A Pop Prophet once said:

We don't follow fashion...that'd be a joke.
You know we're going to set them, set them! So everyone will take note, take note!
(Adam Ant, "Goody Two-Shoes")

Young Brett Anderson was certainly going to set them, set them. And, many many people would be sitting up to take notes.

Take notes.

Adam Ant couldn't tell the future. If he could, he might have altered history to avoid his shame as a jailbird in the early 21st century. But with those words, he certainly made people wonder if he knew...well, something.

At this moment, the door-bell rang and Brett looked around, up at the camera...his face enquiring yet challenging. And words appeared on the screen as the picture "free-framed" excitingly.

The Story of Suede

said the words.

"That's right," assured the young one. "Send him up!"

Brett instinctively knew the visitor would be his class-mate BERNARD BUTLER. They had both taken on "code-names" beginning with the letter B...unlikely monickers in the style of their hero Oscar Wilde...names that conjured mystery and adventure!

flashback

"I'll be...Bernard Butler!" his friend, Neil Simmonds, had announced.

"That's fitting," Kevin Hammond replied with a flit of his limp wrist. "You always were servile!" As the other boy scorned in contempt, Kevin added, "I'll call myself Brett...Brett Anderson, like a Swedish necrophant!"

"Like it!" approved the other.

flashback ends

"Come on up, Neil...B-Bernard," Brett (Kevin) corrected himself, arranging himself in the doorway. He was wearing dark chocolate brown cords from a market in trendy Greenwich; a plum coloured velvet jacket; and friendship bands that Bernard and he had made one afternoon, fashioned from beads and cord, plus painted and varnished pieces of macaroni pasta.

His friend ascended the stairs...a feminine-faced youth, with curtains of long hair. Bernard was dressed accordingly, in a black polo-neck, dangly earrings from Mark One and leggings tucked into biker boots. They developed their style through a form of bricolage, "making do" with available accessories and forming their own language of clothes!

"What do you think of me, Bernard?" questioned Brett.

"Oh, you are divine" laughed the other, half-jokingly. "Have you had a homosexual experience yet."

"No, no", said Brett airily -- the two discussed homosexuality frankly, flaunting taboos with delight -- "I am still a heterosexual who hasn't had a gay experience." (Words he would later use in interview, for 10 years.)

"You are a tease," laughed his friend, a smile playing about his mouth. Then his face went more manly and serious as he turned to business, spreading a sheet of chord changes and lyrics on Brett's bed, and taking out his guitar. "Now, about these songs."

"OK Mate," Brett said crouching by him on the duvet, knowing that the time for playing about was over. "I have been thinking about bringing my gay thoughts into this project...feeding the problems I had with my sexuality...into something positive."

"Sounds wonderful...Mate." Bernard began to pick out a would-be familiar riff on his acoustic guitar, and Brett stood up to get the full range of his lungs.

"Oh, he is gone," Brett crooned, "And he wa-ha-has...my Inflatable One."

Bernard scribbled some notes about chords, then looked up, beaming. "I think that's it Mate...that's the B-side for our first single."

Brett hugged him willingly.

Brett Anderson slapped a tambourine against his thigh and sweat droplets scattered, catching the light from arc-lamps above. This was what he had aimed for all his life! Most of his songs were achieved through improvisation in the heat and passion of the stage-moment, and the one he was halfway through was no exception. That's why the lyrics made no sense.

"She sells hearts, she sells meats! Oh dad," he wailed, "she's driving me mad!"

As Brett waved the microphone above his head briskly like a camp cowboy, Bernard grinned over at him.

"What was that one called, then, Mate?" he read out, engaging in some rehearsed stage banter. (Bernard, less impulsive, had the "feed lines" written on a sheet of A4 and taped next to the set list. Jokingly, Brett had called him the "straight man", though he knew they were both as sexually ambiguous as the other.)

Brett's inventive mind raced. Smiling out at the audience, he saw "his people" - all the misfits and outsiders the London Suede had recruited to a sort of rock army. Girls and boys what you couldn't tell the difference between... young people in silver blouses and daring unisex necklaces ... hair of all shades of the rainbow, from blonde to brunette. "It's called The Beautiful Ones," Brett almost said, surveying the crowd of pretty people, but he would save that title for a better song.

In a panic at thinking up a title, Brett's mind thought back to when he watched telly with his old man...Jim O'Fixit...then the robot sitcom called...

"Metal Mickey," he gasped suddenly, an explosion filling him.

Dog man star took a suck on a pill
Stuck his cerebellum with a curious quill

at the start of "Introducing the Band", there were cries of protest from fans who were used to having their minds and sexualities challenged, not pandered to, by Suede's brand of music. Brett had even had his hair cut to a conservative style, and he still hadn't managed to enjoy a homosexual experience, despite having declared himself open to it for the last 3 years and received numerous offers.

