brett anderson, welcome to hardtalk. thank you very much. lovely to be here. you've just written your second memoir which takes us right france, germany and britain have through your music career. requested a meeting of the un and throughout it you appear to be security council. almost painfully aware of the danger president trump described the attack as a "bad idea". of being some sort of rock cliche. a monitoring group says at least ten would you say that is fair? civilians have been killed so far. chancellor angela merkel has attended a memorial vigil in berlin yeah, i mean, very much the starting for two people killed in an anti—semitic attack point for writing the book in the german city of halle. was to sort of subvert the tired the attack took place on thejewish cliche of the sort of well—trodden story that we're aware of. i think every rock career is basically the same story. holy day of yom kippur. it's a story of struggle, success, excess and disintegration, and then if you're lucky, you kind of arrive at a point dramatic pictures released of some sort of self by italian rescuers are gettihng reflection or awareness a lot of attention on our web site. of what you've been through. a small plane was left dangling upside down after getting entangled in ski lift cables in the italian alps. the pilot sustained only light injuries when he was thrown out of the plane — and is now being treated in hospital. that's all. stay with bbc world news. but i wanted to write a story about — that wasn't about the cliches, that was more about the kind of, an investigation into the kind of machinery, the fame machine, the success

machine, and what that does now on bbc news it's hardtalk to people and what they did to me, especially. are you doing it out with stephen sackur. of a spirit of sort of regret, even resentment at that machinery and the way it used you? welcome to hardtalk, no, not at all. i'm very aware the machinery i'm stephen sackur. is actually amoral, that it kind rock music inhabits a world of doesn't have an opinion, it doesn't have a consciousness. of permanent revolution. it's just something today's biggest bands will most likely be tomorrow's tired old has—beens. but just occasionally, that happens to people. artists and groups find a way of reinventing themselves and outlasting the constant fluctuations in fashion and taste. and the last thing i wanted to do with the book is to sort of point fingers and blame anything, really, to be honest. you know, if there is any villain in the story, it's myself, it's my own kind of, ineptitude and my own, my own lack of understanding of how the machinery works. so, it's certainly not kind of, my guest today knows plenty about surviving the highs and lows of a music career, brett anderson's like, blaming anyone. band suede was hailed as "the future of rock ‘n‘ roll" back let's begin at the beginning. in the early 90s. because it is fascinating. in yourfirst book, they are still making music coal black mornings, a generation after britpop ceased you chose actually not really to be a thing. 00:01:48,404 --> 4294966103:13:29,430 so what keeps him going? to write about the music business at all, but to write about brett anderson's childhood, about being brought up in a relatively poor home, but in a relatively prosperous part

of the south—east of england. yes, yeah. that sort of weird juxtaposition. and it does seem that actually the relative poverty of your parents and your upbringing had a huge impact throughout your life? i was born into a sort of poorfamily, there was — that was kind of poor in a materialistic sense, but very rich, culturally. my father was an obsessive classical music fan, obsessed with franz liszt. my mother was an artist. so we lived in this council house, and there'd kind of be audbrey beardsley prints and we'd be listening to sort of wagner and stuff like this, you know. we'd — we always — there was always a sense of outsiderdom where we didn't fit in. we didn't fit into the community in which we lived, but then again, we didn't fit into a sort of — some sort of wider, middle—class world that my parents‘ aspirations kind of, you know, covertly aimed towards, i think. and is that why you appear to have been so desperate to get away and so desperate to, frankly, to make it as a rock ‘n‘ roll star at an early age? i think it's quite —

yeah, i think it's a huge motivation, poverty. you know, fear of poverty continues to be the reason why i carry on doing this. but i wasn'tjust thinking about the poverty, i was actually thinking of the ability to express yourself. yeah. and maybe you saw yourself in pop music as it was then in the mid—to—late 80s, you saw a space that you could occupy. yeah, i think i saw a space where — i looked at the rock world and it didn't seem to me that anyone was really speaking about their lives. it seemed to me that they were speaking about what i call ‘rock speak‘. they were kind of, like, they were talking about — they were talking in terms of rock cliches. they were, you know, it was, it was songs about ‘elevating one's soul‘ and kind of these meaningless phrases just sort of like seem to seep into the rock lexinography. and if i may, also, interestingly, a lot of musicians in the uk were looking to america for their inspiration. yeah, yeah.

