Knowing you wanted to mend your mistakes from the past – that's the valuable side of maturity. I didn't want it to come off as over sophisticated, I think a rock band has to be very careful about being over sophisticated, it can come off as too forced.
We're approaching the 20th anniversary of the debut LP, and in 1993 it really kicked British music in the balls, and now 20 years later it feels like we're back at that point where music feels stagnant again. There's nothing that really grabs you anymore. Do you feel like this is déjà vu and the time is right for Suede to reclaim that mantle? I don't know. The way that Suede announced ourselves on the scene, you can't ever recreate that, you're talking about zeitgeist, and these elements that you can't ever recreate, they are once in a lifetime things. And the energy and excitement about the band and the way it fit into music at the time. All you can do, is . . . just do your best fucking job at making as great a record as you can and everything just has to follow. I think people follow, and plot, and predict zeitgeist, and I think you either have to be a genius or incredibly lucky. And its never been my intention to try and do that.
But I know what you mean, there is a certain stagnancy about music. I do get excited about certain things, but they are disparate, and few and far between. There is some amazing music out there. I love a new band called Teleman that I just discovered, they made a great song called "Cristina," that Bernard Butler produced, which is absolutely fantastic. And what else do I like? The new Foals album, a band called Savages and stuff like that. There's lots of really exciting music out there.
But there is . . . music has become incredibly safe again. Because what I think has happened, is because of what's happened to the music industry with piracy and posting on the Internet, there's less money in it, so therefore the powers that be have almost become more conservative to make as much money as they had before, be much more business minded about it, which means being much more safe about it. Which is very sad.
And speaking of that business side of things, Suede has always had a fairly tumultuous relationship with America. Can you envision a reconciliation with the United States? There's never been . . . [laughs] any friction between the band and the United States. I've always loved coming to the States, and we played Coachella a few years ago, and I remembered how much I loved being there. I spent a wonderful couple of days out there in the States. Loved the show and everything.
The whole name thing, that's always been the problem for us. You know the whole "London Suede" thing. I just took my eye off the ball at the wrong moment, woke up and realized we had really messed up. And that's a problem, that name, I just can't be known under that name.