Reviews of the "sell-out" album -- the term being used here to imply commercial success, but loss of integrity -- were mixed. One described "The Power" as a ballad reminiscent of BROS! But others were less positive, and the tide was turning uneasily against Suede's once-radical sound.

It was the mid-1990s by now. Kurt Cobain and River Phoenix were dead, causing a feeling of uncertainty in youth culture. Style commentators asked where the heroes has all gone, and who was going to take the place of these American icons. At once, the race was implicitly on for a new set of role models...but it was far from clear who would be in the pole position.

In the 90s, voter apathy among young people meant that youngsters didn't care, or tell the difference, between Tony Blair, Neil Kinnock of Labour, or the Liberal Democrats like John Smith or whatever. But if you asked them who they preferred as the representative of their culture, their eyes would light up and ears point. Some cast the vote for BLUR, with boyish frontman Damon Albarn...some for the laddish fops OASIS...some yet for PULP, voice of the underdog oxfamite...and the fourth name on the "ballot" was SUEDE...

The atmosphere at gigs in underground clubs like Earl's Court and Webley Arena, where the forefront of bands usually played, was therefore electric...the word being used to imply danger, as well as thrilling power. Backstage, conflicts were echoed in constant running battles between the members of Suede, as the friendship between Brett and Bernard threatened to become as fraught as any marriage.

This was the interesting "back-drop" to the moment we now drop in on, when Brett Anderson, wearing a leather jerkin zipped to the chest and black jeans, slapped his rear end rhythmically on the stage of the trendy Ally Pally club and sang, in a sing-song voice:

Well the church bells are calling
Police cars on fire
And as they call you to the eye of the storm
All the people say "Stay at home tonight"
I say we are the pigs we are the swine
We are the stars of the firing line

And as the smack cracks at your window
You wake up with a gun in your mouth
Oh let the nuclear wind blow away my sins
And I'll stay at home in my house

The songwords of Brett's new track "We Are The Pigs" didn't flinch from summing up the contemporary picture of society. Down the road from the gig, in inner-city trouble spots like Brixton, black youth and police men were coming to a head and doing exactly what Brett's prescient lyrics had described. ("Pigs", as most of the crowd knew, was code-word for "police.")

The line about "all the people stay at home tonight" showed that Brett was at least drawing some of his lyrics from a Burroughs-like "cut-up" process, where the sound of the words meant far more than the mundane sense. Bowie's influence was clearly affecting Brett's songwriting craft in this respect.

As for "you wake up with a gun in your mouth", the line now seems to have little relevance. At the time, though, its power was immediate...shocking. It was an image of Kurt Cobain, and this was Brett's "calling-card", or manifesto, to take his place as the new youth leader.

The gig was going as planned, and Brett made a signal with his rear end to show that it was time for the stage managers to prepare the choir of schoolkids who would, at the finale, chant "we all watch them burn!" The juvenile voices had provided a chilling end to the album track, and Brett was determined to reproduce the effect "live".

Glancing around, he ascertained that everything was in place. Out of the corner of his eye, a glaring absence...Bernard wasn't there. Brett grimaced in anger. He had forbidden any kind of break from playing during songs. This would surely mean the end of their relationship, professional or otherwise.

Brett cast his gaze about furiously. On the balcony he spotted a gangling, embarrassed figure raising his hand in a feeble wave. Brett glared, recognising his old partner.

"I'm sorry, Pal," Bernard mouthed from the Upper Circles. "I'm taking my chances."

"Solo?" mouthed Brett scornfully. "You won't last a day."

"Not Solo..." Bernard's mouth silently formed the words. He reached out a hand, and a tall, handsome black man stepped ito view. "I'm teaming up with David McAlmont."

Brett spat, his lip-liquid sizzling against a footlight. This would cripple the group...but then his face began to change, questioning, hopefully. Yes, "hang on"...the marvellous guitar licks were still chiming and carving out from somewhere, although Bernard had put his own axe down and deserted the band.

A thick-set young man with long dark hair emerged clumsily from the crowd, still working his hands skillfully over his guitar as he clambered up on the stage.

"I'm Richard Oates," he panted to the Suede frontman. "I'm...I'm your biggest fan! I learned all the music from watching you on TV..."

"You're in," said Brett with a grim smile, gesturing with a thumb to where the newcomer should stand. With the corner of his eye he watched Bernard's face fall, and he smiled accordingly. Then, noticing another disturbance in the corner of the club, he turned back to the eager young hopeful. "Hey...Oates?"

"Yes, sir."

Brett gazed over the stage, peering into the darkness where a knot of tall, unruly men and women in cardigans had stormed the ticket office.