‘We Are The Pigs’: the violent Suede song inspired by ‘Lord of the Flies’
The genuine tragedy of British rock in the 1990s is that it didn’t have to be dominated by two bands. Britpop may well have enlivened the mainstream music carousel, but it’s hard to ignore that their dominance did dull the edges of the decade. Case in point is the band that coined the term Britpop with three of the best rock albums of the 1990s, Suede.
Despite what the swirling lager spills of the giant crowds who will descend on various Oasis shows will soon tell you, Britpop began with their brand of gender-fluid, gritty sex music that harked back to Bowie, The Cure and the Pet Shop Boys’ icy, camp cool.
They caused such an ungodly storm of intrigue that they performed their third single, the deathless ‘Animal Nitrate’, at the 1993 Brit Awards before their debut album had been released. Forget Blur and the aforementioned Mancunians, Suede were set to be Britain’s answer to Nirvana, and their self-titled debut album was the equal of any released that year. Of course, the record’s contents were a little too risque to garner the same level of mainstream acceptance, but they still became icons, and their follow-up was one of the most anticipated records of 1994.
In the meantime, though, being in Suede had become a profound form of mental torture for the two creative hubs of the band, singer Brett Anderson and guitarist Bernard Butler, as they battled one another. Their struggle for control of the group is one of the reasons their debut is as good as it is, as the games of one-upmanship grab the listener by the throat and do not let go. However, by the time sessions for their sophomore record began, their relationship had slid into a toxic cesspool. They tried to make it work for a while, Butler recording his guitar parts in the day while Anderson took over at night.
Anderson instead would spend his days holed up in his home in Highgate, sinking into a deepening drug addiction and seething at the blithely middle-class attitudes of the families surrounding him. The dichotomy of London having such a class disparity despite living in such close proximity has long been a fascination of the artists who find themselves on either end of the social spectrum. Some of the most notorious estates in the city sit directly opposite opulent townhouses. It landed heavily on Anderson.
The very fact that his neighbours would go about their day, ignorant of their own privilege despite living proof of it being yards away, inspired the first single from what would eventually become Dog Man Star: ‘We Are The Pigs’. He told Select Magazine that the song was “a warning to the middle classes that everyone they’re keeping under their feet is going to end up crushing their skulls. That was the idea behind it. It’s supposed to be quite a violent thing”.
Violence is the key word with ‘We Are The Pigs’. Even before you get to the stomach-churning video that’s basically Justice’s video for ‘Stress’ two decades early, this is a thing of grotty, nauseating majesty. It’s not for nothing that in a separate interview, Anderson also invokes one of the most shocking pieces of literature of its time in describing it. One that also reckoned with the violent, tribalistic nature of the British class system lurking just under the surface.
Speaking to the band’s official website, he said: “I suppose this was my comment on an age of excess, a portent of doom, the guilty realisation that this grotesque house of cards that we had built around ourselves could at any point come tumbling down. There was a bit of Lord of the Flies in there as well with the innocent but chilling children’s voices chanting at the end.”
It’s hard not to be struck by the band’s creation. Pulsating into effect with Anderson’s uniquely poised vocals, the track feels like a rallying anthem when coupled with the violent imagery of the video. While the song is more melodic than you might imagine and certainly has more brass than most calls for class war, it’s still a brutal assault.
Maybe that’s why, for all their hype, Suede never quite made it to the level of Oasis and Blur. For all that style, there was always a dangerous, nihilistic streak to their work that would always make them a bit too radical for the mainstream. Anderson and Butler may have appeared as warring factions, but they united in their blood-streaked determination to shake up the mainstream circuit. However, they might have rattled so many cages they found themselves smacked by the feeding hand they were trying to bite.
