Damon Albarn Read online

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  Having thrown themselves against a tide of grunge with Modern Life, Blur now had to put their music where their mouth was on the road. They were not about to bottle out – the stage was set for the twelve album dates, cluttered with all the trappings of a pantomime modern life – toasters, sofas, flying ducks, lampshades, a greasy cooker and fridge, and a TV playing local news and adverts. If U2 had their global Zooropa, this was Blur’s “Shitty bedsit-ooropa”. A warm-up date for the national tour at Washington Heights in Reading was warmly received and things got steadily better. The band came on to the bizarre fairground reject ‘Intermission’ which got proceedings off to a suitably frantic start for many gigs to come. The new album material was delivered as full-on punk for this tour, and Damon’s demented stage antics were now revitalised to schizoid heights, after the tiring troubles of the last eighteen months. The band’s first ever two singles were still here, but there was a real sense that this was purely a respectful and duty bound nod to posterity. As traditional with Blur, the live set was far more weighty and fierce than on record, unaffected by the more sparse instrumentation that live gigs dictate. There was more here to remind people of ’76 than ’67. The gigs were all sold out, and an extra date had to be added at London’s Astoria through demand.

  After initially very quiet sales of only 30,000, Modern Life continued to sell gradually over the summer, while the album tour and some festival dates kept the reasonable momentum going. Unfortunately, the response in Europe was pretty poor. Despite covering all the corners of the Continent including a scary excursion aboard a decrepit Aeroflot charter plane to the Soviet state of Estonia, Blur’s new angle didn’t seem to click, and record sales were disappointingly low. Undeterred, Blur reinforced their creative renaissance at the end of June with the release of the next single ‘Chemical World’. This track had originally been written to placate the dissatisfied American label SBK, but they rejected it and eventually put out the original demo version (sorry tales of SBK trying to get Blur to re-record the entire album with Butch Vig are reportedly true. Never mind). With its snarling guitars and stop-start drums, it was one of the album’s strongest musical tracks, possibly Graham’s finest piece on that record. It was a track that was far stronger musically than vocally, and an odd choice of single perhaps, with clear references to Mott The Hoople and Madness. Damon’s vocals were a little odd, vacillating between his new-found depth and his old affected squeak, but the chorus redeemed him somewhat. Many have seen this as another turning point (Blur – and by definition Damon – seem to have had more turning points than a privet maze), but this is patently not so. ‘Chemical World’ reached No.28 as with ‘For Tomorrow’, another relatively muted commercial success. Fortunately, the band’s slowly building momentum did not stall.

  This was largely due to the Blur’s continued live renaissance. During the dark days of 1992, Blur gigs were a drunken, unsavoury mess. With the new focus came a new live energy, none more so than with their front man. At the Nottingham Woolaston Park Free Festival they were excellent. At their warm-up for Reading they were superb, and at the festival itself they were blinding, the highlight of the weekend for many. The Reading bill was an oddly sombre affair, with the designer rebellion of Rage Against The Machine alongside New Order, Dinosaur Jr, The The and Porno For Pyros. As Matt Johnson rather unfairly went down like a lead balloon, droves of people walked across to the second stage to see the headlining modern lifers. Damon was in his element. It was a crucial triumph, and possibly the very moment when people started taking Blur seriously and listened to their unfashionable music again. Outside factors were starting to move in their favour and this superb performance perhaps started the momentum rolling that was soon to sweep them off their feet. Damon himself sees this particular show as a triumph, as he told NME: “That was amazing. It was the first time I was ever in control of my performance. It was a lovely feeling, and I suddenly realised what we were, I discovered the key, the eclectic quality of gathering lots of different kinds of people together.” This gig, perhaps more than any after the album, confirmed Blur’s substantial transformation from baggy flop tops and would-be tour abuse casualties to seriously accomplished songwriters ploughing a unique and fertile furrow. In the space of eighteen months, Blur had grown from a fashionable band with no lyrics, musical depth or thematic manifesto to an opinionated, articulate and musically diverse new force. Similarly, Damon had been transformed from a floppy-haired and arrogant newcomer with painfully banal lyrics, to an uber-cool modern commentator and lyrical innovator. It had been an unlikely and intriguing re-invention, but hardly a painless one. Blur were back from the brink.

