What the pop papers said: Bernard Butler

We find ourselves at the end of a slightly underwhelming BBC-mandated 20th Anniversary of Britpop (marking the point when Johnny from Menswear first said the words '... and if we bung a picture of, I dunno, a Mini or Ena Sharples on the sleeve, I reckon it's money in the bank').

BBC Four, rather than showing the old compilation of Britpop performances at the BBC with the introduction from Damon Albarn, edited a new set of Britpop performances together, and slapped the old Damon Albarn intro on the front. Still: Pulp meeting Trev and Simon.

In the end, though, it was just a further coagulation of the Britpop narrative: John Humphrys in front of the Blur and Oasis logos, announcing a state of permanent warfare, forever.

Which is a pity, as by now you'd hope they'd be finding space to tell some of the more interesting stories of the time.

Like the acrimonious Suede split - which did get touched on, accidentally, on one of those late-night repeats from the Evening Session this week.

It's worth spending a little bit of time digging back into that awkward period. John Mulvey's interview with Bernard Butler from the NME in 1998 gives just a flavour of what went wrong:

It was around this time, probably, when Bernard starting doubting himself. Even today, you can see a potent and battling combination of confidence and shyness in his character: sure of his own gifts, but reluctant to express himself. Surrounded by people telling him he was wrong when he wanted to expand the band's musical parameters, struggling with a producer (Ed Buller) who he disagreed with over everything, alienated from a band he had nothing in common with something had to crack... Him.

"I don't necessarily think that a nice personality makes a nice record. There's a lot of bastards around that make great records, and that's the one thing that kept me going after Suede, because they trashed me so much personally, saying so much bullshit.

"It was really cowardly to do it when they knew I wouldn't answer back. They knew I'd flip and I did, I pissed off to France 'cos I couldn't hack it. I cried a lot, because it really hurt. I've got a lot of good memories of Brett and it really f--ked me up that I never said goodbye to Simon. The last time I was with Simon we were getting stoned, having a nice time, having a laugh like we always did. Next minute he's saying I should have my head chopped off or something, I should be put down like a dog."

"But I just said to myself, 'They'll get through it, just don't answer back'. You can't answer back when someone's calling you a wanker. What do you say? 'I'm not a wanker! I'm alright!'"

Bernard, bravely, rose above it all, and always carried that regret that he never got to say goodbye to Simon. Can you explain some more about how you rose above it, and - I dunno - maybe try to show Simon he was wrong to be so rude about you, Bernard?

[Were you] a control freak?

"No. I wasn't a control freak and never have been."

If you were, you wouldn't have Ed Buller produce the records?

"Right. Exactly. I tried to stop him making 'Stay Together' and then I tried to stop him making 'Dog Man Star'. No-one would let me. So, at the end of the day, that's why I left. There were lots of bad vibes between me and Brett and stuff, but they'd always been there. He was going off in one direction, shooting off as this star, and I was shooting off as this songwriter somewhere else. Unfortunately we were going totally the wrong way.

"At the end of the day, I was with the wrong people: I had the wrong manger, the wrong record company, the wrong road crew, the wrong band... I didn't think the drummer was very good, can you imagine what that was like? Simon Gilbert, the rock star drummer in Suede, I think is very average. Mat Osman: he's not a great bass player, he should've been Jeremy Paxman, he should've been reading the news. He should never have been a bass player 'cos he's just a theorist.

"Those are my biggest problems: standing there with a whole set of ideas about what I wanted the record to sound like and I wasn't allowed to say them. I'd have this great idea about what the hi-hat should do in bar four, but if I said it I'd piss off the drummer. There were times when I remember Simon taking his drums and throwing them down the stairs saying, 'I'm not being told how to play the drums'.

Oddly, Bernard would be later surprised to discover that Simon said some negative things about him.

All a long time ago, and bridges have sort-of-been rebuilt since then, of course. We were all much younger.

But the stories have got to be worth hearing, more than seeing that rack of Country House next to the rack of Roll With It in HMV for the 33,000th time?

