LYRICIST

RC:  You said you underplayed your role in the music for political reasons.  Was that because you wanted the partnership to be seen in terms of lyricist/musician?
BA:  Not in the slightest.  I don't really know why.  It was just a matter of how our roles were perceived in the band and it just seemed to fit at the time.  It's difficult to talk about.

RC:  But did the music come first, irrespective of your contribution to it?
BA:  Yes, I'd never actually sing him something.  But I don't really want to talk about how we worked too much.  It's something that's completely irrelevant.  All that I can say is that my role was never just as a lyricist.  It was always something much more musical than that.

RC:  In promoting the first album, you'd open your shows with "The Next Life", which I always admired as an audacious move.  I remember expecting it to be an encore and thinking: they're opening with the final track as if to underline that they've already moved on.  Was that the intent?
BA:  Definitely.  It was quite audacious, but we didn't want to do a traditional rock gig.  There was a real strong determination with the first two albums not to comply with what people thought was rock music.  I always tried to push it a bit.  I've actually refocused my ideas and fallen back in love with rock music.  But for a while the thought of just actually doing a rock show was horrible.  Lots of people misunderstood that as feyness.  We could rock with the best of them, but we wanted to do something slightly different.

RC:  So, what would you say was specifically "fey" about the show?
BA:  Well, take the early incarnation of suede.  It would have been very easy for us to go onstage, play a blinding rock show with a load of great rock/pop anthems…. That was just too easy to do.  We wanted to do something slightly different.  And because we stuck things like "The Next Life" in there and "Sleeping Pills", people saw it as "maybe they can't rock".

RC:  I'm amazed if people would say that.  I didn't see any reviews that said that.
BA:  Especially in the States, they saw it as a deviation from a rock blueprint.  It was said that we had a chink in our armour.  It was just a result of us being ambitious about how we wanted to be perceived.  There's a lot of stupid people out there that just see things in two dimension.

RC:  Although people always go on about suede as representatives of English pop, with lyrical landscapes filled with council houses and suburban unrest, nobody mentions that you also use Americanisms; words like "gasoline" and "trash" are very much a part of the suede vocabulary.  If you did an album it would more likely be called "Modern Life Is Trash", not "Modern Life Is Rubbish"…
BA:  I've always had aspirations towards being a kind of universal person.  I just don't want to be seen as this one-dimensional character.  I think there's a lot in "Dog Man Star" that wants to break free from that, from the typical image that people had of us, which made us write songs like "The Power", about some basic human principles, and being more global about our outlook.

RC:  That said, you haven't had much luck in America.  While the Cranberries broke through, you had to change your name to London suede.  More recently you were reduced to performing with a cane on painkillers after a fall.  Ever feel America's been jinxed for you?
BA:  Yeah, I think so.  It's a funny old place.  We've had our ups and downs there.  We haven't broken America in the slightest but there have been pockets of extreme suede mania that we've had when we've been touring there, on both major tours.  I don't know, it's just a matter of breaking into the mainstream.  It's all based around the radio and there's something about the idea of suede records on the radio that doesn't quite sit properly to American ears.

RC:  Saul Galparn(founder of Nude Records) gives the impression that America's a market you won't be tackling again for some time.  True?
BA:  I don't know.  My feelings about America are… I've given up thinking about it too much, really.  It's a big market and that, but Europe's a bigger market.  And Europe is more important for us at the moment.  We're No.1 in two countries in Scandinavia and it's just starting to happen in Europe, and we're concentrating on that for the moment.
There was a problem generally worldwide with the last album, because there was a lot of confusion over whether we'd split up.  In total, we've done something like 100,000 copies there between the two album.  But it's great in Sweden and Finland.  We've just gone to No. 1 in Finland, which is great.  The whole of Scandinavia we're in the Top 5, which is cool.  Denmark's a great country for us too.

RC:  "Dog Man Star" was almost cinematic in it's approach, both musically and lyrically, with songs like "Heroine", "The Wild Ones", "Daddy's Speeding' and "Hollywood Life" all containing film references.  That's no coincidence, I take it?
BA:  I think I did get quite obsessed with films.  I did want it to be a big sweeping album, a really massive, epic thing.  Like I said before, a lot of the lyrics were a desire to try to break away from the mould I'd been put in.  I wanted to do something with more of a universal sense.

