Written by: Ian Parker and Jack Doyle
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Interview with Louise Wener

As the singer/songwriter leading Sleeper, Louise Wener became Queen of the Britpop era. Will her new foray into literature be similarly successful? Ian Parker and Jack Doyle ask.

It's a bit like bumping into an old school mate. On the pages of the NME, odd appearances on television, and in poster-ised form in pride of place on the bedroom wall, she was someone that you saw almost as often as your friends during your formative years.

Sitting outside a small cafe in her home suburb of Crouch End, immersed in the feature pages of the Guardian, sits Louise Wener, former leader singer of Sleeper, newly published novelist, and graduate of the University of Manchester.

She has a new blond-rinse look, and a quieter demeanour than one might expect from the former rent-a-quote of her time, but, after all this time, it's a remarkably familiar face sipping on a cranberry juice.

The original plan had been for this interview to take place over the phone, but as one who was always at the front of the queue buying any record or magazine that happened to have her face on it, I insisted on a 400-mile round trip and a meeting.

After taking six years out of the spotlight she once so revelled in, Britpop's favourite pin-up has exchanged sex, drugs, and rock `n' roll for a nice cup of tea and a good book.

Louise, without wishing to dwell on the past, has put her experiences with Sleeper to good use with Goodnight Steve McQueen, her debut novel. It takes as its subject, you guessed it, the life and times of a band trying to land a record deal while still paying the rent.

Guitarist Danny McQueen is given six months by his girlfriend (note: not his parents) to either land a record contract or find a `proper' job, as opposed to his part-time position down the local video shop.

But according to Louise, there is only so much Sleeper history to be found in the book. "There's not a huge amount of us in there. It did take us quite a long time, I think it was about four years to get a record deal so there was a lot of time sort of doing crappy jobs.

"The first tour that we did was kind of like the one in the book, where you play and then go back to these really shabby little bed and breakfasts. The kind of place where you get back late at night and someone else is sleeping in your bed. It was that kind of level. A lot of the characters in the book were part of coming up from that sort of thing."

Instead, Sleeper began to develop while Louise was at the University of Manchester, paying at least some, if not always full, attention to a joint studies degree in English and Politics.

"I chose Manchester because I had some friends up there and they were having a really good time, that's all." But the future queen of Britpop didn't get herself involved in the emerging music scene in Manchester.

"I seriously wasn't massively involved in all of that. I used to go the Hacienda. I used to go a club called PSV, I don't know if it's still open, that was in Moss side, and besides that was mostly just a students getting pissed on cheap tequila kind of thing. So I can't really claim to have been part of any great Manchester dance thing."

Instead, Louise began a band with some mates and began to get gigs in the local pubs. "We went out a lot, played lots of small gigs, lots of pub gigs, and we had this sort of residency, and we got paid about £20 each or something, which supplemented the drinking money."

It quickly became the defining feature of Louise's time in Manchester. "I wasn't a conscientious student at all. I met the guy that I formed Sleeper with in my second politics lecture. And that was kind of it. I spent most of those three years dossing around and playing guitar, so I wasn't a particularly great student. There was a lot of Neighbours involved, and a lot of This Morning, Quincy, and so on."

But the band never really got very serious in Manchester. The name Sleeper was a way off, and so was the recruitment of any of the other members of the eventual line up. That only came when Louise got back to London, leaving Manchester far behind. It wasn't until Sleeper began to tour that she returned to the city.

"We went back on tour, and played the MDH and the Academy. It was weird going back to places where you used to go and watch bands and then playing them."

After Sleeper first split, Louise looked seriously at starting a solo career, but found that the record companies were only interested in developing her into some kind of sugar-pop star. Giving her the Natalie Imbruglia treatment, if you will.

Despite all of Louise's pop stardom dreams as a kid, the idea did not appeal to a woman who had carved out an image one of the `ladettes' of the era. Instead, Louise took some time out to reassess her future, and came back with a surprising career change.

The sex and drugs of rock `n' roll was cashed in for quiet afternoons in second-hand bookshops and a career in publishing. "Publishing is very much nicer. Sort of very Home-counties lovely girls and so on. There are no lines of cocaine, it's now a cup of tea and a slice of cake."

Some things don't change that much. While the lads in Sleeper were usually confronted with several willing groupies each night, Louise tended to get offered poetry by blushing boys. And now that she has contacts in publishing the volume has only increased. "I get even more poetry now, it's just a little bit better constructed."

"I don't really miss the fame and celebrity of music compared to that in publishing. I did really enjoy it. It was great, I mean it really pisses me off when people talk about fame and what a drag it was. It was really fun mostly, but you know, I've sort of done that and I'm quite happy to be settled now. I do still, very, very occasionally, get recognised at the supermarket though."

