The essential second volume of memoirs by Brett Anderson, which reveals the key years of the Suede story

Book of the Year
Sunday Times, Daily Telegraph, The Times, Evening Standard

'A compelling read from one of the greatest artists of our time' Evening Standard

'Anderson stopped his enchanting first memoir, Coal Black Mornings, just short of the band's brilliant early 1990s breakthrough. Here, he handles their operatic rise and fall with the same thoughtful grace, picking through the paraphernalia of addiction, fame and ego with self-lacerating honesty and a lyrical eye for time and place' Sunday Times

'Honest and lyrical . . . Anderson, in his lyrics, has always been fantastic at capturing the sleaze of underground city living and he does the same here . . . Anderson's writing is as he is in real life: sharp, unsparing and sensitive' Miranda Sawyer, Observer

'Anderson conjures a cracked and confused persona, fumbling his way through a bizarre early adulthood, by turns gleefully hedonistic and wantonly self-destructive, hardworking and profligate, egotistical and insecure, a character more likely to be seen shuffling around in a dressing-grown smoking fags and staring out the window than prancing on the stage' Guardian

'A compelling personal account of the dramas of a singular British band' Neil Tennant

The trajectory of Suede - hailed in infancy as both 'The Best New Band in Britain' and 'effete southern wankers' - is recalled with moving candour by its frontman Brett Anderson, whose vivid memoir swings seamlessly between the tender, witty, turbulent, euphoric and bittersweet.

Suede began by treading the familiar jobbing route of London's emerging new 1990s indie bands - gigs at ULU, the Camden Powerhaus and the Old Trout in Windsor - and the dispiriting experience of playing a set to an audience of one. But in these halcyon days, their potential was undeniable. Anderson's creative partnership with guitarist Bernard Butler exposed a unique and brilliant hybrid of lyric and sound; together they were a luminescent team - burning brightly and creating some of the era's most revered songs and albums.

In Afternoons with the Blinds drawn, Anderson unflinchingly explores his relationship with addiction, heartfelt in the regret that early musical bonds were severed, and clear-eyed on his youthful persona. 'As a young man . . . I oscillated between morbid self-reflection and vainglorious narcissism' he writes. His honesty, sharply self-aware and articulate, makes this a compelling autobiography, and a brilliant insight into one of the most significant bands of the last quarter century.