With their scent of antiquated pawnshop tags, council estates, life in British suburbia and Brits drinking away their sorrows at the local bar, Blur have personified everything from pop disco punk to queasy listening. They are the softcore Cockney rebels who drew sneers of contempt and everybody loved to hate. For some they represent the scourge of the earth but for others they are the carriers of a legacy that waltzes back through old-fashioned ballrooms, where mirrorballs rotate elegantly and weeping strings accompany an almost Dickensian fair-haired man with a twinkle in his eye, crooning over a microphone.
They are the sniff of class distinction, professional cynicism and heirs to the Britpop throne. If they lived in some seaside town like Brighton, England, a place of pebble beaches, fairgrounds, bingo halls and tawdry piers they'd seem right at home. Even when golden boy and vocalist Albarn was sneeringly emulating The Sex Pistols' Johnny Rotten with Globe Alone, Terry Hall of The Fun Boy Three on Top Man, Paul Weller and The Jam in Entertain Me, or their tribute to Britain's past musical icons The Kinks and The Beatles with Charmless Man, they still couldn't disguise their roots of cheeky, softcore Cockney rebels taking a waltz back through time and musical history.
Drawn from environments as disparate as the country houses of rural England, grey and congested inner city council estates and the factories of Japan, Blur with their fourth album The Great Escape, painted aural portraits of a fast moving world; a modern world, a world in a tailspin but one that desperately longed to escape its heritage. Nostalgic, sardonic and infectiously wistful they beautifully quashed stereotypes and suddenly made everybody sit up and take notice.
The British music press salivated like rabid dogs foaming at the mouth. The British teen population screamed in pubescent ecstasy and the other contenders for the pop throne, Oasis, venomously began a war of words and attrition. Liam Gallagher sarcastically, viciously and predictably wished they would catch a fatal illness on Blur and commented facetiously that Blur's infectious strains were comparable to "chimney sweep music".
Blur smiled sweetly in their direction and Gallagher squirmed.
"Yeah, it's good to be a burglar," Blur's bass guitarist Alex James grins. "Oasis have just got the Midas touch at the moment and it's great. It's brilliant that a British band have finally cracked America. You know we've all helped each other really, I'm sure they would never be as gracious to say as much but we've done each other a lot of good. It's been a global marketing phenomenon. They're nice boys. They are! They're alright. I don't think Noel (Gallagher, Liam's equally mouthy brother) and Damon (Albarn, Blur's chief songsmith and vocalist) would ever see eye to eye. Noel can't put a foot wrong," he concludes with a wry twinkle in his eye.
Skulking quietly and anonymously through the labrinyths of inner city London, home to that oppressive echelon of power, the Houses Of Parliament, double decker buses and the grey, dirty (but getting cleaner, at last) waters of the Thames, the wily, tongue-in-cheek "contemptuously lazy" and cheeky James is enjoying catching up with old friends, and shaking off a hangover of emotions that oscillate from euphoria to suicidal tendencies: "The end result of a year long tour," he assures.
James groans at the memories of the miles notched up across continents and confides, "When a band is on tour, you hate each other about six times every day, you love each other seven times or eight times during the day, and you're very bored with each other the rest of the time. It's an emotional thing. It's an emotional rollercoaster being on the road because everything happens every day and you're very tired."
Enjoying re-acquainting himself with Blighty's comfortable charms, and lighting the home-fires again, James and the other members of Blur - Damon Albarn, guitarist and backing vocalist Graham Coxton and drummer Dave Rowntree - are about to enter the womb-like confines of the studio to record more ballads and potent guitar pop hookery.
James, who has recently been dividing his time between sleazy discos and quiet solitary nooks and crannies where he pens his own musical equations, is excited at the prospect of recording some raw Blur-esque canvas' that according to him will be more reflective of the quartet as an entity.
"I've written a lot over the last year," he elaborates. "It's all gone a bit gay disco in my world. Why? I just like getting drunk and going to discos. I don't think you can beat really big bouncy bass drum gay disco music. Damon writes the words and tunes but it is an organic kind of thing. There's no point in being a band unless it's all of you."
In the past year much has been said about Blur in the press worldwide. Many scribes have alluded to Albarn's relationship with Justine Frischmann of the punkish and equally impressive Elastica and have made the most of his stance against drugs. The incestuous umbilical chord of the music scene has firmly wrapped itself around Blur's throat and removed any sense of privacy and anonyminity. Not that the feisty James is having any of it. He throws his hands up in the air and sniffs "It's worse than you could imagine.
"Everybody knows each other, you know. It's not a very big country this," he motions around him, "Y'know you all do the same TV programs and festivals and shows. You have one hit record and you meet everybody. And as for this term 'Britpop' ... " he shrugs irritably, "it's not very cool anymore. You know it's one of those things that is just a bit annoying. I don't trust any kind of scene. It's always an excuse for there to be one or two good bands and lots of people having an easy ride."
