Dog Man Star - Recording and Production

Recording and Production

After the success of their debut album, Suede were hailed as the unwitting inventors of Britpop, something they were proud of for a short while. However, Britpop soon grew to be dominated by other musical forces, as Blur, Oasis and Pulp arrived on the scene. This disgusted Anderson, who called Britpop "horribly twisted, a musical Carry On film", and he began to distance himself from the scene. "We could not have been more uninterested in that whole boozy, cartoon-like, fake working-class thing." the singer said in 2008, "As soon as we became aware of it, we went away and wrote Dog Man Star. You could not find a less Britpop record. It's tortured, epic, extremely sexual and personal. None of those things apply to Britpop".

The album was recorded between 22 March and 26 July 1994 at Master Rock Studios, Kilburn, London. The rehearsals were very tense and would inevitably split the band into two separate camps, i.e. Butler and the rest of the band. Butler seemed to consolidate his separation when he appeared on the front cover of Vox magazine with the tag line, "Brett drives me insane". The interview explained how Butler liked to improvise and how Anderson made this impossible because of his slow ways of working, and his obsession with rock stardom. A despondent Anderson remembers reading the article the same morning he was recording the vocals for "The Asphalt World": "I remember trying to channel all this hurt that I was feeling and the iciness I was feeling into the vocal." Butler apologised to Anderson soon after.

Musical differences over "The Asphalt World" triggered the next big argument. The version that finally made it on to the album clocks in at nine minutes 25 seconds, but according to bass player Mat Osman, Butler's initial creation was a 25-minute piece with an eight-minute guitar solo. "Bernard was very determined", says Anderson. "He's always been quite stubborn and single-minded, he was determined that it would be long. I don't ever remember him saying, 'We'll edit it down.' It was always going to be eighteen minutes or whatever." Osman, felt that Butler's compositions were too audacious and experimental, "Lots of the musical ideas were too much. They were being rude to the listener: it was expecting too much of people to listen to them."

The arguments over "The Asphalt World" spilled over on to the rest of the album, as Butler became progressively more dissatisfied with Ed Buller's production. In a 2005 interview, the guitarist maintained his position on the matter, stating that Buller "made a terrible shoddy job of it". Butler wanted Buller dismissed, allowing him to produce the record by himself, although it was later revealed that Butler had recommended Chris Thomas as their producer. Thomas was more experienced and had previously worked with punk rock bands The Pretenders and the Sex Pistols; however Suede's label Nude Records declined Butler's request, saying Thomas was too expensive. Nude's owner Saul Galpern claimed that the guitarist became impossible to reason with and also made threats to him and Buller. Buller claims he received phone calls where there was the sound of scratching knives on the phone.

Butler issued the band and their management an ultimatum: either they discharged Buller, or he would leave Suede. The rest of the band, however refused to comply with Butler's demands and decided to let him walk out before the record was finished. Butler insisted he was kicked out the band, that when he turned up to the studio to find he was not allowed in. He went back the next day to pick up his guitar so he could record parts at home, though he was told that his guitar would be left in the street for him. "That was it, really. I didn't leave; I was kicked out. That's really obvious. If I'd just left, no-one would have let me leave, if I'd been wanted." Suede's manager Charlie Charlton made a final attempt to reach consensus between the two parties, however during a tense phone conversation the final words Butler uttered to Anderson were along the lines of "you're a fucking cunt."

On 8 July, Butler exited the sessions leaving Dog Man Star some distance from completion. Anderson had recorded little more than a string of guide vocals; several songs did not have titles; much of the music was still to be embossed with overdubs. Buller and the remaining members succeeded in taking the record to its conclusion. Butler did finish some of his guitar parts, though according to Saul Galpern he refused do it at Master Rock and instead had to book another studio where he could work on his own. Shortly after Butler left the band, he recorded an unrequested backing vocal on "Black or Blue", which Anderson recalls. "...I can't remember the exact words but it sounded vaguely threatening." Among the post-Butler additions was a reworked ending to "The Wild Ones", an orchestral coda on "Still Life" and an electric guitar part, copied note for note from Butler's original demo of "The Power", which he strongly criticised. Butler became a harsh critic of the album, not just from a production standpoint, but the overall musicianship. He cites lack of commitment in the studio, along with Anderson's partying antics, and the band's unwillingness to challenge his elaborate ideas as his main criticism, "I just heard too many times, 'No, you can't do that'. I was sick to death of it. I think it's a good record, but it could have been much better."