Long-serving rhythm section MAT OSMAN and SIMON GILBERT on Suede's dirty dozen (with interventions from Young Oakes and the Brettmeister himself)
(May 1992, No.49)
Mat Osman: "It was supposed to sound really drunken, woozy, and messy.
Everyone wanted us to release something fast and vicious as a first single, but we wanted
something with a bit of poise. Drunken poise."
Simon Gilbert: "I'm still really proud of it. And I get to start it, of
course, with the drum roll! I remember hearing the chorus for the first time, and
thinking, 'God, I've never heard anything like it.' It only got to number 49 or something,
but we were really excited: 'Wow! 49!' We got sick of playing it, eventually, though. We
might do it one day for the fan club. Or the 25th Anniversary Tour."
(September 1992, No.17)
Mat Osman: "We recorded it really quickly, all in one night, and I just
remember being slumped on the sofa, 6am, listening to different mixes, and not having a
clue what's good or bad any more. It's a weird thing knowing that any tiny change you make
is a huge decision: it'll be there forever, on pub jukeboxes."
Simon Gilbert: "It reminds me of the first time we did 'Top Of The Pops', and
it felt like we were taking off. We got really drunk before we did it, because Polygram
sent us loads of Jack Daniel's - rock'n'roll! - and I couldn't understand
afterwards why everyone was saying, 'Wow, did you see Suede on "Top Of The
Pops"? Outrageous!' All my mum's friends thought Brett was a woman."
(February 1993, No.7)
Simon Gilbert: "Our first video, and it got banned, because of the two fat
people! Which turned into 'Two Gay Men Making Love', which it wasn't at all. It was quite
a thrill getting those words, 'Animal Nitrate' into the charts. I remember playing The
Brit Awards, and Mat throwing his bass down, which he used to do at every gig anyway, and
seeing the audience's faces: 'What the fuck was that?!'"
Mat Osman: "That was one of the funniest days of my life. Complete
incomprehension. I didn't realize people could be so easily offended any more. I thought
we'd reached this stage where people could assimilate anything. You could come on
stage and sing about murdering children, and the executives would go (clap hands)
We can sell that..."
(May 1993, No.22)
Simon Gilbert: "This reminds me of when we first met Derek Jarman's lot. They
made the video, and I really liked it: me sprawled on the piano, Bernard caressing his
guitar ...It didn't get very high in the charts, though, but it still gets the crowd
going, even now."
Mat Osman: "It's definitely our favorite from the album, and it was a real
step forward in songwriting terms. I think it's a better single than 'Animal Nitrate', but
it kind of got lost."
(February 1994, No.3)
Brett Anderson: "The one point in our career I can actually agree it was hype
that made it successful. Hype based around the excellent quality of the first album, but
'Stay Together' didn't deserve it.
Simon Gilbert: "I have no nice feelings about this song. Probably because it
was at the time that things were going off. In this very room, in fact. I can't say
much more, in case someone is still listening, lawyers at the ready. Once I'd got
my drums done, I walked out of the studio and didn't come back. Things were turning a
bit...sour."
Mat Osman: "It's just an all right song that got overdone. A prime example of
taking a good idea and swamping it. It's a very impressive record, but there comes
a point in life where you have to stop trying to impress people."
(September 1994, No.18)
Mat Osman: "Literally no one wanted us to release this. They begged us. We should have released 'The Wild Ones', but it was bloodymindedness on our part. It was probably commercial suicide, but seemed to fit the times. We were in a very strange situation, and to put out a single that sounded so dark, and was called 'We Are The Pigs' seemed cool, very apt. 'Dog Man Star' in general wasn't the most pop of records. Maybe with time it might turn into some sort of cult classic..."
(November 1994, No.18)
Simon Gilbert: "Filming the video was the worst day of my life. We did it on
fucking Dartmoor, blowing a gale, raining, in this Winnebago..."
Mat Osman: "...four of us, and six models, sitting in a Volkswagen Camper Van
for 15 hours, shivering to death. Then the rain would stop and I had to go outside, pull
these silly poses (holds arms aloft, mouth wide open, as if celebrating a goal) and
stand completely still. I drew the short straw. It's still one of my favorite songs. If we
released it now it'd be huge, but it kind of died on the vine."
(January 1995, No.21)
Simon Gilbert: "The third or fourth single off an album always feels
pointless. You don't even bother to ask where it's charted."
Mat Osman: "We were already writing new stuff with Richard, which we knew was
great, but we didn't go around saying it because everyone does that: 'Our next album's
really amazing, it'll blow you away.' It's become meaningless. Actually, I wish we'd done
interviews saying, 'We're fucked. Honestly. We just can't write. It's shit. I mean, listen
to it, give it a spin but don't expect to get excited.'"
(July 1996, No.3)
Richard Oakes: "It was just a really fizzy, exciting pop record to jump around
to, 'To brush your hair to', as I believe the phrase is, before you're going out."