Duffy has had enough-fy

The frankly rotten sales of her second album have sent Duffy to a dark place, reckons the Sunday Mirror, which claims a friend says she's thinking of giving it all up:

A pal of the Welsh warbler reveals: “She’s really down about the last ­album, Endlessly.

“It didn’t sell well and charted terribly and she isn’t trying again and making a comeback.

“She wants to have a quiet life and start over. Duffy made a truckload of cash with the first album and through her endorsements with Diet Coke, so she’s ­comfortable and able to enjoy some down-time. She’s not got management right now and has met a few people about taking over. But she’s just not interested."

It's surprising quite how badly the second coming of Duffy went - Well Well Well, the first single off Endlessly, stalled outside the top 40; Endlessly did make it to the top ten - just - but doesn't even appear to have gone Gold yet in the UK.

The suspicion has to be that she was a highly-weaponised delivery system for Bernard Butler's work, and once she struck out on her own, she has found the world a colder place. To be fair to her, she was always going to struggle to find something that was going to outrun Mercy - still the number one choice for cereal adverts and unthreatening faux-edgy restaurant dining room music.

Bernard Butler not bothered at missing reunion

Bernard Butler seems to have assumed that people are talking about his non-appearance as part of the Suede reunion because they're stirring. It's not, it's just disappointment that the Suede reforming are the rather-good second XI in place of the original and best.

Either way, Bernard's still not going:

"It's a shame for them that my name gets dragged into it to try and stir something up, he said.

"The honest answer is that I haven't been asked to do it. I saw Brett the other night socially and it's not really something we're going to go on about. So, it's all in people's fantasies and imaginations really."

Given that Bernard had fairly solidly ruled out a Suede reunion not long ago, perhaps it's not surprising that he was invited.

You wonder how long the list of 'things not bought up when Brett & Bernard meet socially' is now, don't you?

Gordon in the morning: Suede back

You could call Suede getting back together, but without Bernard Butler, a reunion. But it's a bit like restoring a classic car to the state it would have been if it had been left at the bottom of a lake for six months. Yes, it's still the same thing, but it's not what you'd really want.

There's no official confirmation that Suede are coming up again - just rumours - but that hasn't stopped Gordon running the story as fact:

BRITPOP legends SUEDE are reuniting - for one night only.

The quartet, who injected a dose of elegantly wasted glamour to the 90s indie scene, will play a headline gig in March. And the rockers, who split in 2003, can't be accused of doing it for cash - it will be for charity.

Gordon doesn't say when, exactly, the gig is happening. Or where. Or who the charity will be. In fact, you could have written this piece solely drawing on the rumours online from over the last 24 hours.

Gordon is reduced to explaining Suede to his readership. Smart writing about Suede. It's like hearing your daughter is going to be at an event where Ronnie Wood is attending. It doesn't have to end badly, but you just can't help worrying.

Tell us about Suede, Gordon:

Led by backside-slapping frontman BRETT ANDERSON, they crushed grunge's chart domination when they emerged in 1992 in a riot of smeared lipstick, greasy fringes and turbo- charged glam rock.

Their lyrics picked over the grittier side of life, influenced by industrial-sized drug use.

The drugs eventually caused the band serious problems. Singles Animal Nitrate, Trash and We Are The Pigs have stood the test of time, and founder Brett went on to have three solo albums.

Jesus. It's like Wikipedia filtered through someone who can half remember a few front pages of Select and Melody Maker but never read the stories inside. Shouldn't Gordon at least point out it was his own arse that Brett would slap?

[You might actually enjoy: the Suede weekend]

Bernard Butler: I hate you, Britpop reunions

Bernard Butler is as angry as a wasp in a sweetshop window with all these Britpop reunions:

"There's an awful lot of Britpop reunions going on at the moment and I find it embarrassing personally.

"I think it's got no relevance to what's going on at the moment."

Mmm. It;d be much better for the kids to listen to something of the moment like, erm, Duffy, right?

"I've never had an offer to do anything as Suede.

"I'm obsessively opposed to nostalgia. I hate the idea of it. It doesn't work. And it doesn't interest with me at all.

