Do you remember the first time? Not that! I mean the first time you’ve heard of Sleeper. For me, my friend, Mark, was studying abroad in France and had brought back three Sleeper singles “Alice EP” (which was actually “Swallow EP” German CD single- but I didn’t want to confuse anyone), “Swallow EP” and “Delicious” when he went home for the holiday. It was like nothing I’ve ever heard of! All three singles were maginicent, especially their b-sides, which are often stronger than their singles...
    Most magazines and ‘history’ written about Sleeper are often time wrong, so I decided to write my own. Some of the materials used here could be wrong, but I’m hoping it will be the definate Sleeper biography.

    Louise Jane Wener who was borned in Gants Hill (suburb north of Ilford) and unknown to the little girl, she would one day be a famous singer of a pop band known as Sleeper. Even with the buck-teeth and thick glasses of Louise on the cover of the LP of Pleased to Meet You, Louise has always been cute. She would one day be known as Loudmouth Louise, the New Lass, the Margaret Thatcher of Britpop, and the Noel Gallagher of Sleeper. But whatever you call her, you gotta love her.
    Jonathan David Stewart was borned in Sheffield on, Sep 12, 1967. It doesn’t seem likely, but Jon is a big fan of Devo and Madder Rose (which would incidently bring Chris Giamalvo onto their session and live bassist later on in their career.) Jon is the nicest guy in the world, by the way. He’s currently happily living in London.

IN THE BEGINNING
    You are probably going to be very familiar with the next couple of lines of how Sleeper were formed. The most famous goes something like this: Louise Wener and Jon Stewart met each other while attending Manchester University, where they were both studying in politics and history, in 1990. I think the NME published Louise’s grade (which was a 2:1 degree in Politics and English). They took similar courses and spent a summer in America. According to Jon, “There's a boat runs out of Boston Harbor called Spirit of Boston which Louise and myself worked on for a summer during a student exchange programme. Its a floating restaurant and we were singing waiters!” Louise and Jon were both interested in singing or at least a career in entertainment.
    Obviously at the time Jon and Louise were going out and decided to move to London to form a band. They placed a rhythm section want ad in the Melody Maker: “BASSIST, DRUMMER WANTED. PIXIES, PARTRIDGE FAMILY. Serious applicants, telephone...”
    Andy Maclure at the time was in a band called The Mable String Quartet, which was a ten-piece ska band. Kenediid ‘Diid’ Osman was working in a band called Candyland, which sounded “baggy, indie.” According to a quote from Diid, “When I joined they were working with Gil Norton who’d just produced the Pixies. Then he wasn’t working with them anymore and it all went horribly wrong...” Both quite their current bands and answered Louise and Jon’s advert, creating Surrender Dorothy.

SURRENDER DOROTHY
     In those days, they were working under the trade name of Surrender Dorothy. The name came from a line in “The Wizard of Oz” whereas as Jon recalled “[was] when the witch paints in on the sky with her broomstick.”
    One of their first gig at Islington Powerhaus was supported by Shed Seven. According to writer John Harris’s article in Osman, Louise were all in black and the central riff in “Delicious” was pinched from the Cure’s “Just Like Heaven,” that it made Sleeper look rather like a little gothic.
    According to Louise: “It was a terrible time. I was on the dole for three years. I was stealing things, shoplifting, waitressing, trolling around little clubs, playing to 50 friends who you’d practically paid to come down and see you. And the music... I didn’t have that much to do with it. Our lyrics were awful. I could never go through that period again.”
    They had demoed a song for Indolent Records called “Stay”, which Jon described the song as “A great song. Violins, epic, waltz time, tearjerker, REM - everything. And incredible piece of music.” It was good enough that Indolent Records signed them for a two-single development deal. However, they had to change their name because at the time there were already four bands in England with that name.
    Diid wanted Starsky, but “we had to reject that cos of Huggy Bear.” Then it happened: Louise came up with the name Sleeper, which was another movie refference, but it could mean so many other things. So Sleeper was born.

ALICE IN VAIN
    By November 1993, Sleeper had made their first recorded music, Alice in Vain EP. The sound recordings were bad, but it was raw and unproduced that gave them a ‘garage sound’ that sounded a little like Elastica. The song caused a little bit of comparison between Courtney Love’s Hole and Louise Wener’s Sleeper because the song “Alice in Vain” contained a line that was the title of Love’s riot-grrl/feminism fanzine, “She’s Not Even Pretty.” By the way, Louise hadn’t known about the fanzine until it was brought to her attention later on when interviewers would ask about the connection.
    After the release of their debut single, Sleeper went on tour with various (now famous) bands such as the Manic Street Preachers, Blur, and the Lemonheads. After the three months of tour, Sleeper recorded their second EP called “Swallow.”

