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| SUEDE - Back in Fashion,
June '99 Suede use plenty of make up, but def-leppard are tarts in comparison. as the two bands file out of the lengthy, industrial strength foundation-laying session prior to their *TFI FRIDAY* appearances, it's difficult not to notice the main diffrence between the two. suede, the fey, southern fakers. walk towards the studio looking every bit the band. Sheffields hardest rocking combo, on the other hand, look more like middle aged women on the pull at *ritzy's* Brushing surreally past the likes of Frank Carson and the vicar from EastEnders to the strains of keyboardist Neil Codling and bassist Mat Osman's best Impersonations of The Chemical Brothers, Suede take to the TFI Friday stage, ready to pop. Kicking off proceedings for this week's regular exercise in ginger ego-nurturing, the band play current single'She's In Fashion', a song they have been rehearsing for the past week. In the band's crowded dressing room earlier on, frontman Brett Anderson is trying to quash the rumour that the song is about a certain other breakfast DJ. "A lot of people have made the assumption that It's about Zoe Ball," the Suede frontman asserts. "They've heard the line, 'She's the face of the morning show', and took It from there, It could be about her in a sense but it's generally about all those girls you see on the front of FHM. I think it's kind of obvious." This evening will be the first time the band have played the song in front of a live audience so far having opted to leave the song a conspicuous absentee in the their recent fanclub shows. "We've never really done a song like this before," explains Brett."lt's got a real subtle dynamic to it and that can be difficult to get across when you play live. It's got a real lightness to it: you can't just do a rocked-out version like we perhaps may have done in the past - that would be unfair to the song. It's been quite a challenge to get that pop feel." Pop. It's a word that's always been used, in a variety of ways, to describe what Suede do - but never has It felt more appropriate than now. When Anderson stated publicly at the time of its inception that current album Head Music would be a "colder and less emotional record" than past efforts, eyebrows were raised and the point was misconstrued. "Saying that I wanted to make a 'colder album didn't mean it would have less feeling. I just wanted the songs to be simpler in their approach. If anything, I'd like the songs to get simpler still. As you get older you see life as a simpler thing." the three minute pop punches that made up Coming Up are even more refined this time around. From the straight ahead punk of'Can't Get Enough' to the nursery-like ease in which you can sing along to 'Elephant Man's chorus, it's an album that hasn't sat too well with those longing for the overblown Suede of old. Critically. much has been made of the 'dumbing down' of Anderson's once profound lyrics, some even suggesting the band are taking the piss (choice line: "She lives in a house/She's as stupid as a mouse ('Savoir Faire'). It's an accusation Anderson views with disdain. "I'm really disappointed with people that equate so-called'clever lyrics with superior music.There's this assumption that because the lyrics are deliberately dumb, they're in some way stupid. It's disheartening when people have so little scope that they feel a good lyric is something you don't understand and has to be poetic and veiled. I think that's total bollocks." But wasn't that something Suede were once credited for in the past? "Maybe," he answers, "but I just hate this idea of,'Oh, that band's so great because they stare moodily out of a window; there's this binary equation where moodiness and darkness somehow equal a kind of credibility I think that's terrible. I think some of the best lyrics are something like that New Radicals song: "You've got the music in you" - what a great line! Everyone knows what it means - just a simple, great pop lyric. Better than any stupid guitar band singing about something they don't know anything about" "I think a fashion develops in what you're supposed to think about a record," interjects Mat. "It's beyond the individual's point of perception. A lot of people have spoken about the lyrics on this album and their depth; the whole point of this album was that Brett didn't want to write lyrics like he'd done in the past - things were going to be more instinctive and universal this time, and I think we've achieved that." "Obviously not everyone's got that Some people are sheep," deadpans Brett. As drummer Simon Gilbert walzes past, a digital camera seemingly glued to his palm (he has about 300 hours of Suede-vision at home, apparently), the conversation turns to current musical tum-ons. Special mention is reserved for Super Furry Animals ("They're the most inventive band around with the melodies to go with it," asserts Brett), yet, tellingly most of the band's current favourites are within the realms of contemporary pop and dance, rather than the indie-rock one may expect. "Because we're recognised as being an indie, guitar-based band, people tend to assume that's