Did Suede Start Britpop? Part 1 with Miranda Sawyer

This season, we’ve covered two of the biggest bands in Britpop, but did Oasis and Blur actually kickstart the genre? With the release of their first two singles in the early 90s, Suede may have lit the very fuse. In this episode, Yasi and Miranda Sawyer, British music journalist and author of Uncommon People: Britpop and Beyond in 20 Songs talk about how Suede – including Justine Frischmann – came together and unintentionally created the genre by, according to frontman Brett Anderson, “trying to play songs about little twisted English lives to rooms full of people obsessed with Pearl Jam.” Listen along, and just maybe Suede – and Brett’s slutty little blouses – will open your ears to British music. EPISODE PLAYLIST: Listen to the songs we talk about HERE. CREDITS: Host: Yasi Salek @yasisalek Guest: Miranda Sawyer @msmirandasawyer Producer: Liz Sánchez Audio Editor: Adrian Bridges Additional Production Supervision: Justin Sayles Theme Song: Bethany Cosentino Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

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• 1:28Speaker 03

  What's with this band anyway? I don't get it, can you please explain? Wait, like, "Fan Splain"? Never heard this band in my life. Oh, you haven't? I'd love that. Really? Why? Yeah, I love this song. Oh, I don't know that one. Fan Splain, Fan Splain, Fan Splain. I really like this band! Whatever, I'm their biggest fan. Fan Splain, Fan Splain, Fan Splain, Fan Splain. Fan Splain!

• 2:08Yasi Salek?

  Hello and welcome to Bandsplain. I am your host, Yasmin Solid. This is a show where I invite an expert guest on to help me explain a cult band or iconic artist. Today's episode is about Suede, or in America, the London Suede. If you've never heard the music of Suede, you guys, strap in. Get ready. I'm about to blow your mind when you learn what a pantomime horse is.

• 2:37Yasi Salek?

  My guest today, return guest, real-life British person, Miranda Sawyer. Welcome to the program, Miranda.

• 2:45Speaker 05

  It is very nice to be here once more. I'm excited to talk pantomime horses.

• 2:51Yasi Salek?

  I mean, I wish we could just spend two full hours on pantomime horses. I have so many questions.

• 2:56Speaker 05

  Yeah, I bet you do.

• 2:59Yasi Salek?

  Miranda, before we dive into the Suede A-levels, as you call them, because I did my due diligence in my 82-page Google document, can you tell us a little about your background, how you were boots on the ground, and also why you wanted to talk about Suede? Why I was excited for you to talk about Suede?

• 3:22Speaker 05

  Okay, so when Suede were around, I was a music journalist. Well, I'm still a journalist, and I still write about music, but I was kind of, I suppose, specifically a music journalist. And I worked for a magazine called Select, which was like a kind of cross between the NME and Smash Hits, so it came out monthly, it had posters. But we covered kind of, I suppose you call them indie bands, but dance bands as well, but indie music. So I covered, I mean, a lot of kind of British bands, really, from the Happy Mondays and the Stone Roses and New Order and people like that, through what we now call Britpop, various dance bands. I was just working, you know, I was earning a living.

• 4:06Speaker 05

  But I was also living in London at the time and the time, I think you don't know this because you're just living your life, but what you realise is that you were in inverted commas part of a scene because the scene wasn't just the musicians, it was also the music journalists and the A and R people and everybody that turned up at the little gigs and and so you were part of that really. And I wrote a book quite recently that was trying to expand the idea of Britpop by doing twenty songs, so like a little mixtape, but just expanding it out of Oasis, Blur, Pulp and Suede. They're the first one actually in the book because they're they're kind of they kick off the idea of Britpop.

• 4:47Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, and we're going to talk about that and I want to ask you about it because arguably some people have said that Suede was the first Britpop band and if you're willing to give credence to the idea that Britpop is a real thing, which we can talk about.

• 5:02Speaker 05

  We can argue about that.

• 5:03Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. But yeah, basically Miranda's not saying is that she was literally like part of the like summer of love, like she was in the coolest places of all time with the coolest people but didn't know that that's what it was. And now everyone has written six hundred books and made documentaries about this like just one time in your young life where you were like, I was just getting a paycheck, by the way, having one of the coolest jobs on the planet that people dream of, writing about bands. Were you at select when the infamous cover with Brett Anderson and the Union Jack was there?

• 5:36Speaker 05

  Yeah, I was. Yeah, yeah, I remember. I was just trying to look out for it. I'll see it. I'll have another look later and see if I can find for it, find it for you. But I've got a copy. Yeah, I was. So that the idea behind that cover, so I'll describe it, is there is a picture of Brett Anderson looking very Brett and behind it they dropped we, they, we.

• 5:57Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, you were, you're not clean, Miranda.

• 5:59Speaker 05

  Yeah, we dropped a a Union flag behind him. So it's got that, you know, the kind of red, white and blue behind it. And it says Yanks Go Home on the cover.

• 6:11Speaker 05

  And it's about, and it features, it's a feature, it's basically putting lots of kind of interesting British indie bands together. So there was Suede, there was Denim, there was the Otters, there was Saint Etienne. There's one other as well, Pulp.

• 6:25Yasi Salek?

  Pulp, yeah.

• 6:26Speaker 05

  And we put them all in a feature because at that time, the biggest thing in indie music was grunge. And that was obviously incredibly American, right? It's just the most American thing ever. And what we wanted to say was actually, we've got good, interesting British indie bands, but none of them were big enough to kind of just feature by themselves. So you had to do like five bands all together. So we did five bands all together. And then Stuart McConie, who's a writer, who was writing at the time, he wrote this longer piece about how we're good at pop music. And actually, these bands are really good. Why didn't you, you know, we like Nirvana. To be honest, we didn't like anybody else. Well, I didn't. I like Nirvana. I like.

• 7:09Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, you don't seem like a Pearl Jam girly to me.

• 7:11Speaker 05

  I'm not a Pearl Jam, I'm really not. Nirvana, tunes, you know?

• 7:15Yasi Salek?

  Wonderful, yeah, totally. That's a cross continental band. It is really funny to me that like, because Britain has dominated rock and pop music for so long, for like four and a half minutes in like nineteen ninety one, America was like, yeah, we have like a thing. And and Britain was like, excuse the fuck out of me, bitch.

• 7:38Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 7:38Yasi Salek?

  Bring it back home. We're bringing it home.

• 7:41Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's exactly.

• 7:42Yasi Salek?

  They were not having it. They were like, and then they tried to make Saint Etienne happen and respect and love to Saint Etienne, who is a wonderful band. But it's like, those, I mean, do people talk about denim in this year of our Lord, twenty twenty five?

• 7:54Speaker 05

  No, but they talk about Lawrence. They talk about Lawrence from denim. They do.

• 7:59Yasi Salek?

  Is he on telly?

• 8:00Speaker 05

  Because a guy called Will Hodgkinson has written a really interesting book about Lawrence from Felt and Denim.

• 8:06Yasi Salek?

  Oh, yeah. Okay, well, that's.

• 8:09Speaker 05

  That's Lawrence.

• 8:10Yasi Salek?

  Yes. You know what? Putting respect right back on Lawrence's name. Yes, that man is a genius.

• 8:15Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 8:15Yasi Salek?

  But all I know about denim is that Brett Anderson talked about them pejoratively in a few interviews.

• 8:21Speaker 05

  But he talks about everybody pejoratively, doesn't he? Pretty much.

• 8:24Yasi Salek?

  Isn't he wonderful?

• 8:27Yasi Salek?

  Well, now I feel you guys should be satisfied that Miranda is a bona fide, perfect expert guest for this uh here program.

• 8:37Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 8:38Yasi Salek?

  I think we can dive in. This is gonna be an interesting episode, I think, because Suede is a band that did not cross over in America the way Oasis, Blur, and even Pulp did. And I think there are obviously like diehard Suede fans here and but those are like the kind of people who like worked at record stores or like buy NME on import, you know, not me, couldn't be me.

• 9:02Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 9:03Yasi Salek?

  But it's just not, it's not a, Suede is not a household name over here. So I'm excited to talk about them because I think they are a really important band, just in general in the history of bands, but also specifically as we're in this season that deals with Britpop and British rock music at large. I think they have like a pretty interesting and big role to play.

• 9:23Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 9:23Yasi Salek?

  Let's start with Brett Lewis Anderson. Why did I think Brett was short for something? I don't think it is. I think Brett is just the full name.

• 9:31Speaker 05

  Yeah, I think so. Yeah. Was he not named after like the, a film star, right?

• 9:36Yasi Salek?

  That's right. He was named after Roger Moore's character in the television program, The Persuaders, Lord Brett Sinclair.

• 9:45Speaker 05

  Okay, can I just explain that? Because that's like, it's so ideal.

• 9:50Yasi Salek?

  And I was like, I'm just gonna take your word on that and I'm not gonna look into that. Because if I looked into every single like British television program that was mentioned, I would never finish these episodes.

• 10:00Speaker 05

  Okay, it's true. Okay, so um it was Roger Moore, right? So Roger Moore is known in Britain for playing James Bond. He is smooth. He is really smooth. He's also kind of spy-like, right? And it's quite interesting to me that Brett is named after him because Brett, although obviously he goes through lots of different phases, as we'll see, is essentially, he is tall, he is slim, he is handsome, he is kind of loosh, you know? And so it's, it's like he, he suits that name, you know? You wouldn't be surprised, you know, he look, he looks great smoking, do you know what I mean? Some people look really good smoking. He looks so good smoking.

• 10:42Speaker 05

  And he, so he's like a kind of dark version of that character.

• 10:46Yasi Salek?

  Dark lord. Well, you know, I believe wholeheartedly in nominative determinism.

• 10:52Speaker 05

  Um.

• 10:52Yasi Salek?

  So I think the name that you're given uh shapes who you are.

• 10:57Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's true. I agree.

• 10:58Yasi Salek?

  Uh what are you named after someone Miranda?

• 11:00Speaker 05

  I've named it. Well, my problem is I don't really fit my name. That's my problem. I mean, you know.

• 11:07Yasi Salek?

  Is Miranda more of like a girly name over there in the?

• 11:10Speaker 05

  Uh yeah, and it's, I mean, it's quite aspirational. It's quite posh. I'm I'm the daughter of teachers, so it's quite. You know, obviously, it's in Shakespeare. Do you know what I mean? It's like, uh, so it's quite aspirational in the way that actually Brett is quite aspirational. Jarvis is quite aspirational. Jarvis is an unbelievable name, like for somebody of Jarvis's background.

• 11:34Yasi Salek?

  Much like Jarvis, Brett's sister also has an insane name, Blandine.

• 11:40Speaker 05

  Um.

• 11:41Yasi Salek?

  Um because his father was obsessed with Franz Liszt.

• 11:44Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 11:44Yasi Salek?

  The composer's name, and I guess Liszt, was that Liszt's wife was Blandine?

• 11:48Speaker 05

  Yeah, but they're incredibly aspirational names, those, aren't they?

• 11:50Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, but it works. Look, Brett is a Libra, you guys. I don't think anyone who knows anything about Brandon Anderson would be surprised about that. He's such a Libra. September twenty nineteen sixty seven, born in Linfield, Sussex.

• 12:04Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 12:05Yasi Salek?

  A village that is two miles northeast of Hayward's Heath. Again, Greek to me, but the the these are commuter towns. Is that right? Like kind of outside of London?

• 12:15Speaker 05

  Yeah, there's no reason to go there. You would, I mean, you just wouldn't go there unless you lived there. Do you know what I mean? And.

• 12:20Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 12:20Speaker 05

  Uh they're on the, I mean, I think this is important for Suede. They're on the outskirts of the action. I mean, obviously, you, the suburbs are very important within British pop, meaning that they're aspirational. You want to go where the city life is. You want to have something that's more interesting and dark and glamorous than where you are. So like punk came out of the suburbs. Really? I mean, you know, not the Sex Pistols, but everybody else was suburban. And I think that's quite important for particularly Brett and Matt, because they both met, they met in that area. But they are kind of like, all right, commuter towns with nothing in them.

• 13:01Speaker 05

  You know, like, there's, like, people live there. There's probably one cafe. Well, actually, there might not even be a cafe. We had one cafe. I'm from the suburbs. And like, we had one cafe.

• 13:14Yasi Salek?

  Where do you guys go to, where do you go out to eat? You go into the city?

• 13:18Speaker 05

  I literally never went out to eat. We never, ever went out to eat. There's no way that Brett would ever have gone out to eat. It was absolutely alien. If we went out to eat, it was a birthday and it was really intimidating. And you went to an Italian and some guy gave you a like flour and some cellophane and you got really stressed about the cutlery.

• 13:40Speaker 05

  Do you know what I mean? Like it just didn't happen. Nobody went out.

• 13:44Yasi Salek?

  Heard he that I read is act, was actually socioeconomically okay, but Brett's family wasn't. Brett's family was sort of, I don't wanna say.

• 13:51Speaker 05

  They're pretty poor.

• 13:52Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, pretty poor. Yeah. I mean, his, his father, his parents were really bohemian, which I thought was really cool. And I'm like, when you, when you read a, I don't know, have you read his books?

• 14:02Speaker 05

  Yeah, they're great.

• 14:04Yasi Salek?

  You guys, if you like Sway or if you just like books, you should read Brett Anderson's two books. One's called Cold Black Mornings and the other one is called Afternoons with the Blinds Drawn. I could not stop laughing to myself because he's so eloquent and I'm just picturing him in any scenario, talking to a Gallagher brother. If I had any interaction. And it's like, how did that go down? Because I can't, I can't even imagine them speaking to each other. Like it's, it's different languages.

• 14:33Speaker 05

  Hmm. It really is. I mean, probably, probably haven't spoken that much. Honestly, what became the Britpop scene eventually was slightly focused around Camden, really. Which is a kind of area of London. It's like kind of just North London. And Brett was West London and that was a different area and they just didn't, they weren't mixes. Do you know what I mean? They were like their own thing. So they didn't really mingle.

• 14:59Yasi Salek?

  Not mingleers, not mingleers per se. I, I really respect it. Um. Here's what Brett said about where he grew up. He said, "It was a village perched just outside and swallowed up by Hayward's Heath, an anonymous commuter town, a drab, dreary little train stop, somewhere between London and Brighton. It was a place where, beyond the torrid kitchen sink drama of everyday lower-middle-class life, nothing ever really happened and probably nothing ever really will."

• 15:27Speaker 05

  Hmm, correct. Ideal to become a pop star, right? Don't you think these are ideal circumstances?

• 15:33Yasi Salek?

  Sure, because it's like, what's the alternative, right? Like, if you're faced with the alternative, especially, again, like, we were talking about, Brett's father was, he had a lot of jobs. He was like a swimming pool attendant, a postman, an ice cream man, a window cleaner, and eventually landed on being a taxi driver. But he was also obsessed with classical music, like Liszt. He would take a pilgrimage every year to Austria to go to Liszt's birthplace, and he would take like a sample of the soil from the ground and wear it in a vial around his neck. He was really into and devoted to art, and his mother also was like a painter, and she was actually quite busy working as a dressmaker. So there's not a lot of bohemian layabout time for his mother, but any free time she had,

• 16:18Yasi Salek?

  she was constantly painting. Their house was filled with her paintings, and she made everything, she made their clothes. So he kind of grew up in this, like, poor but like culturally rich environment, which I thought was like a really interesting combination, because you don't get that too often, right? Like, that's not really what was going on at Nolan Liam Gallagher's house.

• 16:37Speaker 05

  No, I don't think so. I mean, I think they probably were culturally rich in a different way.

• 16:43Yasi Salek?

  Brett, totally, yeah. Yeah, they had like, they were really Irish.

• 16:46Speaker 05

  Exactly, in an Irish kind of way. So like, if you're part of an Irish family, you you'll have sing songs, you'll have songs and all that kind of stuff around it. But I think that there's a kind of aspirational quality, especially to Brett's dad, that is really interesting. So it's like... When I've interviewed Brett and talked to him about his dad, it sounded like a little bit like, not that he was snobby, but that he believed in the power of art and also that he was a kind of cut above your average taxi driver. He was interested in list, you know, like he had like, I think he had some crossed swords above the fireplace. Do you know what I mean? And fireplace has probably got like a little too bar fire in. Do you

• 17:27Speaker 05

  know what I mean? It's like, just, it's that kind of aspiration, which I admire. But he was also very intense, his dad. I think his moods were quite intense. He wasn't abusive, but his moods would fit, you know, their house was small. It's a small council house. The mood of the father kind of would fill the house as well. I think there's something really admirable about believing in art. I mean, you know.

• 17:51Yasi Salek?

  Oh, my God.

• 17:52Speaker 05

  That's what you believe in, isn't it? And that's what I believe in. Like, that's absolutely your guiding star. And I think that his dad had that and his mum had that as well. And that's incredibly important.

• 18:02Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it's to me, it was such a romantic notion of the idea of like, we don't have much, but we have this, you know, and like, we have beauty, like, we might not have money, but we have beauty. And I was really touched just by that. And also like how that usually goes one of two ways, right? Either children rebel against the code and conduct of their parents, or they're sort of shaped by it. And it does seem a little bit like, you know, Brett obviously devoted his life to beauty, you know, like in so many ways. And I think that must have been a learned thing. That's a real nature nurture that was happening around him.

• 18:40Speaker 05

  And it's also, it's kind of a combination of both, isn't it? So like, he, I agree with you. He's devoted his life to his art. So that's what he does. But it was abrasive noise. It wasn't classical music. It was something that was rebellious and a bit, you know, absolutely anti beautiful classical music, or something, and something modern as well, you know, it wasn't off the past, if you sort of mean. But that's.

• 19:08Yasi Salek?

  It still had the punk spirit a little bit.

• 19:10Speaker 05

  Yeah, exactly that. Yeah, yeah, I agree.

• 19:12Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Well, here's how he described himself as a child. I was a snotty, sniffy, slightly maudlin sort of boy raised on salad cream. Quick sidebar. What is salad cream?

• 19:24Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 19:28Speaker 05

  Salad cream is really hard to explain. Oh my god, okay.

• 19:30Yasi Salek?

  Is it like dressing for salad?

• 19:33Speaker 05

  It's like tasteless mayonnaise, okay? It comes in a bottle like um like tomato sauce, like Heinz bottle.

• 19:40Yasi Salek?

  Sure, I've seen it at the at the shop.

• 19:43Speaker 05

  Oh, don't bother. I mean, it's horrible, but everybody had it. We had it. Like, it was like you had two bottles of that was it. You know, you had salad cream and there was tomato sauce, you know what I mean? And there was like mayonnaise was a big deal. When I discovered mayonnaise, I think I was about eighteen.

• 19:59Yasi Salek?

  So what is salad cream made of if it's not mayonnaise? What's in there?

• 20:04Speaker 05

  I don't know. It's like egg. I mean, it's I think it's like mayonnaise, but it has no taste. It's it's horrible. It's like a bit. It's a bit vinegary. It's just not very nice, but like you had it. Yeah, for some reason you had it with your lettuce. I don't know.

• 20:20Yasi Salek?

  So just lettuce. Oh, my god. Seed oils, first of all, rape seed oil, twenty two percent, you guys, avoid this at all costs. Corn flour, pasteurized egg yolks and ribbit flavon for the color and sugar.

• 20:34Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, it's just horrible, but that was like, I mean, it's really hard to explain even to kind of British kids now. How bad our diet was.

• 20:44Yasi Salek?

  Nobody eats salad cream anymore. Salad cream is gone from the menu now. Okay, your kids don't eat salad cream, is what you're saying?

• 20:51Speaker 05

  No, we've moved to mayonnaise, although they don't eat that. They just like tomato sauce. Some things don't change.

• 20:57Yasi Salek?

  Not even brown sauce? I love brown sauce.

• 20:59Speaker 05

  No, brown sauce, yeah. Yeah, brown sauce is good for bacon.

• 21:02Yasi Salek?

  Okay, um, okay, anyways, raised on salad cream and milky tea and cheap meat, always scowling in photographs and a little bit downcast. Not nihilistic or depressive really, but definitely glum and always slightly befuddled. Okay, so I found this very interesting because I'm also the other, one of the other things in my many obsessions, because I'm obviously an obsessive person, as you see from my ninety five page Google Doc about the first two Kuwait albums. People who are artists especially like this, their self mythology is always so wonderful and beautiful. But it's often leaving out some key details that do not fit with what they're doing. And so that's why I love to find a little thing called out of print book.

• 21:47Yasi Salek?

  Out of print book such as this one, I'm showing it to Miranda, it's called Love and Poison.

• 21:51Speaker 05

  Yeah, I got it.

• 21:52Yasi Salek?

  By, yeah, David Barnett, who had a swayed fans, he was like a swayed mega fan who ended up writing a book. Would I say they're good books? That's not the point.

• 22:02Speaker 05

  No, it doesn't matter.

• 22:03Yasi Salek?

  They're filled with information. They're often done right after the imperial phase of a band. When the band is like real fast and loose with what they're gonna say to people. Which they would never say when they're like doing their self mythology ten years on. You find some golden gems in here. In this one, it was Brett's dad being like, I don't know what Brett's on about. He was kind of a jock. He was like really good at sports. I'm like, wow, Brett Anderson's sniffly salad cream child. I noticed you didn't mention how good you were at sports, that you were a jock, actually.

• 22:37Speaker 05

  We didn't have jocks, but I think, I presume he was good at football. Which is just like, that's a currency, do you know what I mean?

• 22:44Yasi Salek?

  And track or cross country or whatever, I don't know, some sort of running.

• 22:47Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 22:48Yasi Salek?

  He went to a school called Oath Hall Comprehensive School and he was on free school lunch. And thi- this is, I think, important back to our nature nurture thing. So you have in one sector, obviously, the beauty is celebrated and whatever. You have the moodiness of the father, which you mentioned and Brett talks about in his book, and I thought was really interesting. Partly having to do with his father had a really, I mean, tale as old as time, right? Part of the reason that you hear about the, like, you know, these poor families, big post-war families. Who had really hard upbringings themselves and never really talk about it. And Brett's father's father was quite abusive. He was, I think, a very bad drunk.

• 23:31Yasi Salek?

  And so I think he internalized that to like, I'm never gonna lay a hand on my child. But he didn't internalize it in the sense that I'm gonna be not insanely moody. And mercurial, which is a difficult, uh, as a daughter of a Gemini mother. Um, it's a difficult, uh, landscape to grow up in, cause you kind of get like very reactive. But anyways, what I was gonna say is that the other piece, I think, was reacting to the poverty, right? Like, it kind of develops a sort of ambition in you to be like, I don't. I need to get out of this. Like, I can't, especially, I bring up the free lunch because Brett said, for some reason, rather than doing it privately and discreetly, the unfortunate kids that fell into this unenvied little band

• 24:14Yasi Salek?

  were forced by the school to queue up in public for their special tickets in the large echoing canteen in full view of all the other sniggering, jeering children. To say it was a humiliating experience is a crushing understatement. It was like a Dickensian workhouse scene, a punishment for, I'm sorry, that's so funny, punishment for being poor, like being pilloried or put in the stocks.

• 24:36Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's like Oliver, you know what I mean?

• 24:38Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 24:39Speaker 05

  It's like, honey, please, please, sir, can I have some more? Yeah, I mean, it's, it's weird. I just think you grow up in an environment and you don't realise till later that it's not that great. Do you know what I mean? Like, if you were on free school meals, then people knew you were on free school meals because you had to go and get a ticket and then you went and got your meal. Do you know what I mean? So that is, well, it's humiliating full stop. I mean, people are still on free school meals now, but you don't,

• 25:03Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 25:03Speaker 05

  they're not paraded in that way. You don't have to go and get your ti- your chitty and then, and then go and show it to everybody. Do you know what I mean? It's just people just get their meals. So I think that that is, you, you're being shamed for not having any money.

• 25:17Yasi Salek?

  Totally. And especially in a town, like we said, like, this was not a socioeconomically overtly poor town. So they were sort of in the minority. And also, I'm just gonna say something insane, which my elder millennial and Gen X listeners, you're gonna be like, yeah, dad, but I want just to address the small but mighty population of young people listening to this.

• 25:37Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 25:37Yasi Salek?

  You guys, you don't understand that there was a time when being poor was shameful.

• 25:43Yasi Salek?

  That I know that it turned into a different thing now being rich is shameful. Uh, but at school in the seventies and eighties, if you were poor, it was very shameful. That's all. People are gonna be like, Yasi, we know.

• 25:56Speaker 05

  But it depends where you're moving as well, doesn't it? So that if you're in a suburb, a suburb is full of kind of, I suppose, commuters, maybe aspirational people. You know, the idea is that you're living a better life. You're not living in inner city life, you're living a suburban life, you know, with your garden. And your three bedrooms or whatever, even if your house is tiny. Even if it's a council house, it's not a council flat. You know, you're not living in a in a block of flats. Exactly. Um, what do you call them, projects? You're like, you you're not living in the projects, you're living in like a house outside. So like, there is an aspirational quality to the suburbs always. So if you're. Part of that, but you don't have any money. You know, it's just really basic. It's obvious things like you probably don't dress, you haven't got the right shoes.

• 26:40Speaker 05

  You probably don't dress right, you know, your clothes are being made by your mum.

• 26:44Yasi Salek?

  You can't buy like crisps after school or whatever with everyone else.

• 26:48Speaker 05

  Like, you can't get kickers. I remember kickers being massive when I was young.

• 26:51Yasi Salek?

  Kickers are shoes.

• 26:53Speaker 05

  Shoes, yeah, and they were massive when I was young and, you know, honestly, I was like, we weren't poor, but we couldn't afford kickers. Kickers were really expensive. So you just have to get a really rubbish version.

• 27:02Yasi Salek?

  No, I remember, you guys, I remember because I had to go to Payless Shoes. Some of you will know, I don't even know if it's around anymore, though I don't think they have it in Britain, but that's a chain here of discount shoes. But everyone had Birkenstocks, Miranda, because they were so cool to have Birkenstocks.

• 27:20Yasi Salek?

  I know, and my, I grew up, you know, not super wealthy in Torrance, California, shout out Torrance. And my, and also my parents are immigrants, so like, they're like.

• 27:31Yasi Salek?

  Eighty dollar, you're you're ten. Um, so they took me to Payless Shoes and I got the Payless version of the Birkenstocks. And I remember being like, I hope nobody notices.

• 27:40Speaker 05

  Hmm, and they clock it immediately, don't they?

• 27:43Yasi Salek?

  They do. Casey, her name was Casey, and she was so mean, and her mom would make her sandwiches with the. First of all, this is child abuse now that I look back and I'm like, I'm jealous. She, her mom would make her these these sandwiches, white bread sandwiches with the crust cut off with. Butter and peanut butter and then a coke for her lunch. And I'm like, okay, not one nutritional. Value to be found in that bag, but I had Persian food and it smelled crazy. It was just a little really, you guys, everyone has it wrong.

• 28:13Speaker 05

  It's true, there's always something that you're failing at in school, isn't there?

• 28:16Yasi Salek?

  Always something, me and my smelly Persian food and my bootleg Birkenstocks. Um, back to Brett, this is not about me, this is not about the point, this is about Brett Anderson. He also said that they always called me a queer. It started when I was about nine or ten and just carried on. I always quite liked it, actually, because when you're insulted by someone, you consider a complete piece of shit. How can that be an insult? I always enjoyed the attention, the attention of being excommunicated from the lads gang. He told that to Melody Maker in ninety-three.

