A Conversation with Brett Anderson and Mat Osman (of Suede), Part 2

Before you delve into Part 2, read up on Part 1 of our conversation with bassist Mat Osman and singer Brett Anderson.

A Conversation with Brett Anderson and Mat Osman, Part 2

Britpop got into full swing during your first two albums. What was your feeling about the movement?

Anderson: Our relationship with Britpop is a strange one. I think we initiated it—but then as soon as I was aware of it becoming a cartoon, I wanted to get as far away from it as possible. Dog Man Star is a reaction to it and is very much us saying, “We don’t want anything to do with this. We are going to go completely in our own direction. We’re going to make a record with very overtly European influences, rather than jingoistic, nationalistic and English influences.” We wanted to make a record that was very tortured and very sexual, rather than a pub-ish sing-along.

What were your feelings about America? Did you enjoy touring here?

Osman: I always had an amazing time. We’d meet these freaky people, the bands we played with would be great and we could behave insanely badly. We’d go days without sleeping, reappear from a few nights on someone’s floor in Phoenix, do the show—it would be absolutely crazy—and then we’d do it all over again. 

Was it difficult for you to get excited about coming to the States after you had to change your name to The London Suede here for legal reasons?

Anderson: That was always the kiss of death to me. It confused the fan base and I couldn’t commit to touring with a band called The London Suede, which isn’t the name of this band. This band is called Suede. It was really frustrating and it demotivated us. If it hadn’t happened, we would have kept knocking on the door. 

Mat, by the time you recorded Dog Man Star, relationships between Brett and Bernard had reached a boiling point. What was it like being in the band at that time? 

Osman: We were so young; none of us had been in that situation where we had to be adults about having relationships with each other. What we should’ve done is said, “You’re really unhappy. Take a year off; go and do a soundtrack or a solo record. Come back in a year and, if you’re still unhappy, we’ll call it then.” But at that age, a year is forever. I regret that we weren’t more adult about it, but then I don’t know what kind of record we would’ve made if we were. We were kids striving for something beyond our age.

What was it like when Richard joined the band and during the making of Coming Up? 

Osman: It was a joy, though there were huge amounts of pressure. We spent a hell of a lot of time in the studio with Richard and then we went on tour for 18 months. When you’re that age and the records are doing well, it’s fantastic. You’d march into Bangkok or Philadelphia and stamp across town. There’d be girls and drugs and I really enjoyed that. Bernard was a mature guy pretty early on and the periphery of being in a band never interested him. I wish I could say I was so mature that that happened to me, but I quite liked the flunkies and the madness of it. 

By the time you released Head Music in 1999, the cracks were starting to show within the band. 

Osman: It was absolutely nuts. I would turn up at 10 or 11 and [producer] Steve Osborne would be there alone. I’d say, “Who’s coming in?” and he’d be like, “I dunno.” Steve and I spent days sitting there playing video games. Brett was doing a lot of drugs and it wasn’t any fun. I just remember it being a ghost record. You can hear that we weren’t listening to the same records and we weren’t trying to make the same record. Nonetheless, I don’t think we were prepared for failure. We’d always pulled out of the fire. We’d always done drugs and we’d always been right on the edge of spectacularly fucking up, but it always turned out alright, so none of us knew what to do when it didn’t. There are things on there that I’m really not proud to have recorded. It got to the point where Brett knew that he had to clean up his act and then we went on tour, which was great, but it doesn’t make much difference if the record’s not there.

Your final album, New Morning, was greeted with an unfortunate apathy in most quarters. What were you trying to achieve with that record? 

Osman: We wanted to make it a really simple, acoustic pop record and it didn’t particularly suit us. After Head Music, the last thing I wanted to do was make a complicated, electronic-led, sprawling record. Head Music went to Number One and the tour was great, so there was this sense that we were bulletproof, which is the worst fucking attitude. I’ve always hated bands that only do something that’s worth the cost of a CD. You have to work for your art and you have to earn it. New Morningstands for a lot of the things that I’ve spent a lot of time slagging other bands off for: complacency and indulgence. It was a record that we needed to make, but it’s one that we should’ve made for just ourselves. 

When Suede broke up in 2003, did you always think that there might be a time when you would get back together? 

Anderson: I didn’t think that far ahead. To be honest, when we did actually finish, we didn’t see the band as splitting up—we said we were going to do some other things for a while. I didn’t have a long-term plan. I was very happy making solo records and I didn’t really think of Suede for a number of years. Then, there was an offer out of the blue from the Teenage Cancer Trust for us to play Royal Albert Hall in 2010 and I just thought, “Why not?” It seemed like we had been away long enough for us to come back and for it to be exciting. I called everyone up and everyone—apart from Richard—said, “Yes, definitely. Let’s do it.” Richard was much more hesitant about it, because his relationship with Suede is a lot more complex than anyone else’s. He was never comfortable being perceived as Bernard’s replacement, so he had reservations about the reunion. But we ultimately agreed to do the gig and it was, without doubt, my favorite Suede show ever. To play your favorite show ever with a band you formed 21 years earlier is a remarkable achievement. 

Are you excited to play Coachella, which will be the first time you’ve played in the States for over a decade?

Osman: It’s going to be good. Our setlist will be based around the forthcoming Best Of album. It’s going to be an upbeat rock-and-roll show without any bells and whistles; no samples, no orchestras and no films. I hope we get a chance to go on and play New York, San Francisco and everywhere else again, too. Everyone in the band is very keen to not make this the swan song. 

We’re going to re-release all five of our records in updated formats this year. We are looking around for stuff to go on it right now. The Best of Suede will be coming out in the States, hopefully before we play Coachella. We’d like to see it released on vinyl. Brett did a lot of the remastering and Bernard oversaw the tracks he originally played on.

Now that you’ve done a few reunion shows, what are your feelings on Suede’s future?

Anderson: I feel OK about the future, but I don’t really know exactly what we’re going to do. I would like to do some more stuff with Suede—I think we all would. We plan on playing a few shows this year and we’ve talked about possibly doing some writing together. Whether anyone will actually hear what we’ve done is another matter. If we wrote some stuff and it was simply OK, then no one will hear it. No one is going to hear what we’re doing unless it’s fucking fantastic. F