and you absolutely never wanted to do that from the very beginning. i wanted to write about the world i saw around me, whichjust happened to be england. it happened to be london, it happened to be, you know, a kind of a very sort of marginal, sort of disaffected sort of side of early 90s london, so we were living on the dole, all these sorts of things. and i wanted to write about that world because that was the world that was real to me. i didn‘t want to write about kind of, you know, some imaginary sort of fantasy of california or anything like that. but your problem was that it was tapping a vein of personal experience which a lot of people didn‘t seem very interested in. i mean you spent years on the circuit, pubs and clubs in london in the late 80s, early 90s, not really getting anywhere. i mean, at one point you say, and this an anecdote you tell against yourself.

"at the amersham arms in south london we actually played to one person." yes, absolutely. but i that‘s, really, you know, you, as an artist, you need to go through that period of struggle because you‘re, you‘re kind of, you‘re sort of finding out who you are. and you‘re kind of like you‘re honing your craft as well. but bands that kind of get picked up too early in their career and they have a hit too early or something like that, they‘re not given enough time to develop and grow and suede very much at that time to develop and grow because we were incredibly unfashionable. and also, we weren‘t very good as well. laughter. you say "we were actually pretty terrible." the only guy that was good in your band was the guy that you‘d hired to be lead guitar, bernard butler. bernard, yeah, yeah. i mean, he was the only kind of only proper musician in the band. but, you know, ineptitude, there is nothing — kind of, people are fearful of ineptitude and i think you should, kind of in a funny sort of way, embrace it.

because it helps you learn. and i‘m glad that we spent three years playing rubbish songs to two people in pubs ‘cause it sort of gave us a bit of character, and it allowed us to sort of find out, like i say, find out who we were. let‘s just play a clip of you guys in that magic year when you broke through in 1993 playing the track ‘so young‘. let‘s have a look. let‘s do it. # because we‘re young # because we‘re gone # we‘ll scare the skies with tigers‘ eyes # oh yeah # we‘re so young and so gone # let‘s chase the dragon, oh # let‘s chase the dragon # from our home i do love watching you watching you, it‘s sort of fascinating.

i don‘t know what was going on with my hair there. i don‘t think i had washed that for about four weeks. well i wanted to ask you about the hair in the broader sense that you projected an image, which i think was very deliberately androgynous to a certain extent. it certainly wasn‘t matching the sort of macho stereotypes of most rock ‘n‘ roll lead singers. no. and you talked a lot about sexuality and some of your songs dealt with the darker sides of sex. yep. what were you trying to do with your sexuality in your songs about sexuality? yeah well, first of all, i think good pop music has always had a very strong sort of sexual side. you know, my favourite pop songs and favourite rock songs, there‘s always — there‘s always a kind of like a sort of murky, sort of priapic sort of side to them. but secondly, i think i was trying to, even though that the phrase didn‘t exist then, there was a sort of like, a certain sexualfluidity that i was going to express.

which obviously, coming forward to the generation we have today, it‘s absolutely prevalent. but it looks back in a sense, to people like david bowie. does in a sense, but i wasn‘t trying to. i think that is more of a kind of androgyny. and certainly, i wasn‘t trying to sort of parody those things. i think people sort of tended to misinterpret it out the time. there was a kind of an element of sexualfluidity, which i‘m kind of proud that the band sung about in those days. because there was a strong side of ladism that led through the 90s, especially 1994, through cool britannia and britpop and all those sorts of things. and yet this is hugely important for you in your career... and i feel as though... ..because you got associated, in fact, you were regarded as the pioneers of britpop... well, there‘s the irony. ..and then along came oasis and blur

and a bunch of other brands. did you resent being lumped in with them? yeah, i suppose so. i don‘t think anyone likes being put in a box, do they? no—one likes being labelled, because that kind of limits you. it tells you, you know, you‘ve got someone else telling you what you are. and i think every artist likes to think they are bigger than that, i suppose. well, it goes back to the very beginning of this conversation and the machinery behind the music industry. in a sense, you were being packaged as part of a sort of young generation of dynamic, energetic british bands who are going to sweep the world with this cool british pop music. yeah. but i dissociated myself from that very early on, though. i, you know, as soon as i saw what i saw as becoming this kind of laddish, jingoistic kind of cartoon happening, which became britpop, i very quickly distanced suede from that. but did that make you sound a bit snobby when you dismissed 0asis as what was it? probably. "the singing plumbers?" well, you know, that was something — i might have said that 25 years ago. well, i think you definitely did. i‘m not going to — i‘m not going to kind of like, kind of sort of try and justify