where our influences stem from - yet it's probably likely to be something more like Prince," reasons Mat"! think this record is the first one that begins to reflect those influences; songs like 'Savoir Faire' and 'Hi-Fi' are not traditional rock songs - you'd never have heard us do these sort of songs in the past." Employing Paul Oakenfold's Perfecto sidekick Steve Osborne to produce Head Music has gone a long way in realising this new found sensibility Pills, Thrills And Bellyaches (the classic Happy Mondays album produced by Osbome) Is one of the band's favourites. "We'd decided we'd gone as far as we could with Ed Buller; producer on the first three Suede longplayers] and decided to try something new," recalls Mat. "A lot's been made of Steve's dance credentials but the plan was never about Suede embracing technology and re-inventing ourselves as Fatboy Slim or whatever" laughs Brett. Mat explains further "Steve's dead sympathetic to the original sound of the band. The Mondays were a traditional group; on Pills..., although Steve probably had great influence on its overall sound, there's still a real sense of feel. He'll bring out a groove rather than drop in some inappropriate breakbeat" "We were excited about using new stuff, keyboards, whatever" adds Brett, "but you're in danger of getting too involved in the technological side of things; we'd use a sound and Steve would disagree if he thought it confined things too much to 1999. There's something about rock music that has a certain timelessness to it. I think dance culture is very much of the moment and gets dated very quickly; I think Steve was aware of that too." Richard Oakes was 13 when Pills.Thrills And Bellyaches came out. He was just 17 when he joined Suede. Not only did he have to cope with joining an established, older band, he also had to replace Bernard Butler; the much lauded guitar hero who many believed to be the band's main talent. At the time of Oakes' induction, cynics laughed in disbelief when Anderson announced Suede were "stronger than ever'.At the time,this may have seemed like unfounded fighting talk from a band in a desperate situation; history however appears to have rendered the statement true. Suede are genuinely more popular now than they've ever been. As Oakes signs autographs outside, along with fellow new(ish) recruit (and main focus of female attention) Neil Codling - bearing in mind the band's refusal to play any Butler era songs on their recent fanclub tour - does it feel like having been in two separate bands for the older heads? "I suppose it does, to an extent," admits Mat "It just doesn't feel relevant for us to play something like 'Animal Nitrate' now, in terms of what we're about now. I think we certainly feel uncomfortable playing those songs" now; we don't get the kick out of playing those songs anymore so we've stopped playing them. Through us playing a set of songs that 'this' band have actually wrote, rather than playing what feels like a set of covers, it makes for a better show". It's more than a fair point. The crowd's reaction on the recent tour suggested that the old stuff was hardly missed. Indeed, such is the youthfulness of the second wave of Coming Up/Codling era Suede fans, many are probably too young to remember the excitement that was generated when 'The Drowners' first appeared. The emergence of Britpop is often attributed to Suede and it's easy to forget how times have changed. While most indie bands in 1992 would have settled supporting Ned's Atomic Dustbin, Suede were looking towards taking 2 Unlimited on and beyond. "There was no acceptance of the sort of band we were. We weren't accepted into the mainstream at all. We were getting next to no airplay but we were somehow making an impact. Going on Top Of The Pops with 'Metal Mickey' was such a big deal then - not just for us but for all bands of our type," recalls Anderson."We certainly opened doors for other bands. We don't look for credit or respect for that but there's a lot people that may have only recently heard of us and it's important to know the context of how we came about. Things were different then," he says with mock nostalgia. Certainly when Suede first appeared, you could hardly have ignored them. Heralded as the saviours of British music before their first single was even released, the music press lapped them up. At last, along with the fledgling Manics, here was a British band that could counterweight the anti-heroics and glamourless American grunge invasion. "A lot of people thought we were an Invention of the press and that we couldn't be any good - which wasn't the case. Because of the amount of press attention we received early on, people thought it was just some hype situation going on and, yeah, perhaps to an extent it was," explains Brett."But the word 'hype' implies there wasn't any substance behind that promotion. I think it was justified; we were a great band and, because of the state of the music scene at the time, we were what was needed." Although the band have stayed true to their original roots In not shying away from competing with the likes of Steps (Suede have never gone 'difficult' in the way peers such as Blur and