• 28:48Speaker 05

  Hmm. It's interesting how the lads game came back in again, isn't it, later, like for Britpop, really? But, yeah, like, he was very unlads, so it doesn't really, you know, even if you are good at sport, I don't, we'd never use the word jocks, but you could be like, you know, you could be good at sport, but being a, I don't even know if we used the word lads then, but there was always like, there were lads.

• 29:09Yasi Salek?

  But they exist. It's like indie sle- like, we didn't say that then, but now you can say it and you know what we're talking about.

• 29:14Speaker 05

  Yeah, exactly. So there will be always, you know, in every school, there's a big group of very heterosexual macho boys.

• 29:21Yasi Salek?

  Aggressively heterosexual men.

• 29:23Speaker 05

  Yeah, exactly, who just, you know, who think that everybody who isn't like them is gay, queer, like, you know, and those things is insults. Although, you know, obviously, as anybody knows, as soon as you hit teenage years, those are the ones that the women fancy.

• 29:38Yasi Salek?

  I mean, Brett Anderson may have been one of the most beautiful men to ever have existed. Uh, you guys, do yourself a favor, go do a little Google Brett Anderson nineteen ninety-three. The haircut, the cheekbones. We'll, we'll get into all that. We'll get into all that later. Okay, so when he was thirteen, he visited Blandine at art college, and she had an acoustic guitar. And that's when he just said, I picked it up and I started playing Bob Dylan things and kumbaya. And that was it, really. So he bought a little electric guitar for forty pounds. And Blandine had a boyfriend called Tim, who put him on to all this music, like The Beatles, The Kinks, Bowie, The Who, Zeppelin.

• 30:22Yasi Salek?

  In his words, all the pre-punk records that during the early eighties had been cast aside by fashion's relentless march. While other kids were getting into Thompson Twins chart pop or post-punk. I was starting to unearth records by Jefferson Airplane, Robert Wyatt and early Floyd.

• 30:38Speaker 05

  Yeah, interesting.

• 30:40Yasi Salek?

  I thought that was really interesting, given what Swayed ends up sounding like, because I couldn't get over when I was listening to it, I was like, this is in the same genre of Oasis. You know, I'm like, this is so not that, like, it's it's completely drawing from a different pool of inspiration and a bit of crossover, maybe, but.

• 30:57Speaker 05

  Yeah, I think it's interesting because what in the end, what a lot of Britpop ended being was a kind of reaction to the synthy sounds of dance music and eighties pop, I would say.

• 31:10Yasi Salek?

  Sure.

• 31:10Speaker 05

  And the kind of slick sounds of that music, which was, you you didn't realise at the time, but was incredibly dominant in the nineteen eighties. So like, you know, great bands like Depeche Mode, you know, were making uh synths songs and making really good synths songs, but that's what the that sound was. And that was a kind of post punk thing that happened. They kind of came up through that. And then if you were interested, I suppose if you were interested in guitar music, that was quite hard for quite a long time. So you would maybe, you know, you'd have The Smiths and and and things like that a bit later, but like, you maybe you would be looking back a little bit further for those bands that that he mentioned are British guitar bands. That's what they are. They're very varied, but that's what they are really, aren't they?

• 31:53Speaker 05

  They're kind of, they're bands that make their noise through guitars and basses and drums and not by sitting at a keyboard and pressing a button that samples something and does something else. And that had kind of risen post punk and I suppose through dance music as well. So I think that all the the bands that he's mentioning are really, really different. And in the end, you know, they obviously swayed sound completely different from Oasis and and Blur and everybody else. Everybody sounds very, very different, but it's something to do with the belief that the guitar. Is important, not in a kind of like, let's go on for ages and have guitar solos way. Although Bernard Butler may be.

• 32:29Yasi Salek?

  Bernard Butler. I don't know babe, Bernard Butler might have something to say about that. But you're right, not to contradict myself, but actually now I'm like, it is actually so interesting that most of these bands heard the Beatles and the Sex Pistols and then ran to the races and made completely different albums, but they were kind of drawing. Like they heard these two bands and they like went from there.

• 32:51Speaker 05

  The Sex Pistols are so important. It's really hard to explain how important they were. Like loads of Manchester bands, like literally the Smiths and Joy Division and all these bands like saw the Sex Pistols play at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester. And that's where everything started. Like it's it's really hard to explain how important they were really, because even I was.

• 33:12Yasi Salek?

  That's my, that's my big bang. I want you to understand right now, that's the big bang as far as I'm concerned is that.

• 33:18Speaker 05

  It was a big bang and like.

• 33:19Yasi Salek?

  Lesser Free Trade Hall.

• 33:21Speaker 05

  And they're, and they're swayed are too young for that because they're like my age. So they would be like nine or 10 when the Sex Pistols come out. So what you're feeling from that is like the rebellion, like that's really exciting. There they are doing something that's really scary.

• 33:35Yasi Salek?

  Totally. Like the coolest thing about bands like the Sex Pistols or I would even say the Smiths, like obviously I was not, I was nine or not even when the Smiths were out doing their thing. I was like five, you know? But those bands wait and sit for you to come find them when you're ready, you know? And they're still just as exciting to you as if they were like out there playing. You're like, what the hell?

• 33:58Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 33:58Yasi Salek?

  No one told me about this. And then your whole personality becomes the Smiths or the Sex Pistols. Or in Brett Anderson's case, I'm going to get to, he got really into punk and was like super. This I found so interesting, he was super into crass.

• 34:11Speaker 05

  Hmm. So his, him talking about crass really reminded me of a couple of people I knew at my school, boys, who were like interested in the energy of punk, like the scary energy of punk. So I think when you're a teenage boy in particular, you need something that does that. Like, I mean, now it can be hip hop or it could be, it could be heavy metal, like or whatever, but like punk and post those kind of sounds like crass and things like that. There were definitely a group of kids at my school that went down that road. Do you know what I mean? It's just like, it's, it's a noise. It's a noise that does something to expresses something inside you when you're that age, I think.

• 34:58Yasi Salek?

  To back up what you're saying, here's what Brett said. He said, "My father's classical obsession seemed somehow provoking and confrontational and non-inclusive, and led me to embrace punk's starkness and primitive vital energy, with the added sense that instead of being part of an irrelevant faded bygone age, this was an expression of my life and the world I saw around me. The white dog shit on the pavements, the vandalized piss-stained phone boxes, and the constant miasma of threat and fear that somehow, through its expression of truth, it contained its own equally valuable nobility." Hmm. Beautiful. Such a good writer. Such a good writer. He's such a good writer, yeah. Nevermind the Bollocks was the first album he ever bought, even though, like you said... He's too cool, man. Nevermind the Bollocks is your first album, that is so cool.

• 35:43Yasi Salek?

  I mean, who knows if he's lying, though. Again, respectfully, Brad Anderson, I don't want to lawsuit, like, I believe you, but, you know, like, sometimes when people ask me what my first concert was, I say it was the K-Rock Mini Roast of 1995, which is partially true, because that's the first one I wanted to go to, but the first concert I went to was the Gypsy Kings with my parents. Do you know what I mean? I bet it was full of energy and tunes. It was full, it was wonderful. Absolute bangers, babe. Now I look back, bamboleo. We all remember it. It's wonderful. Yeah, shit goes crazy, bamboleo, I must say.

• 36:27Speaker 01

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• 36:53Speaker 06

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• 37:24Yasi Salek?

  So, one very funny thing, though, besides, I think, him finding his own thing, and like you said, going away from his father's classical music tyranny into his new, this is mine. He didn't realize that he was playing, specifically, I think, the Crass and Discharge albums, but maybe all of them, at the wrong RPM.

• 37:45Speaker 05

  I know. That's so amazing. Isn't it brilliant?

• 37:48Yasi Salek?

  That's so good. And he's like, and I thought it was so good. And then someone was like, no, you're, it's 45 RPM. And he changed it. And he was like, this shit sucks.

• 38:00Yasi Salek?

  He didn't say that, but I'm just paraphrasing. He liked the slowed down version. And I was like, oh, maybe that had something also to do with his musical DNA brain in here. This is where I'm like, much like microphones, I don't understand how that shit works, but I respect it a lot. And I love that there's people that can figure it out by.

• 38:20Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 38:21Yasi Salek?

  You know, slowing down, speeding up, Bernard Butler, 17-note solos. All right. Brett Butler, yeah, he got some A-levels, babe.

• 38:30Speaker 05

  Yeah, he got, I thought it was interesting. He got, he got scientific A-levels, didn't he?

• 38:34Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, maths, physics, and chemistry.

• 38:36Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 38:37Yasi Salek?

  A-levels are hard, right? That's like optional. That's like, if you're 16, you can fuck off and leave school and go get a job.

• 38:44Speaker 05

  I think now, nowadays, you have to kind of stay in education, but you don't have to do A-levels. You can do different things. You can do like B-tex and stuff like that. But he's, yeah, he's the same age as me, so he would have done, he might have done O-levels instead of GCSEs. I can't remember. Anyway, you do exams at 16, and you do about like eight or nine. And then you choose your topics. And he chose maths, physics, and chemistry. So he, that puts him with the science nerds, like, without a doubt. Um. But then he's obviously also artistic. So I found that quite interesting. I did a similar thing. I did maths for the maths and French. That's not gonna get you anywhere. So like, you you're actually cutting down what you can do the next bit. So the next bit, he he leads to go to university.

• 39:26Yasi Salek?

  Well, for our purposes, sixth form college is important because that's where Brett Anderson goes. It is called Hayward's Heath Sixth Form College.

• 39:35Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 39:36Yasi Salek?

  And he meets two friends, both called Simon. Simon is a very popular British name I'm starting to gather.

• 39:42Speaker 05

  Only English.

• 39:44Yasi Salek?

  Only English. Oh, got it. In every, almost every single one of these episodes I've done research on, there's at least one Simon, if not two to five. Right? I mean, there's a Simon, The Cure has a Simon, there's many Simons. Simons abound in England. So Simon and Simon had been in another band called The Pigs. With Brett, they form a band called Suede and Elegant.

• 40:08Speaker 05

  Isn't that great?

• 40:09Yasi Salek?

  It's so good.

• 40:10Speaker 05

  It's so good.

• 40:11Yasi Salek?

  The Pigs had a theme song called We Are The Pigs.

• 40:14Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 40:15Yasi Salek?

  Which you might recognize, as Brett nicked it later for a Suede song many years later. Now Brett is like, learning about Joy Division, The Cult, Cocteau Twins, Lloyd Cole, which is such a specifically UK artist, Lloyd Cole and the Commotions.

• 40:34Speaker 05

  So weird.

• 40:35Yasi Salek?

  Did not make it over here. I don't know her. Do you know what I mean? Like, that's not a thing, but.

• 40:40Speaker 05

  He's great.

• 40:40Yasi Salek?

  Massive. Yeah, he has a, I looked into it. Very good music, has a Substack if you guys are interested. Publishers, I believe, at least weekly. You can get it on his Substack action.

• 40:49Speaker 05

  So all those bands that you're talking about are like good indie bands that were around at the time that had hits, you know, like, you know, they would end up on top of the pops if they had a hit kind of thing, but they were kind of of the, they kind of came out of the NME culture, I suppose, really, but they're all really great bands, like. I mean, Joy Division, like, one of the greatest bands that ever existed.

• 41:09Yasi Salek?

  One of the greatest bands ever. I mean, I guess they were defunct in nineteen eighty six, obviously. But their shadow loomed large and New Order was popping, I'm sure, by nineteen eighty six. Okay, so then he meets, you guys, brace yourselves, another Simon.

• 41:25Yasi Salek?

  Simon Holdbrook. And thi- this is another favorite thing of mine that I've read in many stories. They start doing magic mushrooms, which they just scavenged from the fields on the edge of town.

• 41:37Speaker 05

  Mate, you can do them everywhere. Like, literally, I can get them for the local park.

• 41:41Yasi Salek?

  Right now?

• 41:43Speaker 05

  Not now, the weather's bad, but like.

• 41:45Yasi Salek?

  Oh, but I mean, like, this year, right?

• 41:47Speaker 05

  Probably, yeah. Yeah, they're kind of everywhere.

• 41:52Yasi Salek?

  That's really.

• 41:54Speaker 05

  Yeah, honestly, they are very, very common in Britain, obviously completely illegal folks, but like, you know.

• 42:00Yasi Salek?

  Sure, I did this at home, but yeah, Jesus and Mary Chain also did that, like, they were just off, like, picking them up and eating them in fucking Scotland. So the combination of this new Simon and the magic mushrooms led to uh writing songs with unintentionally hilarious titles, like String the Years Together Like Beads.

• 42:22Speaker 05

  Oh, I love it.

• 42:23Yasi Salek?

  And Homage to the Beatles, homage, homage to the Beatles. And here's what the chorus of Homage to the Beatles was. Homage to the Beatles, homage to those guys. Homage to the Beatles and Paul McCartney's eyes.

• 42:40Yasi Salek?

  It's so good.

• 42:41Speaker 05

  It's so funny.

• 42:45Yasi Salek?

  Meanwhile, Brett is working as a janitor, cleaning the college's toilets. That's when he meets Matt Osman, Matthew David Osman. Here's what Brett said, there was another boy who I started to notice at college. He was very tall and strangely fascinating, despite a kind of gauche gothiness. I would notice him holding court in the sour smelling common room, an audience of wide eyed acolytes huddled around him, hanging on his every word as he enlightened them about the nuances of Marxism or proportional representation. Isn't that not the most goddamn college shit you've ever heard in your life?

• 43:18Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, but Matt, I think, you know, obviously it's really important that they met. But there was all, you know, Matt is incredibly striking, he really is tall, like he's proper tall.

• 43:30Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, he's super tall, because Brett is just normal tall, but you see in photos, Matt is quite a bit taller than him.

• 43:36Speaker 05

  Yeah, they look great, I have to say, you know, and Matt looks great, he's really tall. He, you know, the the fact that he's talking about Marxism and stuff like that, that's just so of its era, I just love it. You know, it's like, it's literally a way of picking at women.

• 43:50Yasi Salek?

  Do you know what I mean? Hundred percent. You know. Hundred. You're like, babe, have you heard about socialism? Or no, we need to dismantle. We need to bring the power back into the hands of the workers. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Do you, would you like to go out? Look at me and my long mac. Looking good. That's a cool look, honestly, I have to say. People, men should bring that back. He saw, he saw Matt, you know, sitting alone, playing some punk riff on an old bass guitar and they start chit chatting about music. Matt is also a Libra. This is, this is a very Libran band, you guys. Libra, you know, devoted to beauty, like the a sign ruled by Venus, very artistic, very in about justness and fairness.

• 44:34Yasi Salek?

  It's, I really feel like the Libraness jumps out in this band. Also, I think charismatic, Librarians are quite charismatic, right? Totally charismatic, totally like, I mean, they're beautiful people. That's like part of the, not even like talking about aesthetics, like they're, they're just alluring sort of, sort of people, which obviously Suede was. And later when we get, much later when we get to Richard, he's also a Libra, who's the second guitarist for Suede. Anyways, Matt is from, also he words Heath. His mother Brenda was a supply teacher. His father was a businessman who worked for companies like American Express and Dunlop, and he left the family when Matt was ten. His parents were not into music and the first band he remembers liking on his own was ABBA.

• 45:18Yasi Salek?

  Me too. That's, that was like just what you did when you were a kid. They were the right age. Do you know what I mean? It's like sing song songs when you're about like seven, eight. Perfect. Also, what is your heart made of stone? And you hear ABBA and you're six and you're not gonna love it. It's amazing. It's fantastic. Matt said, the only reason you get into bass really is because you wanna be in a band. I always wanted to be in a band. He actually got into bass because he tried to do guitar and his friend at school was like, you look ridiculous. You're so tall. It looks like a ukulele on you. You can't play guitar. So then he got the longer one, which is the bass that more suited his frame. Brett, at this point with third Simon Holbrook, is busking. They're standing outside Satan's Buries, babe.

• 46:03Yasi Salek?

  They are playing With God on Our Side by Bob Dylan and some Beatles songs. And they're, I don't know, I guess they have a hat in front of them trying to make a little catch. Matt stumbles upon them. Matt says, I absolutely hated the Beatles at the time. I had no idea of musical history pre nineteen seventy four. Before that, it was in black and white. He was playing Beatles songs. I don't know why. It wasn't normal in any way. He just decided to do it. And literally, the first thing I said to him was, do you want to be in the band? Because he was a guitarist who wasn't an idiot. He was the first person I knew who was cool and could play an instrument.

• 46:38Speaker 05

  This is how bands are formed. It's very important. It's not to, you know, I mean, obviously, musical talent is important. But is it?

• 46:48Speaker 05

  Is it really?

• 46:49Yasi Salek?

  I, I might argue.

• 46:51Speaker 05

  I think not that much. I think a music talent, musical talent is incredibly important in America because it's a big place. And you need to be really good at what your job is. And you probably have to start when you're about like four and be Beyonce. But like in Britain, you just have to have the right attitude. You have to look correct and you have to like, you know, kind of stand for each other. Especially post punk. Because post punk was the idea, like anyone can pick up the guitar, just look good and have some ideas.

• 47:17Yasi Salek?

  And have some energy, have some creativity. That's how it was here in the nineties too. We used to be, we used to be a problem country and now it's all over. It's all over. Yesterday, you guys at the farmer's market yesterday, I saw a man wearing a hoodie in black metal font. And I went and looked closer and what was the fucking, what was the words? Imagine Dragons. No. Traffic. I almost literally was like, well, it's been a good run. I'm gonna walk right into this bus because I can't be here anymore. Anyways, that's neither. We're back in the engineer sex. We're back in the happy place.

• 47:47Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 47:48Yasi Salek?

  So I, I want to point out that Brett was walking around all the time wearing a yellow suit that he bought at Top Man on a discount clearance. And he thought he looked cool as hell. And so he really stuck out. Matt even said that he was like, I already knew who he was because there's like not that many weirdos in Hayward's teeth. And he was absolutely a weirdo walking around in that yellow suit. Okay, this is also very funny. I'm sure you read this, but Brett's dad was obsessed with Matt because he thought he looked just like List and that he thought he was the reincarnation of Franz Liszt.

• 48:18Speaker 05

  Oh my god.

• 48:22Yasi Salek?

  You're like, ugh, dad, cut it out with the list shit. Jesus, you're embarrassing me and one of my friends.

• 48:30Yasi Salek?

  They don't wanna hear about lists anymore. Dad, go away. That's not how Brad Young Nelson talks, but imagine if he did behind closed doors. Okay, so they started a band called Peanut Black with a guy called Stuart Avery. And now I'm obsessed and I can't wait to get your take on this. A singer named Gareth Perry, who I did look up and it was gorgeous. Whose brother, you guys, his older brother was a famous male model named Adam Perry, who was in this very famous black and white photo, him shirtless, holding a baby, which then led to him doing an interview saying that that photo allowed him to sleep with three thousand women.

• 49:10Speaker 05

  I'm not surprised. He's Athena man with baby.

• 49:14Yasi Salek?

  I cannot. So this is like extremely a famous image. It says it was one of the best selling posters of all time. When it came out, it sold five million copies.

• 49:25Speaker 05

  Like, when you wrote that down, I read your notes and I was like, I know exactly who that is. Like, without a doubt. And he was like a hunk. And he was holding a baby in his hunky arms and it was black and white. It was like the ideal man for many young women. Yeah. And I'm not surprised he slept with that many women because he was, I can't really, I don't know what the modern equivalent is. I just don't think there is a modern equivalent.

• 49:50Yasi Salek?

  For us, it would probably be like the Aqua Di Gio guy. If it's around this, for me, or like the early nineties. There was an Aqua Di Gio ad, who's just this gorgeous man and everyone, like, oh my god, Aqua Di Gio guy. Maybe, maybe not even.

• 50:02Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's like, yeah, like, I suppose like a perfume addy kind of thing. But it was just, posters were so important. You know, we had posters in our magazines. We went to record shops and got posters. We went to magazines and magazine shops and got posters. You know, this, it was a big deal. And that Athena, Athena guy was very important.

• 50:22Yasi Salek?

  Did you have it? Did you have it hanging in your house?

• 50:25Speaker 05

  I did not have it, no. I didn't. I was more music. I had music. Like, I had things stuck out from me and put up on the wall. So not the Athena guy, but I knew exactly who it was.

• 50:36Yasi Salek?

  That was, this is not that important. It's just that I got obsessed with this idea that this person even existed.

• 50:44Yasi Salek?

  And his brother, who was a very handsome man also because of the shared DNA, was the singer of Peanut Black. They played one single time, all together in Brett's bedroom, and then never again, they evolved into a band called Jeff.

• 50:59Speaker 05

  I think that's a good note for a band. It's quite funny.

• 51:01Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. It is. It's a very nineties. It's actually, they were a little ahead of their time, like a band called Jeff.

• 51:06Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 51:06Yasi Salek?

  It's very good. They had a new drummer called Danny Wilder, and Brett and Matt have gotten really into like, the Smiths. C eighty-six bands, yeah, the House Martens.

• 51:17Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's good.

• 51:18Yasi Salek?

  And Gareth is like, no babe, I like pop music. I wanna do mainstream stuff. I don't know what you're on about. See, the pastels, get out of my head. And so that band sort of started to disintegrate, but because Gareth wasn't into that, Brett started writing his own songs with like all the words and the music. Brett said, that was kind of the turning point. The songs were pretty derivative, very Beatles inspired, but I did start to write. There was a song called Red Ferrari, and positively negative, that was one of mine. We had played literally one gig in our whole history, and it wasn't even the four members of the band. Matt couldn't be bothered to turn up. He had a job at Gatwick Airport and he had to work that night. So me and Gareth decided we'd do it with me on acoustic guitar and him singing.

• 51:59Yasi Salek?

  It was probably one of the most inept pieces of music making ever, like the Proclaimers, but much, much worse.

• 52:05Speaker 05

  Amazing. Love it. I like the fact that he just gets a dig in at the end as well. Like, he's saying, we were really, really bad, like Matt couldn't be bothered to turn up, but we were like, the Proclaimers, but worse. He just, he can't help himself. He's a born pop star. I love it.

• 52:18Yasi Salek?

  He's so good. I mean, all of these things, even like, anyone he talks about, he manages to get a dig in. Even, I first met Matt and he was so wonderful and everyone loved him except he was a gauche goth.

• 52:30Yasi Salek?

  You're like, you didn't have to say that part, that he, he's an honest man.

• 52:34Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 52:35Yasi Salek?

  They made some demos, but then, listen, college is almost over, Gareth gets a plum job at the Virgin Store, that's a record store.

• 52:42Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm.

• 52:43Yasi Salek?

  And Matt is like, I'm going to. Uni.

• 52:46Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 52:47Yasi Salek?

  The London School of Economics to study politics. And he said this, what I thought was interesting. You've got to remember that there were student grants. So for most people, if you could get into university, they paid minimum wage. You just got paid for it. So you just had to decide which city you wanted to live in. That's so cool.

• 53:02Speaker 05

  Yeah. So yeah, what happened in those days is if you did stay on and did your A levels and you you were clever and obviously Matt was incredibly clever. You would get your exam results and then you would go to university and you would get a grant. So like the government would pay for it. So, I mean, it wouldn't be much, but you would could live on it.

• 53:22Yasi Salek?

  But literally the opposite of here where they're like.

• 53:24Speaker 05

  Does not happen anymore.

• 53:26Yasi Salek?

  We'll give you a loan and you owe it back to us with a lot of interest and you'll probably never um pay it till you die.

• 53:32Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 53:33Yasi Salek?

  So good luck to you.

• 53:34Speaker 05

  But it was that that era, actually, you don't realise it because it was a kind of, it was Thatcher. But it was okay. So you could go to university on a grant. And if you weren't at university, you could get a.

• 53:46Yasi Salek?

  The enterprise.

• 53:48Speaker 05

  Enterprise allowance. You can get enterprise allowance and that's how all the bands were formed.

• 53:51Yasi Salek?

  So don't I know it, don't I know it? I know it well, the enterprise allowance scheme. Thank you, Margaret Thatcher, honestly, in the end, you did. The Happy Mondays were formed on the enterprise allowance scheme.

• 54:02Speaker 05

  Everybody, everybody did it for a while.

• 54:05Yasi Salek?

  Okay, so Matt goes off to London. Meanwhile, Brett is like, okay, well, I'll go to Manchester then. To study town and country planning. I think he wanted to go to Manchester, he said, just because he was like. I love the fall and enjoy division and, you know, the Smiths, like, I'm gonna go to the Met, the hometown.

• 54:23Speaker 05

  Yeah, Manchester was still, even then it had a big reputation. I know it's it's always been good for students.

• 54:28Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it was like eighty, this was like eighty eight or something.

• 54:30Speaker 05

  A bit earlier, I'd say, maybe eighty five, eighty six.

• 54:34Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, so it was still popping. There was still, Hacienda was still going, maybe.

• 54:38Speaker 05

  Yeah, definitely.

• 54:39Yasi Salek?

  So he goes there until his mother divorces his father. And then he goes home to help his dad to to.

• 54:49Speaker 05

  Manage.

• 54:50Yasi Salek?

  Or whatever, yeah, to get the solid cream and so.

• 54:56Speaker 05

  To stop just listening to list to actually feel himself.

• 54:58Yasi Salek?

  List all day, yeah, it's like, I think, so he, he said that he also just was a kind of word of Manchester on top of it. And but the whole time he had been there, he'd been writing songs and he would send them to Matt in London on cassette tapes. And he said, we would play this hilarious game where I was the artist and he assumed the role of journalist and would send me back in-depth critiques framed as NME reviews, complete with marks out of ten. He was always unrealistically positive. The songs with titles like Empty House and Somewhere Along the Way, which I hope sounded a bit like Felt or The Loft, actually sounded weak and tuneless, but he would receive them in the spirit of friendship as minor masterpieces. And in my self-mythologizing way, I would be happy to almost believe him.

• 55:43Speaker 05

  Yeah, I love it. I love that. I love the fact that the, the, the kind of relationship with the NME is already occurring in their head. Do you know what I mean? It's so great.

• 55:54Yasi Salek?

  Well, it loomed so large, right? Like, how, how important were Music Weeklys to people like,

• 56:00Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 56:01Yasi Salek?

  People like Brian and Matt, you know, like the people who are interested in indie music and who were trying to form, like, that's, I can't imagine what would be more important.

• 56:09Speaker 05

  They were so huge. It's really hard to grasp now, but they were just so important. I was never, because I was more pop, I suppose, I was more smash hits and then select and stuff. So I was more on that tip, but, NME, Melody Maker and Sounds when Sounds was around, was just immensely important when it came to bands. So bands would write to the NME before they even did anything, like Morrissey wrote to the NME before he was Morrissey.

• 56:35Yasi Salek?

  Famously, regularly, regularly wrote to the NME.

• 56:39Speaker 05

  Yeah, and the Manics wrote to the NME to kind of say, come to our gig. So it was just, it was like a discussion that was happening all the time about interesting music and an argument that was happening between the writers, between the bands, between the magazines. It was like a little subculture.

• 56:55Yasi Salek?

  I think. You've nailed it in the best way that I've heard anyone describe it, which it was a discussion. I think that's what it's the hardest part to grasp is that this wasn't like Vanity Fair. It was like so untouchable that you're like, they'll never know I exist. They just rule culture. It was like Enemy came out every week, you could literally write them a letter. If you made a band, ninety percent chance you would get one little write up in there. Like, it was not that hard to get written up in the Enemy, actually, like, you you might not ever go anywhere after, but like so many bands like end up having some interaction, if not like being on the cover like two months after they made their band.