things i said a long, long time ago. ithink, you know, did it make us look snobby? probably. you know. you may make lots of mistakes along the way, i‘m not perfect. you know what i mean? but all you do — you just go with your instincts. but i saw what was happening with britpop and it — for me it felt quite distasteful. it felt nationalistic, it felt like there was a sort — quite a strong thread of misogyny. right. i didn‘t think suede should be a part of that. ifeel you‘ve probably found it quite difficult to talk about the internal dynamics of the band, because it is such a cliche that bands they get great success, then start infighting, and there‘s all sorts of tensions and then they fall apart. but the truth is suede had its share. yeah, absolutely. and as we referred to, probably the best musician in the group, bernard butler, he left having delivered an ultimatum to you others that he wanted to control the band, pretty much, and you wouldn‘t have it. your girlfriend left even earlier, justine. yes. she was an integral part of the first suede.

yeah. is it a bit like a sort of maximum—intensity family, living in a band? yeah, it‘s a weird thing. it‘s like — you‘re absolutely right. the parallel is a family where you‘re incredibly close to these people and you spend an intense amount of time with them. and you get to know them with a depth that you can only equate with, yeah, how well you get to know your family. you spend a lot of downtime with them, which is a really key thing. you know, you spend a lot of time sort of hanging around, sitting around, smoking, these sorts of things. and yeah, it does become like an extension of the family and lots of ways. but you‘re right, all of the cliches that as a band when you first start, that you‘re very aware of, that you think we ‘0h, we‘re not going to fall into the trap because we‘re better than that.’ because you think of spinal tap, you know, the absurdity of that. yeah. they‘re so — but then again, i always think that, you know, i don‘t give myself too hard a time about it because it‘s like life, isn‘t it?

you think that — well, everyone knows that people kind of like split up and get depressed and all of these traps that you fall into in life. but everyone‘s ? it doesn‘t mean people stop doing it. it doesn‘t. it still happens. it‘s kind of part of human nature. and being in a band, it‘s like human nature, but kind of magnified. it did get to a point where i think you and bernard found it so difficult to be in the same space at the same time that you couldn‘t be in the studio together, and you would be literally posting cassettes to each other. yeah, i mean, it got, you know. it got kind of sticky, yeah, for a while, yeah. but the — relationships break down. it‘s what happens with bands and it‘s what happens with people. and i think the thing is to remember, is that this happened when we were in our, you know, early, mid—20s, at those days you don‘t have the kind of, you don‘t have the social skills or the kind of life skills to be able to deal with that. you know? you‘re young men, thrown into this sort of cauldron of kind of success, ambition, money, all of these things are thrown at you. it makes you, it makes

you kind of erratic. it makes you imbalanced. and you certainly don‘t have the life skills to be able to deal with it. and grief. i‘m guessing, i don‘t know how you been about this, but i‘m guessing, well basically when justine left, but also bernard, there must be grief when you lose a bandmate. yeah, of course. yeah, absolutely. it‘s terribly. it‘s a tragedy. you know, it‘s happened to me several times with very, very close members of my band that have left. it‘s a terrible thing to overcome. and, you know, you just — as a young man you kind of bury it and deal with it in your own way. but, you know, it‘s only now, looking — being able to write this book, and looking at these relationships in a kind of clear eyed, hopefully more objective way that you realise how affected you were with these separations. let‘s be honest, you made things worse for yourself, or more difficult, in those

respects, by also turning to drugs in a very big way. yes. and, again, without wishing to indulge in all the sort of rock cliches of talking to rock musicians about their drug habits, you are very frank about the degree to which you got stuck in a spiral. mm, absolutely, yeah. is addict the right word for what you were? um, i suppose so. it‘s difficult to say. that‘s kind of getting technical, i suppose. and, again, with great frankness you have written about the moment which was the very worst of this. i think it was in 1999 when you and your girlfriend were having a binge... yes. and she... was this with crack cocaine? yeah. she nearly died. yes. yeah, yeah, yeah. it‘s, um, yeah, it‘s horrific. it's... you know, i try not to, kind of, glorify anything, but i‘m very kind of clear eyed about it.

