So, to the second night of Glastonbury 2015. I didn't do Kanye West. These things are now on the BBC i-Player and you can catch up with it retrospectively rather than live which is always the best way. I suspect it won't be my trip. Instead I watched an hour of Suede doing their thing as the headliners on the John Peel Stage with beer, the original Far From the Madding Crowd on the box with the sound turned down and the traffic of Newcastle night life parading past my window on the pavements below.
I thought they were blindingly good last night. Brett Anderson in particular as he's always been their main attraction particularly with Bernard Butler, his main foil no longer beside him, although they had a second guitarist who seemed like a bit of a look alike and hid for most of the set behind a fringe making me wonder for a while whether it actually might be him. Probably not. There was no doubt at all that it was Anderson though and he gave the performance his all, stretching his sinews to breaking point, waggling his bottom as if it was still twenty and exhorting the crowd from the top of the speaker stands to deny the passing years had actually passed and we were all still in 1993 living the decadent, bohemian dream in some run down, crummy, London dive.
He had the crowd in the palm of his hand. Pleasingly, they pretty much all seemed really young, far too young to be veterans of the mean streets of Camden in the early nineties. He had whole waves of beautiful people singing 'let's chase the dragon,' back at him, mostly people who wouldn't dream of actually doing so in real life. Such is the beauty of pop music. It gives ourselves the opportunity to dream ourselves into the sea of possibility without having to actually ever get wet and end up choking up a lung full of salt water.
To go back to where it started, Suede seemed like a very good thing in 1993. The British competition was very, very poor at the time which shouldn't be forgotten, but they were a flash of drama and cheap bedsit glamour. In the gutter but looking at the stars with the right set of poses and pouts and with a great set of songs at their service, (seek out the first album as conclusive evidence of this in addition to the songs posted here) . The British music press almost wished them into existence and they can't help but be seen in retrospect, (they actually were at the time), as the John the Baptists for the whole Brit Pop circus which followed shortly behind, snapping on their heels and eventually overtaking them over the next couple of years.
Suede pilfered shamelessly from an almost exclusively English heritage and a very slim set of influences. You got the impression that Anderson had very few records in his collection and even less books. Most obviously the early Bowie albums, Ziggy, Aladdin Sane and Diamond Dogs, The Smiths and precious little else while I'd also throw in Performance as their defining film, I think Anderson ended up in residence in or near Powis Square where all that decadence took place, living out his own dark romantic dream.
I'd also add to all this the Oliver! soundtrack as the source for their quite peculiar, twisted mockney-isms which always seemed much more of the product of a youth spent in suburbia dreaming of the metropolis than something that someone who had actually been brought up in London itself would ever come out with. Significantly, none of the major bands of that era who were based in London from that period were actually from there in contrast to The Clash and The Pistols or The Kinks,The Who and The Small Faces from previous generational movements. It led to a quite strange vision of existence in the capital that drew on music hall and old pub singalongs as much as rock and roll but it still seemed very exciting at the time.
In the cold light of day I'm perhaps throwing cold water on my enthusiasm for Suede last night. But they were great. As was this record, their first single and its twelve inch b-sides which came out in 1992. I can still remember marveling over its record sleeve with my sister over the Christmas of that year.
So Suede are still standing, and Brett Anderson still living the dream though I imagine he keeps rather better care of himself nowadays. Thanks to them for taking me back and rattling the rafters yesterday night. Now for some breakfast. Kanye can wait!
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