Some song lyrics are beautiful. Some are funny. Some are just idiotic! So here we are, at the end of the road of lyrical idiocy. I've trained my eyes and ears on some of the greatest lyricists in rock and pop, who, during odd moments, have greatly disappointed me with some of their valueless verses! These lyrics are all bad on their own terms, but they're made even worse when you consider who wrote them. So continue on for my ten worst rock/pop lyrics of all time. Michael Jackson - Earth Song “What about elephants? Have we lost their trust?” - Really Michael? Are Elephants the only species you could come up with who might have lost our trust? What about those we kill to eat? What about those we use for own amusement and fun? What about those that we just kill as ‘sport’ or get hunted by stuck up toffs like foxes? Katy Perry - Firework "Do you ever feel like a plastic bag?" sings our Katie. That's a question Ms Perry, can’t really say I have. What kind of plastic bag am I supposed to feel like? A freezer bag maybe, Asda carrier bag? Bin Bag? Nope, I can honestly say I’ve never felt like a plastic bag and I don’t know anyone else that has either!
Nirvana - Smells Like Teen Spirit “A mulatto; An albino; A mosquito; My libido” - How do a mulatto, an albino, a mosquito, and some random guy's libido have anything in common? What on Earth is Mr Cobain singing about? I really haven’t a clue! But honestly, I do love this song despite the weird words!
Toto – Africa A song that is the ‘Gold’ standard when it comes to daft lyrics. “I know that I must do what’s right, As sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti” Toto’s Africa really is a masterclass in writing bizarre lyrics, I mean what were they on when they wrote it? There’s also the simple fact that Kilimanjaro isn’t even remotely close to the Serengeti, so they didn’t have an atlas in front of them at the time either. That isn’t the only bizarre lyric in the song though, I give you - “The wild dogs cry out in the night, as they grow restless longing for some solitary company.” What in the world is “solitary company”? To me, ‘Solitary’ means you are alone, and company means you aren’t alone. So it’s an oxymoron! Do not attempt to make sense of the lyrics to this song, It will only give you a headache. The Police — De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da As if writing a song based around the chorus “De do do do/ De da da da” wasn’t bad enough, Sting chose to include two verses that scan like kindergarten rhymes. Then he introduces an ill-advised rape metaphor for good measure in the line, “And when their eloquence escapes me, Their logic ties me up and rapes me” Nice one, Sting, where the f**k did that come from? I’ve been at a loss for words before myself but I’ve never thought of it as being the equivalent of rape!. Maybe a chill pill or a bit of tantric might be in order? Depeche Mode - Everything Counts Now, I’ve always loved this song, but I’m sorry, without doubt it wins the ‘stupid line in there just to make it rhyme’ award for coming up with and actually recording the line, “The turning point of a career in Korea is being insincere” Beck - Loser “With the plastic eyeballs, Spray-paint the vegetables, Dog food stalls with the beefcake pantyhose”, a lyric so ludicrous it's basically genius. Beck, I salute you. Definitely up there with some of the drug-induced lines in The Beatles’ I Am The Walrus. Coldplay - Fix You Now I’ve probably mentioned before my dislike of Coldplay and Chris Martin so lyrics like “Lights will guide you home and ignite your bones” really don’t endear me much to them. Now okay, the first bit about the lights is fine, kind of wholesome even. Igniting your bones though? That doesn’t sound so nice to me. How strong are these lights? Sounds like some kind of therapy that Martin was probably introduced to by Gwyneth Paltrow before their 'conscious-uncoupling'. If she likes deliberately getting stung by bees and putting olive oil in her vagina, then who can honestly say they’d be surprised to hear that she likes to burn her bones? Oasis - Some Might Say Actually the lyrics to the entire song are pretty dreadful, I mean “The sink is full of fishes, She's got dirty dishes on the brain, And my dog's been itching, Itching in the kitchen once again”. Makes you wonder what goes on in the kitchens of the South Manchester, Burnage households the Gallaghers grew up in. Then there’s the ominous air around such nonsense as "Some might say that sunshine follows thunder, Go and tell it to the man who cannot shine" which truly make the lyrics to this song particularly awful. Then off the same album there’s the wonderful track, ‘Champagne Supernova’ which contains one of my favourite weird lyrics in “Slowly walking down the hall, Faster than a cannonball” something I just don’t get at all.