and, you know, ijust talk about it because these things happened. i don‘t particularly... i‘m trying not to romanticise it in my own way, but i suppose by virtue of the fact that i‘m talking about i‘m romanticising it in some way. no, it doesn‘t come across that way. it comes across as profoundly painful in a way that is still with you. yeah, it was sad and i kind of regret that period deeply. and i think it led to, looking at an overview of the band... i regret it because it kind of destroyed the band. it‘s what led to us eventually splitting up. i think, most relevantly, it led to a dearth of ideas, because that‘s what drugs will do to you. addiction aside and all of these sorts of things, these things that grab the headlines, as a songwriter you kind of, you don‘t care about anything else except the substance that you‘re chasing. and so your songwriting, your writing becomes secondary. i became the kind of...

i started writing... i drifted into a period of self—parody as a writer. and i really regret that. that had effects that led onto us splitting up, i think. but, interestingly, if we then moved forward a bit, that level of regret any feeling that you had missed out on years of creativity with people that you cared about, was that a big driving force in making you decide that a reunion, which again is a bit of a rock cliche, was actually something worth trying, because you felt you hadn‘t finished what you could have achieved? that‘s exactly it, yeah. there was a sense that suede split up on a kind of bum note. that we finished before we should have done and that we didn‘t — we didn‘t sort of explode in this kind of riot of glory. it finished on a bit of a whimper. i think one of the motivating reasons, the main motivating reasons to re—form, was because we had unfinished business.

let‘s look at a second clip. cause this fascinates me, this idea that you can find new ways of telling stories that you told before in your 20s but then you‘d come back to the stories in your 40s. so let‘s look at the royal albert hall, a famous suede concert, i think the first from your reunion tour. yes. so let‘s have a look at that. # like his dad you know that he's had, animal nitrate in mind. # 0h in your council home he jumped on your bones. # now you're taking it time after time. # oh, what turns you on, oh?

# now he has gone. # oh, what turns you on, oh? # now your animal's gone...# it‘s electric, actually, watching that. thanks. it was a really special night. and whenever people ask me what my favourite gig of my whole career, i actually mention that one. because there was something really special about that. i don‘t know... we didn‘t quite know how it was going to be received and we‘d been away for such a long time... no, it is a risk. just like putting new albums out is a risk, because the critics are going to be tempted to say, here you are, just milking it for another payday, going through the same old routine... the paydays aren‘t quite as big as they used to be in the old days, i can assure you of that, you know. what intrigues me is the level of energy, you feel from that, you can‘t fake it. and yet i‘m just wondering if you, as an artist, really want to keep

touring, keep doing, that was animal nitrate, one of your most successful ever songs, whether you want to keep wheeling out the old hits when you‘re still a creative person — clearly is focused on writing new stuff. well, i mean, the only reason i‘m comfortable with playing old songs is because we still write new music. i couldn‘t be one of these bands thatjust is this sort of a nostalgia act and goes through the hits and you know. we‘ve spent the last eight years making new albums and making kind of like increasingly strange sort of left—field records that we absolutely love and i feel as though it sort ofjustifies us carrying on, really. it feels, to me — if we‘re looking forward we can look back at the same time. yeah. i think, maybe in the book, i can‘t remember, but i read it somewhere, you said, you know, my muses for writing used to be lovers, friends, the things i was seeing around me, today, you say, primarily it‘s my son, and i wonder how that‘s changed the music you‘re writing?

well, i think that you‘re always — i‘m always looking for... there‘s a sort of core of human emotions that you‘re always writing about, i think. i‘m always writing about kind of paranoia and fear and passion and all theses sorts of things — loneliness, sadness. and you‘re just — all you‘re doing is an artist is that you‘re clothing them differently. and when i was a young man i was sort of writing at these things from a different angle. i was writing about living my life is a dissolute young man on the margins in ‘90s london. and now i‘m writing from a different perspective. i‘m a married man, i‘m a father... you‘re a rather comfortable middle—aged man, with a lovely family, living in a lovely house — or houses. absolutely. can that make as creative and edgy a music? i think there is always — i think it‘s a sort of an oversimplification to look at someone‘s life and see it as comfortable and think that they can‘t write about — and to see..

