Reintroducing The Band
As Suede band reform, frontman Brett Anderson gives Stuart Clark the lowdown on fronting one of the most iconic indie bands of the '90s...
Stuart Clark, 01 Jun 2011
The last time I shared breathing space with Brett Anderson was on September 6, 2002 when Suede were getting ready to play live at the Hot Press Irish Music Awards in Belfast.
The then 32-year-old was in superb form, talking up the Britpoppers’ soon-to-be-unleashed A New Morning album.
“We wrote a hell of a lot of songs and narrowed it down to ten great ones,” he told me over a very un-rock ‘n’ roll cup of tea in the Europa Hotel. “I don’t think we’ve ever done anything that’s so choc-full of good stuff. There’s no filler.”
Sadly, the record-buying public didn’t agree, with A New Morning failing to trouble the UK Top 20 – an unwelcome first for Suede.
Traumatised by their dramatic fall from commercial grace, the Londoners announced in November 2003 that they were slinging their collective hook and following a final show in the London Astoria, went their separate ways.
Far from pining for his ex-colleagues, Anderson seemed delighted to be free from the shackles of bandom.
“You can’t communicate with anyone outside your little circle,” he reflected in a 2009 interview. “It’s a very repetitive, insular existence. The whole point of being a solo artist is being able to stretch yourself and do interesting things you couldn’t do before.”
All of which made it a ginormous surprise last year when Brett, Neil Codling, Richard Oakes, Mat Osman and Simon Gilbert announced that Suede were back in business.
“It seemed as if the right amount of time had elapsed for us to revisit things,” a disgustingly fit and lean-looking Anderson tells me in response to the inevitable “why now?” question. “We’d faded in people’s memories enough for it to be a really exciting event when we came back and played the Royal Albert Hall and London O2 last year. If no-one had turned up we’d have taken the hint and gone back to the various other things we’ve been doing these past eight years, but they were among the best shows I’ve ever done, either on my own or with Suede. After 20 years of a career, I think we’ve worked out what songs work live and how to get the onstage dynamics right. Despite us playing old material, it also seemed incredibly contemporary. It didn’t feel nostalgic to me at all, which I was definitely pleased about. I’m a big These New Puritans fan – their first album, Beat Pyramid, is genius – so I asked them to support us in the Albert Hall and I think we did okay up against the youngsters!”
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