Mat Osman: "We had no idea how it was going to be recieved. I knew we had a
lot of fans, but the whole musical scene had changed. In the two years we were off, we
went from being the biggest cult band to being part of the mainstream, without actually
doing anything. The mainstream moved, we didn't."
Simon Gilbert: "It was on daytime radio all the time. Capital picked up on it,
and they'd never played us before. We've got a whole new audience now who recognise Brett,
but haven't got a clue who the rest of us are."
(October 1996, No.8)
Simon Gilbert: "The audience go fucking mad for it. You can see them waiting
for the chorus: 'Here they come...'"
Mat Osman: "It's one of those songs that's for everyone. It's about the band,
and the fans, and everyone around us. Our records have always had a balance between joy
and darkness, and that shifted a bit on this album, just because we were happier. People
see it as a career move, as if we sat down and drew a graph: 'right, 75 percent
happiness...'"
(January 1997, No.6)
Simon Gilbert: "A slowie! So it's not ideal for things like 'TFI
Friday'..."
Mat Osman: "It's quite a mature, accepting record. It's one of those records
that sounds like you've always known it. (Some maintain we always have: Nicky Wire
reckons it's ripped off Elton John, while Mansun say Eric Clapton) Well, obviously!
They're two of our all-time heroes. We're going for the ancient market."
(March 1997, No.7)
Brett Anderson: "It was incredibly simple when I started it, but Richard
breathed life into it with his amazing guitar line..."
Mat Osman: "Brett's original demo is worth hearing, actually. Very trippy,
very slow, it kind of wanders off...But when we do it live, it rocks. There's no feeling
like it, when you just loose it. That's why people get sex and drugs and
rock'n'roll mixed up: they're supposed to be the times you just act naturally, you don't
think, you're not in control."
Simon Gilbert: "The audience reaction really suprises me. We think of it as a
relatively slow one, but they start pogoing! We were in this club the other night, and the
DJ played it and everyone danced, so I think we'll be allright..."
(July 1997, No.7)
Mat Osman: "It started off with this Pistols riff that Richard had. It's about a certain kind of British actor - Alan Bates, Terence Stamp, people who make what they do look easy."
(April 1999, No.5)
Simon Gilbert: "Electricity is the first single, that bit [intro] came about later but we had the track around for quite
a while before that didn't we?."
Richard Oakes: "Yes we did. It's just little things to funk it up. The first demo that was done was quite garagey punk with lots of
guitars and stuff. It's an uptempo fiasco. It's very good."
Brett Anderson: "Sonically it's possibly quite consistent with the rest of the album. It's got a lot of bottom end and a lot of bass hooks and stuff like that. The bottom end of the tracks was something we were working on specifically on the album. We were working the tracks from the bottom upwards rather than from the top downwards if that makes any sense."
Mat Osman: "Really electric, very modern and quite spiky and hard-edged for us."
Neil Codling: "Hard-edged, spiky and more like the last album than anything else on this one."
Brett Anderson: "just meant to be a simple love song. It's nothing bigger than that. Why did we choose it as the first single? Well, it was either going to be this or 'Savoir Faire'. There are about five singles on the album, so in the end I couldn't really tell which one should be first. It was pretty much flip a coin or roll some dice."
(June 1999, No.13)
Mat Osman: "A big summery pop song, probably as light as anything we've done."
Neil Codling: "I think She's In Fashion is one of Suede's more brazen attempts to be a pop band really."
Simon Gilbert: "A summer smash I reckon, I hope so."
Richard Oakes: "Probably the most pop song you'll ever hear in your life and the way it was done. That was one that for a while the thing we wanted to do with it was kind of harsh. We tried a few odd keyboard noises and funny little spiky guitar riffs and at the end it was like going back to how we'd imagined it in the first place and the first band demo we did.
The actual first demo at all, it wasn't a song it was a piece of music on a tape, Neil sent me was about 15 minutes long and it was the strangest thing I'd ever heard in my life. Strange kind of, you know "gloopy strings" it was called, it was a gloopy string riff over the top and a kind of Hawaiian bass line and nice acoustic guitar over the top."
Mat Osman: "We spent fucking months on that track and just couldn't get it right. We must have tried about eight different versions of it. It's just really weird listening to it now cos it just sounds straight and completely untouched and unforced. It just seems ridiculous to go through six months of three studios, and eighty attempts to make it sound as
un-studio as that. It was hard work that one."
Richard Oakes: "But it's one of those songs that will be on the telly."
Mat Osman: "Or possibly on the radio."
Simon Gilbert: "On the Clothes Show I think you'll find, I think it's guaranteed a six week run."
Neil Codling: "I had this string riff and beats and Brett wrote the melody to it. And however we tried to do it, we tried to make it a lot more obscure and a lot more dancey but it didn't really suit it. We tried about ten different versions of it when we did the record and it just didn't work."