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  Whilst Modern Life continued to sell conservatively but at least persistently, Blur agreed to headline a Melody Maker sponsored tour called ‘Sugary Tea’ (a line taken from ‘Chemical World’). For each of the fourteen nights, they were supported by Salad and a local band and, as an added extra, there were three public debates, with Blur giving an open forum to any questions. At these discussions, in Newcastle, Coventry and Brighton, many questions centred around Blur’s alleged boot boy image, but Damon defended the band strongly, saying, “we’re not crazed patriots, not at all. I’m just not ashamed of using what I’ve grown up with as a creative aid. Our culture’s less embarrassing than America’s.” He also laughed at the stifling Riot Grrrl movement and belittled excessive political correctness. They talked of embracing their Englishness and how it had given them a new focus and direction, as well as how they had left their drunken, listless days behind. Once again, Damon proved himself to be the most outspoken of the four. A media trump card.

  The gigs themselves saw a trimmed down stage set from the cluttered front room of the album tour, with the central prop being a television connected to an archaic space invaders game. The second album material and the dashings of still newer stuff (a song called ‘Girls And Boys’ was frequently aired during the tour), gave their set a revitalised energy and even tired older songs like ‘Popscene’ were joyously reborn. Suddenly, Blur seemed to have a set bulging with pop hits, smooth ballads and pure punk stormers. At the Manchester Metropolitan University gig, Damon ended the set by saying, “We were bloody marvellous tonight”, a stark contrast to his opening line at the disastrous Gimme Shelter gig of the previous summer.

  To coincide with these dates, Blur released a new single ‘Sunday Sunday’ and a long-form video, Star Shaped. The single, one from the sessions with Steve Lovell, was arguably the album’s most damning judgement of the hated Americanisation of England. Whilst a Sunday supplement nuclear family take their kids to McDonalds because the Sunday roast has been left too late, an old soldier reminisces about the good old days. The opening drums and clanging guitars are embellished by chirpy brass sections, then halfway through it all goes mental, speeding up to thrash velocity with swirling bingo organs. Dave Balfe hated this instrumental break, but Blur got their own way and it stayed – just as well, because it became a central feature of the song. Interestingly, the B-side finally aired some Seymour demos which had been around since 1989, with ‘Tell Me, Tell Me’, ‘Long Legged’ and ‘Mixed Up’ revealing just how far the band had come since their pyjama-clad beginnings. A second format had odd cover versions of the old music hall classics ‘Let’s All Go Down The Strand’ and ‘Daisy Bell’. Blur were now plunging head-first into their English experience, even though not everyone was convinced – yet. ‘Sunday Sunday’ reached No.26 in October 1993, again not a stunning hit, but another contribution to the band’s growing momentum. Damon now had one of the country’s most recognised faces.

  The Star Shaped video was hailed as an impressively honest account of a band slipping into genuine tour psychosis and ravaging themselves with booze and despair. It chronicled the period from mid-1991 to mid-1993 and the disastrous frame of mind the band was in at the time. Amongst the catalogue of excess, we see Graham shooting puke out of his nose, Dave never without a can of beer and Damon
vomiting on his shoes and saluting his own sick. In the space of 85 sordid minutes, Blur go from sweet faced bowl haircuts to dishevelled, drunken yobs. The highlight is the now-famous moment when the interviewer asks them what it was like to be in Blur in 1992 and is answered only by stoney silence. This was a genuine fly-on-the-tour-bus account.

  Despite the squalid scenes, there were already tentative plans for a sequel perhaps based during a proposed Australian and Japanese tour. Damon later said to NME: “Rock musicians have a real fear of embarrassing themselves and that’s why Star Shaped is quite unusual and interesting. It’s good because it’s so natural and because we don’t act up to the camera.” He added, “You couldn’t have scripted it, that’s for sure.” The same could be said for the band’s continued recovery – many eyes were now on Blur as a not-so-dark-horse to revitalise English music.

