Lover

I’ll take your hearts!!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

I’m BERNARD

I’m NOT the Anti-Christ

B. Butler

When asked about working with Brett again he went on his “not living in the past” and “it’s not his cup of tea” and “the only time he thinks about it is when he has to answer the question in the forum” and said something about those people can just go “curl up with their old Suede records” .

“I can handle things, I’m smart. Not dumb like everyone says. I’m smart & I want respect!!”

Brett on Bernard

“One of the most poignant thing he’s ever said” recalls Anderson “is he thinks of himself as a singer who can’t sing. He speaks through his guitar, pretty much. He definitely co-stars with me on the song. He astounds us with what he can play.”……

Catalog No.: NUDE1CD Label: nude / Release Date: 3/29/1993 / U.K. CD /

Interview - Bernard Out Of Suede

Jan 9, 1993

Where are you and what are the vibes like?

Recording studio. The vibes are elpeevish.

What was the last thing you ate?

A satsuma.

What will be the next video you rent?

A very funny, sexy one involving lots of fun and sex.

Who makes you angery?

Most journalists. Lazy people. Untidy people. Rude people. Most musicians. Conceited tortured artlists. Impatient people. Clever people. People who moan in queues. Opportunist former associates. Yes, most people.

What was the first record you ever heard?

‘Tie A Yellow Ribbon Round The Old Oak Tree’. Who’s it by? (Tony Orlando and Dawn - Clever Ed)

What were you good at school?

Passing time imagining music in my head. Little else.

Key films in your life?

Allie, It’s A Wonderful Life, Rear Window.

Fave punk rock records?

Teenage Kicks - The Undertones; New Dawn Fades - Joy Division (is that punk?)

Fave in door games?

Music and love.

Worst lyric you’ve ever heard?

“Bang goes another day/Where it went I cannot say” - Blur. Who cares?

“She’s the girl with the most and she lives on the coast” - T-Rex. Terribly great.

Who’s sexy?

My girlie.

What did you have for Christmas dinner?

Yeast.

What were your new year resolutions?

Speak less. Be less courteous to people who are nasty to me.

Name a record that can make you cry?

Wild Horses - The Stones

What was the last dream you can remember?

Me and Brett in a doctor’s surgery being analysed by former teachers.

When were you last drunk?

Last Saturday. With Simon, naturally.

What’s your favorite record in the charts?

Man On The Moon - REM

What can you cook?

Toast.

What was the last great record you heard?

Creep - Radiohead

Showgril - The Auteurs

Current catchphrases?

Ohh, me lumbago.

Fave comedians?

Simon Gilbert.

Are Suede as good as everyone reckons?

No.

What do you dislike most about your appearance?

Nose.

What do you find depressing?

Watching TV. The Hit Parade. Homelessness in London.

Who are the second best group in Britain?

Suede.

Can you quote a line of poetry?

“When Lil’s husband got demobbed, I said” - The Wasteland, T S Elilot.

Fave places in England?

London.

Who’s overrated?

Suede.

Fave thinkers?

My girlfriend.

Fave painters?

I don’t like all that art caper.

Any thoughts on the new age travellers?

Not really.

What’s the strangest thing anyone has sent you?

A furry mouse to be worn at the end of the finger.

What causes would you support with your music?

The cause against loneliness.

Worst job ever?

Rebuilding our rehearsal rooms to pay off our debts.

What items would you save in a house fire?

Guitars, socks.

What was a Suede’s lowspot?

Playing to two dancing professors at a Cambridge ball. Freezing to death playing the Camden Falcon to two more people.

What do you always carry?

Plectrums, keys.

Which newspapers do you read?

None.

Describe Madonna in three words?

Artless, sexless, useless.

How do you relax?

Listening to music. Tidying up.

What could make you happier?

Universal joy.

http://bernard-butler.blogbus.com/c2448546/

Brett Anderson and Bernard Butler by Mary Marchenko

Fate?

“This year I’ve started to believe in fate. Bad things are supposed to happen, I think. Maybe if I’d had a list of girlfriends, I wouldn’t have found somebody who I want to spend the rest of my life with. Maybe I wouldn’t have relied so heavily on music. I didn’t talk very much for a number of years, you know. I didn’t have anyone to talk to. I just had sound.”— Bernard Butler, 1996

GQ: It’s good that you appreciate your luck, isn’t it?
Brett: Yeah. Of course, you create your own luck but if I hadn’t met Bernard… If I hadn’t met Justine, because she was very influential as well… I’ve been lucky in lots of ways.

