Inside Neil Codling's Head

06/29/1999 9:00 PM, LAUNCH
Lyndsey Parker

When the Britboys of Suede first reared their impeccably coifed heads in the early '90s, the U.K. music press--in a manner so fawning and fanatical it made Teen Beat seem like the Wall Street Journal--instantly dubbed Suede the "BEST NEW BAND IN BRITAIN!!!!" and heaped various other passionate accolades (generally in all caps and embellished with several emphatic exclamation points) upon the budding band. And all this happened before Suede had even released their FIRST SINGLE!!!! Thankfully for Suede (and for anyone who takes whatever is printed in NME as the gospel truth), the group's eponymous full-length debut lived up to such foaming-at-the-mouth hype. Suede's blend of the eerie androgyny of Space Oddity-era Bowie and the swooning melancholy/ melodrama of the Smiths--highlighted by the swishy, sissyish vocals of femme-y fatale Brett Anderson and the gorgeous, glittery guitar work of Bernard Butler--resulted in one of the most absolutely fabulous albums of 1993. No wonder Melody Maker had made such a fuss!

But of course, the fickle limey music press as a whole tends to have the attention span of a gnat with ADD and the loyalty of a typical two-timing Melrose Place character, so about 15 minutes after Suede had been declared nothing less than the second coming of God, they were suddenly deemed washed-up--kaput, yesterday's news, and flung atop the has-been scrap heap alongside such fallen-from-favor flavors du jour as Teenage Fanclub and Chapterhouse. Granted, this ultimately premature death knell was greatly spurred by the departure of guitar god Bernard shortly after the completion of Suede's second album, Dog Man Star, or maybe it had something to do with a forced name change to the rather inelegant-sounding London Suede (although with-it hipsters will forever recognize the band as simply Suede), due to a threatened lawsuit from an American singer-songwriter who'd already adopted the cowhide-inspired moniker. But it was more likely just another example of the British media's flighty, downright malicious tendency to tear down the very heroes it helped create.

But now, as Suede release Head Music, their jaw-dropping fourth album (or fifth, if you count their double-disc B-sides collection Sci-Fi Lullabies), the U.K. press seems to have fallen madly in love with them all over again. Perhaps England's music crits have simply accepted the indisputable reality that Suede aren't going away anytime soon. After all, Suede's first album sans Bernard Butler, 1997's decidedly poppier and cockier Coming Up, was a stunning comeback that actually surpassed anything they'd recorded when Bernard was still in the lineup, and their ambitious follow-up Head Music--a spooky, spacey, brilliantly bizarre electro-funk opus that mixes elements of Gary Numan, Kraftwerk, the Fall, and even Prince with Suede's limp-wristed fop-pop to create a freakishly metropolitan, jaggedly cybernetic sound akin to that of a band of space aliens and androids playing T. Rex covers--is just as compelling.

But a major reason behind this Suedemania revival is no doubt the group's newest member, elegantly wasted keyboardist (and drummer Simon Gilbert's cousin) Neil Codling, who at age 22 made his first public appearance with Suede at a secret fanclub gig in January of '96 and became an almost instant teen idol, garnering much ink and many glossy photo spreads in pinup magazines that had never bothered to pay much attention to Suede before and thus drawing an entire new audience of starry-eyed, boy-crazy prepubescents to the group. Soon such Neil-centric websites as Neil Mania, the Neil Cod-Lite Site, My Lovely Neil (based in Thailand!), and the Neil Codling House Of Worship, as well as fanzines like New Boy, sprang up. And the U.K. press took swift notice, proclaiming Neil the "archetypal Suedeboy" whose ghostly, glacial glamour--exaggerated jutting cheekbones, cavernous eye sockets, bloodless complexion, coolly indifferent onstage demeanor, two-pack-a-day smoking habit--was the ultimate representation of the ostentatiously chic Suede aesthetic. Suddenly, the ghoulishly handsome "new boy" had made Suede exciting again, and the press realized that Suede's career was far from finished.

But Neil--often depicted in magazine articles as a man of mystery and of few words, but in reality a rather down-to-earth, pleasant, surprisingly modest fellow--prefers not to take all the credit for this renewed interest in Suede. "I think that's partly to do with the fact that Coming Up was relatively a pop kind of album, and with me and Richard [Oakes, Bernard Butler's twentysomething replacement and the subject of a few websites and fanzines himself] being younger, I think it just sort of appealed to the younger types," Neil shrugs politely. "And, because we're all blokes, it tends to be a more female audience, too. It tends to gravitate around those certain people, that's just the way it is. So deliberately, because it was quite a bit more of a pop record, we decided we might as well do some press with the sort of younger teen magazines and stuff. It just kind of picked up like that. It wasn't a cynical ploy, but it's just the way it worked out, really."

