Brett Anderson and Mat Osman used to go to the same highschool and in 1981 they formed their first band which was called "Geoff". Geoff turned into "Suave And Elegant". In 1986 Brett met Justine Frishman at an architecture course, they become a couple and she joined "Suave And Elegant" as a rhythm guitarist.
In october 1989 Brett and Mat placed an ad in NME which reads " Young guitar player needed by London-based band. Smiths, Cocteau twins, Bowie, PSB. No Musis please. Some things are more important than ability. Phone Brett…". Bernard Butler, a young guitarist which had beenb just thrown out of the London’s Queen Mary College where he was studying hystory was the first to answer the ad and was admited. Later Mat would say "Bernard fitted in straightaway, we knew within the first 15 seconds that he was the one."
The band named Suede (see various versions about the source of the name) took off in December 1989.As they had no drummer yet they were backed up by a drum machine.The early days of the band were no days of glory - the audience in their early gigs was less than not excited and they were dismissed by journalists, venues, agents and record companies. Their first single "Be my god/Art" is also very peculiar and has very little to offer the listener.
In October 1990 an ad for a drummer is placed and among repliers and ex-Smiths Mike Joyce and Elastica's Justin Welsch. Mike Joyce also plays on the (unreleased) single.Simon Guilbert is found while he's selling tickets for ULU in June the same year and joined the band.
Suede got their first record deal in November 1990. It's with a label formed by a friend of a friend of Mat and it involved a release of their debut single "Be my god" and a 7 album contract. Suede declined the deal and the single never got released.
Justine left the band in October 1990 in order to concentrate on finishing her degree. Later she would say "If you’re playing second guitar with Bernard there’s not a lot of room, I just ended up feeling like twat.". Justine has later formed Elastica and had her share of success.
Suede's luck started to change step by step as their gigs are getting better and so are the reviews. After a gig on 28 February 1992 jurnalists write things like "Suede are imminent, serious cullt superstars" and "This year’s most exciting group by a long way". Morrissey , which Brett is now copared to, is seen among the crowd on one of the more famous gigs.
Suede signed their contract for 2 singles with the newly formed Nude records on 10 March 1992. The turn point in the history of the band occured on 25 April 1992 when "The Melody Maker" put the band on it's cover and called them "The Best New Band In Britain". Suddenly Suede gained popularity and were interviewed frequently. Brett talked openly about his sexuality while Bernard tried to avoid interviews and press altogether. A month later Suede released their first official single "The Drowners" which landed on the 47th spot in the Network Chart and toped the indie chart (for 4 weeks). The videoclip for this song featured a model bodypainted as a man.
Suede's popularity continued to soar. Reviews like "The most audacious, mysterious, perverse, sexy, ironic, hilarious, cocky, melodramatic and downright mesmerizing band you're ever likely to fall inlove with" were fillind the music press. Suede appeared at the Reading Festival and released their second single "Metal Mickey" that reached No.17 in the UK chart. Suede appeared at "Top Of The Pops" on 21/09/92 and Brett shocks the audience by using the microphone as his private organ...
After Suede finished their two-single deal with Nude the battle for their contract started. A&R and Gefen are involved, but Nude got them once again. Sony got the publishing rights outside UK.
In December 1992 Brett had the famous interview in which he claimed he is "a bisexual who never had a homosexual experience". Later Simon would say "I'm a bisexual who never had hetrosexual experience".
"Animal Nitrate" the third official single is released and the video for the song got banned on BBC because of one of the following 1)two men kissing" 2) two fat people (various versions). All this time Suede continued to intensevily tour the UK driving the crowd mad and into tearing Brett's clothes.
Suede released their infonomous album with two woman kissing on the cover. The original cover had the full body shots of the ladies, one of the in a wheelchair, but it was banned and replaced in order to preserve the women's identities. The album sold 100,000 copies on it's first week - the biggest seller since Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s "Welcome To The Pleasuredome". The press was very excited and called it "the most eagerly awaited debut since "Never Mind The Bollocks" by The Sex Pistols". The album is very far from dissapointing and contains fast and "heavy" songs ("Breakdown") and well as slow and melacholic ones ("Pantomime horse"). The album toped the charts and turned gold within 2 weeks.