RC:  "Still Life" reminded me of Scott Walker, both vocally and in the Brian Gascoigne arrangement.  Indeed, Gascoigne would later work with Scott on "Tilt".  Were you aware of Scott Walker's work back then?
BA:  Much less than people assumed.

RC:  Did people assume it?
BA:  Yes, they did.  The first comparison we ever had with Scott Walker was with the song "The Big Time" and I'd never really heard Scott Walker.  Of course I knew "The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore" and stuff like that, but those were covers.  I wasn't really aware of Scott's solo work at all.  So, when someone said, "That really reminds me of Scott Walker's stuff", I checked it out and I said, "Yes, I suppose it does".  I think it was more of a case that the way the song was written just seemed to suggest the arrangement, with Mellotrons and sweeping things like that.  Scott Walker is someone I've just started to listen to recently.  During the making of this album I went out and bought all the Scott Walker albums and checked them out.  But there was nothing at the heart of it at all.  It was just a form of making music, just one of those basic blueprints.

RC:  On Bernard Butler's departure: you said:"I don't think he ever really wanted to be in the band or have anything to do with it", and Simon added, "He hated our guts".  But surely it wasn't always like that, was it? Was he always distant from you and the others, or was it just in the months leading up to "Dog Man Star"?
BA:  It's difficult to talk about, again.  We were very unified early on an then things just started going wrong.  Bernard had always been slightly separate from the band.  I don't know what happened.  It just happened, like it does.

RC:  He said of you:"It took a long time for him to trust me and trust my music".  Was that command valid?
BA:  No.  I don't think so.  No.  I can't really ;comment on anything he says.  A lot of the things that have been said since the split-up have been said in strange circumstances.  So, from my point of view, it's not valid.  Maybe from his, it is, otherwise he wouldn't have said it.

RC:  Did you feel that he was trying to take over the musical direction of suede at that time?
BA:  Um(long pause).  Not as such.  No.  But, n the other hand, I think if you're serious about anything you do and if you've got any sort of vision and any single-mindedness, then one naturally thinks that one's opinions are correct about things.
 

PHILOSOPHY

RC:  Was there a different philosophy about how the musical direction should go?
BA:  I don't think so.  Much less than people would think.  It wasn't such a dissatisfaction with the music.  The popular misconception is that we were arguing about songs and things like that.  It wasn't so much like that… The departure I presume was… it's difficult.  Because I haven't spoken to him for such a long time, I don't really know what's in his mind.  I didn't really know how his mind was working when he left.  So I can't really say.  Maybe he was completely dissatisfied with it musically. It could be totally true.  But I felt it was far more a personal thing.

RC:  Was there any sense of him wanting to take over the production?
BA:  I don't want to talk about that (accompanied by a twinkling smile).

RC:  It's interesting that you will talk to me about the musical direction but you won't talk to me about the production.  I can only draw certain conclusions from that!
BA:  Ha! Ha! Ha!  (he laughs for almost ten seconds!)

RC:  On Radio 1 recently, you mentioned that suede lost the plot at one point but never actually pinpointed when you felt that was.  It sounded as if it was just after "Dog Man Star".
BA:  Yeah, it was pretty much in the period when we were touring an album that wasn't relevant to the line-up.  Richard had joined that band and he was playing songs that had been co-written by me and Bernard.  It's a confusing and difficult time for a band to go through.  Everyone thinks you've split up.  Everyone thinks you're just miming to a load of songs.

RC:  You were very confident that Richard Oakes would prove the right choice, and it seems you were vindicated?
BA:  I've always had a lot of faith in gut reactions.  A load of other people were saying, "God, you can't get him in, he's only 17 years old", but I'd heard him playing a guitar ad I just thought, "He's great".  I really have faith in him all the way.  I still have.  I think he's getting better and better as a musician as well.  He's starting to really see music with perspective now.
He's a really nice bloke as well.  I get on really well with him, which is nice. I spend a lot of time with him socially and he's one of the nicest people to be with you can imagine.  E's a really funny bloke and he does incredibly funny impressions of people.