The Hollies - Carrie Anne The first two verses of this song describe a creative, independent young lady, each of the members of The Hollies singing a different verse. However when it comes time for Graham Nash to step up to the mic, he gives us this "People live and learn but you're still learning, You use my mind, and I'll be your teacher, When the lesson's over you'll be with me". To me, a very creepy string of words that could easily read as a cult leader grooming a young target. They got away with that in the sixties – not sure they would anymore! So there are some things we’ll never understand in this world and one of them is why some lyrics just don’t make any sense no matter how you look at it. There are songs that are so deep, they really make you think. But then there are those which are just so ridiculous you've got to wonder ‘Why?’
They were hated by the music press and spied on by the police. They battled addiction and an unfashionable image, so it's a wonder The Levellers ever went on to become the leaders of a counter-culture phenomenon back in the nineties.
Not being such a big eco-warrior type of guy, I’m not really your typical Levellers fan. Back in the day the occasional song from the first album I’d heard hadn’t really made any impression on me either. However, things changed when I walked in a record shop (remember those?) in about 1991. Playing in the background was some music I’d never heard before. It had a folky/punk feel akin to an updated Pogues or Waterboys sound. I immediately liked what I was hearing, went up to the desk and enquired who it was, turns out it was The Levellers’ ‘Levelling The Land’ album which had just been released. I bought it and was hooked on them for the next ten years.
The timing was perfect, we’d seen the end of ‘classic rock’, the start of grunge so I’d lost interest in that genre and needed something new. I got into ‘Levelling The Land’ and with the next few albums I’ve grew to like them more and more, to a point where I could listen to them anytime, anyplace and enjoy their music on multiple levels – both for folky pleasure and for eco-analysis. Even though The Levellers are not and will never be my favourite band (there’s just too much crap in their post-2000 catalogue), I still consider them to be essential, and one of those full-of-surprise “wow, why haven’t I heard this before?” moments that people just need to experience. So here’s why: Those Incredible 6 Years. Or, to be more precise, the 1991-1997 “golden” era, which found The Levellers at the absolute top of their game. Never again would they find such a perfect balance between musical ambitiousness, ear-catching accessibility and well-thought, yet not overwhelming lyrical concepts. Those five albums (beginning with ‘Levelling The Land’ and ending with ‘Mouth To Mouth’) represent the true pinnacle of their work, and few other bands managed to keep themselves at such an incredible level of consistency over such a short stretch of albums, without once repeating themselves. Their other work has some good stuff, but most of the times it’s too inconsistent. Those 5 albums (which include the fabulous live album ‘Headlights, White Lines, Black Tar Rivers’), are mostly perfect and I would kindly suggest giving them a good listen. The Tunefulness of Their Music. They are a great pop band. Underneath all the fuss, all the ‘punk’ attitude and posing which you may or may not connect to, The Levellers actually wrote great tunes. If you listen to any of their songs at random (again, only referring to the golden era), chances are high that you’ll like it from the very first listen and end up humming it for the rest of the day. Simply because, Mark Chadwick at his absolute best, simply could not do wrong when it comes to musical hooks. Chadwick recently stated “I came to it from a Roy Harper, Cat Stevens, Simon & Garfunkel, John Lennon style of singular songwriting and we thought we needed a lead instrument so we got Jon in on violin. We didn't wanna get an electric guitar player because guitar solos were out then. But having a fiddle in the sound makes it folkier, so our style kind of developed out of the songs and instrumentation; we didn't design it, the music designed itself”. This movement away from the mainstream is what attracted me at the time. As with all timeless music, brilliant songs like ’15 Years’ still sound current and relevant today, 25 years on. What I’m getting at is The Levellers had substance too, not just spirit!