Pulp have), it could be argued that the Suede experience has become somewhat diluted. From Brett slapping his arse with his mic at the Brte in 1993, to ambivalence towards sexuality and drugs in their early interviews and lyrics, they divided opinion. It's an old cliche but you did either love or hate them - there really was no in between. With Suede in 1999, things have changed.The audience has certainly become broader and, where once anyone who came In contact with Suede had an opinion, for the first time, it appears - Heaven forbid - people are becoming seemingly Indifferent. "When we first started, I wanted to piss people off. I thought that was really important cause everything was so complacent and conservative at the time. We came along and stuck out like a sore thumb. We haven't changed - it's more a case of what's around us that has," states Anderson."I don't think people will ever not have an opinion on Suede. No matter what we do, I think that there's always something about the band that always fascinates people, both In a good and a bad way I'm not saying people think that we're this incredibly interesting band, people just always seem to have a view on us. It's not something you can get away from with us. I don't think we're a band that brings about indifference." "I suppose we feel less like an 'outsiders' band right now," says Mat "We're less aggrieved by everything these days. I've always looked upon us as being renegade in a way, like we crashed the party. It'd be churlish for us to say we were still outsiders in the sense that we get a fair amount of airplay and can be on something like TFI Friday, but in saying we've somehow lost our edge, I'd disagree. I'd say we're more relevant now than we've ever been." So what would Suede circa 1992 think of Suede now? "I'm not sure," answers Brett. "We were less open-minded then and had a set idea on what the band should be about at the time, so I'm not sure if I'd have expected us to have made a record like Head Music. We were pretty ambitious then, so I suppose I may have been disappointed that we aren't bigger than we are now. But it's a difficult question..." Ask them if they have any regrets and you'll receive a somewhat blase shake of the head. "We've probably been a little too honest in interviews in the past for our own good and, perhaps, given a bit too much of ourselves away to our fans and the press. At the end of the day I can't say we regret any of that to any real extent at the end of the day." It's this frankness that has largely resulted in the band gaining some of their often unwanted notoriety "It does frustrate me," admits Brett, looking somewhat forlorn, "that people are so fascinated by drugs that it ends up the main focus upon what they end up writing about us. I'm honest and open enough to talk about anything; you could say it's worked against us at times." "One of the few times I have agreed with what Noel Gallagher has had to say Is when he said that you cannot have a sensible argument about drugs in the press," adds Mat "No matter what you say or how you say it, everything just becomes a soundbite." As the band walk towards the studio, they politely pose for photographs and chat with a bunch of fans for ten minutes. It's an admirable sight; you sense a genuine appreciation towards those that, at the end of the day pay their wages. A look at one of the band's dedicated webpages or fanzines, however and things can become worryingly full-on and obsessive. Does it ever get overbearing? "Yes, it can do - but It's something I've learned to deal with," Brett admits. "I've always tried to avoid having this crappy divide between the band and the fans without it being a patronising thing. Sometimes, people get the wrong end of the stick and expect more - that's where it can become difficult." "If you're as open and as personable as us, it doesn't become too much of a problem," continues Mat. "There's a lot of myths surrounding this band - "that we're this iconic, glamourous, unapproachable band. The best way to fend off the real obsessive types is just to talk to them. Once we've spoken to them, it kind of shatters this image people sometimes have of us. We can often disappoint in that respect," he laughs. "There's this idea of us being a glamourous bunch, but when some of these people see the grim reality it's'Oh, there goes Placebo'," grins Brett. "If anything, the fans are the glamourous ones, they always seem to make an effort. That's a big misconception about us, that we're smooth; It's bollocks. I'm not fucking Tony Hadley (of '80s new romantics Spandau Ballet). I've read all this crap about us always smooching around in Armani which is bollocks...We only wear Armani some of the time." For the record, today Brett wears a pair of beige, boot-cut Levi's cords with a matching slinky Gabbicci jumper he may well have nicked from his dad. Def Leppard's Joe Elliot is wearing a full-length leopard-skin print jacket and perm. "I love this song!" screams Chris Evans as he introduces 'She's In Fashion', a bit of light relief on an increasingly self-indulgent show. Right now, at the very least, that's hardly a criticism you could level at Suede. * |