  And Damon?

  His pivotal role in the landscape of modern British music was only just beginning.

  Chapter 7

  PRETTY ENGLAND AND ME

  1993 had been an encouraging year for British music in many ways. Although the slacker hegemony of grunge was still dominant, there had been a few signs of resistance. Suede’s much heralded debut album hit No.1 and they swept up the Mercury Music Prize as well as countless other industry media awards. Bands like The Boo Radleys, The Auteurs and, of course, Blur seemed to add to that peculiar English focus. Interesting developments were taking place elsewhere in a multi-ethnic Britain, with bands like Apache Indian, Fun-Da-Mental, Cornershop, Collapsed Lung and Trans-Global Underground all producing exciting new music. Whether the failure of these multi-ethnic bands to break into the mainstream reflected their own inability (doubtful) or the greater prejudicial barriers facing them in a medium still dominated by white guitar bands is beyond the scope of this book. Suffice to say, Blur gigs, and Britpop bands and shows in general were not often graced with many ethnic faces (indeed, perhaps it should have been called Eng-Pop, as the majority of the groups included were in fact English). The future seemed to lay in the hands of a new guard of guitar-based white rock once more.

  Blur seemed well placed to be involved in any such renaissance, but Suede were still the leading contenders. Modern Life won few end of year polls, although Blur did scoop the Melody Maker ‘Best Live Act’ category. Undeterred, Blur quietly continued to build on their recent progress. A few New Year dates in America were reasonably well received, but Damon’s continued criticism of the States was never going to win him too many friends – he lambasted Nirvana’s wish to use an 8-track and Steve ‘Mr Sparse’ Albini’s production ethics for their hugely anticipated follow up to Nevermind as “a pathetic aspiration.” Elsewhere, Blur’s musical proficiency was being increasingly recognised. Damon was asked to write the theme tune for a Steven Berkoff film entitled Decadence, which he did eagerly: “I’ve always wanted to go back to my theatrical roots, and it was wonderful to be asked. The producer cottoned on to what we were doing and was confident in us.” Also, and much to the band’s celebration, George Harrison was seen on MTV saying how he felt Blur were excellent songwriters. A support slot to Siouxsie And The Banshees in Portugal at a stadium gig full of goths was also played with consummate ease.

  By early 1994, it seemed the pseudo-mod reinvention for their second album was definitely appealing to increasingly large numbers of people. So, when Blur re-appeared with a new single as a precursor to the next album, eyebrows were raised again with yet another image change. Gone were the turned up Levi’s, Dr. Martens and sharp suits; in came the 1984 casual look, complete with Tachini shirts, Ellesse track suits, fawn corduroys (slit at the ankle of course) and coloured suede Puma trainers. To complement the new look, Blur released a single in March 1994 to launch the forthcoming campaign. The song was called ‘Girls & Boys’ and, for Damon and Blur, things would never be the same again.

  Just when we were filing our Small Faces and Kinks records next to Modern Life, Blur sent us scurrying back for our early 1980s electro disco pop collection, rooting out our dust-covered Giorgio Moroder and Sparks records. ‘Girls & Boys’ opened with a rinky dink riff and then a robotic drum machine beat which crashed in with one of Alex’s finest bass leads yet. Graham’s phased guitar was quirky, piercing and oddly infectious, the keyboards were humourously mechanical and Damon’s vocals were as affected as ever, camp yet yobbish. Suddenly, Blur made perfect sense.

  If the music was a leap forward, the lyrics took Damon on to a plateau occupied by very few of his peers. This was an ambiguous celebration of the fuck ‘n’ chuck mentality of the notorious 18-30 style vacations. His words captured the meat market scenarios perfectly. Then there was the chorus with its sexually ambiguous word repetition, sheer pop genius. To complete the package, the sleeve artwork was taken from a cheap packet of condoms. Blur had released a gem of a single that suddenly catapulted them past all their contemporaries. This was unquestionably Blur’s finest and most audacious moment so far and easily Damon’s most commercial performance.