Their Attitude It's easy to forget how influential The Levellers were in the 90s. They came across as revolutionaries on a quest to change the world through the power of music. They were never quite in fashion, the band carved a niche out of the fact that they didn't really fit in anywhere; music for the disenfranchised by the disenfranchised. Travellers, punks, hippies, folkies, students, indie kids, all united by disillusionment with the Tory State and the way things were going. The Levellers had attitude and spoke the truth - and it caught on fast. So Where To Start? Levelling The Land is always a good starter for ten if you want an entry-point album. Though I’d recommend the Live Album ‘Headlights, White Lines, Black Tar Rivers’ from 1996 which has all the best tracks of the time. It was recorded in Blackpool on the last date of the British Zeitgeist-tour. This album for me is still one of THE best live albums, all the tracks having a certain "je ne sais quoi" that others don't, I guess it's the live ambiance and energy that really makes it.
They go to show that sometimes in art having the right ideas and the right kind of creativity and the right time beats actual proficiency in the respective field. But I digress, the bottom line is that The Levellers in their prime managed to convince and inspire fans and musicians while also staying true to themselves and their aspirations (and annoying critics of the time too). They weren’t that cool. They never took themselves seriously. And in the end, they just wanted to have some fun.
The last 20 or so years have seen the UK charts collapse into a state of mediocrity and ‘sameness’. Musical genres in the charts today don’t really exist, the youth don’t have loads of different types of music anymore, there’s no longer tribes of followers of certain types of genres anymore. Proof of the pudding is always in the eating and a quick look at the current Top 10 reveals not only two separate tracks by Ed Sheeran there but two more separate tracks by Lewis Capaldi! The only deviation from the rule is a Stormzy track that’s holding in there at number four.
1979 A glance back forty years ago this week to 1979 and look at the variety in the charts. The Top 10 consisted of: 1.Anita WardRing My Bell 2.BlondieSunday Girl 3.Roxy MusicDance Away 4.Earth, Wind & FireBoogie Wonderland 5.McFadden & WhiteheadAin’t No Stopping Us Now 6.Electric Light OrchestraShine A Little Love 7.Tubeway ArmyAre Friends Electric? 8.Sister SledgeWe Are Family 9.The ShadowsTheme From The Deer Hunter 10.Edwin StarrH.A.P.P.Y Radio So just in that little lot you’ve got Disco, Electro, Rock, Soul, New Wave and even a movie theme! Look a little bit further down the chart and you discover the following: •Squeeze – Up The Junction •Dollar – Who Were You With In The Moonlight •Gary Moore – Parisienne Walkways •The Clash – I Fought The Law •Chas & Dave – Gertcha •Janet Kay – Silly Games And even Kevin Keegan with Head Over Heals!!! That then brings Pop, Blues, Punk, Reggae, Cockney singalong and even a novelty track from a footballer into the equation. So that gives nearly a dozen different genres in one week’s chart. An odd week you may say? No, it was that diverse all the time back then. In a few months’ time we could add even more genres to the list such as Ska, Two-Tone, Heavy Metal, Country, Goth and the New Romantics. Back then the charts weren’t entirely made up of acts for kids, you were now in an era when adults bought as much music as teenagers which influenced things significantly. Tribes All these genres of music had their own tribes of fans. They all followed a certain type of music and dressed a certain way. Everybody didn’t like everything and everybody didn’t dress the same. Your disco kids wouldn’t go near a blues track like Parisienne Walkways nor would they dress like a punk or a new wave fan. Echoing the Mods versus Rockers battles of the sixties, some fans hated other because of their music, I remember at the time fights at school between the punks and the ‘hippies’! These tribes continued through the 80s into the 90s and then they disappeared into the blandness in both music and fashion that we have today. Everybody dresses the same to a point now where teenagers and their parents (especially girls) seem to dress almost exactly the same. What Happened? So in the words of the Talking Heads – ‘How Did We Get Here?’ I’m not sure! Is it the way we now consume music in bite-size chunks? Is it the very narrow range of pop music now played on commercial radio? Is it kids wanting to look older and dress like their parents or the converse that the parents want to look younger and dress like their kids? Is it shows like X-Factor and Britain’s Got Talent that thrive on mundane, generic acts? Is it the cancelling of shows like Top Of The Pops which brought the musical diversity into all our homes every week? Are there too many other outlets and distractions for today’s youth that music is a long way down their list? Is it just corporate greed?
