Coal Black Mornings by Brett Anderson

Suede’s frontman turns bittersweet memoirist. “Looking back can be just as valuable as looking forward,” he confides to MARTIN ASTON.

Coal Black Mornings is MOJO’s Music Book Of 2018. Thanks. It’s a massive honour. I don’t know what the competition is, but it’s lovely to get that recognition. Am I shocked? In a way. I’m always shocked when people like what I do.

In the foreword, you describe the book as “a wrenching experience,” yet you’ve since said you loved writing it. Which is closer to the truth? There were many sad moments, especially reliving when my mum died. But I did genuinely enjoy it. Doing something outside of music took the pressure off. I love making records but they’re so incredibly… important. You’re playing mental games, like questioning what you’re writing about. A book allowed me a different space, and I just let it flow out of me. I liked remembering the callow, scruffy young man that I was. It was nice to find a place for him at the table.

You wrote that the book is for your young son, Lucian and – acknowledging the cliché – that if anyone else enjoys it, that’s a bonus. I’ve always hated that cliché, but maybe there’s a reason it works, because when you write for yourself, it’s for the right reason. But it’s lovely people have connected with it. No matter how unique or marginal we think our backgrounds and lives are, there are always massive parallels to others’. I couldn’t decide if I’d had an unusual or ordinary background, and I tried to express the dance between those two points. It was also key for the tone of the book to be self-deprecating, which I think surprised people, the ones that confuse person and persona. People don’t think I’m generally self-deprecating. And I think some were surprised I came from a scruffy, unprivileged background. But it’s an interesting background, and my parents’ idiosyncratic characters, especially my father’s, made me who I am.

Was there any particular influence on Coal Black Mornings? My unrealistic model was Laurie Lee’s memoir Cider With Rosie. It’s an extraordinary telling of an ordinary tale. Not that I’m comparing our writing – who could possibly compete with descriptions of people as having “sickle bent bodies”? – but I wanted to give my humble upbringing a similarly rich descriptive framework and do what I’ve been trying to do in the songs, to find the beauty and romance in the everyday.

Did writing the book change the way you look back at your career? It’s inevitable. Forensically detailing the stuttering start of Suede’s early years made me cherish them much more. Previously, I’d brushed that period under the carpet, certainly professionally, but I realised that the inglorious detail is just as much part of the story. And without failure, there’s no success.

The book ends just before those inglorious origins suddenly give way to rampant achievement. I thought that was more interesting, and unexpected, to end where most rock biographies start. There was something bloody-minded about that that appealed.

You also wrote “Right now, I have no desire to rake over those days again,” but you’re writing another book, about Suede’s rise-fall-rise-again years, titled Afternoons With The Blinds Drawn. What changed your mind? I found a way of writing about it. How to tell a story that’s been told before, in an interesting way? I decided to look at what happened to me, almost psychologically, when someone goes through the mechanics of success and gets chewed up by the gears of the machine. Also, I didn’t expect to enjoy the process of writing so much. For decades I’ve been splurging how I feel in songs, but it’s much more naked in a book, and I wanted to write more. I’d like to write another book after that one, but I don’t know what about. It’ll have to have “Evenings” in the title. Some wag on Facebook said I should call it Parents’ Evenings, which I though was funny.

Your 2018 album, The Blue Hour is also informed by childhood, both through your own, and Lucian’s, eyes. I’m very proud of that record. But I don’t think we quite got the benefit of the doubt in some reviews. The response I was getting was, “Yeah, we didn’t know what to make of it at first.” It’s one of those records you have to give a bit of time, and some reviewers didn’t see what it had.

Also looking back is Sky Arts’ forthcoming Suede documentary, The Insatiable Ones. [Director] Mike Christie, who’s a friend, made a film about Hansa [By The Wall: 1979-90], which went down really well. Sky asked what he’d like to make next, and he said a Suede film. It just seemed like the right time. It’s hard to be objective, but I think it’s really moving. It’s hard-hitting too. I wanted Suede to confront our failures, which I’d learnt from Coal Black Mornings. Certainly, if we hadn’t made these last three albums, which I think are among our strongest work, I’d look back at things very differently, ruefully and regretfully, because of how our fourth and fifth albums undermined our legacy before we split. There’s a great feeling within Suede now, which we hadn’t had for ages.

Lastly, what’s the best thing you’ve heard all year? I love Gwenno’s album Le Kov, the melodies and instrumentation, it’s strange and almost psychedelic, and very human too. She sings in Cornish, but it doesn’t matter that I don’t understand a word, it just speaks to me. Shame’s album Songs Of Praise is also fantastic. The melodies and their attitude are great, and the guitar parts set them apart from the rest of the