February 1998 ---- Guitar

Getting Swayed By The London Suede

When guitarist Richard Oakes joined Suede in 1994 at the tender
age of 17, the band was one of the most popular in Britain, and
Bernard Butler, the man he replaced on guitar, was one of modern
rock's most respected players. Oakes began touring immediately
with the band in support of it's glittery and brilliant album Dog Man
Star. But he had some reservations.

"Bernard had a lot of solos in that material, and it actually made me
very uncomfortable - almost physically ill - to play them," Oakes
says from his girlfriend's home in London, where he's woodshedding
prior to recording the band's next album.

Not that Butler's solos were literally nauseating, of course; they just
weren't Oakes' solos. "Bernard wrote them in his style, and I didn't
feel too at ease with stepping into them."

Today, four years later, Oakes has come full circle, from playing
Butler's riffs to reducing his repertoire of solos to shaping and writing
solos in his own style - a Technicolor spectrum of gorgeous
rhythms, lush textures, banging power chords, and sharp, stinging
solos. I'm more into soloing and a little more virtuosity," says
Oakes, who plays an ES-335. "I don't like to separate myself from
the arrangement, just to add depth for the good of the song."

You can find the most recent evidence of Oakes' growth on Sci-Fi
Lullabies, a compilation of b-sides spanning the band's five-year
career. "Now I write all my guitar lines and have 100% control of the
guitar content on our records," he says. "Someone will put the basis
of a song down, then everyone layers their own characteristics over
it. When it works, you can hear everyone's specific contributions
very clearly. That's what makes Suede such a great band."