THE BOY BEHIND THE Britpop Bowie

Coal Black Mornings Brett Anderson Little, Brown €22.99

The bad news is that Brett Anderson’s memoir ends with the still largely unknown Suede signing for a small independent label in February 1992, two months before they appeared on the cover of Melody Maker hailed as ‘the best new band in Britain’. Suede went on to become the progenitors of ‘Britpop’ – a movement they later disavowed – and to enjoy huge commercial and critical success. The good news, though, for both Suede fans and for readers who don’t know their Asphalt World from their Animal Nitrate, is that Coal Black Mornings is excellent: evocative, thoughtful and frank; an instant hit in a minor key. Anderson is particularly good on his unusual upbringing by hardup, eccentric parents in a tiny council house in Haywards Heath. His mother was an artist who enjoyed sunbathing nude in the garden. His father worshipped Nelson and Franz Liszt. Brett, who was born in 1967 and who shares a birthday with the admiral, came within a whisker of being called Horatio. His older sister Blandine was named after Liszt’s daughter. He embraced his parents’ outsider outlook. At the age of 17, by which time he had learnt to play the guitar and was writing songs, he took to wearing a cheap lemon-yellow suit. ‘I imagine I thought it suggested Bowie-esque sophistication but I probably looked more like a cut-price Cliff Richard.’

He was devastated by the death of his mother from cancer, too distraught to attend her funeral, something he regrets to this day. His relationship with his classicalmusic-loving father was more complicated. After watching Suede play at the Royal Albert Hall, his dad suggested that the guitars were ‘too distorted’.

Another key relationship was with his girlfriend and Suede co-founder, Justine Frischmann. They became a couple when students in London. When she met someone else – unnamed here, but it was Blur’s Damon Albarn – Anderson was ‘crushed’ and blamed himself. ‘I was young and I was in love for the first time, and when that dizzying high is over, it’s a long, long way down.’

But Frischmann’s departure from the nascent band was the making of it, forcing the other guitarist, the gifted Bernard Butler, to play in a different way, which became the core of the band’s distinctive sound.

In telling his story, Anderson proves himself as accomplished a writer of elegant prose as he was of narcotically enhanced lyrics about urban ennui. And, like all the best showmen, he bows out leaving the audience desperate for an encore.

‘I probably looked more like a cut-price Cliff Richard ’