• 57:34Speaker 05

  Yeah, it really felt like social media before social media, like people were discussing things really important to them. They were saying stuff about a band and then somebody would come in and go, no, I like, I don't agree. But they would do it like a week later. It's like a really delayed social media.

• 57:48Yasi Salek?

  Delayed social, yeah. Well, we it was time was different.

• 57:51Speaker 05

  Yeah, it really was.

• 57:52Yasi Salek?

  It could take a week to talk about it.

• 57:59Speaker 01

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• 58:27Yasi Salek?

  Something that really jumped out at me in this way of story is that like Matt is the goat man. Matt is the glue that holds this band together. Like every band in my experience has one guy like this usually. Who's like, they might not be respectfully the most important musical person in the band, but they are like the heart and soul. They are the backbone of the band that keeps everything together. And it's like, you even hear this from the beginning, like Matt's there being like, nine out of ten Brett for your some empty home, which was probably garbage. Like kind of just, you know, really wanted to be in a band and was just solid.

• 59:03Speaker 05

  Yeah, I agree. And also it's interesting that he's a bassist because I always think bassists are obviously underrated. And obviously, you know. Like, I remember talking to Alex from Blur from that. He's just a bit like, well, obviously, you know, if I leave, it kind of doesn't matter. But it kind of does matter because there are a connection between, they are important, they're between the, you know, they connect. The rhythm section, they're connect the drummer to the, to the, to the guitarist. They're like so important, but they're never gonna be. The person that people want to interview, you know, or the, because they're not writing their songs, they're just sticking everything together.

• 59:39Yasi Salek?

  The least important person, obviously, in the rankings is always the drummer where they're like, oh, you wanna leave? Okay, fine. Have a good life. I'll get someone else. And then the, in, in the, in the last being obviously the singer.

• 59:49Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 59:50Yasi Salek?

  While Matt is the backbone, I think what this band really needed was a catalyst.

• 59:58Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:00:00Yasi Salek?

  Enter Justine Eleanor Frishman. So Brad goes to architecture school, right? After he's like, sort of settled his dad in and he's getting bored now and he receives. He's like, I will move to London and join Matt. I'm gonna enroll in the Bartlett School of Architecture at University College London. And that's where he meets Justine Frischmann, born September sixteenth nineteen sixty nine of Virgo. Let's talk a little bit about Justine's background here. So she was born in Twickenham.

• 1:00:32Speaker 05

  Yeah. So that's southwest London. It's famous for its rugby stadium. It is quite posh. Posh, posh suburban London is where it is. It's quite green. It's like a bit of a way out. Like it is London, is it London? It's, yeah, posh suburbia.

• 1:00:48Yasi Salek?

  Okay, got it. She was the daughter of a man called Willem Frishman. Who was orphaned at fourteen years old. He was a Hungarian Holocaust survivor, orphaned by the Holocaust. Who kind of really in a bootstraps situation.

• 1:01:04Yasi Salek?

  Landed in London and worked his way up to becoming the chairman of the Pell Freshman Company, which was a company of engineers, he was an engineer.

• 1:01:14Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's like a building engineers is what they were, yeah.

• 1:01:17Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it's truly like a ragster which is like came with nothing as an orphan and made his, made his money on his own, which is not a common thing, right?

• 1:01:27Speaker 05

  No, and also they really were properly rich, so there's a thing in um,

• 1:01:32Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:32Speaker 05

  in Britain, obviously, we're obsessed with class and money and all that, we all know that, but there's this thing which every year, there is a list published by the Sunday Times called the Sunday Times Rich List, have you ever heard of this? It's unbelievable.

• 1:01:44Yasi Salek?

  No.

• 1:01:45Speaker 05

  It's literally like the list of the people with all the most money in Britain. So like the Queen would be there, do you know what I mean?

• 1:01:52Yasi Salek?

  We kind of have that, we have the Forbes richest people, I think they do the Wall Street usually, but.

• 1:01:56Speaker 05

  It's a Sunday Times Rich List, and I remember that Justine's dad was on at one point. So because he was like, it was an engineer for very important buildings, like there's a building in in London called Centre Point, which is really, really close to Tottenham Court Road. It's like everyone knows where Centre Point is and like he, they did, they were the engineers for that, they were engineers for lots of important buildings, you know?

• 1:02:17Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I was very interested by, I don't know, maybe it's because of everything is through your personal lens, but A, because Britain is so class obsessed, that just because your dad got rich doesn't mean you're high class, you know, like it could mean, also they were Jewish, which Justine talks about, like, I might have been rich, but I was definitely not fully accepted in my like posh girl's school or whatever.

• 1:02:43Speaker 05

  I'm not surprised by that.

• 1:02:44Yasi Salek?

  Because I was the Jewish girl, yeah, you know, and then also, you know, like, I think there's a difference between generational wealth in terms of like how maybe your parents might raise you. And how your dad, who was a fourteen year old orphan and your mother, who was also a refugee, might deal with having money and raising you. It's just something that I do think is like worth like a nuanced distinction. And there are, I mean, I'm fascinated by the UK because also it's an England full of like, what do they call them, landed gentry or whatever, like.

• 1:03:17Speaker 05

  Yeah, she's not landed gentry. She's definitely not that.

• 1:03:20Yasi Salek?

  That which is like people that have titles and stuff, but they also might not have money, right? Like they might have titles and class distinction, but they might not actually have any money.

• 1:03:27Speaker 05

  Yeah, exactly that completely. She's not that, but she is. She's very different from Brett. She really is different from Brett and Matt and most people actually, you know, so I would say like.

• 1:03:39Yasi Salek?

  Sure.

• 1:03:39Speaker 05

  So her, her being, she would, she was studying architecture and he was studying town and country planning still, right? And there's like a massive difference. So architecture is obviously, that is an, um, you know, that is a job with ambition. You need to do X amount of kind of exams and then you're going to be designing something beautiful, you know, at the end of it. And he was doing.

• 1:03:59Yasi Salek?

  And it's an art form. It's an art form, right? Whereas county planning, perhaps not as much.

• 1:04:03Speaker 05

  And he was much more, he was town and country planning. That's like where the road goes, where the bogs go, you know, you know what I mean? It's like, it's nothing. And, and so I think that that almost that shows their distinction. You know, how, how different they are because he's just like, I need to go to university. I'll do this. I did sciences. I don't want to be a scientist, so I'll do that. It might be quite good. I don't know. And she has thought, okay, I'm going to do architecture. I'm arty. I'm clever. My dad is an engineer of buildings. I will do this. It will be good.

• 1:04:32Yasi Salek?

  Okay, so interesting not to be relating to Justin and Freshman again, and not just because I do feel like we have a slight resemblance and also I want to get that haircut. But I think I have to find my notes, but she said something like she actually wanted to paint. She wanted to go to, but. When you have a poor immigrant father.

• 1:04:50Speaker 05

  Yeah, that isn't happening.

• 1:04:52Yasi Salek?

  They're not gonna be like, go paint, they're like, get a real job. So, architecture was kind of her like, competence job. But it is, you make a great point. And she says it too, she's like, it really shows you what Brett's relationship to ambition was, what he thought was possible.

• 1:05:09Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:05:09Yasi Salek?

  Because he chose town and country planning, you know, like, that's as much as he could think was possible, basically.

• 1:05:15Speaker 05

  Absolutely, yeah, I think it is really interesting. And obviously, she, she, a very, very, very long time after that, she does become an artist. But she didn't go to art college, and I think that's really interesting, the point that you make about having immigrant parents. Because it's like, you can't go and study art because you need to get a job.

• 1:05:30Yasi Salek?

  Totally, and no matter how wealthy I think they end up, like, the idea is still always like, you could be poor at any minute, and you need to be able to provide for yourself.

• 1:05:40Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:05:41Yasi Salek?

  Anyways, it doesn't mean she wasn't a rich girl.

• 1:05:45Yasi Salek?

  But, you know, maybe a lightly different rich girl than, you know, one of those duchesses or something.

• 1:05:51Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 1:05:52Yasi Salek?

  So Brett says, there were so few planners that we were thrown in with architects. One of them started to catch my eye. She was extremely beautiful in an almost Middle Eastern or Mediterranean way, with long, unwashed, dark hair, cut in a severe fringe. She would always wear scruffy clothes, like faded vintage Mickey Mouse t-shirts. Not me currently wearing a faded vintage Mickey Mouse t-shirt. Or big, clumpy bikers boots, but somehow they just managed to make her look more elegant and moneyed. And just the thing is, I wasn't sure if he was a boy or a girl, because he had earrings in both ears and a bag that his sister had given him. That was really a women's handbag. And I thought he was really cute if he was a boy. And he was luckily. He smiled at me in a lecture and absolutely stunned me. I just felt like I knew him or something and became completely obsessed with him.

• 1:06:35Speaker 05

  Oh.

• 1:06:36Yasi Salek?

  I know, I have a bit of a parasocial relationship with this relationship, like as the kids would say, like, I ship this, like, I, I could see a world where I write fanfic about this, but I'm not going to because I'm not weird. It's one, it is one of the more beautiful, it's just, it's like a really beautiful, it's a really beautiful story. You see how they served each other, and we're gonna get into that. Part of the reason I was really excited to do Suede with you, and spoiler alert, we're gonna do Elastica as well. Is that. I think people have said, and I have the John Harris book, and there's like

• 1:07:05Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 1:07:06Yasi Salek?

  Suede invented Britpop, Brett Anderson invented pop, but you know what, Justine Pritchman invented Britpop.

• 1:07:11Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 1:07:11Yasi Salek?

  I'm sorry, Justine Pritchman is patient zero. Well, she, it might not have been through making the actual music, but she is the catalyst in many ways. And we're gonna get into that, but like, Justine Pritchman, I'm gonna say it, she invented Britpop.

• 1:07:27Speaker 05

  Interesting. There's definitely an argument there, I would say.

• 1:07:30Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:31Speaker 05

  She's got great taste, Justine, can I just say, it's so important. She has got really, really, really good taste. Like, unbelievable. And also, because she was from that background, I think it's really interesting that she didn't really know anything about music, because posh people, and I'm not saying she's born posh or nothing like that, but the culture of posh people, if you go to a posh school, they know nothing about music, I cannot tell you. Like, I literally, at one point during the nineties, I did a piece on posh kids who were at like Edinburgh University for their face. And I went up and, you know, they were perfectly lovely, not a clue, not a clue. I said, what is your favorite music? And they said The Lion King.

• 1:08:14Speaker 05

  They just don't know anything.

• 1:08:15Yasi Salek?

  Um.

• 1:08:16Speaker 05

  They know nothing at all.

• 1:08:17Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, that one.

• 1:08:18Speaker 05

  Hmm. They know nothing at all about music. So she will not have had, you know, I'm sure maybe her parents were into music, you know, maybe she had a bit of music, but the, the, the culture of her school, because she went to a, a posh girl's school, will have nothing to do with music. They just won't have had anything. So she was into art and she

• 1:08:36Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:36Speaker 05

  But because she's got great taste, when Brett introduces her to music and then later on, you know, she becomes involved in music, she's just got really brilliant taste, like, amazing.

• 1:08:46Yasi Salek?

  Really perfect picker, like a, like a really perfect one. Yeah, I think Brett talked about like when they first got together, all she had was like Kate Bush and

• 1:08:56Speaker 05

  Astrid Gilberto, I'm sorry, both really good.

• 1:08:58Yasi Salek?

  Astrid Gilberto and Van, and Van Morrison. Not Kate Bush, Joni Mitchell, sorry. Kate Bush is, is way too exotic for what she would have had. Um, and he was like, she never heard of the Happy Bud Days, man.

• 1:09:10Speaker 05

  Yeah, so that's what it's, that's what they, yeah, that's what they were like. Posh people, mad. Hmm.

• 1:09:16Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. I will say what I thought was really funny is when they very, when she first spoke to him, because she did the instigating, he thought that she had a speech impediment, because she was so nervous.

• 1:09:26Speaker 05

  No, because she was so posh. Honestly.

• 1:09:30Yasi Salek?

  What?

• 1:09:30Speaker 05

  When you hear, just have you ever heard Justin talk?

• 1:09:34Yasi Salek?

  Yes, just just last night in a beautiful documentary about Smae called The End Station once she does. Her voices absolutely not match what you would think that she would sound like if you like hear Elastica or like see pictures of her in the nineties. It's so feminine lilting kind of musical voice.

• 1:09:51Speaker 05

  Very musical, but very posh. So she would say, instead of saying cheers, she said cheers. Cheers. And she like, she, it was just like, she had this kind of really posh drawl. I can't, I can't do it. I'm not from the south and I can't, I just can't do it. But it was incredibly seductive. It was really seductive, but I can really imagine him thinking that she had a speech impediment because it was really languid. And.

• 1:10:17Yasi Salek?

  So good.

• 1:10:17Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:10:18Yasi Salek?

  So they started hanging around together, but she was, she was very sweet. Brett said that like the, when they first hung out, they went on a good school field trip to the Wielden Downland Open Air Museum in Chitchester. Babe, I don't even, some of the, Chitchester, what are you guys even talking about?

• 1:10:38Yasi Salek?

  Chitchester, how do you say that?

• 1:10:41Speaker 05

  Just take it to terrible tiny museums about like mustard or something like that. Do you know what I mean?

• 1:10:49Speaker 05

  Chitchester, it's quite posh. Chitchester.

• 1:10:51Yasi Salek?

  Okay, so they went to Chitchester on the, on the, the, the coach. And she made him sandwiches to eat.

• 1:10:59Speaker 05

  That is cute.

• 1:11:00Yasi Salek?

  She, he said, it was such a simple touching gesture and it was the beginning of one of the two great loves of my life. We started hanging around together, although I'm not quite sure what she saw in a gauche provincial twig like me. My naive parochial charm must have been novel to her. She, however, was so urbane and worldly that I'm surprised I never found her daunting. For me, she somehow exuded London, the wealth, the power, and indeed the possibility. But her confidence never stepped over into arrogance as she possessed a clumsy, disarming kind of charm that seduced everyone she met.

• 1:11:30Speaker 05

  Yeah, I think that's quite accurate, actually. She's really charismatic. She's really, like, if you saw her before you spoke to her, you would be daunted because she looked so good. Like she really wore clothes really brilliantly and there's something incredibly daunting about that. I don't know why, especially when you're young. When you're older, you get over it. You're like, you just accept that some people can wear clothes. She can wear clothes, man. She looks, she just always looked really brilliant. And she was incredibly good looking and clever, really clever, but she was really nice. Honestly, really nice person. Like you spoke to her, she was interesting, she was interested, she was funny, she had opinions, she was great.

• 1:12:09Yasi Salek?

  She said, he told me his dad was a taxi driver and I said, I thought that was quite romantic, which he thought was really funny.

• 1:12:17Speaker 05

  Well, it is funny.

• 1:12:19Yasi Salek?

  It is funny, because it's not romantic, it's just a job.

• 1:12:22Speaker 05

  And it's also so classist, isn't it? It's like, oh my god, he's a taxi driver. It's a bit like the character in Common People, do you know what I mean? Like unbelievable.

• 1:12:31Yasi Salek?

  No, I mean, this is like, it's it's amazing that Jarvis didn't know this story because it is a sound a bit the common people ask over here, or maybe he did, actually. I'd been mixing with rich kids until I got to university. He was probably one of the first people I got to know really well who didn't have a well off background. And I guess for me, that was quite exotic. One other thing I love, I'm sorry, I'm such a just stand first from the stand, is that all of these interviews that you read with her, she's so honest. She doesn't like, and maybe that is another benefit of like really believing in yourself from having self belief from a child, from having a a a good background or whatever and having that confidence. She's not like, oh, I'm gonna sound like an idiot if I said that. She's just like, yeah, that's what I said. You know, like, yeah, I was that, I didn't know any, I didn't know any kids who had a taxi driver dad. It was, you know, like,

• 1:13:16Yasi Salek?

  she's just being honest and it's it kind of endears you to her. You're like, gosh, you know, you didn't. And Matt, Matt really liked her too. He said, the first time I met her was in Brett's bed. I can remember it clear as day, just coming in one day and there's Brett in bed with this gorgeous girl. The two of them just sitting there beaming, obviously in the very flushes of first love. She was not, I she was not really like anyone else I've ever met. I thought she was absolutely great. She was really, really confident. Where I came from, there weren't a lot of girls like that. She was the first person I knew who had a really good visual sense. She had an amazing sense of design and how things looked in record sleeves and clothes. And was totally sure of herself and sure footed about these things. One of the first people I met who actually loved art. And I think she's really ambitious, not in a bad way. She always wanted something to happen.

• 1:14:01Yasi Salek?

  And me and Brett were much more sitting around, smoking dope and talking shit. Okay, so I bring that up because I think Suede happened because they met Justine.

• 1:14:10Speaker 05

  Absolutely.

• 1:14:11Yasi Salek?

  Right? Like, would you agree? Like, I think they might have just puttered along, happy to sit sit together and give each other enemy reviews and. You know, write songs and maybe just not take it to the next.

• 1:14:23Speaker 05

  Yeah, I think it's so interesting because I think she, that band wouldn't have formed without her. And then it wouldn't have been with, if she hadn't left. Like it's so, but she needs to be there to start it off and then she needs to leave for it to exist.

• 1:14:36Yasi Salek?

  For it to like pop off, yeah. But this quote from Brett in Cold Black Mornings, bust out your Kleenex babe. When Matt met her for the first time, I remember feeling so proud of both of them in their own ways, such wonderful people that had become so dear to me. And that I had brought together.

• 1:14:52Speaker 05

  Oh, I know, I know. And they're also good looking and lovely and clever.

• 1:15:00Yasi Salek?

  What the hell. Also, it's really amazing to me because obviously everyone knows the story of how this ends, this relationship ends. But still, none of, Brett never speaks poorly about just Ian, she never speaks really poorly about him. I mean, she kind of takes a few jabs at like how she thought it was silly that him and Damon would fight in the press. Or like say things about each other, just like, oh, you boys, but they never, there's no ill will, there's no like negativity. It's really like a nice thing, given like you could totally see that they're.

• 1:15:31Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:15:31Yasi Salek?

  Being a different version of that.

• 1:15:33Speaker 05

  Yeah, definitely. I think, you know, it seems to me, I, I don't know, I don't know them well enough at all, but I imagine they're still in touch. They seem like they're still friends. It seems like it, it, you know, that they are friends. Do you know what I mean? I mean, it's very interesting, the difference between. Like how he refers to her, I mean, he, he literally never mentions the word Blur, the name Domhnall Bond. He never, ever even says the word.

• 1:16:01Yasi Salek?

  There's a great part calling, maybe ten years later when they like are talking about Britpop and they're like, what? It was like when Blur was still going and pretty popular, but Suede had slower, slowed down. And the guy's talking, he's like, brings up Blur and he goes, well, there's no accounting for taste. And that's all he says and then moves on to the next thing. It's just, just. Everyone, I guess, likes their own what they like. That's none of my business. She also said something about them, which I really respected, which she said. When I was hanging out with Brett and Matt and their mates, my background was never ever a point of discussion. It was totally irrelevant. I was treated as a creative being and it was interesting to see what I'd come up with.

• 1:16:41Speaker 05

  Yeah, completely. And I feel like. You know, I'm certainly not saying that everything I wrote in the nineties was fair or not. You know, there were definitely points where I think, you know, I probably wrote stuff and I thought a bit like, oh my god, why would you ever write that? But with Justine, I knew that, like, we knew that she had a rich dad, like, we just knew that. But she was so obviously creative, interesting, funny, cool. Like, I mean, it wasn't relevant. I didn't care.

• 1:17:08Yasi Salek?

  Sure.

• 1:17:08Speaker 05

  Like, how could you care about that when you're when you're confronted with somebody that's so interesting and charismatic and talented? Like, it's not relevant.

• 1:17:16Yasi Salek?

  That really made me think hi- really highly of Brett and Matt. And not in the sense that, like, they didn't, it didn't feel like they were, like, social climbing on her. Like, it was just like, these people had a real bond over art and music and a creative sensibility that they share.

• 1:17:33Speaker 05

  Yeah, and also the kind of time of their life as well. Like, you know, you're, okay, she grew up in Twickenham, but Twickenham is boring. Like, you know, like, that's great, you know, you could grow up in Twickenham. Like, I grew up in a nouveau riche suburb of Manchester. It's boring. Like, it's great, you know, that's nice, you've got feels around there, lovely, but it's boring. And so, like, if you are at that moment in your life, which is where they are, which is the cusp of discovering yourself and having a great time. And you find two friends, like, you find Brett and Matt, then, like, when I first came to London, it was about the people that you met, and everyone you met weren't from London. Because they would come to London to do something.

• 1:18:15Yasi Salek?

  It's like New York or LA.

• 1:18:17Speaker 05

  Yeah, they come to London to do something, and there was a hole in them that wasn't being satisfied by where they were from. And that doesn't matter if you're from a posh house in Twickenham or from a house that's falling down in Haywards Heath. It doesn't matter. You come to London to find something that you can't find there. So then if you find the people that you can find that thing with, that excitement, that glamour, that kind of, I mean, I hate to use the word sleaze, but sleaze is part of it, isn't it? To go to a city and it be, like, not boring.

• 1:18:47Speaker 05

  You know, like potentially dangerous, potentially thrilling, potentially exciting. That's just brilliant. And so to find it, find that or start embarking on that adventure with those two people. You know, that that little threesome is a great threesome because all those people are really interesting and creative.

• 1:19:06Yasi Salek?

  Creative. And like you said, like, Justine didn't know much about music, but Brett taught her and she took to it immediately. Like she knew what was good, the right things resonated with her. And interestingly, and we'll get into it, they had different tastes. Like Justine really liked post punk in the most classic like sense, whereas like there's stuff that. I'm maybe more glam stuff that Brett was into that she was like, I don't know about that for me personally. And you see in Elastica, right? She took what she took what she liked. And also, I love this. My favorite thing is that Damon Albarn, the story sort of inverted when Justine started dating Damon Albarn. He had no records. She was like, he literally had no albums. He knew nothing about music.

• 1:19:48Yasi Salek?

  And so indirectly, and Brett Anderson probably wants to fucking also walk into traffic like I did at the farmer's market. When he thinks about how his teaching of Justine was then passed on to Damon and create a blur, he probably wants to die. That's not why I taught you that.

• 1:20:04Speaker 05

  Can you just hold on to your religion?

• 1:20:07Yasi Salek?

  Can't give it anyways. And she taught him about art and artists and this is a beautiful thing. So Justine said, like, I I said that thing about the town planning and how little he expected of his life. But she said, I don't think he was brought up to expect much for himself. He's very sweet about it. He's always said that something had changed when he met me because I really believed in him. I guess I'd been brought up to believe there were opportunities in life, and if you really wanted something, you could have it. I think it was good for him to be around that. It rubbed off on him.

• 1:20:38Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's sweet. Like, that's really great, isn't it? Because also, it's not like, it sounds to me like it's not like his dad didn't try. His dad just, like, his dad tried, but all those jobs that he did, whether it was a swimming pool attendant or a taxi driver, there are no inverted commas. It's not a career. That's a job. It's just a job, isn't it? It's not gonna go anywhere unless you start owning the taxi service, like, it's not gonna go anywhere. So like, those are just jobs. And she understood what a career was because her dad had had a career.

• 1:21:05Yasi Salek?

  There's a meaner version of a quote about her, about how she really wanted things to happen from Bernard. And said some, I didn't even write it down, because it was so mean, but I'll just paraphrase. It was something to the effect of like, she was the kind of person that stood back and waited for something to happen and then got involved. And I think he was, I think he was maybe more talking about why she left Suede or whatever, but at this point, she kind of helped make it happen and they start a little band, the three of them. It's called The Perfect. They make a demo, a couple of songs, Justice and Just a Girl. It's fine. It's a little acoustic-y.

• 1:21:50Yasi Salek?

  It's September and Brett's mother died.

• 1:21:52Speaker 05

  Oh, yes, that's very important.

• 1:21:55Yasi Salek?

  It's very important. He said that, "My mother's death almost destroyed me. I was unable to get out of bed for days and days, just shuffling to and from the toilet every few hours, blinds drawn, the soft oblivion of the duvet waiting. I didn't eat and I didn't wash and I developed shingles."

• 1:22:10Speaker 05

  You don't want that.

• 1:22:11Yasi Salek?

  No, I had shingles once.

• 1:22:12Speaker 05

  It's horrible.

• 1:22:13Yasi Salek?

  We don't need to talk about it. I got it from a, I got it from stress of staying at a Coachella influencer house. We don't have to get into it. Um.

• 1:22:20Speaker 05

  Don't do that. Don't do that again.

• 1:22:22Yasi Salek?

  Don't do that. Damn. It was, I was desperate for work. I wasn't the influencer. Please believe. I'm not an influencer. I was like working. I was the staff. So Brett is destroyed by this, right? He couldn't even go to the funeral.

• 1:22:37Speaker 05

  Yeah, man, I feel so sorry for him about it.

• 1:22:39Yasi Salek?

  Me too. It's really sad. She had cancer. He talked about as a child, like one of his greatest fears was, he just was always afraid that his mother was one day gonna die. They were, they were very close and, and.

• 1:22:50Speaker 05

  It's just awful. She dies and he was twenty-one. Like, it's just.

• 1:22:53Yasi Salek?

  He's twenty-one, I know.

• 1:22:54Speaker 05

  It's just terrible. And also that thing of not going to the funeral is really interesting because it's not the same at all. But um, my granny died around, when, when I was around that age and I didn't, I, I really didn't want to go to her funeral. And it was because somewhere in my head, I thought, it just doesn't mean anything. It's just a lot of nonsense. She stared and da, da, da, da. You know, those kind of weird things that you have in your head when you're young. And my parents made me go. They were like, and my brother was like, what is wrong with you? You're coming to the, like, don't be an absolute dick. But in my head, I thought, like. It was the dying that mattered, not the funeral. And obviously, I'm incredibly happy I went to the funeral, because it's really important. But I think that when you're young and you have funny ideas in your head, which I can really imagine that he did and he was devastated, he didn't go to the funeral.

• 1:23:40Speaker 05

  And he regrets it now.

• 1:23:41Yasi Salek?

  He, yeah, he expressed regret. He was like, I really would have liked that closure and I'm definitely really not getting the closure that I needed. He slowly comes out of it. Now it's October, so we lose kind of some time there. They're sitting around, the three of them, watching Top of the Pops. And Brett says, I remember seeing some ridiculous tired hair rock dutifully going through their repertoire of preopic, preopic means having to do with the penis, posturing and thinking how shit it was and saying something like, I just know we can do better than this. So that's when they decided they needed to advertise.

• 1:24:14Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:24:14Yasi Salek?

  For a real guitar player. They put an ad in the NME, October twenty eighth, nineteen eighty nine. Young guitar player needed by London bass band, Smiths, Commotions, Bowie, Pet Shop Boys, no musos. Some things are more important than ability. Call Brett.

• 1:24:29Speaker 05

  And they are correct. Some things are more important than ability. I mean, luckily for them, they got someone that is full of ability, but some things are more important. They know that.

• 1:24:37Yasi Salek?

  Hundred percent.

• 1:24:37Speaker 05

  Yeah, ideas and talent and looks.

• 1:24:40Yasi Salek?