But how does one go from the top of the charts to the top of the page on your first novel? "The band split up and I was kind of thinking about doing a solo album. At that time, someone asked me to do a short story for a collection, and I really loved doing it. And I just thought, oh shit, I'm going to try and write a book.

"I bought a book called the writer's and artist's handbook, which lists all the agents and publishers in the country. So I wrote about 17,000 words of this book and picked a few agents and sent it in brown paper envelopes. I got an agent and then a publishing deal. So, bloody hell, I thought. I'd been writing for about a year then, just sort of messing around, and I'd written the beginnings of two other books which I ditched. It took a while to find a groove for it."

The sample that Louise had been sending out was an early version of what would become Goodnight Steve McQueen. They say that you should write about you know, and Louise kicked off her literary career by returning to her days in the music world. For a girl who grew up singing in front of a mirror, it was another case of knowing what she wanted, and sticking at it until she got it. But despite the constant theme, a big change had taken place.

"The creative process is very, very different. You know, to write lyrics and to write music used to happen really, really quickly. I mean, to write a song took about a couple of hours maybe, and then you'd spend a load of time getting it together with the band and the recording and the production and all that sort of stuff.

"Most of the time is sort of spent doing photo-shoots and talking crap and all that sort of stuff. But when you write a book most of the time is spent shut away writing for maybe nine months purely involved in a creative process which is great and I really love that. There's not very much bullshit that goes with it."

One of the most interesting things about Goodnight Steve McQueen is that Louise has taken on the first-person voice of her lead character Danny McQueen, a man. For a woman once at the forefront of the ladette movement, it's perhaps not at that surprising that Louise should make a point on gender again.

"I just thought that it would be fun to try it. I'd read this book called the Patchwork Planet by Ann Tyler and I'd read that, and I thought, god, I've never read a women doing that and I thought it would be good to try.

"It also comes from just spending hours and hours hanging out in the back of a van with men, and I like the banter, the humour of it. There's quite a lot of fiction by women which is quite critical of the way that men are friends together, its just quite reductive of male friendship, and I wanted to write something a bit more complimentary I suppose.

"There was this period where women were picking up guitars and fronting rock and roll bands at the same sort of hedonistic level that the guys were. That seems to have diminished or maybe it's just expressed in a different way now. I'm sure that Pink and Christina Aguiliera are living it large, you know."

But the music is definitely over as far as Louise is concerned. Beyond the odd casual strumming of a guitar, there are no plans to return to music-making. In the past years or so, Louise has watched as countless of her contemporaries have gone back on the road or back into the studio to see what can be salvaged from their careers. In the last year the likes of the Bluetones, Shed Seven and even EMF have found their way back into the business in at least some capacity.

"When I saw that I just sort of though, Awww, bless. I had a brilliant time and I was really sort of privileged to do it. But I love writing and its great to have done a book, so I have no desire to go back."

After the split of Sleeper, Louise originally considered going solo. But the record company and Louise had slightly differing visions of where the idea might go. "The record company were like, maybe we could get someone else to write the songs, and maybe you could dress a little bit like this, and the thing that had enticed me in the first place was going round with a group of mates and touring round the world for a while. I think you have to make music with other people."

But Louise is pleased with her decision to keep her memories of Sleeper and move on. "After the split, it took a couple of years to get it all back together. You're kind of miserable because you're letting go of everything, and you have to make this decision, you know, do you try and re-establish it or do you say that was then and that was fantastic but you have to find a new way of doing things. A lot of the bands at the moment look to be trying to get that back, but I'm not sure that you can.

"You talk to some of the bands and they're like, yea, we're making an album and we're putting it out ourselves on the internet and you're like, hmm, that's nice."

Louise, on the other hand, is definitely looking to a future in writing. With Goodnight Steve McQueen still hot from the presses, she's halfway through writing her next book. "It's nothing to do with music. I've got that off my chest now. It's about a girl whose dad was a compulsive gambler and her search for him. And she learns how to play poker as a method for finding him.

"It's not a personal experience, it's just that I'm very keen on poker, so it's an excuse to go to loads of casinos and research it." Has she been to Vegas? Oh yes. She raises an eyebrow and smiles.

When we're taking the photographs behind a church just around the corner, it's difficult to get her to smile. She looks serious. She wants to be taken seriously. She's moved a long way from the pouting, lingering stare of old. But it's a welcome change.

At the end of the interview, Louise says `goodbye' and heads off down the Crouch End high street. But part of you knows its won't be the last time you'll bump into her, whatever she's up to.

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