RC:  What was the nature of the arrangement with him? Was he put on a wage and recruited on a trial basis?  Is he still on trial?
BA:  In Not at all.  He's part of the band.  He signed an inter-band agreement quite a while ago.

RC:  How long did that take?
BA:  It took a while.  We were touring.  It took a few months, I suppose, and then we started writing with him and it just seemed natural.

RC:  Does the same thing apply to Neil?
BA:  Pretty much.  But they're both completely pat of the band now.
 

FINANCE

RC:  is suede now a two-tier financial operation with the senior members on a higher percentage?
BA:  No.  Well, yes.(Laughs). No, no, no.  Yes!  I don't want to talk about money too much.  I do most of the writing, so naturally if you do most of the writing you get most of the readies.

RC:  Yes, but I meant financially apart from that.
BA:  I see.  You'd have to ask Mat and Simon about that.  I don't pry into other people's financial arrangements.

RC:  Is the age gap with Richard and Neil a problem as well as an asset?  Is it easy to relate to each other? To what extent is suede now a group of juniors and seniors, in terms of attitude, power, finance, etc?
BA:  In no respect whatsoever.  When we're rehearsing and writing, everybody's equal.  Richard and Neil are strange people.  They're incredibly well-developed for their age.  Richard is 19 years old, he's going to be 20 in about a month's time.  He does some interviews and any interviewer I've spoken to about it says they can't believe how grown-up and sorted he is.  He's just got one of those brains, that he isn't fazed by anything.  He's just very sorted, so there's no sense of him being younger, or anything like that.  Not at all.

RC:  What about Neil?  I wouldn't say it's quite a happy accident, but he almost seemed to be there at the right moment.
BA:  Yes, pretty much.  He just turned up and could play everything, and it was great.  But we weren't really looking for anyone.  It's strange.  It wasn't like with Richard, where we had to find a guitarist.  With Neil it was something completely different.

RC:  But I thought you wanted to incorporate keyboards into the act.
BA:  That was a while ago.  I was thinking about it for a while.  But the way Neil joined the band was just very natural.  He just started coming down to rehearsals and started playing along on the piano.  I said, "It's great", and, Bob's your uncle.  He just seemed to be an incredibly suede person.

RC:  Did you find it difficult to listen to, or appreciate, artistes after they were gratuitously slagging you off, like Oasis and Blur?
BA:  Yes, it is quite difficult.  I've always got an open ear for music, generally, and I never randomly slag people off.  Well, I did very early on, but that's just what happens very early on.  But later on in your career, you expect fellow musicians to have a general respect for people.  There's a lot of pigs in the business and I do find it hard to appreciate the music of people who've slagged me off.  Which is a shame, because I'm a big fan of music generally.  There's not that much music that I actually genuinely hate.  Generally you only get slagged off by people who feel threatened by you, that's the thing.

RC:  Blur's Dave Rowntree reckoned, "We were in major competition with suede because we felt they'd nicked our ideas".  I'm sure you'd argue the reverse?
BA:  No comment on that.   Just look at things chronologically and anyone with a brain will know that that is absolute nonsense.

RC:  Damon Albarn's heroin allegations appeared to cut very deep.  Yet you've said, in interviews, "I'm obsessed by drugs… I've tried everything.  There's nothing I haven't tried."  Even in recent interviews you speak positively about E, acid, drugs in general.  Then when heroin's mentioned you clam up with a "No comment".  Why the big taboo?  It struck me that you might be wary of tabloid exploitation but, given your comments on all other drugs, that doesn't fit.  Besides which, it's not as though you're Cliff Richard.  So is there a problem there?
BA:  I just don't like people commenting on my life and assassinating my character.  I'll say anything off my own back and talk till the cows come home but when someone starts attacking you.
….

*Ok, that's it for this time. The last part of the interview Brett's gonna continue that rather boring topic: "drugs"(same old show!), then why 'young men' was drop from Coming Up & "will there be a solo album from him?"....... Stay tuned!

Maggie - still typing