Afternoons with the Blinds Drawn by Brett Anderson – review

Early on in the second instalment of Brett Anderson’s memoirs, he writes that this is the book he said he wouldn’t write, “talking about the things I said I didn’t want to talk about”.

The first instalment, Coal Black Mornings, was an elegant, evocative meander through his childhood on a housing estate near Haywards Heath with his talented, frustrated mother and angry Liszt-obsessed father as they survived on the edges of poverty.

Though a beguiling read, there were some glaring lacunae, including many details about key points and people in his life. When your life has been as well-documented as Anderson’s, this is tricky territory for a memoir. We diehard Suede fans want to know about the blood and guts and glory of the Britpop years, his loathing of Damon Albarn, his terrible rift with guitarist Bernard Butler and his vertiginous descent into heavy drug use. Does this second memoir deliver? Not entirely. But it’s still a brilliant read.

Afternoons with the Blinds Drawn tells the story of Suede’s journey  through the Nineties, from when Melody Maker hailed them as “the best band in Britain” before they had even released their debut single, to the break-up of the group and Anderson’s predictable descent into drug abuse as he becomes “a baseball-capped caricature of paranoia” and plummets into “collapse and personal disintegration and addiction”.

Anderson provides a fascinating glimpse into the corrupting nature of success and how his public persona “like some sort of haunted ventriloquist’s dummy in a bad horror film … smothered and suppressed” him. Initially alluring, fame soon revealed a “venomous, malignant core,” which in the end became all-consuming.

Anderson doesn’t hold back when describing the corrupting effects of fame or his drug abuse, and is also eminently readable when talking about his theories of the machinations of the music industry. 

The book becomes less interesting, however, when halfway through it slips into a never-ending list of songs, what inspired them and how they were written. It’s surprising in fact that an editor allowed that part to stay in.

But even though he is still after all these years unable to write the words “Damon Albarn” and would rather die than name drop, he gives as much as you feel he is able in terms of his dealings with other people. What really makes this book great, though, is Anderson’s fiercely honest, often lacerating self-reflection, and his incredible talent as a writer and poet. Forget sensational revelations, this is a flawed but compelling read from one of the greatest artists of our time.

Afternoons with the Blinds Drawn by Brett Anderson (Little, Brown, £18.99), buy it here.