SWALLOW
     Probably Sleeper’s most controversy song. This was released in February 1994 and already had a following in France because of the Black Sessions (which is a radio show similar to the Peel Sessions). “Swallow” was about about blow jobs, although Louise insists that “It’s a much misunderstood song and it isn’t actually about blow jobs. It’s about a relationship breaking down, it’s actually a really sad song. It’s also about when people steal all your secrets and know all there is to know about you and the image is a metaphor for that.” Nevertheless this song caused quite a stir in the music scene.
    The entire Swallow EP were done in one take. Incidentally, Louise hated “One Girl Dreaming” - which she claims was the worst song they’ve ever written and she could never bring herself to singing those older songs. Personally, I think “One Girl Dreaming” is a decent song... perhaps Louise was thinking of another song? After all, she claimed that there’s only 1,000 copies of the 12” of “Delicious” - which I’m not sure is the correct number as I’ve seen a lot of them floating around (around mid-1995) ....
    Promoting their music the band, especially Louise had to hand out call girl cards (they’re commoningly found at phone both) that said “SWALLOW! 0891 100324 - GORGEOUS and fully equipped,” because in those days they didn’t have any money behind them.
    By this time, Sleeper had already been roped into the whole New Wave of New Wave scene. This was good and bad. Being in the scene meant more recognition but at the same time it tied them to that label.

DELICIOUS
    Sleeper success ensured them a renewed contract and Louise and Jon liked the control they had over their releases that they’ve stuck with the label and released their third single three months after Swallow. The song was (gasp) another sex song! This sent a bunch of writers into a frenzy to write up stories about a sex-crazed Louise Wener and her band. The song was produced by Ian Broudie (of the Lightning Seeds as well as producers of the Fall and the Wedding Present), the song was a guitar driven that made it barely to number 75 on the UK charts.
    Select (Jun 94) ran an article that claimed that had a photo session of the now famous “FEMALE FRONTED BAND” t-shirt. It was a bold statement in a time that female fronted bands (such as Elastica, Echobelly, and Salad) were all being attention and getting famous. Once again, Sleeper did not like to be part of any music movement (this will prove once again when the Britpop movement died out).
    Another controversy was the fact that their b-side “Lady Love Your Countryside” was a play off of S*M*A*S*H’s already controversy “Lady Love Your Cunt” (which was an essay written by Germaine Greer). Jon recalled, “S*M*A*S*H phoned up our record company and asked our A&R man, ‘What’s that song about. Are they taking the piss out of us ‘cause the boys aren’t happy.’ ”
    The acoustic number had nothing to do with S*M*A*S*H’s lovely song about women’s right, and in fact “was just about getting messed up and having a good time and it’s about getting wasted” according to Louise.
    “I hate Germaine Greer, she really irritates me. Of course I agree with it, but I think it’s all really obvious, I didn’t need S*M*A*S*H to tell me, I do already, alright?” Louise knows what she’s talking about, she was initially a self-professed typical leftie feminist early in her years at the university. She found the whole ‘Sisters United’ ethic to be bollocks and stopped dismissing that all men were insensitive pigs.

BUCKET AND SPADES
    If you are American, you might not completely understand the title to their four release. A ‘spade’ is what the English call a shovel, just like a ‘torch’ is what we know as a flashlight. This was a live recording of their gig at the Zap Club, Brighton, 8/9/94. The recording captured Sleeper as a brilliant live act and was released while they were on the road touring. Supposively “Bucket & Spades” sold 3000 copies in less than three days via their fanclub.
    But their fanclub isn’t the only place you can get this green vinyl 7”. A lot of them were sent to record stores and given out free to various occasions such as a Sleeper in-store signing.
    For some odd reason, Sleeper love vinyl. For instance, “Bucket & Spades” and “Gorgeous and Fully Equipped....” were both released only on 7” record. Even on their “Delicious” 12” Sleeper issued an extra track, which would prove quite rare until Raw magazine issue a free tape, For Immediate Use, with their magazine (and even then “Tatty” is a rarely heard song.)

