Shimmy!

(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

“It’s 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 don’t remember being aware of that at the time but looking back it can’t have been a coincidence.”

Afternoon with the Blinds Drawn

Brett

“The relationship I had with Bernard in Suede was as deep and intense as I’ve had with any woman, well mentally!”

Hot Press 2013

Brett

“It’s possibly my biggest regret in life that I didn’t 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 I’ve worked with since it was a special partnership and we made some pretty special music. But at the time I didn’t know how to fucking do it. I didn’t know how to reach him and I was sick of it, I was fucking sick of it”

Mojo Magazine 2016

Brett

“I feel a lot of sadness about it, now that the dust has settled and a hell of a lot of regret that I didn’t do everything in my power to keep Bernard in the band” Sunday Times 2013

Brett

“I’d like to think we are friends. Actually that’s too shallow a term. I have a similar with him as I do my father”

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

“I’m 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 tension…and the quality”

“I do think it was a tragedy him leaving”

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)

“He 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 couldn’t understand the world we are in. It’s sad to say but I think he is totally finished now, Suede were his crutches and he threw them away”

French fanzine 1994 sourced from screencap on tumblr

Bernard

“Being an arrogant little shit,” Butler says, “I thought I could say, Ed’s out of order, let’s 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.”

Brett

“I’d have to be in a strange mood to listen to Dog Man Star now,” says Anderson. “I love it but the tension makes me restless and I’m sad, too, wondering what we’d have done if Bernard had stayed. It’s like seeing the picture of someone that you love, who then died.”

Anderson admits it felt “slightly unprincipled” to play Dog Man Star without the original line-up. “Part of me would love to play those songs with Bernard again,” he says, “but a part knows it probably won’t ever happen. Anyway, it’s too complex emotionally, to orchestrate. And Bernard hates the idea of reunions.”

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"

Sorry for the delay but here you go 🙂

Bernard Butler (1999)

I’m intrigued…

“You and me together in the year of the horse”