I honestly don’t know! What I do know though is the music industry is a poorer place for it. Nobody really has any interest in the charts anymore. Yes there’s good new stuff out there if you go looking but that’s the difficulty, it’s not played on most radio stations nor is it on the TV anymore so its not presented to you, you’ve got go hunting to find it! I’m pretty sure if I asked my 19 year old son to name a track out of the current Top 10 he’s struggle, when I was his age I’d have known at least half of them. Sad Isn’t It !
This Otis Redding classic is one of my all-time favourite tracks. I’ve loved the song ever since I first heard it on the radio as a young lad. I mean, has there ever been a greater ‘chill-out’ record than this? I think not!
Three days after Otis Redding recorded the song he died in a plane crash on the 10th December, 1967, two days before I was born and a month before the song was released. It was far and away his biggest hit and also had the notoriety of being the first ever posthumous Number One single in America. At the time of his death, Redding was still a rising star moving closer and closer to mainstream success. Who knows what other classics he would have gone on to record if he had lived?
Wasting Time From its opening lines, the song finds Redding stuck in a lifeless humdrum: "Sittin' in the morning sun/ I'll be sittin' when the evening come/ Watching the ships roll in, and then I watch them roll away again." The lyric could be written off as some sort of country and western nod to the contentment of living a simple-life, but Otis grows increasingly despairing as the song goes on: "I've had nothing to live for/ And looks like nothing's gonna come my way" he moans on the second verse, giving way to "Sittin' here resting my bones/ And this loneliness won't leave me alone" on the third and final verse. To me the song has always been about the point when you realise nothing is working out in your life, and you decide to stop fighting everything. Not in a defeatist, or suicidal giving-up hope way, just stopping the struggle and the fight and taking a break from it all. For me it’s about taking a moment and and relaxing long enough to notice the beauty of nature all around you and quietly watch the world go by and enjoy it rather than battle it. I’ve always thought that there’s a hidden beauty in wasting time, everybody needs to waste time at points in their life. It’s a recharging of your life force and a reconnecting of your soul with nature and the world around you. Somehow rising above the stress and conflict of life in the end by just wasting time and in course, finding renewed hope. The gentle relaxed whistling at the end is the moment in the song where that reconnection with our inner soul and future hope happens for me.
The Whistling The whistling at the end, although never intended to be left in the song, actually conveys so much of the mood and attitude that it is an essential element of the track. It immediately translates to something akin to inattentively wasting time. It makes for a perfect way of capturing the real life emotional experience of the song. In this way, I’m glad Otis never got a chance to finish the song and write a final verse as it’s perfect as it is. Most people when mixing it would have been tempted to repeat part of either verse one or two’s lyrics at the end rather than leave the whistling in, Steve Cropper though was wise enough to see the value in keeping it in and I think it’s a very important part of what makes this song the classic that it is. The Mind’s Eye I must say Stax guitarist and co-writer of the song, Steve Cropper, did a wonderful job mixing it. Even using the sound effects of waves and seagulls as deftly as if they were musical instruments. In a time before music videos it was impossible not to listen to this song without seeing everything play out inside your head in full techno-colour real life images just like you were watching a wide screen movie.
Pure Musical Genius (Sittin' On) The Dock Of The Bay reminds me of so many times in my life when all seemed hopeless. It’s yet another example of the apparent futility of the hands we are sometimes dealt. But in it there’s also a nod to hope and a better future. Otis Redding was just an awesome soul performer. It still amazes me to see the power and emotion he put into every single song he did. So as I said, the track is one of my all-time favourite songs, I mean - how can you not love it? It's so mellow and just has such a laid back vibe that you just don't seem to find in songs these days. For me, this is quite possibly the greatest soul song ever written. There's nothing quite like cracking open a cold one, listening to "Dock of the Bay" while sitting by the ocean just wasting time.