"What's important is not what I did last week, it's what I'm going to do next week. I made great records - I love them. My kids play them now. But that's for them and everyone else."

The key words, of course, are "as Suede". What with The Tears being completely different, and all.

Tears on Tuesday: The Ghost Of You

Butler, Anderson, some MTV cameramen, a hell of a song and little else:



[Part of Tears on Tuesday]

Tears on Tuesday: Refugees

Following the Suede weekend and Bernard Butler on Monday, the inevitable Tears on Tuesday, then.

There was a mixture of excitement and alarm when Butler and Anderson reunited - the decision to use The Tears (from a Larkin line) instead of Suede indicating this was being seen as something other than a straight reunion. The album, Here Come The Tears was better than you might have hoped for; the reception less warm than they'd have been hoping. Although not officially junked, it's notable that there hasn't been much Tears activity since 2005.

So, enjoy them while you could. Or can. Refugees - from the album, off Top of the Pops:



More through the day:
The Ghost Of You - acoustic for MTV
Apollo 13 - live at Roskilde
A Love As Strong As Pain - live in Hong Kong

Butler on Monday: Rockferry

We would normally rather gnaw on our ancestor's bones than embed a Duffy video on No Rock, but this one does rather neatly round off today's clatter through Berard Butler's career: He's currently the force behind Duffy; it's interesting to note how little on-camera evidence of their work together exists (indeed, the rare bit you find online makes use of the word "rare") but here they are:



[Part of Butler on Monday]

Butler on Monday: It's Just Love

From one of the more curious corners of his guitar-for-hire roaming of the musical foreground: A collaboration with Sofia Talvik, Swedish singer-songwriter, on the track It's Just Love:



[Part of Butler on Monday]

Butler on Monday: A Change Of Heart

Although McAlmont and Butler are - we think - still notionally a going concern, Bernard continued to try other things. The idea seems to be to record with every band that's ever existed, in some way. Surprisingly, he's also squeezed in two solo albums.

From the first (1998's People Move On, this is A Change of Heart live on TFI Friday in 1998. And, apologies, this clip may contain significant quantities of Chris Evans:



[Part of Butler on Monday]

Butler on Monday: Tonight

If it was the Suede Weekend, then it seems only right to follow through the logic with Bernard Butler Monday.

After he quit Suede, everyone waited to see what his plan was. This was the plan: McAlmont & Butler. Here's the pairing doing Falling at the end of one Graham Norton vehicle or another:



More through the day:
Change of Heart live on TFI Friday
It's Just Love with Sofia Talvik
Rockferry with Duffy

[You might also enjoy the Suede weekend]

Embed and breakfast man: Suede

It's a pure slice of self-indulgence this weekend, as we rummage around in the glorious past of Brett Anderson and Bernard Butler for a slew of Suede gawping.

Reading Festival, 1997: The three headliners were the Manics, Metallica - and, if you subtracted the Metallica from the Manics, you'd have Suede, who were the first climax of the weekend.

Beat the crap out of Beautiful Ones, Brett:



More video action across the weekend:
Can't Get Enough & She's In Fashion live at Glastonbury 2003
The Drowners
Trash from Top Of The Pops
The Next Life from Later With Jools Holland

Followed by Bernard Butler Monday
The Tears on Tuesday
Brett Anderson Wednesday

Buy
Suede - the timeless debut album
The Singles - all of them, no matter how questionable
Introducing The Band - their first live video, originally cranked out on VHS back in the mid-1990s, sort of half-arsedly thrown out on DVD
Love And Poison - the official biography (= not quite detailing the worst excesses)

Sons and Daughters take on Butler

The lovely Sons and Daughters have hired in the help of Bernard Butler to work on their second album:

Scott Paterson admitted: "Bernard was a weird choice because I was a big fan of his playing on the first Suede record and I learned to play guitar along to people like him and Johnny Marr.

"He really knows his stuff in the studio and he's a great musician as well. He's definitely given a lot more feedback on the songs - it's like working with an old-school producer in the Phil Spector sense, where they take stuff and advise on direction or arrangements."

Although without the waving guns in your face, of course.