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As One: Remaking Suede
'As One is brilliant. Truly, a great examination of a very rare musical event that makes me cherish what Suede have managed to do all the more' Shaun Keaveny
'As One documents with great care and exacting detail how Suede restored themselves from the margins' i Paper
'An intimate and obsessive book, but one not only for the this is a story about fresh starts and second chances and how to navigate them as an adult' Mariana Enriquez
'Rodge has been absolutely brilliant. He's a big fan but not too close. He was very much a fly on the wall' Brett Anderson
'The candid biography of Suede we've all been waiting for' Steve Lamacq
This year will mark thirty-three years since Suede released their debut eponymous album and sixteen since their glorious and unexpected comeback in 2010.
Their two most recent albums - Autofiction in 2022 and Antidepressants in 2025 - both reached number two in the UK charts.
Based on exclusive and extensive interviews with the band, their family and friends, As One is an intimate and candid biography of one of the UK’s biggest band’s during the unlikely second act of a career that spans four decades. It is a book that studies the band from close up and afar, written by award-winning author Rodge Glass, who has been granted unprecedented access to the members at home, on stage, backstage, in the studio, rehearsing and promoting over the past three years.
It is an honest, long-term interrogation of what it is really like to be in Suede. The book asks difficult questions about how great bands survive and thrive over time, many years after their first flush of success. How do you build back up from nothing? How do you reconnect with your audience, while avoiding simply rehashing old ideas? How do relationships in a band change with time? How do you remake Suede?
'As One documents with great care and exacting detail how Suede restored themselves from the margins' i Paper
'An intimate and obsessive book, but one not only for the this is a story about fresh starts and second chances and how to navigate them as an adult' Mariana Enriquez
'Rodge has been absolutely brilliant. He's a big fan but not too close. He was very much a fly on the wall' Brett Anderson
'The candid biography of Suede we've all been waiting for' Steve Lamacq
This year will mark thirty-three years since Suede released their debut eponymous album and sixteen since their glorious and unexpected comeback in 2010.
Their two most recent albums - Autofiction in 2022 and Antidepressants in 2025 - both reached number two in the UK charts.
Based on exclusive and extensive interviews with the band, their family and friends, As One is an intimate and candid biography of one of the UK’s biggest band’s during the unlikely second act of a career that spans four decades. It is a book that studies the band from close up and afar, written by award-winning author Rodge Glass, who has been granted unprecedented access to the members at home, on stage, backstage, in the studio, rehearsing and promoting over the past three years.
It is an honest, long-term interrogation of what it is really like to be in Suede. The book asks difficult questions about how great bands survive and thrive over time, many years after their first flush of success. How do you build back up from nothing? How do you reconnect with your audience, while avoiding simply rehashing old ideas? How do relationships in a band change with time? How do you remake Suede?
416 pages, Kindle Edition
Published August 27, 2026
About the author
Rodge Glass
32 books12 followersRodge Glass is the author of the novels No Fireworks (Faber, 2005) and Hope for Newborns (Faber, 2008), as well as Alasdair Gray: A Secretary’s Biography (Bloomsbury, 2008), which received a Somerset Maugham Award in 2009. Recently, he was co-author of the graphic novel Dougie’s War: A Soldier’s Story (Freight, 2010), which was nominated for several awards. He is currently a Programme Leader in Creative Writing at Edge Hill University, and was Associate Editor at Freight Books. His novel, Bring Me the Head of Ryan Giggs, was published in April 2012 by the multi-award winning Tindal Street Press, then as a paperback by Serpent’s Tail, and it appeared as Voglio la testa di Ryan Giggs in April 2013 (66thand2nd, Roma). His latest book, LoveSexTravelMusik, was published by Freight Books in April 2013 and was nominated for the International Frank O’Connor Award. His fiction has been published in Serbian, Croatian, Slovenian, Danish and Italian.
(from http://rodgeglass.com/ )
(from http://rodgeglass.com/ )
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Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review
September 19, 2026
Both David Barnett and Brett have written excellent accounts of the start of Suede's career and this is a worthy successor that brings the story up-to-date, chronicling life for the members after the breakup and through the first five reunion albums (five and a half if you count the attempt to write a ballet). Glass is very good at describing the music, the gigs and the tensions and discovers many fascinating background secrets.
