Watching Bernard Butler, one of the great guitarists of his generation, playing a solo gig in a tiny north London venue not dissimilar to the New York coffee shops Bob Dylan once got going in, you had to wonder if he would have been happier in the Sixties. Butler made his name in Suede, that hugely impactful indie band of the early Nineties, but he has never traded on their name and legacy, instead going down a solo acoustic path that has more in common with the bohemian spirit of folk guitarists like Bert Jansch and Davey Graham than today’s rather more ambitious stars.
“Don’t forget these places,” he said of the 50-capacity Green Note in Camden. “They’re as important as the places where you