Brett Anderson

How the devil are you?
Erm.... All right, actually.  Not bad at all.   I'm feeling fairly robust at the moment.

You're currently on tour. What do you look for in a good hotel?
Twenty-four-hour room service.  The hotels have been pretty good on this tour.  I've stayed in some awful ones in my time.  I once spent three of the worst days of my life in a Novotel in Bradford.
 

What is a man's arse doing on the front cover of your album?
I don't know.  I suppose the same as… No, we haven't had one on a cover before, have we?

This is your first arse.
Is it our first arse?  I just liked the image, really, of the bloke on the bed in the room. It's quite sort of sad and sexual, I think, like the songs on the album.

What do you think of when you think of Q?
(Smirking) Quality.

How has your life changed in the last eight years?
What date is it now?  1994? So, 1986 then.  I've changed completely, I think.  I'm doing something that I want to do, instead of doing a load of old stupid dead-end things that I never wanted to do in the first place.  I think I've grown up a bit.  I've become the sort of person that I always wanted to become, I suppose.

You got through all the Bernard Butler question in your media campaign relatively unscathed, didn't you?
Yes.  Are you going to try and redress that?
No, no, no.  Do you, as the son of a taxi-driver, tip cabbies extremely generously?
It depends what the people are like.  If you're feeling like a piece of shit and they incessantly want to talk to you, then I tend not to.  It depends.  I don't think I'd tip my dad.

Can you drive?
No.  I never learned because my dad was a taxi-driver, and I knew that if I learned, then he'd force me to go into the family business.

Do you have posters of yourself up around the house?
No.  Definitely not.

Are you a vegetarian?
Yep.  Since, ooh, long time ago now.  Ten years or something like that.

You met J.J. Cale at the recording of Later With Jools Holland.  Did you chat awhile with Sir Caleford?
Not really.  I didn't really get to speak to him much.  He was kind of a tousled old blues man.  I spoke to Terry Hall a bit.  He was all right.

Have you ever had a bad acid trip?
Yes.  I had a couple of awful acid trips.  I had a microdot once when I was about 15.  It ws from this batch of microdots that were really rogue, and if you speak to anyone that's had one, they became kind of minor-celebrity microdots.  People were having awful times on them.  I had a whole one of them and was in hell for five hours.  I haven't taken much acid since then, because of that.  I try to avoided.

Do you share your birthday with anyone famous?
Er, the Bros brothers.  And Horatio Nelson.

What's your middle name?
Lewis.

What 'A' Levels did you get?
I got Physics, Chemistry and Maths.  Three Cs.

Which lyrical couplet are you most proud of?
I like "through Southern snow to Heathrow"(off Black Or Blue from Dog Man Star).  That's my favourite on the album.  I like some of the rhythm of the words in Heroine as well.  Not so much the rhymes, but the rhythms, the way they judder and shake and stuff.

What is the prince of all cheeses?
I think it's probably Stilton.  I like Stilton and wine.  That's nice.  After you've had a nosh-up.

Do you write back personally to suede fans, or do they get a standard old thank you letter?
I try to as much as I can.  I occasionally do.  But it's pretty difficult.  The problem with that is that once you establish a relationship, then it's more of a let-down for them if you break it off than if it never existed in the first place.  You get into dodgy ground.  But people always get replies to letters, and they're never just standard letters.  They're always replied to in some way and they're always looked into.

What do people get if they join your fan club?
They get a free gig every year, which is pretty good.  They get a load of signed stuff.  And they also get our undivided attention.

What is the best book you've ever read?
1984.

Which newspaper do you read?
I try not to.  I read the Mirror sometimes because I quite like the gossip about EastEnders.  I like to find out what's going to happen.

What's the closest you've actually come to a homosexual experience?
Couldn't say.

You're one of the few singers who admit to having had singing lessons.  Do you still have them?
I always have them when we're recording.  Just before I'm about to do some vocals, Ed(Buller, producer) says, Oh, better book some lessons.  So I go for a couple of weeks and then I don't see Tona de Brett for another year or so.  But I'm quite aware of getting too good at singing.  I'm serious.  I don't' mean that complacently.  You can hear it when people have learned to sing.  I think it's to the detriment of the record sometimes.  Neil Tennant said something brilliant in an interview recently.  He was talking about how there's lots of people whose music has actually benefited from them not being able to sing.  People like him and Bernard Summer.  Because they've got a limited range to their voice, they tend to write things that are simple.  And all the best songs are quite simple.  So I don't want to go into Pavarotti territory.  I only do it to make my voice rich and warm.

What does your answerphone message say?
My latest one had a scene from Performance, which was quite good.  This dramatic bit with Mick Jagger and James Fox rattling on at each other.  Then I had - I always have bits from films - I had a bit from a film called The Shout, with er, you know….

Alan Bates.
Yeah!  I love that film.  It's actually one of those lost films, isn't it?  I don't know anyone else who's seen it.  It's one of the most tense films.  I nicked it from the video shop.

Tell us a joke.
(long pause) I don't know any jokes.  I never find jokes funny.  I'm always terrified at the end of them that I won't have understood them.  Ask Mat(Osman, bassist), he's the best one for jokes.. He knows some great ones.  (He may well. On this particular day, however, Mat pronounces himself completely devoid of jokes, as does drummer Simon Gilbert, their manager, label boss, and new guitarist Richard Oakes.  Sheepishly, Osman concludes that suede are "completely humourless".)