A bit of gravel is definitely good for you. When I listen to Rod Stewart I always feel like a dirty junkie, going to a shameful, squalid place to get my fix of ‘gravel’. I don’t know why I feel Rod is such a guilty pleasure, lord knows there’s lots of equally uncool music I like without such feelings of shame. Sure other artists have imitated the gravel voice with varying degrees of success. The Black Crowes and The Quireboys from the late 8os/early 90s both spring to mind. Then there’s the female gravel voices - Bonnie Tyler and Kim Carnes have it. Stevie Nicks - oh yeah, Sheryl Crowe kinda has it sometimes. None thought have every really matched that of Rod.
Later this year Rod celebrates 55 years since the release of his first single, “Good Morning, Little Schoolgirl.” There was stints in various groups with Long John Baldry, The Jeff Beck Group and later The Faces and he changed the music world with “Maggie May” - a track personally which I freely admit I can take or leave! Not Cool He’s not been ‘cool’ for more than four decades but he’s still a guilty pleasure to many, including me! I’ve even seen him live quite a number of times where he can still put on a quality show. My favourite period of his was the early seventies both solo stuff and with The Faces. My favourite albums are Every Picture Tells A Story (of course), Gasoline Alley and possibly surprisingly to many, the ‘MTV Unplugged, and Seated’ album with Ronnie Wood which is a fantastic album showcasing his, at that time 30 year career.
My ‘Go-To’ Rod Era As I said above, Rod’s true purple patch came early in his career in the late sixties then the seventies up to release of the ‘Blondes Have More Fun’ album when his ego, money and love of blondes took over. On his work with Jeff Beck, The Faces and his early solo albums his gravel voice worked wonders. Not a huge range of course but a good gruff snarl for rock and blues which also translated well for the softer folky pieces. It seemed that he brought so much soul to seventies rock music. Rod was profoundly influenced by Sam Cooke. His first 4 solo albums are marvellous blends of electric and acoustic textures with Rod's folk roots in full display. ‘Every Picture Tells a Story’ remains one of my all-time favourite albums. About the time of "Do You Think I'm Sexy", though he lost that soul sound and never quite got it back (although like I said earlier, ‘Unplugged...and Seated’ came close). Back then though, not just Maggie May but tracks like ‘Every Picture Tells a Story’, ‘Mandolin Wind’, and ‘(I Know) I’m Losing You’ showed a singer right at the top of his game, sublime in quality and never again to be matched. The Faces stuff too was truly awesome. ‘Stay With Me’, ‘Miss Judy's Farm’, ‘Pool Hall Richard’ and ‘Too Bad’ all had out and out quality gravel vocals from Rod as did the cover of the Wings track ‘Maybe I’m Amazed’. They were everything the Black Crowes were going for two decades later but could never quite achieve. Water Down The Drain I think it's a real shame the direction Rod’s musical career went. I guess he's done great financially, but I think we really missed out on some great music - especially if he had stuck with Jeff Beck or Ronnie Wood, I really think those guys creatively really needed each other. Sure there was the odd quality track after the purple patch such as ‘Passion’, ‘Hot Legs’ and ‘I Don't Want To Talk About It’. Then there was the cover versions, especially the covers of Tom Waits’ ‘Downtown Train’ and ‘Tom Traubert’s Blues’ both of which showed he could still do it when he put his mind to it. But there again, he did always have that uncanny knack of covering songs and making them better than the original. I think Rod Stewart in his day was one of the finest voices in rock and had an original sound to his writing as well. It's sad he let all that potential go, like water down the drain. I really don't care what kind of syrupy drivel Rod has been spewing out for the last 40 years, what he did in those early days’ for me guarantees him a spot in rock voice history and that will always make me keep going back to him.
For a period during the late 80s and early 90s it seemed that our Number One records were decided by either Stock, Aitkin and Waterman or by a jeans manufacturers. Hard to believe I know but it’s true! It did bring a number of classic tracks back into the public eye that maybe didn’t get to number one first time round, these included: •The Clash – Should I Stay Or Should I Go •T Rex – 20th Century Boy •Steve Miller – The Joker •Ben E. King - Stand By Me •Marvin Gaye - I Heard It Through The Grapevine •Bad Company - Can't Get Enough •Percy Sledge - When A Man Loves A Woman
There were also new bands that would probably have not given the charts a look in without Levi’s involvement like the truly awful Spaceman by Babylon Zoo. - And then there was Stiltskin who got to Number One with the wonderfully grungy ‘Inside’.