GORGEOUS AND FULLY EQUIPPED MEETS FANTASY Y-FRONTS
     The Sleeper fanclub was run by three girls who were known as the Fantasy Y-Fronts. One of the girl, Maria, wanted to start and to run the fanclub for free because she was a big fan, and Indolent took her seriously. Their Sleeper newsletter were in a form of the official Sleeper fanzine, called Gorgeous and Fully Equipped (after the call girl cards) and often had written articles by members of the band. The ‘zine are quite revealing, such has Diid’s biography and pictures of Andy’s home. Andy said that they knew everyone and they published a their own fanzine, Fantasy Y-Fronts, which on occasion would have bands interviewed such These Animal Men, Blur, Gene, Supergrass, Elastica, etc..
     Through an exclusive offer to fans only (in the fanclub), the collectible and very rare “Gorgeous and Fully Equipped Meets Fantasy Y-Fronts” 7” flexi record was given out free with the Christmas issue of Gorgeous and Fully Equipped fanzine. The flexi had samples of Sleeper’s forthcoming Smart album and had samples from the BBC archive inbetween the samples.

INBETWEENER
     By the beginning of 1995, “Inbetweener” had already become somewhat of a hit. It was at this point that their career took a turn. The single would hit number sixteen on the UK charts, which was a huge success to the band.
     Louise rembembers the song being, “the first time I’d written an honest song, really. It was the first song that was true to me, something that I actually recognised. I grew up at Gants Hill, near Ilford. It’s a roundabout, basically, and the observational Sleeper song are based there. ‘Inbetweener’ is my mum and dad. When I first started writing lyrics you’d write about things that you almost thought you should. When you write something that’s true to you, people see that very quickly. With that song I recognise a lot of myself. I am that song.”
    The pre-album flagship single, which had a two-note guitar riff would change Sleeper forever. Louise and Andy would take over as songwriting, as Jon take the role of just a guitarist. But Jon isn’t bitter about it at all, and in fact said “No, I haven’t stopped writing, but it’s a bit like being George Harrison in the Beatles, on a smaller scale. What Lou writes is better, and she has to feel comfortable with what we put out, cos she has to sing it and explain it in interviews. So I’m not gonna sit there and make her record my six-minute feedback opus.”

SMART
     While recording their first album in autumn of 1994 (with the working title of “Hunch”) Louise and Jon broke up as a couple. It was a difficult time and it some of the songs (that were written at the time) were severely affected by the breakup. Such songs as “Amuse” and “Hunch” were “really personal” and Louise would not comment on the song’s meaning. Although in an interview for Hits magazine, Louise commented “that was quite a personal track for me. I had gone through a break-up with someone, and it was about that as well. Sometimes you get peace of mind when you're alone, and sometimes it's a time when you're tortured as well.”
    Dropping some great producers as Anjali Dutt (who was the producer for “Alice in Vain” and “Swallow” and one of the engineer for Oasis’s Definiately Maybe) and Ian Broudie, Indolent records signed on Paul Corkett to produce the first album. Corkett had already had some heavy weights under his engineering belt, most notably Tori Amos’s Little Earthquake, Bjork’s Debut, and Catherine Wheel’s Waydown.
    Riding on the preceding single success of “Inbetweener,” Sleeper’s debut Smart reached Gold in 1996 and then Platnium in 1997. The album reached number five on the UK charts and sold incredibly well (over 130,000 copies world-wide).
    Andy Maclure chose a cover from a 50’s booklet, which resemble the cover of the movie The Right Stuff. The cover features seven astronauts, with two of them had spray painted their doc martens silver, which they thought were hilarious.

VEGAS
     Unhappy with the recording of “Vegas” on Smart, Sleeper decided to re-record the song with a string orchestra, in March 1995. Graham Coxon (credited as Morgan C.Hoax) came by the recording to play saxaphone because at the time Blur were in the same studio recording their album - which had excerpts from the Sleeper intro tape on the sountrack to The Great Escape. Blur kept bother Sleeper and “going in and going ‘We like your band.’ ”
     The b-side had surprisingly a cover of the Pretender’s “Hymn to Her” their other known cover is the Cure’s “Inbetween Days” which was performed live for Bernard Lenoir’s Black Session. The other song, “It’s Wrong to Breed” had a very country-influenced song about a burglary. And wrapping it up is an instrumental song called “Close”, which would be one of the last song that Jon would completely write.