  And looks. Oh my god, Bernard Butler, they have that haircut. Enter nineteen year old Bernard Butler, Bernard Joseph Butler, born May first nineteen seventy, a tourist to Irish parents in North London.

• 1:24:52Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 1:24:52Yasi Salek?

  He started playing violin at eight years old, but he got beat up and spat on the bus for it, so he quit. And he switched over to guitar and taught himself guitar from a chord book and then also because his older brother was a, we don't have this anymore really, but he would uh bootleg concerts, he would go to the shows and tape them and sell the tapes. So he would bring back tapes for Bernard, including the Smiths, and Bernard taught himself guitar by copying Johnny Marr from these bootleg Smiths shows tapes. So I thought it was so interesting.

• 1:25:25Speaker 05

  So good. I love it. Yeah. Bootleg, they were big. Yeah, bootleg um tapes, massive.

• 1:25:30Yasi Salek?

  I mean, now they are only in like certain communities of jam bands here in America, like Phish and and they they reclaimed their own, so I think they like, they do it themselves.

• 1:25:42Yasi Salek?

  It's a little different. He was really into the Smiths. He was in a band with his brothers. Phil and Stephen called Slow Dive. Not that one, different one, with another set of brothers called Kevin and Eugene O'Sullivan, their other Irish friends. And he was, you know, young and just really talented.

• 1:26:00Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:26:01Yasi Salek?

  Bernard said, no muses, that was the classic line. I mean, what was I supposed to do? Turn up and just sit in the corner without saying anything?

• 1:26:08Speaker 05

  Turn up and be shit?

• 1:26:10Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, he's like, but they'd obviously sat down and carefully chosen this very strange, varied list of influences and that caught my attention. I know they were either going to be really weird or just complete rubbish, or they were trying really hard to be different. And then he also said, when he got there, he was like, I thought they were really posh, very well spoken, and they seemed very, very mature. I didn't believe they were only a few years older than me. They were really sociable. They'd shake your hand, give you a kiss on the cheek when you said goodbye. Girls didn't kiss you on the cheek where I came from, unless you were married.

• 1:26:41Speaker 05

  That's so Irish, but it's so Justin.

• 1:26:43Yasi Salek?

  Totally. She.

• 1:26:46Yasi Salek?

  She taught them. And on their part, they were like, he was in- Justin, he's incredibly quiet. He said he'd been reading the ads in the back of the music papers for five years. Five years, babe, since you were fourteen, you were looking for a band teacher. Um, and this was the first one that had said the right things. There was some talk of calling him laughing boy because his face didn't crack once and he hardly spoke, incredibly shy. And he looked really young. They had tea. So fucking British, they're like, kiss, kiss, have some tea. Now we're gonna do our tryout for our cool band. And Brett was like, I finally heard him play and the shocking quality of his musicianship exposed our ambition as that empty, groundless folly that it was. At once so violent and tender, direct and purposeful.

• 1:27:29Yasi Salek?

  He was always, even from those first moments, such a very special talent. I realized barely early on that if I wanted the accolades and the status, I thought the world owed me, then it was up to me to try to catch up with him.

• 1:27:39Speaker 05

  Yeah, I think that's really interesting because like basically Bernard turns up and is really brilliant. So they're like.

• 1:27:45Yasi Salek?

  Uh oh.

• 1:27:46Speaker 05

  Yeah, they're a bit like, okay, well, maybe I'll stop playing the guitar because I'm really not very good. This guy is really good and I'll just concentrate on trying to be a better singer and write some lyrics because like he's arrived. You know, like we need to do something.

• 1:28:02Yasi Salek?

  And we made a lot, a big deal about Justine making suede happen, but again, there was not going to be any suede without the addition of Bernard Butler. They would never have gone anywhere.

• 1:28:11Speaker 05

  No.

• 1:28:12Yasi Salek?

  The best part of this story that makes me laugh very hard, I mean, he's nineteen. And when he's leaving, he turns around and he goes, how old are you guys anyways? And they're like, hmm, we're twenty two. And he's like, oh, you better get a fucking move on. And he didn't say fucking, but you better get a move on then. He's like.

• 1:28:26Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:28:27Yasi Salek?

  You're old bitch, we gotta, we gotta go.

• 1:28:29Speaker 05

  You're practically dead at twenty two. What are you doing?

• 1:28:33Yasi Salek?

  They're like, oh god, I guess he's, I guess he's right. But now we're cooking with gas, babe. We are cooking with gas. And also, I think they did a lot for Bernard. So what he says is, I was very young looking and I was really skinny. And they were the first people I'd met who thought those were good things. They helped me warm to them. They encouraged me to be who I was. Within two or three meetings, they told me I was good looking. No one had said anything like that before. My brother and my friends thought they were wankers, pretentious talk, but I loved it. And they liked me. I think they thought I was some kind of spring waiting to uncoil and they were going to be the ones to do it. I really felt that. I really enjoyed being uncoiled. They're also smart.

• 1:29:11Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's great, isn't it?

• 1:29:13Yasi Salek?

  Beautiful metaphor. And then we're fucking cooking with gas, babe. We're, it's, we're making music. They always wanted to be a Morrissey Marr. Situation and that's kind of what they did. Bernard would write the music. It was not collaborative is from what I understand, the sense of what you imagine, a band sitting in a room writing music. Bernard would write at home, put it on a tape, give it to Brett. Brett would take the tape home, sit on his little keyboard and write the top lines and the melody and the lyrics.

• 1:29:42Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:29:42Yasi Salek?

  And that, and then they would come back and teach the, I guess, the band the song.

• 1:29:46Speaker 05

  And that's very Morrissey Marr. Like, that's like.

• 1:29:48Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:49Speaker 05

  Like how they did it, you know, like they used to put it on a tape. And I think, I think actually Johnny used to post it to Morrissey.

• 1:29:56Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I believe that with Bernard and Brett, it ends up in that sense too, which I feel like they could have looked back and been like, that didn't work out well.

• 1:30:04Speaker 05

  Yeah, why didn't we do that?

• 1:30:06Yasi Salek?

  That went south. Maybe we could have modeled ourselves after someone that lasted a longer. I thought it was interesting. I wanted to ask you this. The first song they wrote together was called Natural Born Servant. It was a baggy song. It was in the, it was like in, I guess that was really the predominant thing at the time.

• 1:30:25Speaker 05

  Yeah, if you think about, like, say, if you think about even, like, Blur's first album, that was a baggy album.

• 1:30:30Yasi Salek?

  Sure.

• 1:30:30Speaker 05

  Like, and it was, we were very, like, dance music was really important. It's really, you know, it gets kind of slightly for, maybe forgotten, but because it's not so easy to talk about because it's not always bands, you know, like, might be the one, a one-off track and then, but what had happened is that you, you'd had kind of had acid house and then indie dance had come along, really, which had turned into baggy, which is basically kind of, you know, a, a kind of generic version for all the bands that were worse than the Happy Mondays. But like, those things were still important, you know, because going out and raving was so, still so new and so uh revolutionary. It really was revolutionary when it happened. Like, the fact that you could basically, you know,

• 1:31:14Speaker 05

  you were so excited about going out and dancing all night that you had to go and find a feel to do it and there was nowhere to do it. Like, you had to, you know, it was, it was like it swept through the nation. It was still really important. So those things were still there. Do you know what I mean? The Stone Roses were still incredibly important. Like, the Happy Mondays were really, really important and we knew that. And so if you're becoming a band, that's a prevailing kind of air, I suppose, really. That's like what you think you need. Plus, they haven't got a drummer.

• 1:31:44Yasi Salek?

  Right, they were, they were using the drum machine.

• 1:31:44Speaker 05

  So you're using like, you know, like, you know, everyone was using the funky drummer, weren't they? So like, you're using kind of like samples, do you know what I mean? That you're using samples to get that, that drumming sound anyway. So they probably thought they didn't need a drummer. Because that's how people use it.

• 1:32:00Yasi Salek?

  I was actually kind of surprised to learn that Brett was so into Happy Mondays. Not because I don't think Happy Mondays are incredible and wonderful, as you know, I definitely do, but it didn't seem his take, like, he reads to me, especially like in the first weight albums, like this sort of macabre romantic.

• 1:32:22Yasi Salek?

  Like Dark Prince energy and the Happy Mondays was really like, what's up bitch? More goodies. We got some maracas. You know, like it was, it's like kind of a different vibe on every level. So it's great music, but I think that was, maybe it's just because it was in the culture so much and he's tapped into the zeitgeist.

• 1:32:41Speaker 05

  It's really working class, like it's proper, like it's completely working class and that's very important to Brett, I think. But also they're really, they're such an odd band, The Mondays. They're so odd and so unusual and.

• 1:32:55Yasi Salek?

  The weirdest.

• 1:32:56Speaker 05

  Yeah, they really are. Like, I mean, remember people telling me that, that, you know, that kind of Shaun and Bez were a bit like, you know, typical council estate people. And I was like, they really aren't. They're really unusual. They're really unusual. They're like, really, like, they're not. They're really not. They're really clever and really unusual and odd and wild. And I think also what happened with Suede, which we'll definitely talk about, is something changed when Justine left. And, and I think that the kind of concentration of the influences became centered a bit more around the Smiths and Bowie and a kind of dark glamour.

• 1:33:37Speaker 05

  But I think that, you know, there were elements of Suede at the beginning that were kind of influenced by, a little bit by the Fall and the Mondays. And like kind of slightly odd things, you know, not, you know, brilliant bands, but they don't mesh so well with everything else, you know?

• 1:33:51Yasi Salek?

  They picked the name Suede. Justine says that she's not really sure who came up with Suede, but she thinks it might have been herself.

• 1:33:57Speaker 05

  Hmm, probably.

• 1:33:59Yasi Salek?

  And then also that they all thought the beautiful south was the best name in the world and they were pissed off that it was gone. And I was like, isn't it the new one?

• 1:34:06Speaker 05

  I think, no.

• 1:34:08Yasi Salek?

  No, I don't think so. Um, Suede is much better.

• 1:34:11Speaker 05

  So much better.

• 1:34:12Yasi Salek?

  Now they have their first ever show. It's nineteen ninety, March ten, at the Sausage Machine, which was a weekly club in the basement of the White Horse in Hampstead.

• 1:34:22Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 1:34:23Yasi Salek?

  They were supporting the Prudes and the Ruby Two Days, two bands I've never heard of in my life.

• 1:34:28Speaker 05

  No.

• 1:34:29Yasi Salek?

  Their friend did lighting for the Prudes, which is how they blagged their way onto the bill. They're very nervous. Brett was like, I basically went into a fugue state. Justine was like, I couldn't see or speak the whole gig. I couldn't open my mouth. I was supposed to do backing vocals, couldn't do it. Matt said we looked fucking awful. The thing that seemed odd when I look back at is when I met Brett at school, he had an incredibly distinctive dress and he wore suits and hats. Proper hats and blazers and things like that. Um, but we got caught up in the scene. I think in the first gig, I probably wore a hooded top with flowers on it and flares. They were in baggy, babe. They were, they were fitting it in the baggy mode.

• 1:35:08Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, I've seen pictures of them and they're definitely shots where like Justine's got a pair of kind of Adidas. Bottoms on and they've got like a, a kind of, yeah, they were wearing like hoodies. Yeah, it's so unswayed.

• 1:35:21Yasi Salek?

  I mean, I can't picture Brett Anderson in a fleece material in, in an athleisure. I don't wanna ever think of such a thing.

• 1:35:30Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's a terrible idea.

• 1:35:31Yasi Salek?

  Anderson is only ever wearing a woman's blouse or like a custom Savile Row suit.

• 1:35:38Speaker 05

  Absolutely.

• 1:35:39Yasi Salek?

  Only things that Brett Anderson can ever wear. So this is not popping off, okay? They get somehow on this show called Demo Clash. Were you familiar with this? Gary Crowley?

• 1:35:49Speaker 05

  Oh, Gary Crowley, yeah, I'm familiar with, yeah. So he was quite an important, he was an important DJ. He's incredibly enthusiastic kind of person. He's very London. He's got a broad taste, but his taste is more on the soul side of things, I would say. Metal or Weller, that kind of thing. But he, yeah, he was important, you know, he had a good show. I think it was on GLR.

• 1:36:09Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, Greater London Radio.

• 1:36:11Speaker 05

  Yeah, and he played good music and he was pretty well respected. He was just madly enthusiastic all the time.

• 1:36:17Yasi Salek?

  I love that. Well, he, I guess he had a show called Demo Clash where they would put two demos next to each other and people would phone in to like vote. And their demo, Wonderful, sometimes ended up on there and it won a few weeks in a row. Partially having to do with one of the most enthusiastic voters being one Peter Anderson, Brett's father, who would sit and wait for the song to come on. And then phone in ten times in a row. I love him.

• 1:36:42Speaker 05

  That's so lovely.

• 1:36:43Yasi Salek?

  So sweet. This apparently was enough to get a Melody Maker writer named Mick Mercer. Interested enough to come see them when they played at the Bulling Gate. Did you know Mick Mercer? Was that one of your colleagues?

• 1:36:57Speaker 05

  Yeah, he's a kind of slightly era before me, I would say, a little bit.

• 1:37:01Yasi Salek?

  Like Johnny Sigurath?

• 1:37:03Speaker 05

  No, Johnny Siggs is my era.

• 1:37:05Yasi Salek?

  That's your era.

• 1:37:06Speaker 05

  Yeah, so Mick Mercer is a little bit before, yeah.

• 1:37:09Yasi Salek?

  Okay, he, well, he went, he was like, it was a bit of a shock. I got along because their demo was so good. Justine looked in the back with her hairily swelled and empty armpits. Brett looked a complete twat, but the rest of them were anonymous. Sorry, a complete twat.

• 1:37:24Speaker 05

  Twat.

• 1:37:25Yasi Salek?

  You guys, I need to remind you that we do have that word here. So I know I'm mispronouncing it, but we say twat. I'm gonna say twat, it does sound better.

• 1:37:32Speaker 05

  Ridiculous.

• 1:37:33Yasi Salek?

  I'm so sorry. I'm American.

• 1:37:36Speaker 05

  Twat. Like twat. It's got an at in it. It's not got an oh.

• 1:37:42Yasi Salek?

  Complete twat. But the rest of them were anonymous. There were, there were some obviously good ideas, but they were trying so hard to be the Happy Mondays. Right down to Anderson's unbelievable rider shuffle. I really wish there was video of Brett Anderson trying to do Shaun Rider. So he wrote in his review, it was bad. It was not a good review. He said, I was told to expect a popped up version of Stone Roses played by Glamour Pusses. Instead, I encounter four would be presenters for Blue Peter.

• 1:38:08Speaker 05

  Ooh.

• 1:38:09Yasi Salek?

  Blue Peter is a children's television programme?

• 1:38:12Speaker 05

  So Blue Peter was goodness. It was a children's programme. I think it was on, I can't remember. In my head, it was on every night, but I mean, I don't, maybe it wasn't. Um, um, but it was like live and it was incredibly worthy and middle class and, and the people who did it were squeaky squeaky clean, the presenters. So like what you're saying is that they are squares.

• 1:38:36Yasi Salek?

  Squares, right, ugh. Yeah, he didn't like it. He said a lot of mean things, including something that you didn't do, which is this I wanted to ask you about. He said, it would surely be curliced of me to suggest that Break the Log, one of their songs, is their defiant refusal to pay the poll tax. Because Mumsy's already taken out a standing order.

• 1:38:54Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 1:38:55Yasi Salek?

  This is about Justine's family being rich. What is the poll tax?

• 1:38:58Speaker 05

  Oh, oh, God. The poll tax is, oh, my God, okay. So the poll tax is kind of.

• 1:39:02Yasi Salek?

  I'm so sorry that we have to really start from the ground floor every year.

• 1:39:05Speaker 05

  So the poll tax kind of brought down Thatcher, really. So the poll tax is a way of, it's like a tax on where you live. So you, like, how big your house is, like, it's like a council tax now. Where you live, you have to pay a certain amount of. According to the place that you lived in, right? It was brought in.

• 1:39:22Yasi Salek?

  Only if you own it.

• 1:39:24Speaker 05

  No, no, no, if you rent as well, I think, I think. Anyway, you brought, it was brought in by Margaret Thatcher. And we all went on the demonstration, the anti-poll tax demonstration. I've got photos of me and my friends going on it, right? And we, so you march and off we went to Trafalgar Square. It was quite a nice day. We got bored with the speeches, so we left and there was a riot. Massive riot.

• 1:39:44Yasi Salek?

  Wow.

• 1:39:44Speaker 05

  Oh, it's a big deal. And they were, everybody went through um the middle of London, Soho and smashed up all the glasses. It's a huge deal. And all the police came in and horses. And it was kind of like, out of that almost, you could say a little bit. It it was kind of part of the feeling of kind of festivals and travellers and um rioting. And raving was kind of partly associated with the poll tax and the poll tax riots. But yeah. Mumsy paying the poll taxes is an indication that Justine has money.

• 1:40:17Yasi Salek?

  Well, that's unnecessary, Meg. I just have to point out. I mean, you could just say the music was bad. Anyways, it's fine. Brett said it was too early for us and the ensuing vicious waspish critiques stung horribly. Oh, because it was like a wasp. I think we were likened to children's TV presenters. And if you ever see any early photos from those shows, the description isn't unjustified.

• 1:40:39Speaker 05

  I think he knew they were a bit rubbish, but it was a hard, it was a bit of a harsh review.

• 1:40:43Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, he basically said it helped us to like, be like, okay, we better get better. And then part of that was, we need to check the drum machine. It's time to get a real drummer. So that I think they might have put another ad. This, I couldn't figure out how they got their next drummer, but the fir- the first guy who drums for Suede is Justin Welch, who was eighteen.

• 1:41:01Speaker 05

  Oh, we love him.

• 1:41:02Yasi Salek?

  I know. He ended up, as you guys might know, um as a drummer of Velazca. But at this time, he was in like eight other bands apparently. And he played with them for like six weeks, but because his other band Spitfire.

• 1:41:13Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:41:14Yasi Salek?

  Was lightly popping off. Obviously, it didn't really go anywhere. No offence to Spitfire. He left Suede. But he stayed long enough to record some tracks uh for a demo, including Be My God, which is technically the first Suede single. Although I think they wish it never existed.

• 1:41:32Yasi Salek?

  Because this guy they knew from Hayward T was like, I want to be in the music industry. I'll pay for that single.

• 1:41:45Yasi Salek?

  Anyways, he leaves, they place another ad. Of course, it's referencing The Smiths. And so who calls? Mike, motherfucking Joyce. He's like, Smiths? You said it? I can say that. Here I am. Here I am. I just can't, again, Chloe Walsh, my dear friend, laughs every time I say this, but I'm like, is the UK made up of 280 people? Because I'm like, you are a band who has played two shows. Okay, two. You put an ad, you love The Smiths, and then it's like ding dong, hello, the drummer from The Smiths is here, I'd love to play with you. What are you even talking about? What are you even saying?

• 1:42:26Yasi Salek?

  It's just, it's that community of people who read the NME. It's literally that. It's so great. He tells a story, it's quite funny. He's like, I saw the ad and I thought, how much more qualified can you get than actually being a band itself? So he calls up, and he lived in Cheshire, I guess, which is Yes, where I'm from. I don't know. Okay. Oh, it's quite far, because he's from Manchester. Exactly. So it's south of Manchester. Wasn't there, there's a long story about how he didn't make money and then he had to sue. Was it him or Andy? One of them had to sue, yeah. They didn't really make much money, but they made a little bit of money. They made a little bit of money, yeah. And then Morrissey took the rest and bought a bunch of veganays or whatever. Um, okay, so he calls, he doesn't say who it is.

• 1:43:09Yasi Salek?

  And the person on the other end, who I think was one of their managers at the time, we'll get into the managers. I was like, well, I'm sorry. I think it was Bernard Butler, was it not Bernard? Oh, it was. Well, Mike said it was one of their managers that Bernard used to dislike. So I don't know, it might have been Bernard, it might have been Ricky Gervais, you guys, we'll get into that. Literally might have been fucking Ricky Gervais. Probably was Bernard, though Mike Joyce probably remembered it wrong. And he said, well, I'm sorry, but we're a London-based band. And Mike was like, that's not a problem, I've worked with London-based bands before, I can commute. And Bernard was like, well, who have you worked with? And he goes, a band called The Smiths, my name is Mike Joyce.

• 1:43:46Speaker 05

  It's like a prank.

• 1:43:48Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, well Brett said, let's see, I'm learning so much, you guys, about British television shows. Cause Brett was like, it was one of the most incredible things to happen to us. We were all massive Smith fans, so it was like Jim will fix it.

• 1:43:59Speaker 05

  Oh, don't.

• 1:44:00Yasi Salek?

  Okay, Jim, Jim will fix it, babe. Jim will fix it is Jimmy Savile, who I believe known pedophile, is that correct?

• 1:44:07Speaker 05

  He is one of the worst pedophiles that ever existed in the British history.

• 1:44:12Yasi Salek?

  Stamped pedophile Jimmy Savile, uh, pre-pedophilia being known to the world, had a show where he would, whatever, make people's dreams come true.

• 1:44:22Speaker 05

  Kids, kids dreams come true. Called Jim will fix it. It was on the telly and you would write in with what you wanted to happen. I remember I wrote in, I said I wanted to rob a bag and get a, rob a bank and get away with it, but they didn't pick.

• 1:44:36Yasi Salek?

  Miranda.

• 1:44:38Speaker 05

  They didn't pick me.

• 1:44:41Speaker 05

  So they, they say things like, you know, I want to dance with the royal ballet. I want to meet the queen or something like that. And he would fix it for you and you would sit in a big armchair with his cigar and he would go, now then, now then. Like to everybody, he's horrible. He's absolutely revolting. And then you've got a medal that said Jim fixed it for me.

• 1:45:06Yasi Salek?

  It's, do you guys, can you believe England is a real place? Did you guys?

• 1:45:09Speaker 05

  I can't believe we survived.

• 1:45:11Yasi Salek?

  I know. No, but you're still, it's still crazy over there, babe. I know Naked Attraction is not on the television anymore. But I still can't get over that as of like a year or two ago, at ten P M on a Tuesday, you could turn on BBC Five or whatever, just like normal ass television station that you don't even need cable for. And see cockage bottles on the fucking television. That's crazy.

• 1:45:35Yasi Salek?

  I'm sorry. It's crazy. It's really crazy. We didn't even get paid, these people. They didn't get paid to show their cock and balls on television. Anyways, we've we've strayed really far from God's light here. We need to get back to God's light, which is Mike Joyce trying to uh be in be in Sway. So Sway sends Mike a a tape and Mike was like, I thought it was fantastic. I just knew bands do demos all the time and this sounded like a pop group. It was there. So he was like really into it, but this is another thing that I love. He said, I listened to Bernard and it shocked me. It sounded more like Johnny than Johnny did. It was just very weird and the fact that he was quite thin and kind of gangly and he was young.

• 1:46:15Yasi Salek?

  And he had the same guitar as Johnny and the same look as Johnny and the same kind of impet- impetuosity. And that kind of sneering look, it was fantastic. He played some Smiths riff and it was terrifying how like Johnny he sounded. And due to all of this, they asked him to join the band and he was like, no, hard, no hard. And they were like, what? I and he was like, it sounds too much like the Smiths. I it's not a good idea. It'll be I'll be the last piece in the jigsaw of the exhumed corpse of the Smiths.

• 1:46:45Speaker 05

  It would have been so ridiculous.

• 1:46:47Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, and Brett even says, he's like, it would have been ridiculous, like a band with no profile suddenly getting him as the drummer. It would have been like Mike Joyce featuring Sway. Which is probably exactly what it have been written about and it would have done them more damage than good. But what an insane little ooh bump bump in your confidence, you know?

• 1:47:05Speaker 05

  That he thought you were good, didn't he? You came down and said, I'll join and then they were like, no.

• 1:47:09Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, so back to Sway's managers, it's June of nineteen ninety. They have three managers. They're all different university union entertainment managers. One is a guy called Norm, one is a guy called Nadir, and one is a man called Ricky Gervais. Richard Gervais, you might know of him from the television program The Office UK. As well as many storied comedic ventures and of one ill-advised television program called Derek, where I believe he plays a mentally handicapped person. Yeah, that was it's not it was not his peak of his career. I'm gonna say it, I feel like perhaps that one, we don't have to look back on that. But at this time, he's in a cool band called Son of Bleefer.

• 1:47:51Yasi Salek?

  And he is running the entertainment office at YULU, the University of London Union.

• 1:47:58Speaker 05

  Which is quite a big deal. That is quite a big deal. Running that is quite a big deal because you're booking all the bands, you know?

• 1:48:03Yasi Salek?

  Totally. And that's that's even the same here, actually, because like I remember, I think it's still the same way. They have a lot of money because of whatever their university. So when bands get to play at the university, they get a bigger paycheck than they would anywhere else. So it's a great gig to have. A guy called Simon Gilbert worked for Ricky's your face. Born May twenty third nineteen sixty five, a Gemini. He's from, do you guys know Stratford upon Avon is a real place? It's where Shakespeare is from and it's real and that's where he's from.

• 1:48:34Speaker 05

  It's definitely real.

• 1:48:36Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, him and Shakespeare are from there. He, Simon was also radicalized by the Sex Pistols. He was a kind of the most punk, right?

• 1:48:44Speaker 05

  Yeah, he's a little bit older, just like a couple of years older. Maybe he's born like sixty four or something, so.

• 1:48:49Yasi Salek?

  Sixty five, yeah.

• 1:48:50Speaker 05

  Yeah, so that would like make him twelve.

• 1:48:54Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, prime radicalization of Nevermind the Bullets. He said, when I heard Nevermind the Bullets, I nearly fucking wet myself. It was like when people reckon they see Jesus.

• 1:49:04Speaker 05

  I love it.

• 1:49:05Yasi Salek?

  I love it too. He was in twelve bands before he joined Suede. Yeah. One of his bands uh called Dead to the World when he was fifteen even got a track on one of the Crass Bullshit Detector compilations. So that's cool. Simon changes things. Again, another piece of the puzzle has been added. They don't have the drum machine anymore. So there's a really amazing, have you have you watched this way documentary, the insatiable ones?

• 1:49:30Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:49:31Yasi Salek?

  I love that part where they are all together, like, I guess, I think it was two thousand thirteen, maybe if one came out. And Brett just holds up the drum machine and he goes, Simon, this is whose job you took. How do you feel? He had a wife and two baby drum machines at home.

• 1:49:48Speaker 05

  You ruined his life.

• 1:49:50Yasi Salek?

  Made me, made me laugh. I was like, I don't know if Red Anderson was funny.

• 1:49:53Speaker 07

  This is the man whose job you took. So are you feeling guilty about that? I've been terribly guilty. He had a wife and two little drum machines to support. To support, two tom-toms.

• 1:50:04Yasi Salek?

  They start writing, okay? They're writing all this stuff, including The Drowners.

• 1:50:09Speaker 05

  Great song, man. I love it.

• 1:50:10Yasi Salek?

  It's not your great song. It's written around this time, so it's nineteen ninety. It kind of dates back to that. Justine said, I think Simon had enough kind of glam in him stylistically to advance Suede in that direction. If you ask me how that happened, I think Simon was a big part of that. I think one of the first things he played was the beat to The Drowners. I think that was like the new song when he arrived, because Bernard had written the riffs or the whatever incentive, it was being worked on. And she said, I mean, that beat is just something that Justin would never do in a million years. And it's something that you would never do on a drum machine in a million years either.