Levi’s were proudly trend-hopping, usually focussed on depicting some bygone era to reflect the authenticity and durability of their product. The grunge sound was just another example, the advert being evidence, if any were needed that by 1994 grunge was already history. Indeed in a sad coincidence Kurt Cobain’s body was found in his garage a couple of weeks before “Inside” was released. Stiltskin Rumour has it that Levi’s wanted a Smashing Pumpkins song (Today) for the advert but were turned down. The advert itself was known as ‘Creek’, it’s worth a watch on YouTube and is a bit old-timey, women, jeans, bathing hunk, twisted ending type of ad – admittedly though, it is a great commercial! Songwriter Peter Lawlor wrote the track ‘Inside’ specifically for the advert. He needed a singer and somehow found Scotsman Ray Wilson, a guy who looks like the product of crossing Bono with Fish out of Marillion. It’s Ray’s clench-arsed voice you hear being “broken minded” on the track. Lawlor himself played all the remaining instruments on the recording. Stiltskin the band weren’t some hyper-cool bunch of grunge misfits from Seattle. They actually looked like a bunch of competent, uncharismatic, session musicians who turned up at their studio’s fancy-dress party dressed as a grunge band. - This is because basically, they were! Lawlor pulled them together at the last minute when he realised he needed a band to go out and promote ‘Inside’. They were, in many ways, the antithesis of what grunge stood for. But what of the song? Well, it’s lyrics are a bit daft (more of that later) and it has a choral bit at the start for no obvious reason, but it does have nice bit of crunching guitar that you don’t get at the top of the charts very often. Smashing Pumpkins were definitely the reference point for ‘Inside’. There was some decent riffs on there, you can detect elements of the Smashing Pumpkins tracks as well as sections that seem to have come directly from the Hendrix track, ‘Hey Joe’. Then there’s that bit where the first heavy riff kicks which is just fantastic.
Those Lyrics!! - What Was ‘Inside’ All About? Well pick your favourite – “Seam in a fusion mine / Like a nursing rhyme / Fat man starts to fall” – note - nursing rhyme, not nursery rhyme, then there’s “Ring out in a bruised postcard / In a shooting yard”. Maybe the best lyric might be “strong words in a ganja sky”. Is it just nonsense of the highest order or do they mean something as some of those lyrics are absolutely priceless? To some reviewers I’ve read they speak of a good time turned bad (see it turn to rust), and a struggle to come to terms and accept what has come to pass for the writer. Lines like "Strong words in a ganges sky, I have to lie, Shadows move in pairs" maybe there is an allusion toward imprisonment, perhaps a reference to where prisoners are shackled together, and inmates keep themselves to themselves? “Broken minded” could speak of mental illness especially if it’s to do with the imprisonment? Personally though I just think it’s a load of nonsense phrases all joined up into a lyric! Guilty Pleasure ‘Inside’ is the song we all pretend to like ironically, but in actual fact, we all really like it. To me it’s was and always will be a guilty pleasure. At the time I liked the idea of grunge but being in my mid-20s was that bit too old for it and Nirvana apart it produced few songs that really stood the test of time. Back then I could see that glam/heavy metal was dying and something needed to replace it. Unlike its predecessor though, Grunge wasn’t fun. I still can’t listen to any of the major grunge acts, great though they may be, without feeling slightly shameful, it’s like I’m listening to the music that stopped rock and roll being fun. Because of its lyrics, the way it was put together and that advert, in many ways ‘Inside’ went against the grunge grain and was a bit tongue-in-cheek style fun. A couple of years after this I noticed whilst watching pub bands around town that a lot of them had assimilated ‘Inside’ into their sets. Whether because they recognised Stiltskin as one of their own or because it was easy to play I couldn’t really say. There was a whole Stiltskin album, 'The Minds Eye' released in the wake of ‘Inside’ which, rather than crashing and burning as might be expected for a group who had quite literally no following; no history; or anything else to grab hold of went top five. Of course the album was panned by the critics, but then it was always going to be.
