In the mid to late 90s, when I was belatedly discovering what the certainty of youth would’ve led me to term ‘proper music’, Suede where anathema. Trapped as I was in the grip of what in retrospect seems quite a conservative avenue of Britrock, Suede seemed weird, dangerous, other. I was into bands that took their influence from the staples of British guitar pop – The Beatles, The Jam, The Small Faces. Suede, with their mixture of Bowie-ish glam and Smiths-like maturity were just too far away from what I considered to be the righteous path to musical enlightenment. Of course, I’m no longer a teenager listening exclusively to music personally approved by Paul Weller, and now that I consider The Smiths to be one of the best ever British bands, have come round to appreciate Bowie’s influence on popular music, and am armed with the knowledge that The Beatles were a much deeper and weirder band than Noel Gallagher’s occasional pinching of chord sequences would have had me to believe, I come to Suede.
A few months back I was watching a documentary on BBC4 about the development of British “indie” music. It took in all the usual stops, including The Smiths, Primal Scream and on into Britpop. Suede were brought up as a kind’ve early trailblazer for the wave of British guitar bands that supposedly took on the world during the 90s and to that end the doc featured an amazing piece of footage – Suede at the Brits in 1993. At that point in time, pre-Jarvis, Noel and Damon, the Brits was seemingly a much more old school industry event. Suede played Animal Nitrate. They stomp, they wiggle, Brett slaps his arse with the microphone; Suede cliches by now I suppose, but the real magic occurs at the very end of the clip. A smattering of semi-polite applause as the camera pans across an audience of the tuxedoed music industry who quite plainly are not amused. A great bit of music tv, right up there with Hendrix causing chaos on the Lulu show. And so begins my current Suede love affair.
Handily this discovery has coincided with the remastering and rerelease of Suede’s catalogue. Every week this month they’ve been putting the albums back out into the world in handsome thick digipacks with two CDs featuring the original records, B-sides and demos plus a DVD of contemporary live footage and music videos. These can be had for a bargain at your friendly internet retailer, so I ordered the first (and apparently best) three sets straight off. And you know what? I’m so very glad I did. Suede is a powerfully confident debut album, featuring massively addictive sleezy glam singles next to slower more graceful material. As first albums go, it’s stunning. Suede where hyped at the time as saviors of British music, only to be subsequently elbowed aside by more laddish, less subtle bands. Listening to this album now makes that seem like a mistake of almost comical proportions. Here surely were the real inheritors of the flame of Morrissey and Marr, instead we chose the Bluetones and Shed 7.
The injustice of Suede’s subsequent relegation to almost cult status is only enhanced by their second record Dog Man Star. The growth from the first album is almost breath taking as the band produced a darker, deeper piece that surely requires a blue plaque marked ‘classic’ to be nailed up somewhere. Driven by the heroic Bernard guitar parts, strings, keyboards and almost jarringly mature Brett vocals, the album is easily my favourite of the three and I can only curse myself for not being into it at the time it was actually released. That the recording of the album was marked with arguments and an eventual massive falling out only makes for a more intense sound. There’s huge pop hooks here (New Generation) but also slow, weird and beautiful stuff like The Wild Ones, surely one of the best singles of the 90s. On headphones it sounds fascinating, through speakers it’s massive – a record to cherish.
Which leaves Coming Up. The acrimonious Dog Man Star sessions resulted in an allegedly highly controlling Bernard Butler leaving the band, yet, recruiting a keyboard player and a 17 year old guitarist, the band somehow carried on. That they did this at all seems a testament to their spirit, that they managed to produce a very listenable, if flawed, album is surely almost miraculous. If Dog Man Star almost defines the term art-rock then Coming Up is it’s polar opposite; Suede’s ‘pop’ moment. Ironically it also pulled them closer to the Britpop sound that had overtaken them in the music press’s affections. A more democratic writing process (both guitarist Richard Oakes and keyboardist Neil Codling collaborated with Brett) led to some classic moments – the monumental Trash, giddy Beautiful Ones and elegiac Chemistry Between Us, but also some car crash mistakes. Film Star for example is easily the worst moment on any of these records, it’s trite lyrics and thrashy arrangement quickly lead to a headache and weaken what could’ve been one of the greatest recoveries in rock.
So, three records, two greats, one poppy mixed bag, but I urge you to check them out if you’ve previously dismissed them and maybe we can send a time machine back and tell my younger to self to open his ears?