• 1:50:44Speaker 05

  It's very strong. Yeah, she's right. She's completely right. It's a really good analysis. And that kind of slightly glam, it's like the stomp of it, isn't it? It's like, yeah, stomping about in your, in your, in your platform souls.

• 1:50:56Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, well, because he loved Budgie and Topper Heaton from The Clash. And like, that's kind of, that's what he's bringing to the table, you know?

• 1:51:08Yasi Salek?

  Now it's October in nineteen ninety. Blur put out She's So High. October seventeenth, nineteen ninety. It's worth mentioning that they, they rehearsed at the same place.

• 1:51:19Speaker 05

  Well, that doesn't sound surprising. I mean, you know, there's only certain places where you could rehearse or you could afford to rehearse. So I'm not surprised by that.

• 1:51:26Yasi Salek?

  I thought Justine met Damon at this show, um, which is what came up in most of my research, the She's So High post-release show or whatever. But then in the documentary, she says she met at the rehearsal space. So I don't really know.

• 1:51:40Speaker 05

  All right, okay.

• 1:51:41Yasi Salek?

  But Suede opens for Blur, October eighteenth, nineteen ninety, the day after that single comes out at the Zap Club in Brighton.

• 1:51:47Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:51:47Yasi Salek?

  Were you there, Martin?

• 1:51:48Speaker 05

  I was, I think not. I think not. I mean, to be honest, my memory is.

• 1:51:55Yasi Salek?

  You're like, maybe.

• 1:51:56Speaker 05

  Couldn't tell you, babe. But I think not, because I remember the Zapp Club quite clearly, and I don't think I saw Sway play the Zapp Club. So I would say not.

• 1:52:04Yasi Salek?

  Justine really liked Blur, and she said, but Damon was really rude to me. Apparently she asked him for a Blur poster, and he said, go fucking buy one then.

• 1:52:12Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 1:52:13Yasi Salek?

  But then he became obsessed with her.

• 1:52:14Speaker 05

  Yeah, he's he's also like the initial, when you ever, you know, I would say like, it's very.

• 1:52:19Yasi Salek?

  When I meet Damon, I don't know if that's gonna happen.

• 1:52:21Speaker 05

  Everybody slugs Damon off, and I know why they slag him off, and like, but I, he's always been like, I really like him. He's always been nice to me. However, he can be really fucking rude. So, I mean, I'm not surprised. You know, he's just confrontational.

• 1:52:36Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, great. I don't want someone going on a fucking podcast and talking about what I said to them when I was twenty years old and drunk at at a bar that I don't remember. Who cares?

• 1:52:44Speaker 05

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:52:45Yasi Salek?

  That's basically what Damon Albarn and all these people have to deal with is my fucking dumb ass coming in being like, well, this is what he said. When he was twenty, and he's like, I don't even fucking remember that. Anyways. Whatever Damon said during the moment didn't matter, but because he loved her. He was obsessed.

• 1:53:00Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:53:01Yasi Salek?

  He called her all the time. She said, I've never been pursued like that. It was also a time in their relationship with Justine and Brett that was not paradise anyways. It was sort of, there was phrase happening in the in the parchment. Justine said, I'd done six months in an architecture office, and it was horrible. And Brett was at home doing the housework and hoovering and stuff. You guys, hoovering means vacuuming. Um, it's kind of like Kleenex here, where it's just a hoover is a vacuum, but then now it's just a ver.

• 1:53:31Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:53:31Yasi Salek?

  You hoover. And he said, oh, yeah, it's gonna be really great when we leave college. You'll be out working as an architect and I'll be hoovering and making dinner for you. And I was like, uh, that's not gonna happen.

• 1:53:42Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 1:53:42Yasi Salek?

  There might have been, you guys, I don't wanna point fingers. I don't wanna, this is not Us Weekly, but there might have been a little bit of overlap.

• 1:53:50Speaker 05

  There definitely was.

• 1:53:53Yasi Salek?

  So, so, you know, it's a little messy, it's a little messy. Justine said it had a little while of not totally being honest, which I obviously regret. But I was young, I was twenty or whatever. That's pretty young. It wasn't like Blur were successful or big or anything. They were like one rung above us on the ladder. But I actually thought they were pretty good. Bernard thought they were good too. He used to come to a lot of the gigs. I don't remember if me and Brett went to any Blur gigs. I don't think we did. Yeah, I don't think Brett went to any Blur gigs. But it became pretty obvious quite easily that he didn't want to hear about Blur. So me and Bernard used to go secretly watch them.

• 1:54:28Speaker 05

  It was very easy to go to a Blur gig as well. They were just playing all the time.

• 1:54:32Yasi Salek?

  So this is a complicated period in in the relationship of Justine and Brett. Blur is starting to do really well though. In April of ninety one, because now we're in ninety one. They break into the top ten with There's No Other Way, their second single. So that's a big deal, right? Now you're a known quantity in the music industry. And Brett finally moves out of Justine's place because she's with Damon. The breakup is so important, like you were saying before, like Justine came in, blew the whole thing out of the house. Let's go, we're in the world now. And then Justine left and then the whole thing recrystallized back.

• 1:55:14Speaker 05

  Yeah, definitely. That definitely, definitely happened. Because I remember talking to Brett about it. I mean, years later. Actually, it was when he brought out Cold Black Mornings, I think. So I think I interviewed him around then. And he was like, what happened with Justine? It was like when she left. It was like you took her out. And actually, now looking at it, you think, of course, it sounds stupid, but like even visually. You take her out of that band and the band look correct. And he said they were like magnets. It was like magnets. They all just clunk, went clunk together. And they knew what they were doing and there was more room for Bernard because she wasn't playing the guitar. And her taste was different to theirs a bit.

• 1:55:56Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, and also like, you're never gonna have the same chemistry in a band if two members are in a relationship.

• 1:56:03Speaker 05

  Yeah, I agree, yeah.

• 1:56:04Yasi Salek?

  As as if there aren't. Now, I think one thing that maybe people don't know or forget about is that Brett and Justine broke up, right? Okay, the breakup is nasty, it's horrible. He says, full of endless fraught phone calls, long tearful evenings. All this stuff, he gets in all, he puts himself in a minicab, go- goes back to the core, cold, hard, friendless landscape. You know, he's a little dramatic, Brett, love him, but he's a little drama. But she goes and leave the band.

• 1:56:33Speaker 05

  Not for a bit, no, yeah.

• 1:56:35Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, so he's off living with his best bud Alan Fisher, which might I tell you, Alan Fisher looks fab. In that documentary, I was like, based on what I've read about your predilections and hobbies in the entirety of this fifteen years, you look incredible. He sounds real well, Alan Fisher, is odd enough to say. He looks really great. So that's his best bud. That, this is with Nell and I, babe. This is with Nell and I, part due eventually. It's the two of them just in living in the squalor, partying, taking ease, drinking wine, lighting candles. But here's what Brett said about the breakup. It was a lot to do with me and Justine splitting up. That was the catalyst that turned Swayed from whatever

• 1:57:19Yasi Salek?

  into a band that could write and play. It was my personal agony at splitting up with Justine and the sense that I had huge emotional stuff to deal with in my head because of it. And it just came out on the page. And it was also a real desire to get off my ass and get my shit together. Brett said, once the pain had faded, I eventually assimilated the loss in the form of an overt femininity that I explored as a style during those first early flushes of success. People would interpret it as some sort of fake gay thing, or a nod to seventies glam, or something similarly dreary. But looking back, I'm convinced I was trying to replace the feminine absence in my life with an Erstets one of my own making.

• 1:58:00Yasi Salek?

  It sounds bizarre and diluted, and naturally it came across as gaudy and more than faintly ridiculous. But at its heart, as was the case with so many things to do with Swayed Sensibility, it was an expression of grief. This idea of replacing people with gestures and things fed into some of those early songs.

• 1:58:16Speaker 05

  He's so clever.

• 1:58:17Yasi Salek?

  But I found that fascinating, right? And we're gonna talk a lot, I think, about the perceived sexuality of Brad Anderson, the tone of the music, the use of gender pronouns in the lyrics, the display of self, some of the literal quotes in the press that might have been misleading. But coming boiling it down to this, like, I'd never heard anything like that. The idea that, like, they were so codependent and he felt so completed in this relationship. He said that, like, I'm not calling him codependent. He called himself codependent, but this idea that, like, he felt whole with a woman in a partnership, and once there was no woman, he invented his own from within himself.

• 1:59:00Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:59:00Yasi Salek?

  I thought that was so interesting.

• 1:59:01Speaker 05

  I did too, because also I actually did ask him about that as well around that same time, around the cold, black morning time. And I said, also, your sister left, because, like, so obviously, you know, his mum died, but before that, his sister left and they were, and they weren't, you know, it wasn't like his mum and dad were not in a the greatest of relationships, you know, they did split up. So like, his sister left, so that's like the removal of a protective feminine influence or I don't know what. And then and then his mum died, he's he got with Justine. It's all these people are incredibly important. They're women that he loves that then leave. And so I think it's a really interesting thing, because if you're like many artists, but you know, he is incredibly clever, but incredibly emotional and sensitive.

• 1:59:46Speaker 05

  And so, I mean, I think that this is him understanding it later. He's, I don't think he knew what he was doing at the time, but I think that that kind of femininity, especially someone like Justine, who's a really interesting, you know, like Brett, she walks an interesting kind of gender line, Justine.

• 2:00:04Yasi Salek?

  Hundred percent.

• 2:00:04Speaker 05

  She's really feminine and she's really sexy and she's definitely a woman, but she dresses like a man. And she presents herself, her intelligence as a man within that environment and her confidence and everything like that. And like, I think that that is really interesting because then, as we will talk about, you know, Brett plays with kind of femininity as well. But those kind of complements of those two of essentially, he's not feminine Brett, but that he's not macho. You know, there's an, there's an element to him that is embracing some side of femininity. And then Justine, who's embracing some side of conventional masculinity, I'm using these terms in very conventional ways, that that makes an interesting couple.

• 2:00:47Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, you're talking about, these are archetypical expressions, not gender expressions personally, right? We can talk about it, but this is like, you're embodying the archi-

• 2:00:56Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:00:56Yasi Salek?

  Confidence is a masculine archetype. Emotion is a feminine archetype. Sensitivity is a feminine archetype. These are just things that they were playing with archetypically. But yeah, but then again, something that struck me over and over again is these are two of the most cis straight, like, people on the planet, though, really underneath at all, right?

• 2:01:15Speaker 05

  Yeah, of course, I agree.

• 2:01:16Yasi Salek?

  Brett Anderson could not be more just heterosexual man. That is what he is. Like, he loves women, he is not, you know, and Justine, and Justine ended up married to a lovely professor in Northern California decorating homes, you know, like, it's, it's all, it's all fascinating.

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• 2:02:34Yasi Salek?

  Okay, so we're broken up. We're still in the band. It's August 2nd of 91 still. And they play a show at the Falcon in Camden. John Mulvey is there from the NME. And he gives them a glowing write-up. This is their first piece of good news since Sway has formed.

• 2:02:58Yasi Salek?

  There has not been any highs. And in the book, I thought it was really funny because Brett was like, "It's so crazy to me that Justine was even still in the band at that time because nothing good happened while she was in the band." But Justine was like, "No, I was still in the band. I remember because Damon was on the cover of Melody Maker and we got the review in the NME that week." Big, big ouch, yeah. And then that, remember that little label that we talked about? That was Matt and Brett's friends from home that were like, "We'll put out your single." Then they saw the NME write-up and they were like, "Great time. We need to put that single out now because we paid for the recording." And they were like, "No, we don't want to." But they did. They put out 500 white labels.

• 2:03:40Yasi Salek?

  Justine was like, "I wrote fuck, fuck and double fuck all over my copies and we dumped 100 of them into a skip." What's a skip, Miranda?

• 2:03:49Speaker 05

  Oh, it's good. So skip is like a, um, it's made of metal. It's like a big bin.

• 2:03:56Yasi Salek?

  Like a dumpster.

• 2:03:58Speaker 05

  Yeah, and it's just outside your house. And like in those days, I mean, you know, people still do it. You could like go skip surfing where you look for free.

• 2:04:06Yasi Salek?

  Sure. Dumpster diving is what we call it here in the good old America. And yeah, she said, "We dumped 100 into a skip." And then a few years later, I saw one going for 70 quid, which was pretty heartbreaking.

• 2:04:18Yasi Salek?

  Um, then they let Ricky Gervais go.

• 2:04:22Speaker 05

  I mean, wise move is what I'm saying.

• 2:04:25Yasi Salek?

  Ricky Ricky was like, I think I made the right decision to follow comedy.

• 2:04:30Yasi Salek?

  So true. And then they met their new manager, this guy named John Edmund through Justin Welsh, because he also managed Spitfire. And he starts like kind of getting them better support slots. And then in October of ninety one, Justine finally leaves the band. Tension had been building, obviously, for various reasons. And then I think one of the final straws was she was like late for a rehearsal because she had been on the set of the video for Bang by Blur, arguably one of the worst Blur songs.

• 2:04:58Speaker 05

  Yeah, and also not a great video.

• 2:05:00Yasi Salek?

  And not a great video, not worth, not really worth it. Bernard did call it the worst song of all time.

• 2:05:07Yasi Salek?

  And Justine was like, yeah, I think it was probably close to one of the worst songs of all time. They play a gig at Yulu, they debut Metal Mickey for the first time.

• 2:05:17Speaker 05

  Excellent song.

• 2:05:19Yasi Salek?

  What a phenomenal song. And that's this show, that's Justine's last show. She kind of says in the car on the way home, like, I don't want to be in this band anymore. And Brett was like, I think she didn't really believe in Suede. She was aware that there were parts of Suede that were great, but it wasn't until she actually left that we managed to completely focus everything and become Suede. And that probably couldn't have happened if she had been in the band, which we've already sort of discussed.

• 2:05:44Speaker 05

  I think Justine didn't really like, you know, that element that is, there's a kind of glam stomp sometimes to Suede. And there's also obviously a lot about a kind of dark city glamour. Uh, a chilly kind of glamour. And I think that that's part of why they're brilliant. But if you fall out of love with that, then you've fallen out of love with Suede. Do you know what I mean?

• 2:06:11Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 2:06:12Speaker 05

  And I think that she was moving in a different direction. But I mean, that's, you know, I I definitely think that that is what Suede is about, really. Even though I do, I have a like, not a theory, but um, I have a thing about Suede. Where I think that, do you know that song Moving on the first album? I think that sounds like Blur. A little bit. I do think.

• 2:06:37Yasi Salek?

  Do you know that Brett Anderson is gonna come to your home?

• 2:06:40Speaker 05

  Not all of it, but there's something about, if you listen to it, there's something about it that's a bit.

• 2:06:46Yasi Salek?

  I do feel moving is an anomaly in the album. It's quite punky and punchy, like, I quite like the song They Hate It, so that. Credence to your, uh, It Sounds Like Blur, although I think Brett Anderson would rather like commit harikari than. That anything that he has to do with sounds anything like Blur. Like, he got really mad because this is getting a little ahead, but. Metal Mickey in the chorus used to be she's so high.

• 2:07:19Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, then it was like she sells meat, which this I wanted to ask you about. There's like a little side conspiracy theory that. It was written about this woman named Jane.

• 2:07:29Speaker 05

  Uh, Jane Oliver.

• 2:07:30Yasi Salek?

  Jane Oliver, who was Justine's best friend, who also apparently Tank Girl was based on. By the way, it's really annoying. You can't find anything about this woman on the internet. I was like.

• 2:07:37Speaker 05

  I will tell you all about her.

• 2:07:39Yasi Salek?

  I'm, uh, I'm like, Tank Girl was based on you, and you know everything about you that's ever existed, but she used to work at a butcher. So they were thinking that maybe it's about her, but Brett said, I'm so fucking sick of Justine implying that Suede were in. Anyway influenced by Chaz and Dave. I thought only Oasis called them that, so that was fun. I have always thought their songs were crap and certainly wouldn't steal any of their meaningless lyrics.

• 2:08:06Yasi Salek?

  You tell me. I really love Justine's, she said this to the enemy two years after she left Suede. I was fed up standing at the back looking like a useless twat when I knew I wasn't. I thought it would be better to be Pete Best. Rather than Linda McCartney.

• 2:08:20Speaker 05

  Correct.

• 2:08:21Yasi Salek?

  It's so good. Yeah. And then it's like, then you wouldn't, it's reframed like that. You're like, yeah, of course she left. Like, this is one. Before we did this episode and I wanted to talk to you about the idea of a muse, because I'm very obsessed with the idea of muses. I think they're really important and I think. Their contribution is often downplayed because muse is a feminine archetype and people don't give credit. To feminine archetypes because credit is a masculine archetype. Anyways, but. Justine's role in, in Suede was a muse role. Like, she wasn't musically contributing. And that wasn't her role, you know, and that's fine, but what she did was, I would argue equally as important to. What Suede was and what Suede became, but.

• 2:09:03Yasi Salek?

  Also, I'm sure at a certain point, you're like, okay, I don't wanna be amused anymore. I wanna go fucking do my own shit.

• 2:09:09Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's weird, cause amused is a kind of, it's not unactive, but you're not making the art.

• 2:09:15Yasi Salek?

  Yes.

• 2:09:16Speaker 05

  You know, you're you're contributing to the thing that might become the art. And I mean, you know, I think that that because you don't make the product, it sounds a bit weird, but you know what I mean? Because you don't come out and say, this is the product and I'm on this product. You're never taken seriously. So if you look at Anita Pallenberg, like fantastic, really interesting. Like exile on Main Street wouldn't happen without her, but she's not the product. So you need to get out and you need to make the thing, or people just will never take you seriously.

• 2:09:45Yasi Salek?

  Because you're working under the tools of the patriarchy. That's that's really my belief. I'm like, the people being taken seriously is within the confines and rules of masculinity, right? Because that's who sets the rules of success and credit.

• 2:10:01Speaker 05

  Um. And also, yeah, I mean, depend, I mean, I, you know, certainly having lived through the nineties, when I look back to the nineties, nineties were really, was really, really fun and I didn't feel disadvantaged being a woman and it was great. But actually, we were all swimming through a kind of sea of sexism. We just didn't know. Like, you don't know. So I can imagine that even within Suede, who are absolutely like not sexist idiots. They're still a little bit like, she's just the rhythm guitarist. She's just like, it's easier like when she's not there, you know?

• 2:10:35Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, yeah. And she she did.

• 2:10:40Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. And now the post Justine era begins, you guys. A band is like any relationship, right? There's a chemistry and you alter it by removing or adding people. And Matt said, I think Bernard completely came out of his shell after Justine left. They were really different people in so many ways. Justine was very clued up and had that kind of confident, social, worldly wisdom that you get from being taken seriously all your life. And Bernard was kind of the opposite. He was a lovely bloke. I lived with him for six months and he's a lovely personality, but he's kind of prickly. He's quite defensive and can be hard to get on with. I found this really interesting and I'm like, oh, this is not only makes total sense, but also portends the future of it where you're like.

• 2:11:23Yasi Salek?

  Bernard had a sort of a deep seated insecurity, right? Like that was just something he carried with him. That was what he brought to the table as a young, he was the youngest member of Suede. He didn't, you know, he wasn't part of their little mate group that had formed. He came from somewhere else that was like maybe a little more provincial.

• 2:11:44Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's also like, I think with, like, there's always that kind of tension in bands about who is the important person in the band.

• 2:11:53Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 2:11:53Speaker 05

  And and obviously Bernard is incredibly, incredibly important. The songs like massively improve. And he's like, you know, if anyone was looking from the outside, who's the genius in the band? It's Bernard Butler, right? So like, that's that kind of standard accepted kind of idea about Suede. And so what happens, I think, when, you know, if Justine goes, then it becomes a more conventional setup. And the argument really is kind of between, you need an argument stroke love affair in all bands. And that love affair is gone. So they, so now it's between like Brett and

• 2:12:28Yasi Salek?

  Exactly.

• 2:12:29Speaker 05

  And and and Bernard.

• 2:12:30Yasi Salek?

  Bernard.

• 2:12:31Speaker 05

  And then what happens is if you know you're the genius, but you're also the youngest and possibly that, yeah, you're like the most insecure, then you you're gonna get more and more prickly because it's really hard. If you're the, you're the really brilliant one. And then actually, you know, people will interview you, but really they're interested in Brett because he does the words.

• 2:12:50Yasi Salek?

  And I'm sorry to say it, that's fair. As maybe I'm biased because I'm more of a wordsmith than having one ounce of musical talent. But that's always my interest in music, you know, I mean, there's a subset of people who are like, I would love to know what arpeggio you used there and what is the chord progression? And can you tell me the pedal setup? And God bless them. But that is a minority where the rest of the people are like, oh my God, what was going on in his head when he wrote this song?

• 2:13:23Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:13:23Yasi Salek?

  What are the ideas? What are the ideas? So, yes, to your point, Brett and Berner grew closer after Justine left, which was great for us because it made better songs. And Justine said she went to the first show after she left and she was like, "It looked so much better. Like, suddenly they were all wearing shirts." I don't know what that means. They didn't wear shirts before, I guess. And it was just four boys on stage and it was much cleaner looking and clearer. They really blew me away. I was like, "Shit, this actually sounds amazing. Fuck, what have I done?"

• 2:13:55Yasi Salek?

  But then she was like, "No, I was sick of it. It was a bad vibe in the band and I had to leave." And then I thought, found this very interesting. At the NME's Christmas issue that year, they included Damon Albarn's, like, "Tips for Bands to Watch" in 1992. And he listed Pulp, The Smashing Pumpkins, and Suede.

• 2:14:12Speaker 05

  Smashing Pumpkins, man, I think he's a bit weird.

• 2:14:13Yasi Salek?

  How dare you, Miranda. On this podcast, we do not malign The Smashing Pumpkins. Billy Corgan, we love Billy Corgan. He is a prickly genius. And, uh, yes. Yes. Okay. Yeah. That man is, that man is a genius. He's, he's made some of the best music of my life. Mayonnaise, babe? You can put on mayonnaise and not feel anything? Drown?

• 2:14:34Speaker 05

  Hmm. The Smashing Pumpkins, leave me cold.

• 2:14:38Yasi Salek?

  Not for you.

• 2:14:39Speaker 05

  Billy is not for me. But like, what I would say also about Damon is Damon, I say Damon is incredibly competitive, and obviously especially around that era. And, but he's not an idiot. I mean, you can see who's good, but also it's a little bit like, "Keep your enemies, enemies close." Do you know what I mean? He was like that about Oasis. You know, it was like, who's, you know, who are the, who are the, who are the, when they came along, who's like, who's the best singer on Oasis? You know what I mean?

• 2:15:03Yasi Salek?

  It really put into perspective for me, doing the Suede research, which I should have done first, honestly, but the Oasis/Blur feud. Because then you just kind of understand that you're like, like you said, this is just Damon's, like, some, everyone has a different motivation in life, and Damon's is competition, right?

• 2:15:21Speaker 05

  Absolutely.

• 2:15:22Yasi Salek?

  I'm sure he has other, but, but like, as soon as Suede was not as much of a going concern, he switched over to, he had to invent, or not invent, I mean, I guess it, it worked for everyone involved. But like, he was like, "Okay, now," and he kind of did a little bit invent that feud, like, he didn't not have a strong hand in it, but like...

• 2:15:40Speaker 05

  Yeah, I think, I mean, I did ask him about it and he had, he does, like, he just is competitive about with other men. Like, he would admit that. He might have mellowed a bit now, but definitely when he was younger, unbelievably so.

• 2:15:52Yasi Salek?

  It worked. Every, again, like we said, everyone has a motivation. Noel Gallagher's was to make money. And, you know, Damon's was competition. Brett's was to channel the divine spirit of, I don't know. He's uh uh has a high-minded, no, but his was also, he also just had ambition, it just wasn't.

• 2:16:13Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:16:13Yasi Salek?

  It seemed, it seemed like Brett Anderson was not concerned. Which I quite admire, where he was like, what other people are doing is none of my fucking business, I don't give a shit, those people don't exist to me.

• 2:16:23Speaker 05

  Exactly, yeah. Yeah, that is really like that.

• 2:16:25Yasi Salek?

  All right, here's a pivotal turning point, you guys, is January of nineteen ninety-two. Suede appears at a show put on by the NME called On for Ninety-Two. I guess it was like the cool, the cool bands of ninety-two, check them out, A and R's. A band called Midway Still, do you know them?

• 2:16:43Speaker 05

  Oh, very vaguely remember them, yeah.

• 2:16:45Yasi Salek?

  Didn't happen for them, I don't think. Fabulous and adorable. Adorable, I have heard, did Adorable sign to Heavenly or Creation? I can't.

• 2:16:52Speaker 05

  I don't remember, so Fabulous was, were um a band that were managed by James Brown.

• 2:16:59Yasi Salek?

  Oh, shout out James Brown, amazing.

• 2:17:03Speaker 05

  There was Martin in there, he was a photographer from the NME. There was Simon Dudfield in there, he was a writer for The Face. They were just nuts, Fabulous. They were like, they had all the ideas, not much of the talent. I used to have a black taxi cab that was my car, and I sold it to Martin from Fabulous, I remember that. And they, they used to drive to gigs in the cab. In fact, there's a picture of the Beastie Boys in my cab.

• 2:17:28Yasi Salek?

  What?

• 2:17:29Speaker 05

  Many years ago. Yeah. But anyway, yeah, Fabulous were funny, but they were never really going anywhere.

• 2:17:34Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it sounds like they didn't. And Adorable went a little further, but not that much. But the point is that at this show, all the A and Rs came to be like, oh, who's hot? Let's do this. Including Saul Galpern, who had, I guess he signed Simply Red and also maybe The Fall.

• 2:17:52Speaker 05

  Yeah, apparently, like, I didn't even know this about Saul, but he's really nice, Saul. I just say he's a really, really nice person.

• 2:17:59Yasi Salek?

  He was starting his own label called Nude Records. And Ricky Gervais actually claims that the only beneficial thing he did for Suede was send out a couple of demos, including one to Saul Galpern, which is why Saul Galpern found his way to this, this event. Saul said, I got there early and there were loads of A and R. Everybody was there. A lot of people at the bar. I think Suede were on first or second. I just remember seeing them and thinking, fucking hell, Jesus Christ. I just couldn't believe it. I was totally blown away. I thought, they must all be watching this. They must all be seeing what I'm seeing. They were so out of flavor with everything that was going on at the time. I thought, he's a star. He's like Brian Ferry. I can't believe how good this is. I guess it was like Alan McGee was there, Andy Ross was there, and he was like, they all, all the A and Rs kind of ignored them.

• 2:18:42Yasi Salek?

  And Saul's theory was like, because they had all kind of been to see Suede before when Justine was in the band and thought they sucked.

• 2:18:48Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:18:49Yasi Salek?

  And so they ignored them and Saul was like, not me, I'm gonna.

• 2:18:52Speaker 05

  Yeah, and also I think Andy Ross definitely couldn't have signed them. Like, there's no way, there's no way he could have signed them. Blur were on their band, like, no way.

• 2:19:00Yasi Salek?

  There was a little goss moment in one of the books, which I cannot corroborate, that did say that Damon, like, Andy Ross spoke to Brett backstage at a show and Damon was like, if you fucking sign them, I'll kill you. Don't even talk.

