| Cosina che ho trovato oggi dal vox novembre 1996, brett spiega passo per passo beautiful ones
The Song "I wrote the song about a year ago, when we were writing ‘Coming Up’," says Brett. "It was incredibly hot – boiling, in fact – and I was in this sweatbox of a studio with no air-conditioning. I’m sure there’s a bit of insanity coming through as you sweat it out. The song is about the insane world we live in and it’s more about the rhythm and sound of the avalanche of words than meaning. "I would agree that there’s a Suede vocabulary. I do use a lot of the same words. I like to have a patent on them so if anyone else uses a word or phrase like '‘hired cars', it sounds like they’re ripping off a Suede word. It’s like stealing public property. "Co-writing with Richard (Oakes, guitarist) has been great because it’s so free. He wrote the verse, but his chorus didn’t really fit with my lyrics so I wrote the chorus, which has been typical of the way we’ve been working; very give-and-take and unformularised. "Beautiful Ones is strange compared to the other singles because it’s not so chorus-based as most of our other stuff, which have got huge choruses. This hasn’t got such a sing along chorus, it’s much more verse-based, which is a very different way of working a song. It’s also strange because it doesn’t go back to the chorus at the end. "When I first wrote the track, I didn’t know quite what it was ans was quite shocked because it doesn’t fit into how I’ve been writing before. "I thought very early on that it would be a single, but I go through so many different mind-changes and then I get single paranoia: ‘Oh, is it a single or not?’ Sometimes you can get too close to a record, and after ‘Trash’ was chosen as a first single – which seemed to be the obvious choice – I put it into other people’s hands to get some space from it. "I take bits of everyday life and try and make them into something good. It’s quite a karmic process. One of the great things about writing is being able to take something that’s considered to be a bad experience and turning it into something that’s good – ie, a pop song, which all my favourite bands, like the Pet Shop Boys and Bowie, have also done to some extent. I don’t think that I’ve glamorised it. I just try to go beyond being so negative."
High on diesel and gasoline "It’s not really supposed to be about drugs – it’s a metaphor for city madness. The pollution in cities is turning everyone into a loony by way of involuntary insanity. It’s up to interpretation, but anyone who would sniff petrol would have to be really stupid."
Psycho for drum machine "This is about music being a soundtrack to the city, where ou have Radio 1 and Capital Radio blaring out from building sites. It could be any city, but it was London when I wrote the song."
Drag acts, drug acts, suicides "This line is ripped off an earlier Suede song called ‘Going Blond’ which we had years ago but we never recorded because we thought it wasn’t good enough. Justine (Frischmann) took some words from it... Well, actually, took all the words from it for one of Elastica’s B-sides which goes ‘See that drag act, that AC/DC drag act". I try to use everything I write; even if it’s not for the song that I’m writing for, I’ll go back to it."
In your dad suits you hide, staining his name again "Yeah, OK, so I did dress up in my dad’s clothes. I suppose we all grew up hand-me-down gear or jumble sale stuff and you wore your dad’s suit to the local disco. When you’re a kid, you’re meant to do these sort of things, aren’t you? Take a bottle of cider down there and hide it down your sleeve, which you’ll probably spill down it later." What about other kinds of unmentioned stain? "Oh no, of course not!" (laughs)
Cracked up, stacked up, 22, psycho for sex and glue "You could read another drug-type meaning for ‘cracked up’, but I’m afraid I only chose the age 22 because it rhymes with ‘sex and glue’. Sex and glue are just cheap ways of getting out of it."
Shaved head, rave heads "Most of the people that I know who aren’t in Suede have got a grade-one, prisoner haircut."
Too much time to kill, get into bands and gangs "It’s pretty self-explanatory; too much time to kill with nothing to do. So in that situation you get into a band or a gang. I suppose one is pretty much a symptom of the other. I’ve always been in a band, but that’s because there’s been nothing else to do. I suppose that’s why Britain produces so many good groups. I was also in a gang when I was a kid."
The Beautiful Ones "They’re just people that I know or bump into, they’re all freaks, really. I think Sex, drugs and rock’n’roll inextricably linked. When I write about sex or drugs in a song, I don’t try and break it away from the traditional stereotypes of long hair and all that boring stuff, trying to be Led Zeppelin and all that. I try to make it a bit more real. "It’s important to you when you’re a kid. It’s a way of escaping any sort of responsibility."
Going Crazy "This is back to the theme of city madness. What I’m saying is that if I’m going crazy, then that’s how you made me. That I’m not responsible for anything I do, really. I’m like this because that’s how the world made me. It’s not my fault."
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