Suede presents America with a new record, an enhanced CD, and a new permanent
line-up. Lorraine Lelis caught up with bassist Mat Osman in between a bunch
of scattered tours and power naps to hear about his fascination with
toilets--which, as it were, never got in the way of Suede's truest love:
makin' music.

SPINonline: I love the album; it's really good.  Are you pleased with how it
came out?
Mat Osman: Yeah, I'm quite happy.

How much input did you give?
The whole band was pretty involved in this one. The last album, Dog Man Star,
was written in a kind of really old-fashioned songwriterly way. The song
being written and then the band playing and filling it up. But most of Coming
Up was written in the rehearsal room just with the whole band playing, and we
just kind of built it up like that.

And is the songwriting process any different now that you have a keyboardist?
 
It makes things a lot easier because before when one of us had to play
keyboards. We all used to play keyboards [on recordings]. I'm quite pleased.
 Neil's one of those people who can play anything; he plays piano really
well.

Whose idea was it to do the CD-Extra?
I think it came about because someone is always filming  videos of us. We've
got about 900 hours of boring footage of us sitting around airports. We
wanted to do something with it. We were in this weird situation with the
album coming out in Britain months ago and we always said to people "don't
buy the import- only buy one copy," but people end up buying both, and it's a
bit of a shame. So we just wanted to put something on it. We didn't have any
more extra tracks so that's what we came up with.  It's quite a good thing.
Did you see it? Did you like it?

Yeah. It's great how you can even click to see Brett just talking.
Oh My God! It must be great. I've seen most of it, but I must admit when it
says "click here to see Brett talking,"...I mean I spend all day seeing Brett
talk!!!

Was it a tedious album to record?
No, not at all. I absolutely love being in the studio. It took two blocks of
two months--which is quite a long time. It was Richard and Neil's first time
in the recording studio. So it's a debut record for them. You actually need a
bit of time to come to grips with everything.

And how do you like touring?
I love playing live; but I don't particularly like touring, because it's so
uncreative. If you're in a band, you want to spend as much of your time
making new stuff. You just can't do that on the bus.

You and Brett started the band when you were young, right?
Yeah, we were 16 when we started playing together. I didn't have any other
interests. I couldn't see any point in being in a band unless it was a great
band, and a big band.

If you hadn't done it, what do you think you'd be doing?
No idea, absolutely no idea. I used to clean toilets.

So you'd be a janitor?
I probably would, yeah. Brett would too. In fact, everyone in the band was
cleaning toilets at some point. Honestly, that's totally true! We only found
this out recently. We were just talking about trades that we've done, and
we'd all cleaned toilets. So there'd be this internationally elegant
toilet-cleaner, strutting around different parts of England. We could start a
company. That's what I'll be doing.

You could still do that on the side.
Great!  Now when people say "Do you have any other interests?" I could say
"Yeah, I'm fascinated by toilets."

What is your basic day?
Basic day is normally wake up somewhere, not know where you are. Look at a
little piece of paper that I wrote down by my bed that says "You are Mat
Osman today. You are in Stockholm." And take it from there.

So what do you do in your spare time?
Sleep. That's about it, really. If we have spare time, we will sleep for four
days straight. And then we're back on the road. I don't sleep much [on tour].
  If I'm driving and we stop at a red light, I normally get about 40 winks in
then. It all adds up at the end of the day. You get a good 3 or 4 hours just
in the pauses in other people's conversations.

What makes you happiest about Suede?
The songs I guess.  My favorite moment is always when you're recording a
track, and it comes together for the first time, when for the first time the
five of you sit down and listen, and it's just almost complete. That's the
greatest feeling I know.

There's nothing else I'd rather do. I don't think any of the other arts are
as good. Pop music is incredibly underrated. I think people give it a hard
time.  I can't remember the last time I saw anyone crying at a sculpture, or
jumping around with joy at a poem. Pop music does all those things the other
art forms are supposed to but just don't do anymore.

Back to the Articles Page

Be a pal send feedback !

This page hosted by  Get your own Free Home Page