[Articles and Interviews]

Guitarist Richard Oakes reflects on the hiccupped evolution
of englands sexiest band


Suede have had the tiresome label of Britpop pioneers lumped upon them on more than a handful of occasions and they don't like it. Who would? What does it mean? If Oasis are Britpop, then were the Beatles Britpop too? My computer's dictionary doesn't recognise words like rockabilly or glam, but it does recognise the word 'Britpop', as it does 'grunge'. That says it all really.

Suede formed in 1991 as a trio consisting of singer Brett Anderson, bassist Mat Osman and original guitarist Bernard Butler. They used a drum machine to keep the beat until they met up with Simon Gilbert and later, Elastica's Justine Frischmann joined up as second guitarist. Since the eponymous debut album, Suede have been legends. Frischmann left the band and boyfriend Brett eariy on in the history of the group and in 1994, a then 17 year-old Richard Oakes replaced Butler. A keyboard player named Neil Codling kind of pushed his why into the band by hanging around the studio during the recording of the third album, Coming Up.
Richard says, "I don't think that we were pioneers, but that whole thing (i.e Britpop] sprung up before I joined the band. I could see from the outside that Suede were a band who showed people how to write a song again. No guitar bands were really doing anything exciting in the eariy 90s. It was all hiding behind effects pedals and no-one was paying any attention to the structure of a song and how if you can make a three minute pop song affect someone's life, then it's really good... Suede showed people that you don't have to play ten minutes of rubbish to get your point across. You can do it in two verses, two choruses and a middle eight or whatever."

The latest album, Head Music (recorded by Steve Osboume who Richard believes is responsible for turning The Happy Mondays "from a bunch of gangsters into indie-dance crossovers") has had five UK Top Ten singles already and it is deserving of more.The keyword in the Suede philosophy appears to be honesty. In the beginning, their shows didn't go down too well but they persisted, knowing that what they were doing was what they wanted to do and it paid off. Richard has a lot to say on most matters I bring up with him. In fact, he's downright chatty.

"Everything we've done has been totally down the line. We've never done anything and then denied having done it. You know the way a lot of bands make a certain album and then when people challenge them and say it isn't very good, they go 'well we never meant to do that, you've got it completely wrong'. We've never said that. The albums are honest, the covers are honest, the titles are honest, the lyrics are honest and that's it really.

"Lyrically, Brett's always been very honest about the things he writes about, especially some of the narrative and observing songs that he does, for instance, She's In Fashion, Savoir Faire or Can't Get Enough. They portray certain images. Can't Get Enough portrays an image of a very hedonistic person. She's In Fashion portrays an image of an 'it girl'. It's not one particular 'it girl', it's just that type of woman who is always appearing on the front cover of magazines with a bikini on and the next minute she'll be appealing on behalf of children in need or saying 'be nice to animals'. It's just the people who are in the media. Those are purely observational songs.
They're not condemning but they're not commending either," Richard explains.

With Steve Osboume producing, it's little wonder the songs on Head Music are so finely tuned and dotted with lots of little effects like loops and layers and all that sort of dancy stuff, but Suede are still a rock band and their live shows are reputed to be among the best you could come across. The art of performance is very Important.

*Our live shows are something that we try very hard with. We strip it down to its bare bones and we just play the songs in a raw rock translation because some of the songs are very studied on the record. We pay attention to the records we've got out and we make sure that they're as perfect as they can be at the time, but when we play live everything has to be stripped down to five parts because there are five people in the band. It's through that that we find our best angle for direct communication with people. You can't just stand at the back with your arms folded. We grab everyone's attention from the beginning and hold it and we take them up with us and we take them down with us. I think we're possibly one of the best live bands in the country at the moment. We always try to win the crowd over no matter what."

When Bernard Butler, who wrote a lot of the - earlier music, left the group after two albums, there was never any doubt that whatever came next would have to be different and Richard, as the replacement, sees it as almost having to look at the 1994 line-up as a new band having to learn to play together. "We had to start almost from the beginning again so that's why Coming Up sounded very much like a debut. It didn't actually break any ground musically. The songs were quite traditionally written.

I think when we did Head Music, even though it's the band's fourth album, it feels like our second album. It's kind of opening the doors again and being ambitious again. It's by no means a defining album at all. I think it's like a comma or colon in a sentence. It shows people what we can do and will do in the future. We're going down a corridor. The next album will have strong evidence of the diversity and the instinctiveness of Head Music," Richard predicts.

Richard says that the band used a good mix of older synths for Head Music like Wuriitzers as well as Neil's "strange modern synths" to create a more interesting sound. They used a lot of practice amps and vintage pedals for the guitars and ran them all through small circuits for a retro touch, but although they were open to experimentation, Richard stresses that "we have not made an experimental album".

This tour is Suede's first visit to Australia and, what with having relatives to visit in Sydney, I'd say Richard is looking forward to it about as much as I am. they play Glenworth Valley on the Sunday the 3rd of October and at The Metro on Oct the 4th (SOLD OUT). Head Music is out now through Sony.