Brett and Bernard masterpost
(this is not all of it, just what I have compiled so far. Reading through all those Suede sources was filling my heart with too mch darkness with all the mean shit the band said about Bernard after he left so I've taken a break but I will finish I promise. There is a whole other post to do about Suede and their PR machine and the damage it did and still does)
Brett
āItās possible of course that subconsciously the title (Stay Together) was a plea to Bernard, a plea to my friend as I saw him become increasingly estranged from the rest of us. I donāt remember being aware of that at the time but looking back it canāt have been a coincidence.ā
Afternoon with the Blinds Drawn
Brett
āThe relationship I had with Bernard in Suede was as deep and intense as Iāve had with any woman, well mentally!ā
Hot Press 2013
Brett
āItās possibly my biggest regret in life that I didnāt try harder to salvage it. It is the stupidest thing that I will ever do because the relationship between me and him was special, with all due respect to everyone Iāve worked with since it was a special partnership and we made some pretty special music. But at the time I didnāt know how to fucking do it. I didnāt know how to reach him and I was sick of it, I was fucking sick of itā
Mojo Magazine 2016
Brett
āI feel a lot of sadness about it, now that the dust has settled and a hell of a lot of regret that I didnāt do everything in my power to keep Bernard in the bandā Sunday Times 2013
Brett
āIād like to think we are friends. Actually thatās too shallow a term. I have a similar with him as I do my fatherā
Bernard
"I didn't join a band to make friends"
joint interview circa 2004
Brett
"He could have picked up the phone and told me to fuck off...It's not like we're best friends or anything, we've still got a lot to sort out between ourselves. We had both said and done things we regretted, so it was difficult. We were 10 years younger when these things happened. But, meeting up again for the first time, we still had a lot to put behind us, we had to draw a line. We didn't meet up to have a relationship, it was with the idea of working together again...The real reason I rang him is that I felt I had written my best songs with him. It certainly wasn't for social reasons"
The Irish Times 2005
Brett
āIām sure Bernard would agree now that we both said things we wish 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 tensionā¦and the qualityā
āI do think it was a tragedy him leavingā
The Independent 2003
Brett (or it may be one of those phone interviews where Mat pretended to be Brett which would be sad and hilarious)
āHe was jealous of my friendship with Mat. Bernard would never admit that I got on better with Mat than with him. He simply forgot that we had grown up together in the same part of London (me: this is untrue, they met as teens in Sussex so either Brett was embellishing or it was mistranslated) and that we had shared so much. The bloke never accepted the cons of being a popstar, he only wanted the advantages. He couldnāt understand the world we are in. Itās sad to say but I think he is totally finished now, Suede were his crutches and he threw them awayā
French fanzine 1994 sourced from screencap on tumblr
Bernard
āBeing an arrogant little shit,ā Butler says, āI thought I could say, Edās out of order, letās get someone else to mix the album. I made a really childish stand-off, to see how much they really wanted me, and I deserved everything I got.ā
Brett
āIād have to be in a strange mood to listen toĀ Dog Man StarĀ now,ā says Anderson. āI love it but the tension makes me restless and Iām sad, too, wondering what weād have done if Bernard had stayed. Itās like seeing the picture of someone that you love, who then died.ā
Anderson admits it felt āslightly unprincipledā to playĀ Dog Man StarĀ without the original line-up. āPart of me would love to play those songs with Bernard again,ā he says, ābut a part knows it probably wonāt ever happen. Anyway, itās too complex emotionally, to orchestrate. And Bernard hates the idea of reunions.ā
Mojo Magazine 2014
Brett
"I look back on them (days) with a real fondness. They were amazing days. Back when me and Bernard were good friends - I mean, we're good friends now, but back then, we were really good friends when we were writing together and we went through a lot. They were amazing days because, apart from the friendship and the gang mentality, I knew we were doing something really special, and I knew that no one else was doing it. I remember when me and Bernard wrote "The Drowners": we just looked at each other and said, "This is f***ing good, isn't it?"
GQ magazine 2012
Brett
"I remember watching him play (The 2 of Us) he was in the live room playing piano and I was in the control room and it was spellbinding actually...there was a sadness and a power to it that I suppose I was interpreting as his sadness and his response to what was going on with his father"
"(Dog Man Star) is about disintegration and it's about sort of distance, it is about people not being able to connect with each other. Kind of like you know not being able to reach each other and obviously that I was sort of writing about what was going on with Bernard. But I wasn't consciously writing about that, very much not so actually. Obviously that whole spirit was finding its way into the writing and even though I didn't write The 2 of Us about about me and him and I didn't write Still Life about him but it had that kind of sense of angst, that sense of not being able to kind of communicate with someone, that sense of someone drifting away from you"
Suede YT channel Simon Price interview