Cynical ploy or not, it certainly seemed to work--so well, in fact, that it was even joked in the Suede book The Beautiful Ones that bassist Matt Osman would eventually be "replaced by two 14-year-old girls whose blood [the band members] could feed on to keep them young." Considering the brutal implication behind such a quip--that the aging, fading band members would need to step aside to make way for cuter, new and improved models--one has to wonder if longtime Suedemates Brett, Simon, and Matt resent the way Neil has unintentionally captured the spotlight (the former drama student and fashion model even appears in the Head Music cover art, cozying up to a female model that just happens to be Brett's girlfriend). Neil scoffs at such a suggestion. "No! I think it's quite convenient for them, because the others do all the serious interviews, and then I get to do the 'what's your favorite color?' ones for all the young teen press."

One has to assume Neil's favorite color is black (this writer didn't work up the nerve to actually ask), since he has such a dark stage presence: while Richard flails away dramatically at his guitar and Brett flounces about coquettishly while lewdly rubbing his mic stand back and forth across his fanny, the specter of Neil simply...stands still. And the audience and press alike just eat it up. The more immobile and apathetic Neil appears while onstage, the more cigarettes he languidly ignites, the less frequently he actually touches any of his synthesizer's keys, the more often he walks offstage mid-song to nonchalantly watch his bandmates from the wings--the more delighted his admirers are. Again, seemingly without making even the slightest effort, Neil has become the archetypal Suedeboy.

Neil admits he's befuddled as to why so many Suedeheads find his complete and utter lack of motion onstage so thrilling. "It's just strange--people will tend to pick up on what they want to pick up on," he muses. "To me, just sitting there and not doing anything is one way to be quietly ignored, so it quite surprises me that people can pick up on it and go, 'Oh, look! There he is! He's doing nothing!' It's quite, quite strange."

Neil also insists that his stage persona--though reminiscent of classically arrogant, aloof keyboard greats like Roxy Music's Brian Eno--is not something he deliberately cultivates. "Absolutely not! It's just what I do. I mean, it's not as if I go do cartwheels or something, and I practice doing cartwheels. I don't sit in my room and practice keeping still!" he laughs incredulously. "I think there's a lot of activity on the stage, with everybody else moving around and Brett doing his thing, and I think the less distraction from him the better, so I just make sure I don't do something outrageous like start playing my keyboard over my head or something."

Of course, all this emphasis on Neil's image, though a definite boost for Suede's visibility and popularity in Britain, does detract from the fact that Neil is a fine musician in his own right; contrary to how it may appear onstage, he isn't doing "nothing." So, does Neil resent being only known as the token Suedeboy, the New Boy...the "Rent-A-Pout," as he once cheekily joked in Minx magazine? "I don't mind that; it hardly acknowledges any musical contribution I make, but I don't think it's a problem," he says humbly.

As far as Neil's musical contributions to Suede go, it is unquestionable that he has had much to do with Head Music's funkier, slinkier electronic vibe. Although this direction can also be largely credited to Suede's switch from longtime producer Ed Buller to new producer Steve Osborne, who's best known for his work with the Happy Mondays and alongside Paul Oakenfold in the techno outfit Perfecto, Neil's reverbed sci-fi keyboards are extremely prominent throughout Head Music, lending the album a chillingly futuristic feel.

Further regarding Neil's participation in Suede, Head Music is the first Suede album with which he's been involved from start to finish (he joined the band during the making of Coming Up, after many of that album's songs were already written), and he shares co-writing credit on six of Head Music's 13 tracks, including the high-voltage first single, "Electricity." He's written several Suede songs on his own as well, including the recent B-sides "Waterloo" (on which he also sings lead) and "Jubilee" and the Head Music cut "Elephant Man." Despite its title, which would normally conjure up an image of hideous deformity, "Elephant Man" is one of Head Music's most glamorous, decadent, high-bravado moments--a swaggering, brazenly attitudinal rant of rock 'n' roll terrorism with such deliberately, deliciously "obtuse and dumb" lyrics as "We love that satisfying rattling crash/ The sound of registers full of cash/ We'll be all over your town like a rash/ We'll steal your children and smoke all your hash."

Neil explains that "Elephant Man" is inspired by the total absurdity of his experience in the public eye. "It's just about the kind of ridiculous situation of being in front of people and being this kind of freak. Because in a way, being in a band and touring has an element of a circus sideshow to it. But it means other things as well. I mean, everyone, as soon as they've been in a band for a couple of years, writes a song about being in a band! So it's got more to it than that. But the basic idea is about being shoved in front of people and being told to sing and dance and stuff."

Now that Neil's been so boldly shoved in front of people and held up as the darling mascot of Suede, one has got to question whether the capricious U.K. press will soon tire of him as well, and if that prophecy about Suede needing to hire 14-year-old replacements in order to remain of-the-moment will actually come true. Neil is well aware that his love affair with the English media will eventually come to an end. "I'm quite conscious of that, and that's why it's important not to play up to an image," he says matter-of-factly. "Because if people write you up and elevate what you do, but you don't play up to it, then it kind of prevents any backlash. I think if you play up to it and you start being Led Zeppelin, then things can backfire." He says he hopes it's his musical achievements that will ultimately be his lasting legacy, adding, "Things always inevitably die down as you go away and write an album. If you can just get on with what you do, which is basically making music, then people will hopefully pay attention to the music that you make and not the fact that you're standing still onstage!"