Brett Anderson Turns His Back On Britpop - page 2
07 November 2009
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A: I've noticed it's an interesting thing going from being in a successful band to being a solo artist. A lot of people see it as an opportunity to give you a kicking because you don't have the armour of being in a band around you.
As soon as you're in a vulnerable situation, like I am now where I don't sell records in the volume that I used to, I think it opens you up to a lot of criticism.
Of course, you read bad reviews of your work and it always hurts. I seem to polarize people's opinions. I don't get much middle ground with criticism, people tend to be very extreme one way or the other.
Q: Are you happy with the new album, 'Slow Attack'?
A: I think it's a beautiful record, and at the end of the day - and you've heard this a million times from a million different musicians - it's all I can do. I'm not making commercial music anymore, I'm not making music for the radio. I stepped out of the machinery of being in a band. I've had the bravery and the perspective to walk away from that when it would have been easier for me to stay with the band, and I'm doing something which inspires me artistically.
You can't be sitting there wishing 'God, I wish I could do a song like I used to do.' It's part of why you have to change what you do as an artist as well because if I was still trying to write 'Animal Nitrate' that would be really pointless because that was 'Animal Nitrate' and that was pretty good, so I'm not doing that. I'm trying to do something with a different feel, that still pushes the right buttons, that inspires me but sounds different and feels different.
Q: Would you ever write a book about your life?
A: I used to be addicted to drugs and now I'm addicted to reading. I'd like to write something eventually but I'd never write a sort of history of my experience of being in a band in the 90s. I can't think of anything more boring than another person compiling a load of information that everyone has read before. I had a funny idea of writing about my childhood that would stop up to the point when I started the band, like a suburban 'Cider With Rosie'. There's time for that when I'm 99.
Q: Do you think Suede should have finished earlier than they did?
A: Yeah absolutely. I think we probably made one album too many. I think the last Suede album was a case of us feeling around trying to find a new identity and probably not succeeding. Of course, there's always pressure on us to make a record but I was a very confused person about what I wanted and what I wanted to be and what I wanted the band to be, but I don't believe in that record as much as I believe in the other Suede records.
Q: Are you happy with the other albums?
A: I do totally believe in the first four, even 'Head Music', and 'Head Music' was one that very much divided fans because it wasn't a traditional rock record, we had lots of electronic influences in it and I think that's a fantastic record. Probably a bit meandering and a bit too long. It would probably have benefited from losing a couple of tracks but it's fantastic.
Q: What inspires your songwriting now?
A: I think it's less self-conscious. I think when you first start writing you're inevitably an amalgamation of your influences and as you develop your confidence in yourself you find your own voice as a writer and your own voice, literally. I feel like it's more natural when I sit and write it sort of comes into me, I'm not thinking oh it's got to be this sort of song or it's got to be that sort of song, it's more of a naturalistic process.
Q: You recently performed a cover of Velvet Underground's 'Venus In Furs' with Carl Barat and John McClure for the Jack Daniel's JD Set. What was that like?
It was fun, yeah. It was a classic song, everyone loves it. I've known Carl for years actually, a long time. He's always been very sweet and a lot of fun. I'd never met John before. He's very tall. He's kind of a foot taller than me. It was great. We just got up there and sang a few verses from a song. I think that's the spirit of the thing isn't it.
Q: You once said you were a bisexual man who had never had a homosexual experience - has that changed now?
A: The whole point about that quote is that I was trying to define and talk about myself in that kind of blurred way, I was trying to blur the genders. It was very much born out of the 1990s when there was lots of the drug ecstasy around. Ecstasy was quite influential in the early 1990s in the sense that I think people stopped sexualising people and started treating them as human beings because it's quite an emotional drug. I'm not in any way advocating its use or anything boring like that, I'm just trying to explain.
I was just trying to reflect on myself as a human being rather than a sexual being.
Q: You've taken to showcasing your demos and new tracks on the internet. Why do you do that?
A: I love that. One of my favourite things about the internet is that you can do things like that. I love doing those little films and I'm surprised that no-one else has really done it. I think it's a great way of introducing new songs to people but without actually giving anything away because I can just sit there and do a piano version of a song. Obviously it's not the final recorded version, it's very different, so it's a nice teaser for the music. I started doing that for my first solo album and it's something I intend to continue doing. It's great, instead of having to give away music or stream music.
By Viki Waters
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