• 2:19:13Speaker 05

  Yeah, I'm not surprised.

• 2:19:16Yasi Salek?

  So that was not on the table. They got a really great write-up in Melody Maker from this show. It was glowing, this singer is amazing, pantomime horse is amazing, blah, blah, blah. Saul calls them first thing Monday morning and he's like, please, I love you so much. I love to sign you. And they were like, you know, they look a little flattery. They look enthusiasm. Meanwhile, a scout from Island Records called Nigel Coxon was also there, who I think Nigel Coxon also was the guy who signed Pulp. He was kind of, kind of interested and he did this, like, I'll pay for a demo for you guys. And they did a demo with his money, Metal Mickey and the Drowners and pantomime horse and he's dead, but then Island was like, I don't really care.

• 2:19:57Yasi Salek?

  And Saul was like, I care, I care, I'm signing you guys, please. And then he hired two guys that you know, called John Best and Phil Savage.

• 2:20:06Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 2:20:07Yasi Salek?

  Savage and Best PR firm. It sounds like that was, again, the last drop needed for the Suede explosion because they really made it pop off for them.

• 2:20:17Speaker 05

  They were great PRs. So Phil, Phil is now Jane, but at the time, so I'm gonna refer to them as Phil now, like you know.

• 2:20:24Yasi Salek?

  Got it, okay.

• 2:20:25Speaker 05

  She's Jane now. She's Jane now, but she was Phil then. So like Phil was the person that did Suede's PR. They were a great team, John and Phil. So like, they both had really good taste and John was probably a bit calmer than Phil. They were just everywhere and they were really nice and we all really liked them. They knew how to talk to journalists and they knew how to talk to bands and they kind of, you could argue, I mean, we, you know, obviously part of what we've been talking about is would Britpop have happened without Suede? And the answer is kind of no, and it wouldn't have happened, but it kind of wouldn't have happened without Savage and Best.

• 2:21:00Yasi Salek?

  Totally, totally.

• 2:21:02Speaker 05

  Because Savage and Best had really good relationships with all the, all the, all the papers and the Face and Select and everyone. Do you know what I mean? Apart from, you know, they didn't really deal with like The Sun. You know, they didn't deal with, yeah, but like everyone, you know, all the music people, like, we all loved them, they were great.

• 2:21:21Yasi Salek?

  No, they sound super important. It sounds like right away they got the Suede demos sent to Steve Sutherland, who was then the, an assistant editor at Melody Maker. And here's where everything takes a massive turn. Because he was like, I love this, I'm gonna offer you guys a little piece called Sidelines, which is just a short section we have introducing new bands. And they were like, fab, great, we love that, we're a new band. And they go and they do a little photo shoot, do a little interview with Steve. La la la, how cool. They sign their deal with Nude Records, two single deal for three thousand pounds. And. They do a show at the Falcon in the end of February. Morrissey is there, you guys. Okay, again, things are heating up. Why is Morrissey at your show? Because you're hot, because you're hot and cool.

• 2:22:07Yasi Salek?

  And Kirsty McCallum, they were like, wow, this is amazing. Then, this is not important at all, you guys, but I just wanted to point it out for the people like me who are like, I cannot believe this was a real show and I didn't get to go to it. March thirteenth, Suede opens for the Catherine Wheel and Radiohead.

• 2:22:27Yasi Salek?

  I would give one of my kidneys, just one whole kidney, if I could just go to that show.

• 2:22:34Speaker 05

  That's so funny. I mean, yeah, it would be great, you know, I'm caught, you can remember if it was that.

• 2:22:38Yasi Salek?

  Maybe, yeah, you were like, maybe I was there, I don't know.

• 2:22:43Yasi Salek?

  But then, it's the end of March, and they're like, hey, let's go pick up that Melody Maker that we have this small little piece in. No, bitch. They're on the fucking cover. They're on the cover of Melody Maker. And they're like, I'm sorry, what? Why are we? And it says, Suede, the best new band in Britain. I want to reemphasize that this band has not released one single note of music besides those five hundred white labels, one fifth of which were put into a dumpster. So, Miranda, what did, did you, obviously you remember this historic moment. What did you guys make of this? Was everyone like, who's Suede?

• 2:23:22Speaker 05

  No, I mean, we weren't who's Suede, but what I thought was, which is, I'm sure true. So Steve Sutherland, he ended up editing the Melody Maker and then eventually he ended, ended up editing the NME. There was huge rivalry between Melody Maker and NME. And NME were generally perceived, I would say, as more important and slightly cooler. And, um, Melissa, that's annoying. If you're Melody Maker, that's really fucking annoying. So I think, Steve Sutherland was a very enthusiastic kind of person, you know, like a Labrador. And, uh, he, he, I think, would have argued that this band is really, really great. I think they're really brilliant. We should do something about, what, what are we for? What are we for? We're for the new bands, you know, this is what, this is what it's about.

• 2:24:07Speaker 05

  Why don't we put them on the cover? And it's stealing a march on the NME. It's saying, we know. Like, we know, we're brave enough to do this. You're not even brave enough to do this. You're just putting Billy Corgan on the cover.

• 2:24:19Yasi Salek?

  How dare you?

• 2:24:22Yasi Salek?

  But no, I get it. I get it. So it it was like they were at war.

• 2:24:26Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:24:27Yasi Salek?

  And also, it sounds to me like it was a big mark of honor to own a band that would go on to be really successful. And so Steve Southern was really putting all his chips on Suede. He was like, I think they're gonna be a big band and I want everyone to know that Melody Maker was about this life first.

• 2:24:44Speaker 05

  Absolutely. And on one level, yeah, you're right. Like, we're talking about it. He was correct.

• 2:24:49Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, so this is a huge deal. This is the first band, I think, in history to be on the cover of Melody Maker without any music released, if you don't count the white label. There's a big article about it. You guys can read it. There's actually a wonderful Suede fan site called insatiableones.co.uk that has almost all of their articles and press. I just want to read one line of it that I I found important, which is, "They don't sing about trees and clouds." That's a dig at shoegaze. And I'm guessing, because shoegaze was pretty popular at this time. "They don't want to be American." Incredibly important.

• 2:25:25Speaker 05

  Very important.

• 2:25:27Yasi Salek?

  Because we are now, we're, we talked about this. We're setting the seeds of Britpop and the backlash against grunge.

• 2:25:33Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:25:34Yasi Salek?

  And they don't attempt to pass off apathy as psychedelia, which I think the apathy was also like a pretty big hallmark of grunge, but maybe that's another.

• 2:25:42Speaker 05

  It's also slightly, I think, a little bit kind of post, it's a little bit baggy. You know what I mean? It's a bit of an attack on baggy, like a bit like shuffling grooves, flares, indie dance, you know?

• 2:25:55Yasi Salek?

  So then the day after the Melody Maker cover, their song goes on Radio One. Miranda, can you explain how big of a deal that is? That's a big deal, right?

• 2:26:03Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's like Radio One is like, so it's like a national radio station. It's the BBC, so kind of nationally funded. And it's the youth radio station. And at the time, it's very mainstream. It's just really, really mainstream. So like you would, you know, Madonna would be on there. Not that Madonna isn't, you know, Madonna isn't always mainstream. But like, you know, you would have an American, probably at that time, it would be kind of, I don't know, Madonna simply read maybe a bit of of that kind of, it's just mainstream music. So to have, for that to be picked out as a first single from a band, that's quite unusual.

• 2:26:39Yasi Salek?

  It's definitely in several of the researchers I've done that they don't get a song on Radio One for a long time. Like, it's a thing that they keep trying to do and they're like, please, please. Can you get it on here? Like, I don't with pulp, that was a thing. The Radio One, I was like, nah.

• 2:26:53Speaker 05

  Yeah, and it might have been, you know, because the pluggers were changing and the pluggers were always pretty good. And so if it was on Radio One, I'd like, I can't remember if it was on, you know, if it got played on John Peel, that's slightly different. But it's like-

• 2:27:04Yasi Salek?

  It didn't. Yeah, it didn't. Went straight just to regular ass.

• 2:27:07Speaker 05

  To a regular, normal Radio One list.

• 2:27:09Yasi Salek?

  And it wasn't even out. It was The Drowners and the single hadn't even come out yet. It was a promo.

• 2:27:14Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's, I mean, it is. Yeah, it's unprecedented.

• 2:27:18Yasi Salek?

  It's really wild. So Simon is quits his job at Yulu. Matt quits his job doing subtitling at the BBC. And Bernard, who was still in uni, about to take his exams, goes to his tutor and shows him the Melody Maker and is like, this is my first big thing. I'm not gonna pass my exams. And the tutor was like, good luck. Fifteen years ago, a young man called Bruce Dickinson came to my office and he told me he had to go on tour with his band, Iron Maiden. He did okay. I love that little story. This tutor, man. Now it is time for the first single finally to come out. We've already been on the cover of Melody Maker, we're already on the radio. But The Drowners, the first official Suede single, comes out May 11th, 1992,

• 2:28:03Yasi Salek?

  produced by Ed Bueller, who was Saul Galpern's mate. Let's talk a little bit about Drowners. Goddamn gorgeous, beautiful song. Fucking go crazy.

• 2:28:10Speaker 05

  Isn't it good? I love it. It's really good.

• 2:28:12Yasi Salek?

  So good. It's that drumbeat that we talked about in the beginning. It just grabs you.

• 2:28:17Speaker 05

  Yeah, it completely announces itself, doesn't it? Like, it's even now, it announce that says, okay, we're here. Like, what are you gonna do about it? It's just great.

• 2:28:33Yasi Salek?

  Brett is fucking phenomenal at opening lines. And this one, Won't Someone Give Me A Gun? Bye. I'm in.

• 2:28:41Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:28:41Yasi Salek?

  I'm hooked.

• 2:28:42Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:28:49Yasi Salek?

  And then the gender ambiguity, obviously, in this one, We Kiss in His Room to a popular tune. This sets off what's gonna be the discourse around Suede for quite some time.

• 2:29:01Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:29:01Yasi Salek?

  Which is, what is the sexuality of Brett Anderson? And why is he singing about blokes?

• 2:29:08Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, it's like, it's also weird because the assumption is it's always he's singing about himself.

• 2:29:13Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:29:13Speaker 05

  Like, it seemed to me like it was about, it's about yearning and love, isn't it? And it's about, like, what's gonna, you know, what's gonna happen?

• 2:29:22Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, well, here's, here's a little tid. It was based loosely around Brett's time spent with a Canadian girl called Laura. And here's what she said about her. She lived in a squat just opposite Victoria Park in Hackney, in a huge crumbling house that today is probably worth millions, but in the nineties smelled of cat food and patchouli, and was infested by tribes of speeding Doc Martin booted goth girls in stripey tights and shambling crusties with nose rings.

• 2:29:48Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, you know, I remember that era.

• 2:29:51Yasi Salek?

  Same, I'm like obsessed with this girl. She's like, yeah, she was really into tarot cards and incense and hole. And I'm like, that sounds like my, that's a girl that I would be good friends with. Except for the stripey tights, a little bit, it's giving a little bit steampunk witch store, but.

• 2:30:04Speaker 05

  It's just slightly crusty.

• 2:30:06Yasi Salek?

  It's a very crusty, the whole thing. We'll start talking about it now, and we'll keep talking about it, but a B-side, Suede also, I think they modeled themselves a bit again after The Smiths, which, once again, I'm like, you guys, we saw what happened. Why did you take heed? They were like, we wanna have amazing B-sides. So they put some of their best songs, not on the album, but as B-sides to singles, like my insatiable one, is on, is a B-side on here.

• 2:30:36Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:30:36Yasi Salek?

  Which is, also has a, uh, gender ambiguity element. Brett said this, that he was very inspired by Bob Dylan, specifically his favorite Dylan song, North County Blues, where Dylan inhabits the persona of a 19th century miner's wife. So he kind of took on his side, songwriting as like, taking on personas, like. A housewife, or whatever. This song in particular actually is, I believe, written from the perspective of Justine.

• 2:31:05Speaker 05

  Yeah, I didn't know that, actually. Yeah, I think that is interesting.

• 2:31:08Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, he said it in um the Love and Poison book. So people always assume that I'm writing about a man, but it's not. The song was seen as this hugely homoerotic anthem. It's completely misconstrued. Even the lyrics were misquoted. It's supposed to be more of a song about sadness. It was written from someone else's point of view. It's a song about me through her eyes, and he's talking about Justine.

• 2:31:26Speaker 05

  Ah, yeah, okay, yeah. That makes sense, isn't it?

• 2:31:36Speaker 05

  I think that's quite astute, isn't it? That Insatiable One element. Because obviously, his fan, the the fans of Suede are now like, you know, one of the ways that they might refer to themselves is the Insatiable Ones.

• 2:31:48Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 2:31:49Speaker 05

  Brett, like, as we will discover, is slightly an insatiable character. Like, there's not much, despite his kind of like naturally darker appearance, like, if you ever see him live, like, even now, he's like, uh, he's like possessed, completely possessed. Like, he's so elegant and so intelligent and so lovely, and then onstage, he's feral, man. He's like mad. And and I would say, but, you know, obviously, that it's not probably not really my position to say, but I would say that he had a kind of taste for getting out of it that was very, very, very strong. That was pretty insatiable, you know? And like, it's like, it's a tendency to push himself to extremes.

• 2:32:32Yasi Salek?

  Right. I think that's well documented. I think you can say that. I think he would probably admit to to that as well. So these these first songs, there's also a third song on this, To the Birds, which to me is not quite as important or as interesting, but I feel like with The Drowners and with My Insatiable One, specifically with The Drowners, you get the like, for me, what is the quintessential, at least in like the first Suede album, starts out really dark and menacing, and then the chorus comes in and it's this like buoyant, lilting moment. And it's such a, it's, it works. They do it a bunch of times.

• 2:33:11Speaker 05

  Yeah, they do. And it's really tuneful. Like, as soon as you say that's, as soon as you say it, like, I can sing that in my head. It's a very beautiful tune. Do you know what I mean? I can hear it completely. I can hear the drums. I can hear all of it, but I can hear. You know, you can hear the lift of the of the of the chorus.

• 2:33:41Yasi Salek?

  It works very well on me. I'm very subtle to this where it's like it's like a bittersweet moment where it's like you feel this lift, but you can tell there's such like a darkness in it. So it just it hits so hard right in right here, right in the heart, guys.

• 2:33:54Speaker 05

  I was glad you like it.

• 2:33:55Yasi Salek?

  Suede album one is my dog. That's my ride or die. Fucking love it. Dogman star, I like a lot. You start to lose me after that a little bit. I'm not gonna lie to you. We'll get into it.

• 2:34:10Yasi Salek?

  Morrissey also covered the Insatiable on on his nineteen ninety-two world tour, which was just that same year. So he also liked it. It did great. Both the papers named it single of the week. We're fucking cooking with gas.

• 2:34:25Yasi Salek?

  Around this time, I'm not saying it's related. I'm just saying in the timeline, this is the time about a month later that Justine and Justin Welch, who now lives with Matt, decided to form a band with Damon on bass at this time. Justine said, when they actually got somewhere, Suede, it made me feel a lot better about everything because I just thought there's a light at the end of the tunnel. At the end of the day, if you persevere for long enough, you do get somewhere if you're any good. And I think that was one of the reasons I felt encouraged to go back.

• 2:34:55Speaker 05

  Also, it's a bit of a fuck you in it. Like, yeah, it's like, obviously, yeah. But also, like, you're like, okay, shit, I was in a band and now they're successful.

• 2:35:05Yasi Salek?

  I know.

• 2:35:05Speaker 05

  I better get another one going.

• 2:35:07Yasi Salek?

  This was this is again, Justine, I'm sorry if this is weird. You're not listening to this. You're living your beautiful life in Northern California and looking gorgeous in a dress somewhere probably. But like, I I'm like, this is exactly how I would be. If my ex-boyfriend and my new boyfriend were fucking popping off on the fucking, you know, music tip and the or I'd be like, bye, see you later. I'm going to fucking rehearsal. Fuck both of you. I'm not going to be the only do nothing in this fucking triad. Watch me. And then she did. She kind of put them. She kind of put them both to shame, if we're going to be honest, in terms of at least like first album. She really she knocked everyone right out of the park. Okay. They play Reading, that's a big deal. Then Metal Mickey comes out.

• 2:35:48Yasi Salek?

  September fourteenth nineteen ninety-two. These first, these being your first two singles? Bitch, stop. Are you kidding? What are you talking about? These per- two perfect singles? Do you love Metal Mickey like I love Metal Mickey?

• 2:35:59Speaker 05

  It's funny because ob- obviously for this, I listened to Suede again. And I was like, man, like you forget, they're just, they're really, really, really good. They're really good. Their songs are so strong, like, you know, you can't, you can't deny them.

• 2:36:15Yasi Salek?

  It's so good. Bernard said that his musical inspiration for it was the Shoop Shoop song that was famously remade by Cher in the film Mermaids in nineteen ninety, great movie. And it does have that kind of like bounciness to it. I don't know how to explain it. Like, it's a pop song. I guess that's, maybe that's what.

• 2:36:33Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:36:34Yasi Salek?

  Brett, we haven't even spoken about it, but Brett's lyrics, like, not, oh dad, she's driving me mad, although that's a phenomenal lyric. He does use words that are not common, you know, we used in lyrics, like even insatiable, like in the Drowners or some, he, he has like a, I mean, obviously from reading his books, he has a vast vocabulary and a love for the English language. But po- that's part of what I really love about Suede is like, there's all these like unexpected words that pop up in his lyrics.

• 2:37:02Speaker 05

  It's, I think the, the lyric, oh dad, she's driving me mad. That's just, it's funny. Like, that's a funny lyric.

• 2:37:20Yasi Salek?

  So anyways, we talked about this. Justine was like, oh, it had shoes so high, it's a dig at me. And then people thought it was about Jane Oliver because of the, she sells heart, she sells meat. But according to Brett, it is about a band called Daisy Chainsaw, specifically the vocalist Katie Jane Garside.

• 2:37:39Speaker 05

  Oh, that's quite interesting.

• 2:37:40Yasi Salek?

  She, he said that was the only contemporary band that he had time for. The B-side to this was when the pigs don't fly, which was written about those days with his third friend Simon taking the mushrooms. He was basically talking about a town where even the pigs don't fly. Um, it's a boring town. He says it, he's really preoccupied with animals and the animalistic. I guess, I mean, you know, his sexuality, the animalistic, you know. This song charts at number seventeen on the UK Singles Chart, big deal. First real hit, and then they do Top of the Pops. They are the first unsigned band to play Top of the Pops. You guys, do yourself a favor, Ben. Go over to youtube.com, type in Suede Metal Mickey Top of the Pops,

• 2:38:25Yasi Salek?

  and just live for a little while, because it's giving, babe. Brett's country bob, by just swinging it around, his generous flashes of nipple, like, from that shirt just coming out. Also, the rest of them, more of a country lob on them, but really lovely, just swinging. They're just looking like it's glam, it's seventies, it's rock, it's swagger, like, hair, sexual smell, dangerous, like, ugh, you see all of it there. Apparently, all of Simon's friends thought Brett was a woman when they watched it.

• 2:38:57Speaker 05

  Excellent, but Bernard's use of his hair always.

• 2:39:01Yasi Salek?

  The whipping?

• 2:39:02Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:39:03Yasi Salek?

  This Top of the Pops will bring you energy and life, and it will arouse in you the feelings of why we used to be a proper society, and now we're not anymore, and we don't have this.

• 2:39:14Speaker 05

  But, I mean, that's just the demise of Top of the Pops. Since the demise of the Top of the Pops society, it's crumbled.

• 2:39:18Yasi Salek?

  All of it, all of it, yes, culture, maybe that's where we can trace it back to. We need Top of the Pops back. They got the cover of NME this week as well, but it's only Brett. We're gonna start to sow the seeds of Bernard leaving right, right here, right from the beginning. So, they shot Brett, and it's only Brett, not because they wanted only Brett, but because they shot with a crucifix. The headline was "The Godlike Genius of Suede", but Bernard was Catholic.

• 2:39:44Speaker 05

  Yeah, an Irish Catholic.

• 2:39:45Yasi Salek?

  An Irish Catholic, and he was like, "I will not be photographed with a crucifix. That is ungodly." And then known as Phil Savage was like, yeah, so it was just Brett. And then Bernard wasn't very happy, but Bernard refused to be photographed with the cross. And I know that magazines hone in on the singer because of the attention span of the audience. It's just too fickle to make it work any other way. But maybe that was the first seed of doubt in Bernard's mind. That it wasn't really working with him being in Suede because so many journalists were writing about lyrics. And were saying what a great guitarist Bernard was, but not in so much depth.

• 2:40:19Speaker 05

  Yeah, and it's also just, I mean, I think generally, uh, Britain.

• 2:40:23Yasi Salek?

  Hmm.

• 2:40:23Speaker 05

  Is a word based society, like.

• 2:40:27Yasi Salek?

  That's right, that's my people. That's why I want to move there. Those are my people.

• 2:40:30Speaker 05

  But it is, so like it's, and it's also slightly easy, you know, writing about music is hard. Obviously, we know that. And uh, and it's, you know, lyrics are something that we can latch on to. In a way, because music mostly is expressing the inexpressible, isn't it? So like, you, you, it's very hard to, to, you know, we can say, you know, with the drowners. That Simon's drums kind of makes it like announces it and it makes us feel in a certain way. But you know, we like, it, it's quite basic ways you can kind of unpick words much more. And I just think that that's, it's easier as a journalist to latch on to the words and then understand what the point of the, of the band is. It's hard to write about guitars, sounds.

• 2:41:12Speaker 05

  You can say that they really move you, but like, actually, I think the guitar exists because to say the stuff that you can't say. Like, you know, that's the point of music, you know? But I mean, I know that makes it sound like I'm like, kind of like, hey, he's a music writer who doesn't actually want to write about music. But it's partly because music is doing the work for you really. Whereas you can unpick the words more.

• 2:41:36Yasi Salek?

  You know, I, I couldn't agree more. And also, I'm just not that, I've never been, I don't even know what I'm talking about. We've said this on the show many times, but if I ever say the word chord progression, I'm doing cosplay, I'm doing theater. Because I don't know what that is. But with pop music. The audience is not, they're not musicians for the most part. They're just people who enjoy feeling and music and art or whatever. And they don't care what the guitar is doing per se. Unfortunately, like it's not really important to them. They care how they feel. And and when and they wanna know why you made it this way to make them feel that way, or I do anyway.

• 2:42:16Yasi Salek?

  And that and and it doesn't mean that, I mean, it doesn't mean that Bernard isn't also expressing feelings and ideas through his guitar work. Of course he is. So like, it's just that maybe that's not, like you said, it's not as easy to write about or talk about or ask questions about even. Yeah. Then in December, Brett does the infamous Melody Maker cover with Leslie Rankin of Silverfish. And then they do this big interview with a bunch of other people, right? I believe Boy George is part of it. But they ask him, what is your point of view? You've never really said. And Brett says the very famous line that will follow him for a long time. I see myself as a bisexual man who's never had a homosexual experience.

• 2:43:00Yasi Salek?

  That's the way I approach my songwriting. Now, most people just went ahead and lobbed off that last end and only fixated on the other part. Yeah. He was very clearly talking about songwriting, but I think there was so much gender ambiguity in the lyrics and people were and and in his presentation and people were hungry for an answer. Do you remember this interview coming out?

• 2:43:24Speaker 05

  I mean vaguely, he did become very associated with that quote, and I remember him being associated with the quote. And um what I would say is masculinity and femininity really throughout the nineties was being kind of picked at a bit, I would say, like those kind of stereotypes. And that's partly because we'd had the eighties and in the eighties in Britain, we'd had like Boy George and people like that. So like. There was a kind of shifting around uh conventional presentations of gender, I would say, but also like it's quite. I believe myself that Britain in general kind of likes.

• 2:44:07Speaker 05

  A non macho man, like we quite like, we really like drag, we like. Like, we really like gay men, like we always have done, like everything about pantomime is like that, we're quite uh. Like, I'm always very shocked when people think that, like, uh when homophobia exists in British society, because I'm like, we are like absolutely a gay society, what are you talking about? Like, it's so weird to me, but I think that we, that Brett, because he wasn't straightforwardly. Conventionally masculine, then more conventional people would be like, well, you know, he must be gay, he's got a blouse on.

• 2:44:43Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 2:44:43Speaker 05

  You know what I mean? It's like, kind of like, as basic as that, but also, like, I think it's quite sexy, you know, like, he he is. Quite a sexy person, and I think he was trying to make a point about songwriting, but his sexuality as presented. Was available to young gay men as well as straight women. There's a kind of dark and like insatiable, exciting sexuality about him that is not conventionally. Boringly macho, he's sexy, but not like that, so I think that that then spun out, because you're conscious of that. You know, people, you can tell he's sexy, even if you don't fancy himself, you can feel that sexiness, and I think that that then spins this quote out a bit.

• 2:45:27Yasi Salek?

  I agree with everything you said, and I also just wanna tip my hat to him, because I think it's really cool that. He refused to engage, like, he refused to give a solid answer, and it wasn't. I think they were accused a lot of like gay baiting, which is a word that we didn't really have back then, but. To me, reading interviews and like understand, try a little bit trying to understand this person by like obviously like reading all the books and stuff is like, I think it's almost like revolutionary or whatever to just be like, it doesn't matter. Like, why are you guys so obsessed with it? Like, it doesn't matter which sexuality I am. Like,

• 2:46:07Yasi Salek?

  why do I have to, it kind of in in a inverted way, the way Morrissey was, although I can't pretend to get into the head of Morrissey or why he was doing that, but like, I kind of respect it. And also, especially when you add the layer of like, Simon, the drummer of the band was gay.

• 2:46:23Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:46:24Yasi Salek?

  You know? And I think, you know, which Suede was very, he came out to them and right away, I think and Suede was like, cool. Like they weren't, you know, they're like, awesome. He does this over and over again in interviews where like, I could imagine if you're the interviewer, like, and Brett Anderson said this to me, I would feel like such a fucking idiot where he's just like, this is not, this is a stupid question. Like, this is.

• 2:46:47Speaker 05

  Well, it is a stupid fucking question. Sorry. It is a stupid question. It's like he's, he is somebody who's trying to write from different, lots of different perspectives. He is a sexy person. Like, he is sexy. Like, if you looked at the fans at that time in the front row.

• 2:47:04Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:47:05Speaker 05

  Who were trying to rip off his secondhand blouse and they were, they were all trying to do it. It was boys and girls. Of course it was. Like, come on. Like, that doesn't really matter. And it doesn't matter who he fancies. They fancy him. Like, they're throwing themselves on him as a sexy person, as a sexy alternative person. And so I think that that it's almost like kind of welcoming people in a little bit.

• 2:47:31Yasi Salek?

  I totally agree. So now it's nineteen ninety-three. We're finally playing our first shows outside of the British Isles in France. Pulp, Pulp opens for one. Then, February thirteenth, the Brett Awards. And Suede perform Animal Nitrate. Were you there, Mar?

• 2:47:48Speaker 05

  So good. It's so good. Isn't it good? Have you watched it on YouTube? Isn't it amazing?

• 2:47:54Yasi Salek?

  It's amazing. First of all, you guys, the best part for me, and I can't even imagine people watching how, well, number one, this is not a single, so it's not even out yet. This is most people's introduction to it. Brett Anderson, his signature move at this time was to take the mic and slap it on his ass. It's gorgeous, wonderful. But because of, like, on Top of the Pops, it doesn't matter, because that's not live, there's no sound. But on this, you hear it, the whole time, what you hear is pop, pop.

