm pushing through the wire

I have no choice but to follow you

You've gotta feel, when you make an

album,

that you've done something a bit of

a risk.

I think a lot of people, at this

stage in their career,

want to just service their fans

and do what they think is expected

of them.

To be able to push yourselves to do

something different,

and still it be the band and still

be interesting, it's hard.

You know, it's very hard.

For me, the creative state is so much

about a state of flux,

it's so much about reacting against

things,

it's so much about having points to

prove,

that as soon as you get to a stage

where you feel as though you've

learnt everything or whatever,

it's almost like, well, then you're

kind of neutered

and then you're not creative anymore.

It feels like there can never be that

end point -

there isn't a nice, neat ending to

this.

Brett is one of the great British

rock lyricists,

and he's not given enough credit for

that.

Play on the road

I mean, on the new record, there's a

song called Flytipping.

Genius!

There is an indefinable Suede-ness

that's there in The Drowners,

and that's there in Flytipping.

What is my name?

What is yours?

Do we own these things?

What has it all been for?

Flytipping on the road of course

Flytipping is a good encapsulation

of the Suede journey.

It's about a couple who, over the

years,

have acquired all this baggage,

and the next part of their journey

through life

is to then get rid of it,

and to look to a future

where you're not weighed down by the

past.

What is my name?

What is yours?

Lots of Suede is trying to

find beauty within the darkness -

the kind of outskirts, the sort of

liminal, in-between places.

I don't see any other bands here.

It sorts of seems to be our own

little territory,

and we're probably welcome to it.

(LAUGHS)

The scruffy bits of the world are

just more interesting.

You know, look at the pylons,

they're so majestic.

The thing is,

I bet Monaco has got pylons.

Flytipping

Feels like just enough

Whatever little bumps in the road

there were,

whatever decision they got wrong,

they also got an awful lot right.

Suede are massively important.

We may be seeing the last day of the

rock music that Suede were part of,

and that's not to be sort of,

"Woe is me,"

it's just a fact if music all died

out, bands of guitars might die out.

It's really rare that you keep going,

because it's hard to be in a band -

all the egos, resentment,

"Why has he got that?

"Why has he got that credit?

"Why have we got an older drummer

that looks like a sex offender?"

You know, shit like that can break a

band up.

But it didn't. It didn't.

They stuck by him.

(LAUGHS)

(LAUGHS)

I hate Ricky Gervais.

The evolution of British rock music

that begins in the late 1950s,

and is still just about going on now,

Suede are one of the key people in

that.

Are absolutely one of the key bands

in it.

They're one of a handful of great

British rock bands

who pushed it on,

who did something new,

who brought a different aesthetic to

it and changed everything.

Michael Christie, you're an evil,

insane guy!

Piss off, Mike.

I thought your film was gonna be

people saying, "Simon, fuck off."

Oh, piss off.

Don't do that!

Why are you filming me,

you horrible git?