WHAT DO I DO NOW?
     Six months later, after a Japanese tour, Sleeper finally released a single entitled “What Do I Do Now?” The song is an extremely sad song about a breakup but backed by a power guitar pop. This song would later be covered by Elvis Costello who recognized and record his version of it, which it should’ve been a sad slow song.
         The second ‘95 UK tour was launched to promote the new single. What was differently about this single was that it had two parts, a CD 1 and a CD 2. This was a trend most of the UK artists were following, which they would release a single and then to revive interests release part two of that single (doubling their sale of that particular single). Sleeper stopped making the collectible 12” version of their single in favor of the second single release, due to funding and (more likely) poor sales on their 12”. The first “What Do I Do Now?” single had two new b-sides, while the second single had some live tracks from the earlier ‘95 tour at Cardiff University and London Astoria.
     Sleeper is still a fan of vinyl... by releasing the 7” of “What Do I Do Now?” in its own catalogue number (with a unique sleeve) they would drive this limited 2,000 record to be a collectible item. Since with this release meant the death of their 12” record singles, I have mention why they have this obsession with records. I asked Andy Maclure, in 1995 at the Whiskey A-Go-Go, why they chose to release special extra tracks on their records. He replied, “Its for the fans. They’re out there getting it when it first comes out...”

SALE OF THE CENTURY
     The preceding single for The it Girl. This song would prove to be Sleeper’s most sucessful single to date. The video which was sponsored by Indolent and later chopped and edited by Arista Records, has the band in water (“We’ll stand where the river bends/I hope we fall in”). Apparently such an appealing image launched the much anticipated single to their highest chart position at number 10.
    By this time, Sleeper had already been grouped together with a much-dreaded term ‘britpop’ (previously known as ‘indie’). The british music movement which was started as an anti-statement to the whole seattle grunge scene which was taking the world by storm.
     Anyway, the “Sale of the Century” 7” includes the Blondie cover “Atomic” which was only previously available through the Trainspotting soundtrack. Incidentally, according to Danny Boyle, who directed the film, asked Sleeper to cover the Blondie song because it would prove cheaper than to use the original song (for re-issueing the song on their soundtrack). The European release of “Sale of the Century” contained an new green cover and combined the regular single and 7” into one released CD single.

THE IT GIRL
     “ ‘The it girl’ is an American phrase which dates back to the 1920s, when Clara Bow and it sort of carried through to the ‘40s, when Betty Grable was the it Girl, the ‘50s, the ‘60s, there was always a different one. There was one token woman each year, one it Girl. I like the phrase, it sounded good. And I found the concept quite amusing,” said Louise.
     It seems that the ‘it’ girl of ‘96 would have to be Louise Wener, herself.

NICE GUY EDDIE
     Sleeper’s other big success was with “Nice Guy Eddie.” The song was about a girl’s relationship with an older gentleman. A bit sad but set to a funky disco beat. The video had Louise dancing out of sync (to a background of lightbulbs) and started a wide misconception that Louise cannot dance.
     The sleeve was a hilarious moment in the song where Louise sings “summer ’92, I remember it clearly/When he choked on the olive in his dry martini” which reminded me of the clever “What Do I Do Now?” sleeve of a torn photograph (“Tore up all your photos didn't feel too clever/Spent the whole of Sunday sticking you together”).
     Again I wanted to point out that the 7” version of “Nice Guy Eddie” was a picture disc (popular among the interview records) and contained exclusive tracks not found on the cd version. The two extra tracks turned out to be a live version of “Inbetweener” and a re-recording of “Inbetweener” by Mark and Lard (who are radio disc jockeys who made fun of the song).
     A special 10” version of The it Girl was released around the same to celebrate Sleeper’s support tour for Elvis Costello. Louise turned out to be a big fan of Elvis (under Morrissey, of course) and Elvis was a fan of Sleeper! They each cover a song from each other which “Other End of the Telescope” would appear on a limited Elvis Costello’s single “All This Useless Beauty” and later on Sleeper’s next single “Statuesque.” Elvis’s recording of “What Do I Do Now?” would later turn up on Volume 17.

STATUESQUE
     This song actually appeared in Trainspotting, but that’s not the interesting thing. A strong single, but none of the music reviewers would recognized this. Sleeper had a terrible year with bad music reviews, it seems that many of the writers still yearns for Smart songs. Personally, I think that when Louise stopped writing about sex, the press stopped listening....