• 2:48:23Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:48:31Yasi Salek?

  They sound like shit, to be honest. That's, that's not the point. Like, Bernard's out of tune. It doesn't matter. They look so cool. The whole thing is so cool. I live, did you watch it in real time? Were you there? Were you on TV?

• 2:48:42Speaker 05

  I was not there. Um, I didn't start to enter the Brit Awards and say, like, there's no way somebody like me would have been invited to the Brit Awards then. Do you know what I mean? Then they shifted. Actually, during the nineties, they shifted to think, oh, my God, we've got to change. The Brit Awards were rea- I cannot tell you how naff they were. Like, they were terrible. Naff, rubbish.

• 2:48:59Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:49:00Speaker 05

  Uncool, terrible. Like, presented by idiots, the, like, the, the, and incompetently, no glitz. Like, if you look to American awards ceremonies, you might think they were boring, but they were like high-end glamour. Like, always, you know, like, and this was like, naff, they gave all the awards to the wrong people.

• 2:49:21Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 2:49:22Speaker 05

  Boring. It was like being at head girl and head boy ceremony. It was absolutely rubbish. And then they came on and they're like, they're outrageous. They're absolutely outrageous. I love it. And you could see all those at the Brit Awards always. I mean, I think still now, it's, obviously, there's loads of lawyers there. Like, that's what I remember the first time I went to the Brit Awards, which was sometime during the nineties. I remember looking around thinking, who are all these people? I don't know them. Like, I don't know why I thought I would know them, but I think I thought I knew everyone in the music industry.

• 2:49:51Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:49:51Speaker 05

  Of course I didn't. I just knew lots of people in the indie music industry. And everybody was a bald, middle-aged guy. Of course, it's lawyers, managers.

• 2:50:00Yasi Salek?

  Absolutely.

• 2:50:00Speaker 05

  People who make money, accountants. Yeah. And then there's this band, skinny, fantastic. You know, their buttocks are like Satsumas, they're tiny.

• 2:50:12Speaker 05

  And then whopping his own bum. It's so great.

• 2:50:16Yasi Salek?

  Wearing a slutty little blouse.

• 2:50:17Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:50:19Yasi Salek?

  So amazing. Yeah, this is, I think he said that I thought all these people were a bunch of prats. These fucking showbiz stupid idiots like Cher. I guess Cher was at this one. We respect Cher in this house, but I understand what Brett Anderson is saying.

• 2:50:31Speaker 05

  He's wrong about that.

• 2:50:33Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, he's wrong about, he's wrong about that. But he said, I think one of the reasons that animal nitrate crossed over was that we had broken out of the pages of the enemy into real people's living rooms. Because the Brit Awards were mainstream. This is past indie. Now you're like.

• 2:50:44Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:50:45Yasi Salek?

  Everyone is at home watching. The next month, no, same month, actually. Brett is on the cover of the enemy with David Bowie. I'm sorry, the dream, the career, the dream career just keeps giving. It's like, here you are. Here's Top of the Pops. Here's a hit single. Now you get to talk to David Bowie on the cover. Just one, Steve Sutherland, uh, set this up. I guess he sent the pre-released album to Bowie, being like, I think you would like this. And David Bowie said, of all the tapes you've ever sent me, this is the only one that I knew was instantly great.

• 2:51:20Speaker 05

  Isn't that good? But he's not wrong.

• 2:51:22Yasi Salek?

  He's not wrong. And then they have this, you guys can read it again, insatiableones.co.uk, but they have this like amazing talk. They talk about scenes. They talk about glam. Bowie calls Alice Cooper Elizabeth Cooper. They also both talk about being fake bisexuals a bit. They talk really ahead of their time about Morrissey's racism. Then there's an iconic line from David Bowie where he says, I didn't get into Crowley, Aleister Crowley, by the way, because he uses too much Greek. I've always been very suspicious of anyone who says they're into Crowley because they better have a pretty fair handle on Greek and Latin. Otherwise they're talking bullshit.

• 2:51:59Speaker 05

  Okay, that's us told.

• 2:52:01Yasi Salek?

  It's just so specific. I loved it.

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• 2:53:08Yasi Salek?

  All right, it's March 29th, 1993, you guys. It's time. Suede's debut album, self-titled "Suede", has come out.

• 2:53:15Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:53:16Yasi Salek?

  Before we get into the album, Miranda, do you feel that those two Suede singles kicked off Britpop? Like, was that the beginning of Britpop? Or was that a little too early?

• 2:53:28Speaker 05

  So what's interesting is I think we can argue that, yes, you're right, definitely. Because there's different aspects to Britpop. So there's the, like, the sound, which I think that people would not weirdly associate Suede with that sound. Their reference points are slightly different from what we might think of a conventional pop reference. But what I think that they did do, which is what, in the end, Britpop was about, is they didn't compromise at all. And they somehow, without compromising and with making the music they wanted to and looking for the limelight, which they were, they got big. And that was the kind of weird thing about Britpop. All these bands

• 2:54:12Speaker 05

  Whichever one you wanna pick as a Britpop band, kind of shouldn't have been as big as they were. Like, that that was a big surprise because they didn't compromise. And they all had someone in them who wanted to step into the spotlight, definitely. Like, you can say that of anyone, like, e- even if you don't think, these are people that I consider to be part of that scene. Who are not conventionally Britpop, like PJ Harvey or someone like, you know, like, she is. You know, she's an art genius, but she wants that spotlight. I've talked to her about it, she wants it, and so does Brett, and so does Damon, and so does Liam, and so does Jarvis, and so does everyone. So does Justine, they want, they wanna be on top of the pops, they wanna talk to some shit, they wanna have their photograph taken.

• 2:54:55Speaker 05

  And that's really, really important and, but they're also not cheesy, they come from a kind of art rock or a belief in music. Of being an alternative and beautiful medium art form. And so they haven't compromised on what they are in order to come into that spotlight, and it shouldn't have happened. They should have been smaller, they shouldn't have got onto Radio One, they shouldn't have really got onto top of the pops, they shouldn't have been on the Brits. Because, you know, that's not what happened, it didn't happen to the Smiths or or New Order or anyone like that, it just shouldn't have happened, do you know what I mean?

• 2:55:29Yasi Salek?

  I don't want to be America-centric, USA, USA.

• 2:55:33Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 2:55:34Yasi Salek?

  I do kind of feel that Nirvana changed everything around the world. Again, it's a very funny distinction though, because you're really pointing out the difference between Britpop and grunge, it's just that grunge was very much like. Please don't look at me, don't put me on MTV, I don't wanna be on the car, like, I don't wanna be famous, but I do wanna be famous, I don't wanna be famous. They had a really complicated relationship with it, but once Nirvana, who was never supposed to be famous.

• 2:56:01Speaker 05

  Yeah, completely.

• 2:56:02Yasi Salek?

  Was never supposed to be a number one record, was never, my mom is not supposed to know who Nirvana is, do you know what I mean? But like, once that happened, I feel like the whole world changed, because Nirvana was also probably just as big in the UK, right?

• 2:56:15Speaker 05

  I absolutely agree.

• 2:56:17Yasi Salek?

  And then, then it was possible.

• 2:56:19Speaker 05

  Yeah, I completely agree. Yeah, and for two reasons as well, really. So obviously Kurt Cobain, I mean, look at him, please. Absolutely gorgeous, like amazing for photographs, but also. Smells like teen spirit is an absolutely universal song. Like you can play that to. You can play it to anyone. Everyone knows that is a great song. It's completely universal.

• 2:56:38Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:56:39Speaker 05

  And it's an alternative song that is completely universal and that is. Exciting. And then the other thing that happened with Kurt Cobain, and this is to do with the British press. Not the music press, but the British press generally is that when he died. They just didn't get it. They were like, what is going on? Like, I can remember where I was when he died. I can remember who I phoned. I can remember, like, it was really, really important. We were really shocked and really upset and. Papers, the newspapers, whatever, whether they were broadsheets or whether they were tabloids. Were just completely taken by surprise. They were like, why are all these young people crying? What is going on? We don't understand them. And they started employing people like me. Like I got employed by The Observer because they were like, we don't understand this. We need to understand it, right? And it's the same.

• 2:57:24Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:57:24Speaker 05

  Kind of the same with the tabloids, except that because after after grunge and when Britpop happened. The stars that you were looking at were in Camden.

• 2:57:34Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:57:35Speaker 05

  Like literally, you didn't have to go to LA.

• 2:57:37Yasi Salek?

  No.

• 2:57:37Speaker 05

  You didn't have to go to Seattle.

• 2:57:38Yasi Salek?

  They were at the, what is it called? The the Good Luck Bar, the good, what is the place called?

• 2:57:42Speaker 05

  Good Mixer. They were in the Good Mixer. They were literally, they were like, they were collapsed drunk. In the street. Like, you know, and if once they got a bit of money, they moved, ooh, all of about like a mile to Primrose Hill. Like, it's like, they were there. So there there was suddenly this access to these people. That they realised would would sell papers that were interesting, that with the things were going on. And the music was taking over as well. So like. I do think, yeah, Nirvana definitely changed everything because it upped the ante for every alternative band. It was like you can be big. You know?

• 2:58:18Yasi Salek?

  So the cover image of the Suede album is taken from a 1991 book called Stolen Glances, Lesbians Take Photographs. And the photograph was taken by a woman called T. Corinne, and actually, it's two women kissing. And in its entirety, it actually shows a woman kissing another woman who's in a wheelchair. They wanted to use the full image, but the photographer said no because she thought it would compromise the anonymity of the women. Here's the inspiration. I feel like the inspiration came from two places. Number one, London. Matt said, "London was a touchstone for everyone in the band." So the album became about us being placed in this city of sex, drugs, and poverty after living in these suburban satellite towns. London is full

• 2:59:03Yasi Salek?

  of a certain kind of arts professional, people in bands whose parents bought them guitars when they were 12 and went to state school. The sense in all of us was that we wanted to get revenge on all of that as the underclass outsider punks. We wanted Suede to be a pop record in the way that Pretenders Stop Your Sobbing is a pop record.

• 2:59:20Speaker 05

  I mean, we talked about it a little bit, but the idea of coming to London to find yourself is just really, really important. And also, the idea of a place where you can kind of realize what you want, but what you want isn't kind of like, you know, a conventional job and stuff like that. It's a kind of dark glamour. London was really, really important for that. And a kind of, there's a kind of desperation about Suede, which I think is, comes from being, from not being the person that Matt just said, from not having somebody say, you know what, why didn't, I'll give you a guitar for your 12th birthday and you can, you can be in a band, darling. It's like, from having no alternative, from thinking, I don't, what can I do? I'm not qualified to do anything.

• 3:00:03Yasi Salek?

  Town and country planning.

• 3:00:05Speaker 05

  Yeah. This is it. You know, I have the romance in my heart, and I have my good looks. And that is it. That's what I've got.

• 3:00:13Yasi Salek?

  It is so interesting because this album came out just like two months before Modern Life is Rubbish, right? Which is another quintessential Britpop album that is also directly inspired by London. But what a different outcome. Like, what a different sound, what a different feeling, because it's put through two different prisms, right? The prism of Brett Anderson and Suede, and the prism of Damon Albarn and Blur are so different. Blur got a lot of flak, right, for this sort of... Taking on of the persona of a uh Oi Mister Yumi Mava um Cockney when they weren't and whatever. But these bands are all doing their own version of that, right?

• 3:00:58Yasi Salek?

  So did Brett, right? I mean, he just said I took on different personas, right? So it's like, but tha- then it really strikes me because it's. I'm always struck when you can hear a British accent in music because it's rare, right? It's, I don't, there was a whole fucking thing on NPR once I heard about like, why? When people sing, they all sound American. It's like a way of singing, like even the Beatles, right? Like you couldn't not always make out, but when, when Brett Anderson sings, he sounds extremely British accented. Like you hear it, but he's not, doesn't, he's not laying it on, right? It's just how he sings, but then when Damon was doing it, he was sort of laying it on because that was part of the art that he was making. This is so interesting.

• 3:01:42Speaker 05

  But also Brett does, there is an affected quality to his voice, meaning there's a kind of yowl to it. You know what I mean?

• 3:01:51Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:01:51Speaker 05

  It's like slightly Mick Jagger, slightly Bowie.

• 3:01:57Speaker 05

  You know what I mean? Real drama.

• 3:02:01Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 3:02:01Speaker 05

  Do you know what I mean? It's like, that's quite affected. You know what I mean? I mean, there's like, it is affected.

• 3:02:09Yasi Salek?

  You're so right.

• 3:02:11Speaker 05

  It's very passionate.

• 3:02:13Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it's very passionate. Well, because the other inspiration for this album is Brett's demon. As Brett said, all my stuff comes from my demon. Who I get on with very well at the moment. This is in nineteen ninety-two. I want to talk about the songs, but first I'm just gonna tell you guys, this album fucking killed it. Number one on the UK charts, sold more than a hundred thousand copies in the first week. It was the fastest selling debut album since Frankie Goes to Hollywood.

• 3:02:41Speaker 05

  That's a big deal.

• 3:02:42Yasi Salek?

  The Pleasure Dome, yeah.

• 3:02:45Yasi Salek?

  It would be supplanted later by Oasis and then later by Elastica. For fastest and then and then Arctic Monkeys, I believe, who are now the record holder, I think, still for fastest selling debut album. It was outselling Depeche Mode Songs of Faith and Devotion by a margin of nearly four to one. So it's killing it. We asked earlier, did Suede kick off Britpop? I wanna read a couple quotes from Brett about this, because obviously they got asked about it a lot. Brett said, we absolutely didn't wanna celebrate Jimi Hendrix or the Beach Boys or anything American. Instead, we wanted to pick over the minutia of British life and celebrate it. I don't think anybody could deny that we pretty much kicked off what became Britpop. And for a very limited time, we were proud of that.

• 3:03:31Yasi Salek?

  That was in two thousand and three. And then in ninety six, Enemi asked them, well, you may have kickstarted Britpop. And Brett said, very much so. It's very easy for bands now to follow our blueprint. But when we started, we were trying to play songs about little twisted English lives to rooms full of people obsessed with Pearl Jam. We kicked the fucking door in. I wouldn't say we started Britpop because The Beatles, Bowie, The Kinks, et cetera, did that. But I think we were crucial in opening people's ears to British music again. Do you think, do you agree with that?

• 3:04:00Speaker 05

  I would say tick, tick. Yes, correct. Absolutely correct. Because it was, you know, if you're, if you're working on a music magazine, it's always really interesting as to, you know, who can you put on the cover, what are you interested in? And, and there, you know, there had been a time, it's like the tail end of Indie Dance, you know, the tail end of kind of the Happy Mondays. And then Nirvana kind of coming in and taking over. And all the bands that had been around, they weren't grunge, but they seemed a little bit like, like a version of that, like Grebo seemed a bit like that. It just seemed like everything was short and.

• 3:04:39Speaker 05

  What you call plaid.

• 3:04:40Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, what do you guys call it? Checks, checks.

• 3:04:42Speaker 05

  Yeah, and like, you know, you know, do you know what I mean? It's like.

• 3:04:46Yasi Salek?

  Well, yeah, and also even just the preoccupy, like, what was Baggy about? What was Happy Mondays on about? Nobody knows, actually. It was awesome, but like, what are we even talking about? I don't know. I mean, what's his name thought that Sean Ryder was Yates, but like, it was great, but like, they weren't talking about the minutia of British life.

• 3:05:03Speaker 05

  No, it wasn't specific. No, not at all.

• 3:05:05Yasi Salek?

  Is not talking about British life, but the Kinks were, right? You know, the, the Rolling Stones were, and so. He, he's very right. He kind of brought, Suede was kind of the first band to bring that. As a, as a preoccupation within the lyrics back to the forefront, and that was important.

• 3:05:22Speaker 05

  Absolutely. It was important because also if you think about like, say Blur's first album, it's okay. It's not great, but it, the lyrics are weak. The lyrics are a weak spot in that, like Damon's not bothering. And like, like by the, when he does mo- mo- Modern Life is Rubbish, he is bothering. He's like specifically trying to write properly, and that was definitely kicked off by. One Nirvana and two Suede, without a doubt. Like, yeah, absolutely, definitely. And I think, you know, quite a lot. I've heard Brett mention this, and it was just something that we all believed in at the time, you know. And I know you're a fan, like the films of Mike Lee were really important. We all love Mike Lee.

• 3:06:01Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:06:02Speaker 05

  His art wasn't real, but it was kind of real.

• 3:06:05Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:06:06Speaker 05

  Do you know what I mean? And it was a very specific kind of British characters. These were not American characters. They were very rooted in who they were. And, and the smallness of their British lives. And they were, and it was incredibly beautiful and great, you know, we knew they were great. So it was to do with that. And Martin Amis a bit, I think. I mean, I don't think that he affected Brett, but he. Wrote in a very, I mean, quite an arrogant fashion. I mean, he wrote absolutely brilliantly. But he wrote about very specific British characters and slightly, I mean, I think he's almost, I, I think he's a better memoirist than he's a writer, but he is really. Exciting writer. And he was writing about kind of contemporary life. A bit cartoonified and absolutely rubbish on women, but you know, good

• 3:06:51Speaker 05

  characters that jumped off the page that were only British. And I just think it was like, kind of part of that really, like, uh, you know, we might be crap, but we're kind of our crap.

• 3:07:01Yasi Salek?

  We're, yeah, but this is our version. Yeah, and I'm I'm surprised that he didn't mention it in that list, but I would also argue the Smiths did this, right? Like, I mean, Morrissey was the kitchen sink drama brought to song, you know, and that's so, that's so British.

• 3:07:17Speaker 05

  Yeah, very, very much so. Yeah, I think you're right. Yeah, that that was also kind of just i- it's what you grew up with, you know, so that's you carry that without a meaning to it's just even the kind of you know, even the cool films, like the cool films around that time would like, we we we're old, so there would be things like, you know, Alfie, Michael Caine, but he's very British.

• 3:07:39Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, well, and they were also obsessed with performance. The movie, the crazy insane movie with Mick Jagger in it, which also the Happy Mondays were obsessed with.

• 3:07:47Speaker 05

  Yeah, everybody was obsessed with it.

• 3:07:49Yasi Salek?

  Made a lot of, uh, made a lot of inroads into indie music. Okay, I'm just gonna say it. So Young, perfect opening song. I fucking love this song.

• 3:07:58Speaker 05

  Yeah, me too.

• 3:07:59Yasi Salek?

  I I had to look it up to see what he was saying, but the shake and it's so good. That just opening and then does the thing that we talked about. It's like dark and like foreboding and then in comes the chorus. Oh, yeah.

• 3:08:18Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:08:28Yasi Salek?

  This song is inspired by his relationship with his girlfriend after justine. His name was a Nick.

• 3:08:34Speaker 05

  Hmm, she was quite important, I think.

• 3:08:36Yasi Salek?

  Yes, she was also in fact so young. I believe she was sixteen when they first started dating. That's fine. That's not illegal.

• 3:08:41Speaker 05

  Is it fine?

• 3:08:44Speaker 05

  We're allowing it.

• 3:08:45Yasi Salek?

  People don't like it when I say this, but I actually do think it's, I think he was like twenty two. I kind of do think it's fine. I don't think it's unethical. I don't think it's, I mean, it probably might actually be illegal, but maybe at that time it wasn't. That part is whatever. I think a sixteen year old girl is a woman who has agency. I just think it's embarrassing. I think a man should be embarrassed. Not like, yeah, he doesn't mean it. I think that you're showing your whole ass that you cannot contend with a, a woman who is of a more

• 3:09:17Speaker 05

  Of your own age.

• 3:09:19Yasi Salek?

  Of your own age, of your own intellect, because they're not mature. And I'm not saying a sixteen year old can't be smart, but like, and this is different, twenty two and sixteen, who cares? It's basically the same thing. But I'm talking about when your fucking fifty eight year old ass is dating a twenty one year old. I think you should hide. I think you should hide your face and be embarrassed because all you're doing is showing the whole world that you're a fucking loser. That, they think it's like a mark of honor. And I just think it's loser behavior because you're just showing that you're so unconfident and so unequipped to deal, because it's not like there's not a hot thirty five year old. Do you know what I mean? There is. Like, you're just unable to deal with it. You need the power dynamic to be so skewed in your favor because you're a little pussy. That's it. That's my soapbox.

• 3:09:59Speaker 05

  Completely.

• 3:10:00Yasi Salek?

  This is not about that. This is fine. You're twen- you're a twenty two rocks, two year old rock star and you met a crazy hot sixteen year old who's like basically on your same material level. That's fine. Have fun.

• 3:10:11Yasi Salek?

  A little bit prophetic, though, in the lyrics. So young, let's chase the dragon. We're not chasing the dragon yet, but we will be in the future chasing the dragon.

• 3:10:19Speaker 05

  Yeah, and it's mentioned quite a lot, isn't it?

• 3:10:22Yasi Salek?

  I know. It's almost like, well, we talked about romance and romanticism. Not much more romantic, unfortunately, than the idea of heroin and, and being sort of in the throes of heroin. Animal nitrate, I just, I'm sorry, we didn't, we mentioned it that it was on national television. And now that we talk about it, I need you to understand people at home how insane that is. This song is fucking mental. Like, the fact that this was a pop hit and you just like click over to the lyrics and you're like, sorry, what now? Like his dad, you know that he's had animal nitrate in mind, which is talking about

• 3:11:00Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:11:01Yasi Salek?

  Emil, Emil nitrate, which is poppers.

• 3:11:05Yasi Salek?

  That's poppers.

• 3:11:06Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's poppers.

• 3:11:07Yasi Salek?

  Celebrated and beloved by the gay community.

• 3:11:09Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 3:11:10Yasi Salek?

  Like his dad. What? Oh, in your council home, he jumped your bones. What? What are you talking about? Is this about child? What are? Brett Anderson, what are you talking about? And then this is on the fucking radio.

• 3:11:23Speaker 05

  But it's great, isn't it? You see, in your council home, he jumped on the bones. Don't you think that's, that's another real Smith lyric?

• 3:11:29Yasi Salek?

  Totally. Oh, my God. Totally, totally.

• 3:11:44Yasi Salek?

  So in your broken home, he broke all your bones. This is a sinister song.

• 3:11:48Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:11:49Yasi Salek?

  This is dealing with dark stuff, but it's so catchy. It's so, turns you on.

• 3:11:57Speaker 05

  But also, like, I think that reference, now you're over twenty one. So at the time, the legal age for gay sex was twenty one.

• 3:12:05Yasi Salek?

  Hmm, yes, this was Simon's big thing. He would, he would, he was participated in a lot of protests and stuff about lowering the legal age for gay sex, which why should it, why should it be different? No, so thi- this is a powerful song. And also, again, Brett Anderson is a genius because he's Trojan horsing in these sort of like topics that people aren't talking about or thinking about into pop music, into the radio, into the hits. And that people are just singing along to Animal Nitrate. And he's like, yeah, it's about violence and abuse and sex and drugs. It's actually quite a hardcore song.

• 3:12:41Speaker 05

  Yes, it is. It's quite dark. It's like, there's a lot of kind of dark implications in there, like broken bones and the age of consent is in there. And the implication to me is that it's about a possibly abusive gay relationship with a young gay man and an older man, is what I would say.

• 3:13:09Yasi Salek?

  And it was a hit. And then She's Not Dead is not my favorite song on here, but I find the backstory very interesting. Bernard Anderson's aunt, when he was younger, she had an affair. I'm just gonna read his quote. "My dad's sister, my auntie Jean, was a spirited, rambunctious woman who was obsessed with cats and Elvis Presley and would totter and clop in her high heels and miniskirt around Hayward's Heath under a huge swaying blonde beehive hairdo. Her life ended in 1980 in a tragedy of almost iconic scale. She was found dead in a car with a man who was presumed to be her lover after they both succumbed to carbon monoxide fumes. It formed the inspiration for a song I wrote well over a decade later called She's Not Dead, where I tried to borrow

• 3:13:51Yasi Salek?

  some of the detail to paint a probably highly stylized sketch of the heartbreaking episode."

• 3:13:56Speaker 05

  I mean, I agree with you. It's not the strongest song, but that is a very strong image, isn't it?

• 3:14:00Yasi Salek?

  Such a strong image. And I can't help, just the aunt, the way he described her, I was like, that's a Smith's cover star, that woman. That's a Smith's single cover star.

• 3:14:17Yasi Salek?

  His reflections in his book are so great. He said, "Part of me feels that it's somewhat shaming and trivial thing to do, to write a song about something like this. And I hope I've never cheapened anyone's memory, but I think it's important to realize that art generally is just a process of documenting and interpreting and channeling one's experiences and turning them into something that lives in a place beyond reality."

• 3:14:37Speaker 05

  Completely. I completely agree with that. He's not telling her story. It's like something that happened and he knows about that. It's inspiring something else that then becomes a song. I completely agree with that.

• 3:14:48Yasi Salek?

  Also, as they say, you and I know this, never be friends with a writer. Just not because, so we're gonna take, we are gonna take what you do and we're gonna use it because what else do we have? We're not gonna invent shit.

• 3:14:59Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:14:59Yasi Salek?

  Okay, we talked, we talked about moving a bit. That's a breakup song with Justine. I actually love this song, but Suede really hated it. Do you not like it?

• 3:15:07Speaker 05

  I don't know. I like it. I just, when I was listening to it, I just thought, oh my God, it really reminds me of Blur. I don't know what it's to do with. It's to do with the guitar. There's a kind of eh eh eh eh eh in it.

• 3:15:16Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. And, and maybe it's also the la ble la ah number.

• 3:15:20Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:15:21Yasi Salek?

  He's really, he's really laying it on thick with the.

• 3:15:31Speaker 05

  Don't you think it's interesting? I'd never thought of it before, but when I was listening to it the other day, I thought, "Oh my god, it really, there's something about it that's really blur red skin." It's definitely to do with that jiggy-jaggy guitar, rather than, rather than the kind of normal, well, not normal, but you know, the beautifulness that Bernard can do. So it's that angularness and, and the way it changes in the chorus. I mean, Suede songs quite often change in the chorus, but I just thought, "Oh my god, that's like a kind of forgotten blow track." We should never mention this, but I'm mentioning it now.

• 3:15:59Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, for the third time, he's literally gonna come to your home, babe. I'm telling you, it's like Beetlejuice. If you say it three times, Brad Anderson's gonna ding dong at the doorbell right, right in five minutes and be like, "What did you say, Miranda?"

• 3:16:15Yasi Salek?

  He hates it, though. He said, "There's hardly anything of the energy. It's overproduced, it's grim."

• 3:16:20Speaker 05

  One doesn't know as a, as a listener, like, how good a track can be if it's not translated onto the, into the final. We don't, like, we don't know how good it could be. Yeah, yeah.

• 3:16:32Yasi Salek?

  Oh my god, it's finally time to talk about pantomime horse, babe. Because I wanna reveal something to you about myself. I did not know what a pantom- okay, I knew what a pantomime horse was, but I did not know it was called a pantomime horse until like two days ago, when I Googled pantomime horse. And I was like, "Excuse me, that is a pant-" like, for, to paint a picture for you guys, a pantomime horse is when you put a, it's a two-person horse costume. It's when you get in a horse costume with two people and one person is the back and one person is the front. You've seen this, Google it. It's a crazy, I used to be obsessed with these things. And I thought Brad Anderson, oh my god, he's such a romantic, these beautiful images. But that is the image, the pantomime horse.