  Backed with four new songs as well, the superb package entered the charts at No.5, and secured massive radio play nationwide as all manner of broadcasting policies found something in the single that fitted with their play lists. ‘Single of the Week’ awards flooded in and Blur were suddenly splashed across a multitude of magazine covers. It is easy to forget that despite all their traumas and triumphs, ‘Girls & Boys’ was in fact only Blur’s eighth single. By a strange twist of pop fate, Blur’s triumph was completely over-shadowed by the untimely and tragic suicide of Kurt Cobain. Whilst the music world was united in its grief, there was a definite sense that the old order had perhaps been irreparably damaged, and whilst wary of disrespectful haste, a new vanguard was clearly about to pounce.

  What that new generation wasn’t going to be was the clumsily christened New Wave Of New Wave. In the autumn of 1993, two NME journalists had listened to the likes of S*M*A*S*H, Blessed Ethel, and These Animal Men and announced that here was British music’s saviour: “The concept is New Wave of New Wave. The reality is a lumping together of (at times) vaguely like-minded fresh British bands with ants in their pants and vocabularies laced with shrapnel.” The two key players – S*M*A*S*H and These Animal Men – were lyrically astute and articulate in their clarion call to rebellion, and their energetic and vibrant live shows initially seemed to offer the vibrant injection that was so needed. Then, in the New Year of 1994, the New Wave Of New Wave went overground with magazine covers and packed gigs, and a whole host of bands were included, such as Done Lying Down, Action Painting and even Elastica. The movement was as important sartorially as it was for the rather one dimensional, speed-fuelled music, which harped back to The Jam and The Clash, but the NWONW’s days were numbered. When Blur released ‘Girls & Boys’ they effectively killed NWONW. First baggy, then grunge, now this. By the end of 1994, many of the NWONW bands had split and barely any long term success was achieved – in retrospect, the movement had no more cultural significance than shoe-gazing. To add insult to injury, Damon was quite happy to claim that ‘Popscene’ had actually invented NWONW anyway (Blur briefly considered re-releasing the single as a NWONW cash in). Even Dave, who was used to Damon’s espousing by now, was uncomfortable with this one: “Oh no, I think we’re going to claim we invented everything again.”

  Whoever had invented NWONW, with the release of Blur’s fourth album, Parklife, it was rendered instantly irrelevant. The rest of 1994 was spent in creating new media superlatives for an album that was rapidly recognised as a landmark British record. Things had not augured so well at the album launch party. Having spent much of their careers ligging at everyone else’s expense, it was nice to see the compliment returned, with the likes of Pop Will Eat Itself, Sleeper, Elastica, Pet Shop Boys, Carter, Lush, The Cranberries, Jesus Jones, Eddie Izzard and Eddie Tenpole Tudor all turning up at an East End dog track. A riotous evening was had by all, and everything went like clockwork, until the Blur sponsored ‘Parklife Stakes’, when it all went h
ilariously wrong. One dog got stuck in the trap then, shortly after, the hare became dislodged and the remaining dogs tried to rip it, and then themselves, to pieces. Pandemonium ensued and the race was declared void – the gold presentation box of Parklife and a £90 first prize remained uncollected. Damon was typically philosophical when he told the media: “Slow start, always led, strong finish.”

  ‘Girls & Boys’ had raised the stakes considerably for Blur and many wondered if they could reproduce that quality across a whole album. Parklife silenced all doubters, and the cynics who had dogged Blur since their inception (at times justifiably so) slinked off quietly into the background. Much of the ground work had been done with Modern Life and indeed without that record there would have been no Parklife, but it was the latter that struck gold. This all-conquering album asserted itself as the year’s greatest record – and one of the decade’s too – earning Blur a place in pop history in the process. The album was recorded at Maison Rouge between November 1993 and January 1994, with ‘To The End’ being completed at RAK studios in St John’s Wood. Stephen Street was at the controls and Blur worked with customary speed once again. With this being their second album in a twelve month period, Blur were clearly taking the Lieber & Stoller work ethic last seen with Morrissey and Marr to their hearts. They arrived at 11am each morning and worked solidly through until 9 or 10pm, only taking a break in the afternoon for tea.