Apparently, at the audition from which you recruited Bernard, just him and a man with no hands turned up. If you could go back now, would you enrol the man with no hands?
Brett:”Nah, no chance. My only regret is that we didn’t take it further - he left the band when there was a hell of a lot more in us. We were untouchable, heading for the fucking moon. There were more creative juices to flow.”

Heartbreak Record:
‘No Regrets’ — The Walker Brothers
Bernard:”I haven’t fallen out of love yet but my big record when I left Suede, which was kind of a heartbreak period for me, was this. It got to such a ludicrous situation with the media. Everything became ridiculous and funny and this song is so over the top that it mirrored the situation perfectly and brought it all down to comedy. You can either break down in tears or break down into laughter, and that’s the way I chose to do it.”

Alright then: have they heard your record?
Bernard:”I’m sure he [Brett] will and I’m sure he’ll go “It’s alright”, or, actually (crosses leg, adopts cockney accent, camply bats imaginary flick of hair from one eye) “It’s alright”. I don’t mind if he likes it or not. (laughs) I just hope they all leave me alone.”

What do you mean by that?
Bernard:”At one stage I was at a pretty low ebb. I didn’t really feel very secure about the people who were around me and the people I’d been involved with. I wasn’t feeling very special about myself and I think that’s a bad thing for anybody. Everyone needs to feel special about themselves, or have someone to make them feel special at some point in their lives. I feel I’ve proved myself. Not proved that I’m better than anybody else. I’ve proved that it’s OK to be me. And Brett Anderson, and people like that, don’t try and take that away from me. Please. (to tape recorder) PLEASE BRETT, LEAVE ME ALONE. Because I don’t think I deserve it.”

Bernard:”I still find that a lot of people think I’m a bit of a villain,” he says. “I’m supposed to be scared of what’s said about me. People are always coming up to me in the street and saying (look of concern), Are you all right? Are you sure? I’ve heard terrible rumours about me: that I just got out of rehab, that I make my music on heroin. I’ve never got involved in that shit.”

Anderson sighs, and tries to smile. “I’m sure even Bernard would agree now that we both said things we wished we hadn’t. But at the time it was very messy, very bitchy. At first I was desperate to make light of it. Our guitarist has left, so what? But the truth was that he was a very creative force in the band, and so his leaving changed everything - the dynamic, the chemistry, the tension …” The quality? “Yes, I suppose so,” he says. “And the quality.”

Brett:”He’s that kind of artist, Bernard. He has to experience tension and strife in order to do what he does. And I guess that’s fine, because it makes him what he is. But I do think that it was a tragedy, him leaving, because there was still a lot of gas left in the tank. I have no doubt we could have gone on to achieve something quite extraordinary if he’d hung around.”

Anderson has, he insists, very few regrets, and prides himself on his reluctance to give into envy, hatred or frustration. True, he would have been more satisfied had Suede built on that early promise, had Bernard Butler remained, had the cuddly Travis not sold a great many more albums than they. But, he says, “I’m not going to spill any tears over it. If I started complaining about our lack of recognition, I would end up sounding like every other band in England, and I’m not about to do that. Fate dealt us this card, and I don’t think we’ve done particularly badly with it. Music today seems so very worthy, so very dull. Nobody wants to stick their neck out any more, and I think that is a great pity. We did, and we left our mark.”

What did you make of Bernard’s solo stuff?
Brett:”I didn’t really hear much of it. I just heard a couple of singles. [Pause] It’s quite interesting to hear him sing. I never heard him sing a note before. He seems to be happy, which is fair enough. I haven’t seen him since he left the band.”

Brett:”It was never a case of jacking it in, but there were a lot of doubts in my mind about whether we could make a decent album. Cos, you know. Bernard left the band, and I couldn’t be sure we could just pick it up again. I know that with Bernard, it was a really special band. That’s something you can’t just dismiss and say, ‘Oh, it’ll be all right.. I may be confident, but I’m not that confident. Losing a key member like that, there’s a chemistry that’s been destroyed.”

Brett:”… The departure I presume was … difficult. Because I haven’t spoken to him for such a long time, I don’t really know what’s in his mind. I didn’t really know how his mind was working when he left. So I can’t really say. Maybe he was completely dissatisfied with it musically. It could be totally true. But I felt it was far more a personal thing.”