• 3:17:15Yasi Salek?

  But then now that it makes sense, it's a two-person horse.

• 3:17:18Speaker 05

  Yeah, but I mean, one of them is always a disadvantage. The whole point, the joke of the pantomime horse is one of the people has like their head right up next to your hoop. And like, you know, one person is standing up straight and one person is bending forward with their, like, with their head on your bum. Yeah, so that's like, if you're the back end of the pantomime sort of horse, you're you're in the worst position, definitely.

• 3:17:41Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Do you think Brad was saying that he was the back end of the pantomime horse?

• 3:17:46Speaker 05

  I don't really know. I don't think that it's as literal as that. I mean, there is a bit of a circus-y bit, isn't there? So he says he's convived circus hand, tragic as a son of a Superman.

• 3:17:57Yasi Salek?

  He said, I was born as a pantomime horse, ugly as a sun. But I think maybe what it actually has to do is what we were talking about earlier, where he only feels complete as part of a two-person thing. And that's a pantomime horse. So he's like, I was born that way, that I always felt. Um, there's a light dig at Justine in here, which is, I would die for the stars. I'm interpreting that. He didn't say that because he would never say that. But I do feel maybe that was a light dig at her going off with a star.

• 3:18:23Speaker 05

  Yeah, maybe, yeah.

• 3:18:24Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I mean, it's definitely a breakup song, so interpret it how you will. And then, have you ever tried it that way? Have you ever tried? It's such a good song, the bridge, oh.

• 3:18:42Speaker 05

  I think you're right. It's about wanting to be with somebody because the two people together, a pantomime horse. I mean, it's such, that's such a weird image. It's not wild horses, a pantomime horse.

• 3:18:54Yasi Salek?

  I'm not, I'm not saying it ruined it for me, but it a little bit ruined it for me. Because before I was like, oh, pantomime horse must be something beautiful, like a painted horse on a wall or something. Never looked into it. Now I know it's a two-person, it's a two-person horse costume. Sleeping pills, I initially thought might have been about Justine, but it's not. Because Justine is not an air, a water sign. She is an earth sign. Because this, obviously Brett Anderson is an astrology girlie when he sings, you're a water sign. I'm an air sign. He is an air sign, yeah.

• 3:19:35Yasi Salek?

  It's a beautiful song. I really like Sleeping Pills.

• 3:19:38Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's interesting. Like, when I was listening to the album again, Sleeping Pill, I mean Sleeping Pill is very beautiful and

• 3:19:47Yasi Salek?

  It's like a ballad.

• 3:19:47Speaker 05

  There's something interesting about using, so Valium as well, like I think. So to a British person of his age, Valium is very, very much associated with like kind of sixties mums, do you know what I mean?

• 3:20:02Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, like housewives. Yeah, yeah, totally.

• 3:20:05Speaker 05

  Housewife stuff. And so, I mean, I don't think it is about his mum or anyone in particular. I mean, I don't know if it's about anyone in particular, but it doesn't. It's like they're dreaming your life away feel that this song has, do you know what I mean? But the just the use of, the use of Valium always makes me think of housewives. I don't think this is particularly, maybe it's not particularly about that, but that always, that reference always pulls me back to kind of suburban lives and just like going through your life on Valium, you know? Yeah, and it's got kind of sweet FA, hasn't it? So the idea is that you are.

• 3:20:37Yasi Salek?

  Miranda, you can't just, you can't just pretend that everyone here knows what sweet FA is. I only know what it is because I had to look it up. That's a very That's a British phrase. You guys, it means sweet Fanny Adams and it's British slang for nothing at all, or sweet fuck all. And Fanny Adams was a young girl who was brutally murdered in the nineteenth century. So actually it's better to say fuck all. I feel like Fanny Adams is kind of a rude.

• 3:21:03Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 3:21:04Yasi Salek?

  FA, but you guys just say that. You just say sweet FA.

• 3:21:07Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, I would always think sweet fuck all. I mean, it is sweet Fanny Adams, you're right, but like, I would just think it's sweet fuck all.

• 3:21:23Speaker 05

  But there's a kind of ambiguity, which is a swede, isn't there? If you have sweet FA to do today, that could be a good thing because swede are not about like doing a proper job, are they? So but so it could be like amazing. You could be lying around in your bed with your, you know, your beautiful insatiable one girlfriend or boyfriend. Or you could be taking too many sleeping pills and not really doing anything. And I think that that's part of the whole romance of swag, really, isn't it? He's saying you don't need those sleeping pills, you don't need them, but you kind of feel that he's definitely drawn towards them, you know?

• 3:21:58Yasi Salek?

  But can you get me some Valium?

• 3:21:59Speaker 05

  Yeah, exactly. Like at one point he's going, yeah, exactly. Can you get me some Valium?

• 3:22:03Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:22:04Speaker 05

  Some Valium.

• 3:22:11Yasi Salek?

  I think your point is right. I think it isn't maybe about anyone in particular, but it's about grabbed in fragments, right? Like a little bit about maybe the girlfriend, a little bit about the idea of sixties housewives on Valium, like kind of all of these inputs coming. It's such a great song.

• 3:22:26Speaker 05

  And also it wouldn't work. Don't you think it wouldn't work? Like you're a water sign, I'm an air sign, right? It wouldn't work if you said you're a fire sign, I'm an earth sign. Like that doesn't work with that song.

• 3:22:38Yasi Salek?

  Fire might, you're a fire sign. Fire might work. I feel like earth wouldn't work. Cause fire, you could make two syllables.

• 3:22:47Speaker 05

  But it's quite dreamy as well. The whole thing is it's like, you know, air and water and like, it's not like, there's a lot of fire in there, in that it can be very fiery swag, but this is not one of those songs. And so it it wouldn't really work, you know, he's very astrologically astute.

• 3:23:06Yasi Salek?

  Breakdown is about his old pal Simon Holdbrook, which we talked about, they go gather the mushrooms and write the embarrassing songs. But Simon kind of had a tragic end. He got really depressed and later took his own life. And so Brett Anderson wrote this song as sort of like a um an homage to him. He also tells a little story in his book about how he went to Simon's funeral with his father. And then he was doing okay until the service ended with Let It Be by the Beatles. And he started weeping like a baby in his dad's arms.

• 3:23:38Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's, well, also, you know, I mean, you can imagine that being a substitute for his mother's funeral as well. It all comes in together. I think the lyrics on this are very, very good, like.

• 3:23:52Speaker 05

  Um. It's not one of my favorite Suede songs, but I like, but the lyrics I think are are really good, you know.

• 3:24:00Yasi Salek?

  Like, have I gone too far inside my mind is such a great.

• 3:24:04Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's a great thing for like, don't let yourself get too far inside your mind, because you probably will end up going spiraling into a way that you don't want to. But also, I really like Back Where the Dogs Bark. Like, I really like that as a image, you know, where the it says, then it says, well, still life bleeds to concrete white. And like, that that that emptiness of a dog barking, like you imagine a dog being like in a back li- like yard or in a house, or it's just barking like this. Do you know what I mean? It's like a kind of danger and an emptiness to it that I think is really interesting.

• 3:24:37Yasi Salek?

  And like, an immediate, an immediate evocation of the suburbs to me, like, I'm like, that's like a suburban feeling and image, like. The that all you can really feel, like you're saying, is like a dog barking off co- like near concrete or whatever, like, that's probably not London. You know, you're not gonna even really focus on a dog barking if there's all these sounds around you in the big city, but if you're in the suburbs, you're really like that dog barking. Yeah, that jumped out at me. I was like, oh, we're back, we're back in.

• 3:25:03Speaker 05

  Yeah, very much so. Yeah, I think you're right. And like the the cars and like, you know, an endless mile. Yeah, it's definitely. It's a, yeah, it's a, the lyrics are really, really good, I think, in this one.

• 3:25:26Yasi Salek?

  Animal Lover, I will say I love it. I did see a review that said there's one animal song too many on this record and it's Animal Lover.

• 3:25:35Speaker 05

  Yeah, well, if you're gonna choose, you've got to, yeah, you'll choose the other animal, right?

• 3:25:38Yasi Salek?

  But I think it's great. Okay, what do you make of the theory that the first verse is about Damon? I see you're moving, see you're moving, moving in with her. You pierced your right ear, pierced your heart here. This skinny boy is one of the girls. Damon had his left ear pierced.

• 3:25:51Speaker 05

  Yeah, did he?

• 3:25:51Yasi Salek?

  But but Brett had two, so maybe he's saying you're gonna be, you're trying to be like me. You're gonna get your other ear pierced. You took my girlfriend, bitch.

• 3:26:00Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:26:00Yasi Salek?

  That's not in the lyrics.

• 3:26:10Yasi Salek?

  Back to the theory of Brett taught Justine music, Justine taught Brett music, Brett made Blur. There is something to be said.

• 3:26:18Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, you know, there's definitely, I mean, maybe, but it's also, there's interesting because my favorite Blur album is Thirteen, and that wouldn't have happened without Justine leaving him.

• 3:26:29Yasi Salek?

  Justine leaving, I know, she's like, first best musical thing she ever did is the first Elastic album. Second and third things were Leaving, Sway and Blur. No, because it's, it's true, and I said this on the Blur episode. I lo-, I, I do like Blur quite a bit, but I don't connect with the Chas and Dave albums that are, I think, works of art in this, in the most classic sense of like, we're doing an art project. And I have an intellectual theory and I'm going to deliver it through music and it's great. But when like, he got split right the fuck open from like, tip to tail by Justine and started to have to access

• 3:27:05Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 3:27:05Yasi Salek?

  personal stuff to write music about, then we're really getting good music.

• 3:27:10Speaker 05

  Yeah, I like Blur when they're depressed.

• 3:27:13Yasi Salek?

  You know, we're sorry, we want you to be happy, Damon, but we're really happy that for a brief period you were already depressed and we have Beatle bum now.

• 3:27:19Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:27:21Yasi Salek?

  And then the last song on this album is about his mother's death. It's called The Next Life, and he said that at the time, he wasn't, he wasn't even clear that he was writing about his mother. Because he's never really clear about what he's writing about at the time, until much later. But he realized like, years later, that this was a general meditation on loss. But also, that it was crushingly obviously about his mother.

• 3:27:44Speaker 05

  Yeah, and there's a kind of, um, it's very simple, the lyrics, but also there's still like, worth-ing and flogging ice creams. Um, those things to a British person are like a holiday.

• 3:27:55Yasi Salek?

  Hmm, that you go with your family.

• 3:27:57Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, and so like, and you know, you'll flog ice creams till the company's on its knees. There's a kind of escape, there's a feeling there's of escape. So in our own car, we can drive away, we'll go far away, we'll flog ice creams until the company's on its knees. That's another, that's another idea of escaping a life that you don't want, you know.

• 3:28:14Yasi Salek?

  I'm so sorry to ask a stupid question, but what does it mean to flog an ice cream?

• 3:28:19Speaker 05

  Oh, sell, just selling ice cream.

• 3:28:20Yasi Salek?

  Oh, okay, okay.

• 3:28:21Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:28:22Yasi Salek?

  Selling, flogging Molly, we're selling Molly.

• 3:28:34Yasi Salek?

  Obviously, the first Suede album, they get fabulous reviews, mostly. Enemy gave it seven out of ten, but I feel they were being coy. If I'm gonna be honest, I feel they were doing the thing where they were like, everyone's so excited about this band. I'm not gonna go ahead and give it a nine out of ten as it so justly and rightly deserves. It's a seven, but he's he's lying. Keith Cameron, you're lying.

• 3:28:59Speaker 05

  I don't think it is a seven. I don't think it's a ten, but I think it's like it's like an eight and a half nine, that album.

• 3:29:05Yasi Salek?

  At least, at least. Select gave it four stars. Steve Lamack, that's is that the most you can give it? No.

• 3:29:13Speaker 05

  No, you can give it five if you want. They gave Part Life five.

• 3:29:16Yasi Salek?

  I see. Hurt hurtful. Steve Lamack called said Suede itself is a very fine, imperfect debut album. There's a feeling in the air that they haven't fully let themselves go yet, that they'll be more shocking or more blunt the next time out.

• 3:29:29Speaker 05

  I don't think more blunt, but I think letting themselves go is quite astute.

• 3:29:33Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I think so too. Cue by Stuart McConie, four stars.

• 3:29:38Speaker 05

  I think Stuart writes really well about that. I remember reading, cause you sent it over and I read it. I thought Stuart writes well about them, actually.

• 3:29:44Yasi Salek?

  It was great. Well, he said that Suede's trick is to appear at the same time both swaggeringly aloof and as wretched as perennial underdogs. I was like, that's good. That's good, Stuart McCones. McCones, that's good. Robert Criscow, my my my king, gave it an A minus. And he said something which I thought, he's always so fucking good. He said, fingernail on Blackboard City for anyone who doesn't believe Mark Bolan is Chuck Berry. And at first I couldn't stand it. Now it's a fave moment for me, but I'm like, oh, he nailed it. It's so true. It's like it's it. Everyone says Bowie, but it's T. Rex.

• 3:30:23Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's a stompiness. Stomp, stomp, stomp. And that that is partly to do. I mean, it's not. He doesn't. It is partly to do with Simon, I think. That power of those drums.

• 3:30:33Yasi Salek?

  Rolling Stone gave it four stars. David Frack, wonderful. Los Angeles Times, not as positive. Two and a half stars. Lorraine Alley.

• 3:30:41Speaker 05

  Yeah, but that's because it's, I mean, I love L.A., but that's a different kind of city.

• 3:30:44Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, she didn't. They didn't get. She didn't get it. Okay, let's talk about Suede Gate.

• 3:30:50Yasi Salek?

  Real quick. This is when Brett is interviewed in The Face and I don't know if this was the work of Savage and Best, but it is not available on the internet, short of buying the actual issue of The Face, which is an expensive one because Kate Moss is on the cover, so I haven't bought it. So I couldn't nail down the exact quote, but basically they ask about Morrissey and Brett says something to the effect of him not being cool when he met him. He wasn't nice, he was weird. I don't know exactly what he said because it's impossible to find. Then Morrissey, because guess what? You can take the letter writer out of the house, but he's not coming out of his heart,

• 3:31:34Yasi Salek?

  writes a little letter to The Face and he's like, I've never met Brad Anderson, so I don't know what he's talking about. I don't know him. And then Brett speaks to Vox and is like, well, The Face lied. It's true. I've never met Morrissey. And actually-

• 3:31:50Speaker 05

  As soon as he said that, I thought, like, I know the writer. It's Amy Raphael. And also, I know what writers are like. It's like, she didn't make that up. You said it.

• 3:31:58Yasi Salek?

  Babe, we have the receipts. The Face literally came back and wrote a whole piece about it and they're like, honey, we have, it's called a tape. We have the receipts. It's right here. We've mailed it to, they mailed it to Morrissey, they mailed it to Savage and Best, they mailed it to Vox. I mean, it's just a funny faux pas where he was probably like, fuck, like I got, I shouldn't have said that. I don't want to be, I don't want to be whatever. And then it was a, it was a big thing and they had to issue a apology and-

• 3:32:26Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's funny. When I read that apology as well, because I know John and Phil, I thought John wrote that.

• 3:32:32Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:32:34Yasi Salek?

  It was had John all over him.

• 3:32:37Speaker 05

  Really carefully done. Like Phil would have just gone, yeah, fuck you. And John went, no, no, no, no, I'll just calm this down and like.

• 3:32:45Yasi Salek?

  Right. He was like, how about I don't burn bridges with like three publications at once? And Morrissey, I do believe Morrissey and Brett Anderson never healed that wound, but that's fine.

• 3:32:57Speaker 05

  Well, he takes things thick, Morrissey.

• 3:32:59Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, he's, he has, Morrissey absolutely has one of those lists of people to kill or like enemy lists. That he's constantly updating and has like a bleeder board chart on his wall. Yeah, it's real long. It's real long. I'm probably on it. He probably listened to the Smiths, Fansfan and was like Yasi Selig. Number seven hundred and seventy three. In April, we get the infamous select cover that we've talked, we've alluded to before. And you showed it on this video that no one can see, but headline, Yanks go home.

• 3:33:31Yasi Salek?

  It's Brett on the cover, which against, well, I wouldn't say against, but behind his back, literally, they put a Union Jack.

• 3:33:39Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:33:39Yasi Salek?

  He did not know they were gonna put a Union Jack. I'm not sure he would have been super into that. And then they listed five bands, Suede, Saint Etienne, Denim, Pulp, The Autiers and The Battle for Britain.

• 3:33:49Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah. So they lose lots of imagery. So they, they interview all those bands and, and basically Blur would have been in there, but they'd already done Blur, well, they, we had done Blur the month before. And so it's a combination of things. It's a combination of believing in no bands, but also we're a monthly publication. So we can't put, it's very, i- i- it's more risky for us to put an unknown band on the cover than it is for the NME and Melody Maker.

• 3:34:15Yasi Salek?

  Totally. You only have one cover a month. Yeah.

• 3:34:17Speaker 05

  So that was quite a big deal. So then we think, okay, well, we'll put, there, there are enough Suede fans, but there also we'll get the Pulp fans. We'll get all the different, and then also we'll do a, an essay, which is written by Stuart McConie about how British bands are worth it. And actually, you know, Nirvana are okay, but maybe not the Smashing Man bands.

• 3:34:36Yasi Salek?

  Poor Billy Corgan catching strays left and right in this podcast episode.

• 3:34:39Speaker 05

  But also the the the graphics were quite funny. So there used to be um a program called Dad's Army.

• 3:34:47Yasi Salek?

  Dad's Army?

• 3:34:48Speaker 05

  Yeah, Dad's Army. And it was a funny program. And it was about um the so during World War Two, there were like the older guys that were left at home and they kind of had to kind of like, they didn't really have an army role, but they kind of pretended they had an army role, right? And so Dad's Army was an incredibly popular um show. And it had a theme tune that's that literally went, who do you think you are kidding, Mr. Hitler? Who do you think you are kidding, Mr. Hitler?

• 3:35:17Yasi Salek?

  Stop it right now. Who do you think you're kidding, Mr. Hitler?

• 3:35:22Speaker 05

  If you think our England's done, you'd love it.

• 3:35:33Speaker 05

  And literally, I think the blur used to come on to it at some point. Anyway.

• 3:35:37Yasi Salek?

  I was gonna say, it sounds like almost like it could be a Blur song.

• 3:35:39Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 3:35:40Yasi Salek?

  Who do you think?

• 3:35:41Speaker 05

  You're kidding, Mr. Hitler. And there was graphics when when that came on. And the graphics were a big arrow coming from Germany towards Britain. And then Britain's big arrow coming back and saying, no, no to you, Mr. Hitler, right? And that was the graphics that were used in Selette.

• 3:36:00Speaker 05

  About the Americans coming over and taking our pop music.

• 3:36:04Yasi Salek?

  They called Billy Corgan Mr. Hitler. They said, who do you think you're kidding? Mr. Vetter is what they said. That's really crazy. That's really crazy. I'm I'm every day, I'm like, England is a fake place. These things are fake. But then you're like, no, it's absolutely real. Bud Flanagan performed this song and it was real.

• 3:36:23Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's real. Dad's Army is incredibly important.

• 3:36:28Yasi Salek?

  So important to the culture. So important.

• 3:36:32Speaker 05

  Oh dear.

• 3:36:35Speaker 05

  It's only when I talk to you that these things make look ludicrous. As far as I'm concerned, this is like, you know.

• 3:36:40Yasi Salek?

  Right, it's so normal to you until you have to say it out loud to an American person, though, like, oh, who are you kidding, Mr. Hitler? Who do you think you're kidding, Mr. Hitler? Okay, cool. This is so good. That's amazing.

• 3:36:55Speaker 05

  Anyway.

• 3:36:56Yasi Salek?

  Okay, I said, I said this in, I think, the Happy Mondays episode, but just in case people didn't listen to that one, and since we're talking so much about the birth of Britpop, and I really feel, I pointed to this magazine cover as a really important moment in the birth of Britpop, back when we were talking probably about Blur or Oasis. But the term Britpop.

• 3:37:15Speaker 05

  Is not used in the article.

• 3:37:17Yasi Salek?

  It's not used in that article, but it had been around for a really long time. Like, it had been used back as far as, like, I found in nineteen seventy seven.

• 3:37:26Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:37:27Yasi Salek?

  They talk about it in relation to the Sex Pistols, actually, into XTC. Sounds did an eighty seven feature, called it Britcore, it was talking about British punk underground. John Robb says he invented it in the eighties, talking about the northern explosion of guitar bands. And then Stuart McConie also says, I believe, that he coined it in eighty eight, talking about Skriti Politi.

• 3:37:52Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, it's interesting, because like, it slightly makes me laugh, because it's so male music journalists.

• 3:37:59Yasi Salek?

  Totally. I invent, it's a really, it's really giving, like, I invented post-its, you know, it's like, okay, well.

• 3:38:05Speaker 05

  It doesn't matter, it was like.

• 3:38:06Yasi Salek?

  Nobody in.

• 3:38:07Speaker 05

  It's like morphic resonance, isn't it? Do you know what I mean? It's like, it's like, everybody kind of had that idea, and you needed, we were all obsessed with like, labelling things at that time. The music business, the music press just loved, you know, Grebo, we're saying Grebo and acid house. So we liked labelling things, and I think the inky's in particular really liked labelling things, and Britpop came, I mean, everything that is Britpop was in that select piece that Stuart McConie wrote, the who do you think you're kidding, Mr. Hitler, Jansko.

• 3:38:33Yasi Salek?

  Who do you think you're kidding?

• 3:38:35Speaker 05

  Piece, it was definitely in there, but he didn't use the word Britpop, and I know that I've checked, it's definitely not in there. It is in this piece, but he doesn't really highlight it. So there's a piece, I've got the face here, May ninety four, and it's got, um, Damon on the front, and there is also a Union flag behind him dropped in, and it, and it's a piece, um, by Cliff Jones, and in there, he does use the word Britpop, but he doesn't kind of really hammer it home. And then by about like kind of late ninety four, John Harris can write a whole piece that uses the word Britpop and you're like, oh, I know what you mean, you know?

• 3:39:09Yasi Salek?

  Well, yeah, because I'm I mean, the battle of Britpop is in ninety four, right? It was ninety five, I can't remember. Ninety five, actually.

• 3:39:16Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:39:16Yasi Salek?

  Anyways, so we got the Union Jack. Suede is not super pleased about that. They're like.

• 3:39:22Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 3:39:23Yasi Salek?

  Brett says, I think some of the aspects of our Englishness have been cartoonized. We are incredibly English, but it's just one facet about what we care about. He's not really dying to be the like worldwide representative of British music.

• 3:39:38Speaker 05

  But nobody, also, nobody really wants to be in a lump with other other bands. You might like, you you know, that's always the case. So, you know, if you have a scene, and I would say that there was a kind of scene, that scene is always competitive as well as influenced by the same things.

• 3:39:54Yasi Salek?

  Right, intra, yeah, intra competitive.

• 3:39:56Speaker 05

  Yeah, so you you know, and people go out with each other and they hate each other. And, you know, obviously, you've got more in common within that scene than you have with Boris Johnson, like.

• 3:40:06Yasi Salek?

  Sure.

• 3:40:06Speaker 05

  But but within that scene, the competitiveness and the rivalries are what make that scene work, really. But you you don't want to be lumped in with them. Suede have never want to be lumped in with any, I don't think any of those bands that we might call Britpop. They're like the Manics now, but like, you know.

• 3:40:20Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, and I think they did then, too. They toured with them early on and they had a respect for them.

• 3:40:26Speaker 05

  Yeah, but they don't want to be lumped in with them. And also, Britpop is the world's worst, like.

• 3:40:30Yasi Salek?

  It's pretty bad.

• 3:40:31Speaker 05

  Name.

• 3:40:31Yasi Salek?

  That's right. I mean, grunge is pretty bad, too, if you think about it.

• 3:40:34Speaker 05

  Yeah, but yeah, it is. Yeah, I suppose so.

• 3:40:36Yasi Salek?

  Nobody wanted to be a grunge band either. They're like, what are you talking about? Pretty much any term. I don't think anybody was really lining up to be associated with a genre term.

• 3:40:45Speaker 05

  Punk is all right.

• 3:40:46Yasi Salek?

  You're right. Punk, because punk punk had an ideology, whereas like, I'm not sure Britpop besides the ideology of Yanks Go Home, Who Do You Think You're Kidding, Mr. Hitler, um.

• 3:40:57Speaker 05

  But also punk sounds a bit scary. Britpop just sounds like, it just sounds stupid. And if you're like Welsh or Scottish. Or Northern Irish Catholic, especially, you do not want to be called a Brit.

• 3:41:11Yasi Salek?

  I have nothing to do with this. This has nothing to do with me. Please leave me out of your narrative. I do find it interesting that Savage and Best did admit that like, most of their machinations around this cover were trying to get pulp to pop off because they were, they were like, we didn't need it for Suede because Suede was doing just fine. But this is our way to sort of like, through the back door, get pulp on the cover and get people to care about pulp. And it, and it worked. It was finally after forty-two years pulp started to um, be a going concern. I'll just say they fired their manager, John, because he was getting, I'm gonna paraphrase, they were saying he was basically getting drunk too much and partying all, because he was their age, he was just fun.

• 3:41:54Yasi Salek?

  And they replaced him with their longtime roadie, turned sound man, turned tour manager, Charlie Charlton, which is a real name. And not a, not an alias.

• 3:42:09Yasi Salek?

  And here we're putting a pause on the riveting story of Suede. We're gonna come back next week and find out, will our lads be able to push on to greater heights? Or will they succumb to the pressures of fame and fortune? Or maybe a little column A and a little column B. Find out next week on part two.

• 3:42:35Yasi Salek?

  If you liked what you heard today, subscribe for more episodes of Bandsplain. Our guest today was the wonderful Miranda Sawyer. Her book, Uncommon People, is great and it is available to buy wherever you buy books, right now. Go buy it. This episode was produced by Liz Sanchez and edited by Adrian Bridges with help from Justin Sales. Executive producers for Bandsplain are Gina Delvack and me, Yasi Salek. Our gorgeous and catchy theme song was composed and performed by Bethany Cosentino and Jennifer Clavon, and graciously recorded by Carlos de la Garza in Los Angeles, California. Special thanks to our producer emeritus, producer Dylan, AKA Dylan Tupper Rupert, and also Sean Fantasy, Michael Hardman, Casey Simonson, Robert Adler, Leah Edwards, David McDonough,

• 3:43:18Yasi Salek?

  Dana Meyerson, Jessica Hopper, and Dr. Robbie. I would die for you, Dr. Robbie. Come back every Thursday for a new episode of Bandsplain on Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.

• 3:43:37Yasi Salek?

  Oh my god, he looks so fit with the blonde hair.

• 3:43:41Speaker 05

  That's what he look, that is exactly, that, that character. Like, when he's like raving, that's what he's like when I met him.

• 3:43:48Yasi Salek?

  Oh my god, you guys must have been such a handsome couple, just two bleached blondes, like, tearing up.

• 3:43:53Speaker 05

  I made him de-bleach his hair, I was like, there's only a group of one bleached blonde in this relationship.

• 3:43:57Yasi Salek?

  Me bitch.

• 3:43:58Speaker 05

  Get out.

• 3:43:58Yasi Salek?

  Not you.