During Suede’s recent Q&A session with NME, Brett Anderson talked about his love for The Sex Pistols and how he used the band to rebel against his family.
Firstly, answering a question about the first artist he fell in love with, the singer explained why the punk band was his first favorite. He said:
“It’d have to be the Sex Pistols, really. That was my first band. It sounds pretty cool, but they were my first. The first band that I kind of felt like they were my band. When you’re a kid, you sort of get excited by the energy of pop music. But the first time, I really felt that I had a band that really meant [a lot] to me.”
Anderson then recalled how he embraced the punk rocker to rebel against claiming his father’s taste in music, stating:
“My dad was really into classical music. So, I – You know, it’s the job of every decent teenager to do the opposite of what your parents are into. So, the Sex Pistols was as far as I could get. So, I’d say the Pistols.”
This early connection to The Sex Pistols affected the vocalist’s work with Suede. In a past conversation with The Guardian, he admitted how the Pistols’ music and style had an impact on his band by saying:
“‘Bodies’ is a proper rabble-rouser. It gets your blood up, and we still play it before shows. The Sex Pistols were a huge influence on Suede too, which people don’t always get. Playing ‘Animal Nitrate’ at the Brits was completely inspired by them, a real two-fingers-up-to-the-industry, glam-terrorism thing.”
In addition to playing them before their performances, Suede covered The Sex Pistols’ songs on a few other occasions. They sang ‘Bodies’ on stage at the Royal Albert Hall in 2010, a year before Anderson named the track’s album, ‘Never Mind The Bollocks, Here’s The Sex Pistols,’ one of his favorites in an interview.