In many ways I’m glad that Kurt Cobain didn’t live to hear this ransacking of his soul; realistically I wish he could have kept going somehow, but then I wasn’t him and never will be; the fact that Ray Wilson went on to join a short-lived post-Phil Collins Genesis proves that he knew and believed it all inside. BTW. In truth I actually prefer the "Live and Acoustic" version from Ray’s solo album of a few years ago to the Stiltskin original – look it up, you might be pleasantly surprised.
I’ve just finished reading Brett Anderson’s autobiography – 'Coal Black Mornings'. Must admit I struggled to put it down and read it cover to cover in two days. For me, Suede were always one of the most underrated British bands, a group with a unique sound and sexually ambiguous visual whi came to the fore in the Brit Pop era of hyper-masculinity. Back in 1993 I still vividly remember seeing the video for ‘Animal Nitrate’ and rushing into town the next day to buy the debut album on tape! Lyrically it was a bit like a Smiths album but stripped of pretence. Animal Nitrate and it’s video sounded to me so fresh and new, but with an instant familiarity. With its Bowie-esque/Roxy Music vibe it was both sexy and glamorous - but with a grim and grimy feel so evocative of the 70s and early 80s of my childhood.
Now at this point I must point out that this isn’t your usual warts'n'all rock biography about the excesses of life on the road and smashing hotels up. This is largely a story about Anderson's childhood, growing up poor in Haywards Heath, a sort of dead-end commuter town that ended up populating so many Suede songs. Brett’s early years particularly fascinated me, before reading this book I knew very little and thought he came from a more privileged background. Growing-Up Comparisons A large part of Brett’s history is quite close to home for me even though I was 200 miles further North. He grew up more or less in the years I did and his analogies of the period are spot-on and far less forced than most novels or TV shows depicting the era are. I can relate to his childhood in many ways: beans on toast for tea, salad cream, the rainy caravan holidays, the general provincial dullness and 'making do' of the time and more than anything - being a bit of an outsider. Anderson's description of London in the early 90s is also real to me - I also had a love affair with London at the time, even living and working down there for 12 months in 1992. Mine was a different experience being more in the west-end back street pubs and clubs than theatre-land. But though the parts of London I knew well were different, Anderson still describes to me a place I knew, there was a general mood of gloom and nothingness, the dregs of the 80s hanging about on street corners, along with the dirt, the cigarette butts and the windswept empty squares.
The early Suede Years Now the majority of the book focuses on Brett’s childhood. If you enjoy coming of age stories you’ll really enjoy it. The band though only makes an appearance in the final quarter of the book with it stopping just before the 'big time' of success. As the book progresses, iconic characters from the 90s musical scene sweep through Brett’s life including Justine Frischman who helped launch Suede, became Anderson’s lover, then dumped him for another musician. I particularly liked the comment about Justine being so posh that he initially thought she had a speech impediment! Interestingly, the dissolution of their relationship seemed to free both of them to achieve more creativity. Frischman went to form her own successful group Elastica, who ended up another very 90s cool band. Anderson also details how his affection, cooperation and conflict with the very talented guitarist, Bernard Butler influenced his own writing and musicianship. I found particularly fascinating Brett's writing processes. The people (friends, relatives, neighbours) and places that informed those early songs.
You don't need to be a Suede fan to enjoy this book Brett Anderson is an engaging writer with a fascinating history. Coal Black Mornings is an essential read for anyone who lived through the 90s. Along with Louise Wener's ‘Just for One Day' it’s an essential memoir of Britpop. It is a short book and if I said I didn’t want more salacious details about the likes of Justine and Bernard I’d be lying, but this isn’t a book about sex, drugs and rock and roll. It is, I think, a very honest account written with his children in mind, about an ‘ordinary’ life in Britain in the 70s, 80s and early 90s, about reflecting on his upbringing and about his love of music and writing music. What make the book work is that he’s cut the jokes and dialogue but maintained a wry tone to the whole thing. It's a wonderful read, so evocative of that age which with ever increasing distance seems ever more magical – yet ever more shabby at the same time. Only negative - the phrase 'Coal Black Mornings' is used 7 times in this book which grates a little. I know its a clever phrase and I get it but it is repeated somewhat, there again in a funny way that’s very Brett!
