Anyone Can Play Guitar

Published 23 March 2011

When I was younger, so much younger than today, I had dreams of a musical career. I started learning to play the guitar when I was about 14 years old and like many people played in a number of bands and graced many a sweaty pub and club learning the trade. Ultimately, like so many others, the bands split up, people moved away and “real life” took over.

One of my guitar heroes was the original Suede guitarist Bernard Butler. Unlike many bands of the time Suede were the archetypal four piece consisting of vocals, guitar, bass and drums. His style was neither “rhythm” or “lead”. Suede songs were always more than a few chords and a guitar solo. His approach was hugely influential to me and I spent many hours trying to learn his songs.

Although I have long since forgotten how to play many of them the one that I could never quite work out was Animal Nitrate of the eponymous Suede album. Recently whilst browsing the BBC web site I came across this 9 minute talking head where Bernard gives us some background about the song, how it came about and how to play it.

Sadly it doesn’t sound as good on my old Spanish nylon strung guitar.