"So Young" (Originally titled "Chase The Dragon") was released as the fourth single and entered the charts at No 6.
Suede continued touring in Europe as well as in the US and Japan. Rumors concerning arguments between Butler and Anderson were spread. "Still life" (recently voted as internet Suede fans' favorite song) was performed for the first time.Suede got the Mercury Music Prize for their album and donated the 25,000 dollars to cancer research.
In the beginning of 1993 Suede released "Stay Together" - a 4 songs EP. Reviews stated that it's "luxuriating in the ambitious, dramatic, exhausting spell of this makes everything else sound like so much ephemera…". In the same time Suede started the work for their second album.
An american country singer Suede suits Suede and forces them to change their alias in the US to "The London Suede" which gains extreme negative responses form fans to this day.
A key event in Suede's history takes place in 10/6/94 when Bernard Butler is reported to storm out of the studion where they were recording the album and to leave the band.The band start to seek for a replacement immedietly. Bernard claims that he's "not insane, but happy".
The name of the new album is "Dog Man Star" - a name which seems to have a million and 1 different possible reasons.The first single out of the album was "We are the pigs" - a song co-written by Brett with Bernard.
On 17/9/94 Richar Oakes, a 17 year old guitarist, joins the band after answering an ad in a newspaper. He is an addicted fan of Butler and already knows all of Suede's songs. His first public appearence takes place on BBC's "Top Of The Pops".
Suede released "Dog Man Star" on 10/10/96 and it went straight to No.1 spot in the UK charts and stayed there for 3 weeks. Later "The Wild Ones" and "New generation" singles were realsed. Suede toured the world and had remarkalble success.
During this period Brett and Damon Albarn enter a media fight when Damon claimed that Brett was a heroin addict, while Brett claimed he was needle-phobic.
Suede contributed their cover of Elvis Costelo's "Shipbuilding" to the "Help!" album, which collected donations in order to help the children of Bosnia.Simon was attacted by violent homophobics near a gay bar in Stratford and lost consciousness for a while.
By the end of 1995 Suede started to work on a new album. In a secret gig in Hanover, which took place on 27/1/96 they revealed a new band member- Neil Codling, a keyboardist and a cousin of Simon who also contributes backing vocals.
"Trash", the first single out of the new album, was released at the end of July 1996 and went to number 3 spot in the UK chart. The press started to talk about a come-back and the fans who were uncertain of the band's future wer once again full of excitement.
The album, called "Coming Up" was released on 2/9/96 and went straight to No.1 in the album chart. It featured 10 songs, out of which 2 are written by Brett, 2 by Brett & Neil and the rest by Brett & Richard. The media endlessly praised the album and so did the fans.
Singles "Beautiful Ones", "Saturday Night" & "Lazy" were released. Suede tour Europe, Asia & North America.On one of the gigs Justine Fishman went on the stage and preformed a new song "Implement Yeah" together with Suede. The demo recording of the next album have began in Singapour in March 1997.
"Filmstar" was the fifth single from "Coming Up" and it's UK version included a live multimedia footage of a band with PSB's Neil Tenant.
In September 1997 Suede recorded a cover of Noel Coward's "Poor Little Rich Girl" for a tribute album.
The fourth album, entitled "Head Music" ( the album title was revealed letter by letter as a publicity stunt took Suede to earlier unknown area of a more electronic music. The album was produced by Steve Osbourne, previously with the Happy Mondays, U2 and Placebo, andhad some quite dark songs, such as Indin Strings and Asbestos, a long with some swinging stuff such as Everything Will Flow.
Head music produced 4 singles out of it - Electricity, She's in Fashion, Everything Will Flow and Cn't Get Enough,
all of whith where coupled with great original b-sides in the best of Suede's tradition.
According to Brett the next album is goinng to be more of a traditional rock one... We'll just have to wait and see.
Statement: The information in the above document is compiled from
various sources on the web and out of it, It's all neither necessery true,
nor do I claim any copyrights fot it.
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