CUNT LONDON
     Sleeper seemed to have a lot of problems recording on their latest album in 1997. They were fed up with the bad reviews, fed up with all the agents, the sleeze, and they wanted to dedicate their third album to all the cunts out there... the working title to their third album would be entitled “Cunt London”. The record company weren’t too happy on using that title - and eventually Sleeper had to change the name. But the attitude on each written song were the same, from “She’s a Good Girl” to “Traffic Accident.”
     After the several cancellations of their ‘97 summer tour dates and most notably the Reading Festival appearance, Sleeper went into the studios to record there follow up to their platinum selling second album (sold over 300,000 copies- twice that of Smart). Shrouded in mystery, we’re not sure what exactly happened, but this is what we do know: on April 25, 1997, Louise Wener approached Diid Osman and asked him to leave the band. This was from a statement issued from Diid on June 5 to the music press. When asked why, Louise’s A&R man “Louise’s decision to work with different musicians both on the new album and forthcoming tours. Louise is Sleeper and she works with whoever she wants to.”
    Louise did slip and mentioned that they had to let Diid go because he couldn’t play the bass lines that Andy Maclure wrote for the third album, insisting that he would miss sessions and practices. Whatever really happened, we’d never know.
     Sleeper did get a stand-in bassist named Chris Giammalvo (from Madder Rose) to play on their new album. Chris who ironically was also brought into Madder Rose to replace that band’s previous bassist, who went on a solo career. They placed an ad in the music papers looking for a new bassist. Some months later, the new Sleeperbloke would be unknown Dan Kaufmann.

SHE’S A GOOD GIRL
    That’s right. After one full year Sleeper finally got their act together and released the gospel-influenced “She’s A Good Girl”. The title and theme kind of remind me of “She’s a Sweetheart,” that was a b-side off their last single. “Sweetheart” was about meeting a famous star, while “Good Girl” was about a famous star who everyone was out to “drag down.” Like previous songs written by Louise, they are all biographical.
    Starting with this release, Sleeper would start releasing their album with Louise’s image on the cover (with the exception of the 7” of “Romeo Me”) and keep in mind that this excludes any releases made by Arista. This is largely due to a new design and art direction by Laurence Stevens @ LSD. On the Smart release, the artwork were mainly handle by Toffee and Candy Pops (or T&CP for short) which I was told was actually chosen by the band themselves. For the second album the artwork were all handled by Satellite@Clinic.

PLEASED TO MEET YOU
     October saw the release of Sleeper’s third album. The album, this time, is entirely credited to Wener as songwriter, except for two songs, written and co-written by Maclure. According to various interviews, Maclure was supposed to have written all the basslines on all the album. And after a talk with Jon who is supposed to have written a lot of songs off The it Girl (and supposedly on Pleased to Meet You as well), so why in the world is it credited solely to Louise Wener? “You can take most of these songs back to chords and melodies which I wrote,” said Louise from The Band magazine, in which Andy added, “The credits are an honest reflection of the songwriting.”
    You can see Sleeper’s progression through their three albums: Smart being half written by Jon Stewart sound more indie pop. The it Girl, which is half written by Andy Maclure sounded more experimental (especially with keyboards). And Pleased to Meet You, which is pretty much entirely written by Louise Wener sounds a little mature and according to Louise, “mums rock.”

ROMEO ME
     According to some, this is the most incredible song in the world. Unfortunately it is also one of the worst charting single, making it only to number 39. This single saw yet another two-part single, a 7” and a cassette single. The materials on CD single 2 had their Evening Session of “What Do I Do Now?” which was only previously only available on the BBC compilation Evening Session: Priority Tunes). Also what is really really nice, is that an exclusive song on the 7” which features “Cunt London.”

     Still plagued with terrible music reviews, which led to Sleeper downsizing venues in five major cities and canceling two other shows on their upcoming ‘98 tour, Sleeper’s A&R people would “re-evaluated and stuff” on reactions from the tour.
    Again, John Green and Justin Parker went on tour with Sleeper, who previously appeared with them on The it Girl tour (and Green’s keyboards on The it Girl LP). Absent was Dan Kaufmann, who was supposively to be Sleeper’s fourth member, but instead was replaced by Giammalvo.
    Following more dreadful reports that the band had split up after “remarks made by a marketing executive at Sleeper's US label Arista” because of: (1) Arista put Pleased to Meet You on hold indefinately, (2) Diid Osman was fired, and (3) “Tensions between Louise Wener and Andy Maclure” - according to the marketing executive. And even more reports that Louise wanted more of a pop success such as Natalie Imbruglia (who had some hit singles “Torn” and “Big Mistake” without actually having the spotlight on the band.) There are also reports that Dan Kaufmann is no longer with the band. It seems likely that Sleeper might split up after all ?
    So where does Sleeper go from here? What do they do now? If Sleeper is at the bottom of their career, wouldn’t it make sense that there could only be one way to go but up?

To be continued....