I would have liked to know a bit more about touring. Why do they switch between van and tour bus and how do they cope travelling in close proximity to one another?
Richard comes out of this as the hero, closely followed by Neil. Richard is very open about the stresses he has been through. Mat and Simon are positively mentioned in passing, Mat often coming in with a good quote but Simon rarely around. The treatment of Brett is more variable. Sometimes he is praised, sometimes the difficulty of his role is acknowledged, but there are also paragraphs where quotes from those close to him, or descriptions of his behaviour, portray him very negatively. In Barnett's book, Brett is the only member who refuses to have any control of what is written about him, (which probably explains why an accusation of paedophilia against him is quoted but not directly refuted) so I expect he gave Glass the same freedom.
We now get the voices of two of the band's significant others, as Brett's and Richard's wives, Jodie and Anna, are amongst Glass's sources. However, this just shows that the band are very private, as is their right, and Glass respects their privacy. That is a good thing in a way, but makes for a biography with significant gaps. If we are to understand the stresses and conflicts of these men we need to understand how decisions impacted on their loved ones and whether or not they received support through the stresses from partners. And it would be interesting to know how the partners interact with one another. But Simon is not available for interviews or for giving access to his extensive video recordings of the band. Neil won't tell us whether he has, or had, a partner. Mat's wife is named, he worked for a few months in New York for her father doing something unspecified and she supplied one photo, but that's all you're permitted to know. Brett is reluctant to discuss his marriage "even with the band". So that just leaves Richard willing to be open about his relationship with his wife but with an understandable vagueness about the relationship he left.
We are told Brett's stepson Jack was the first Suede child and he fathered Lucian later but we don't know if anybody else has had a child since Jack. Brett plans to take Jack to Somerset with him but we never learn if he goes as he is never mentioned again, any further mentions of Brett's family being just about his wife and Lucian. (The author has since confirmed that Jack is still part of the family and loved)
Glass is an excellent writer and has done the best he possibly could with what he was allowed to write about but it would have been a more interesting book if the other Suede members and their partners had shown the same openness as Richard and Anna.
I would have liked to know a bit more about touring. Why do they switch between van and tour bus and how do they cope travelling in close proximity to one another?
Richard comes out of this as the hero, closely followed by Neil. Richard is very open about the stresses he has been through. Mat and Simon are positively mentioned in passing, Mat often coming in with a good quote but Simon rarely around. The treatment of Brett is more variable. Sometimes he is praised, sometimes the difficulty of his role is acknowledged, but there are also paragraphs where quotes from those close to him, or descriptions of his behaviour, portray him very negatively. In Barnett's book, Brett is the only member who refuses to have any control of what is written about him, (which probably explains why an accusation of paedophilia against him is quoted but not directly refuted) so I expect he gave Glass the same freedom.
We now get the voices of two of the band's significant others, as Brett's and Richard's wives, Jodie and Anna, are amongst Glass's sources. However, this just shows that the band are very private, as is their right, and Glass respects their privacy. That is a good thing in a way, but makes for a biography with significant gaps. If we are to understand the stresses and conflicts of these men we need to understand how decisions impacted on their loved ones and whether or not they received support through the stresses from partners. And it would be interesting to know how the partners interact with one another. But Simon is not available for interviews or for giving access to his extensive video recordings of the band. Neil won't tell us whether he has, or had, a partner. Mat's wife is named, he worked for a few months in New York for her father doing something unspecified and she supplied one photo, but that's all you're permitted to know. Brett is reluctant to discuss his marriage "even with the band". So that just leaves Richard willing to be open about his relationship with his wife but with an understandable vagueness about the relationship he left.
We are told Brett's stepson Jack was the first Suede child and he fathered Lucian later but we don't know if anybody else has had a child since Jack. Brett plans to take Jack to Somerset with him but we never learn if he goes as he is never mentioned again, any further mentions of Brett's family being just about his wife and Lucian. (The author has since confirmed that Jack is still part of the family and loved)
Glass is an excellent writer and has done the best he possibly could with what he was allowed to write about but it would have been a more interesting book if the other Suede members and their partners had shown the same openness as Richard and Anna.
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review