and to think that there isn‘t uncomfortable moments within that life. every life has moments of paranoia and anxiety and all of these sorts of things. so what do i feel the most passionate about these days? i feel the most passionate about my family. so the last couple of albums i‘ve written have been very much about my family and fear of losing my family. and the last album i wrote was called the blue hour. and it was sort of like a narrative theme about the loss of a child. it was songs about — kind of based around that narrative core. so it‘s about looking for these kind of motifs in different parts of your life. the last thing i‘d want to do is to be trying to chase some sort of vision of myself that i had from the early i990s, when i‘m sort of trying to be who used to be. sure. you‘ve got to look for different versions of yourself. does it matter to you whether suede, in the end, are put by the critics,

or even the public, which is more important, in that group of rock acts whose work endures, that doesn‘t just exist in the moment it was made, but actually has relevance and meaning far beyond that? i think that there‘s always two artists, every artist eventually gets split into two artists. you kind of like — there‘s always a sense that you inhabit the world that when you first appeared on the scene and there‘s a sense that you‘re always sort of set in — you‘re kind of... the way that the public perceive you as sort of set in time almost. and then there‘s a second artist that carries on beyond that kind of thing. so it‘s difficult to say, really. you know, one carries on making music because it‘s incredibly vital and exciting to me. i don‘t quite know how i‘m going to be perceived in a wider sense. but you‘re not going to stop? i‘m not going to stop. brett anderson, it‘s been a pleasure having you on. thank you so much. thank you very much indeed.

cheers. really enjoyed it. hello there. wednesday has been a very showery day across parts of scotland and northern ireland, particularly western scotland, rainfall totals really starting to mount up, we‘ve seen some flush flooding in places, a lot of surface spray on the roads. as we head on into thursday, it looks like it‘s going to stay pretty unsettled, turn windier through the day, with another band of rain moving in. could see the new area of low pressure. this is the low pressure we have had for the last few days, eventually clearing off to the north—east. this new area of low pressure will send its weather fronts out across for the north—west of the country, and it will bring another round of fairly strong winds. thursday though starts off

fine and dry for many. lovely spell of sunshine up and down the country. a few showers across western scotland continuing. and then the band of rain starts to push in, to northern ireland initially, and then into much of scotland and perhaps the far north of england. and it is going to turn very wet and we could see further issues with surface water flooding across western scotland. whereas further south, although there will be a lot of cloud across england and wales, there could be quite a bit of dry weather too. the top temperature of 17 degrees. but through thursday night, it stays quite blustery. further heavy showers, longer spells of rain across the north—west of the country. and then we will start to see some more persistent rain pushing to parts of england and wales by the end of the night. you notice temperatures 12—14 in the south. turning much milder. temperatures nine or 10 the overnight low for scotland and northern ireland. the reason for the wet weather as we head on into friday and, indeed, into the weekend, is this weather front which will be pretty much part across england and wales, we think, and it is going to bring a lot of rainfall throughout friday. it will pile up into the hills

of wales, perhaps the north midlands and northern england, particularly across the peat district. 50 — 70 millimetres of rain which could cause some issues, atrocious conditions on the road and surface water flooding. mild to the south of the weather front friday afternoon. 18 degrees the high. 15—16 on the weather front. sunshine and showers and cooler air, 1a degrees further north. showers in northern areas begin to ease. a new renewed bit of rain starts to push in into the south—west into the weekend. england and wales likely to seek most of the cloud and rain which could cause some issues. for scotland and northern ireland, slightly cooler air mass and a mixture of sunshine

and showers, some of which may be heavy and thundery.

i‘m rico hizon in singapore, the headlines. international condemnation as turkey invades kurdish—controlled areas

of northern syria. for civilians across the border on the civilian side, this is going to feel like one more round of battle in an agonisingly long war. a gunman kills two people near a synagogue in eastern germany while live—streaming his actions online. i‘m kasia madera in london. also in the programme. australia‘s young farmers share stories of the ways climate change is damaging their lives and livelihoods.