Live Q&A: Saint Etienne in conversation at Rough Trade

The trio that is St Etienne - Sarah Cracknell, Pete Wiggs and Bob Stanley - met in 1990, and in 1991 released their seminal debut album Foxbase Alpha, which included relaxed, come-down classics Only Love Can Break Your Heart and Nothing Can Stop Us Now.

The night at Rough Trade was expertly hosted by BBC Digital Editor Anna Doble, who blended her insightful, open-ended questions with a clear love of the band and deep understanding of their music. Anna has also released a book, Connection is a Song: Coming Up and Coming Out Through the Music of the 90s, which is available in paperback.

Anna kicked off the Q&A with a question about how Saint Etienne reached the decision to stop, and how it influenced the songs on International.

Bob: It certainly influenced what we did with the record, yeah, because we thought if we want to make one more record, who would we like to work with on it? 

We worked out this list of people we'd like to work with, and everyone said yes. It was incredible, everybody we got in touch with said they wanted to do a co-write, or a duet, it was amazing really.

We were writing songs for this album when we were still recording The Night (album released in 2024), and kept going through loads of different drafts for it. Some of the songs were much longer originally.  We did think maybe it should be a double album, just put them out close to each other, within a year, which no one does anymore, and they both stand alone and work better as individual albums.

Sarah: I thought they should be released in the same week, the same day, just thought it would be funny. But we did start to come out with ideas for International while we were coming to the tail end of mixing The Night, so there's a slight segue going on there. I do think that we wanted to give people a bit of everything we've done over time, wrapped up in one record, particularly with the International, and I think we've done that.

Anna moved the topic onto the singles on the album, and asked if Saint Etienne are still motivated by chart success.

Pete: We used to think like that, but it does your head in after a bit, the whole "this needs to be a hit," you know, because that would have spoiled the writing process. If you consciously think, "I want to write a hit," it probably won't happen.

The conversation next turned to the heady days of the 1990s, and like a lot of bands that were coming up and coming out during that period, the spectre of "Britpop" loomed large, but while "Cool Britannia" and hanging out at the Groucho Club was the done thing, Saint Etienne decided to take a break.

Bob: I think there were a few reasons, it had been quite intense up to then it had been five years basically, as David Bowie said, the lifespan of most groups, so we knew we needed to take a break so me and Pete started a record and label, Sarah did a solo album and we kept recording, we did things on the phone and gigs. We just needed to take a step back from touring.

Pete: We didn't want to become rich.

(Band and audience laughter)

Bob: Looking back, it wasn't the smartest time to do that.

Pete: We're generally happy people, and we've been lucky to have lovely fans and write music for 35 years without burnout and people hassling us in the supermarket, although I'd like a little bit of that. But yeah, we stayed friends, and Saint Etienne's been a massive part of my life; it's been incredible.

Bob: This album feels like a bookend, it's intended that way and the fact that we're all here and we're all able to make this informed decision without having any pressure from illness or whatever. A lot of our contemporaries are not all around; there are groups where someone's gone, so we're really lucky we can make the decision on our own. That was part of the thinking, before something goes horribly wrong, before we make The Great Escape, or some terrible follow-up.

The halfway point was met with a warm round of applause, and an audience member shouted, "Reform!" ... before catching themselves and adding "not the political party". It is always best to clarify in the current climate, I suppose.

Anna then asked the band about this year's 90s reformations, with gigs from Oasis and new albums from Pulp and Stereo Lab, and if they wished they had leaned into the Britpop label more...

Pete: No.

Bob: It's pop music from and about Britain. We wrote about our surroundings and what we knew, which bands in Seattle did as well. It feels like a natural thing to do. I think when it became this weird kind of nationalistic thing, we went to Sweden and made an album, then went to Germany.

Pete: We're going to do "Smells Like HP Sauce."

(Band and audience laughter)

Anna: Do you see yourselves as icons or pop stars?

Pete: Both.

Anna: Was it a good feeling to get to number seven with Paul Van Dyk?

Sarah: These are such sweet questions.

Anna: Do you have an idea of who your fans are?

Pete: Dare I say?

(Band and audience laughter)

The conversation then moved onto Sarah's perception of the media at the time and their perception of her, as Anna and the band explored the difference in support male-led bands received and the way in which female-led bands were written and talked about by the music press. In particular, Jo Wiley preferred listening to "the blokes" and not Saint Etienne...

Sarah: I think it's better now, that's why there are so many great young, really young female solo artists out there, and female-led bands. It was tough; some of the biggest criticisms sometimes I got were from female journalists, and I thought, "Aren't we supposed to be championing each other in this very male-led environment?" I didn't understand it.

Pete: We used to do quite a lot of press tours around the world, and in different countries they'd direct all the questions at me and Bob, wouldn't they? They wouldn't ask Sarah anything.

Sarah: The invisible woman.

Pete: Yeah, how weird. Now they talk to her and I'm not arsed.

Sarah: I think they thought I had nothing to do with any of the writing or production or the decisions, I think they honestly thought that.

Bob: I remember, at least once, they put your age and not mine or Pete's age. It's maybe not for me to say that, but I remember thinking, "That's not on."

The evening was winding down. Anna thanked the band for sound-tracking her life, and the feeling among the crowd was mutual; it was now over to them to ask the questions.

Audience member #1: Your last studio album, and I'm probably asking the question that you've hinted at, are we going to see you live?

Pete: Yes. We're waiting for the bookings to come rolling in.

Sarah: Yeah, we keep saying, "Oh yeah, we're playing live next year," and people go, "Where?" And we just say, "I don't know yet."

Audience member #2: Have you ever, deliberately or otherwise, avoided having a hit or swerved a collaboration that was offered to you?

Sarah: Not being funny, but what about 7 Ways To Love? We swerved, having a hit there.

Bob: Alan McGee got us a Boddingtons advert, which sounds great, but you have to do Stay by Maurice Williams and The Zodiacs. It's a great song, but if that had been a hit,, it would have been a cover version, and it would have been sort of a self-parody.

I can hear it in my head, and I think "we could do that," but we turned it down because we could get saddled with that. But yeah, it could have been a number one.

Audience member #3: Just to say, thank you for all the music you've done over the years, really appreciate it. My question isn't really profound, but as you get older, things that happened years ago seem closer than things that happened last week. Do you remember the first time you played in Nottingham? You played at Venus, May 1992. I was there myself, as I'm sure many people here were, and it was a good night. Do you remember that at all?

Pete: I remember the word Venus.

(Band and audience laughter)

You were taken into the manager's office, and it was probably a blur after that?

Bob: It was fun then, wasn't it?

Peter: There was the Heavenly Social in Nottingham, wasn't there?  I remember that.

And with that, the night came to an end. Saint Etienne have flirted with a gig next year in Nottingham, and the evening's Q&A at Rough Trade gave an insight into the band's beginnings, their independence and some emotional moments as they reflected on 35 years of making music together.