Damon Albarn, the leader of Blur, is sitting at the end of the bar in New York's Roseland, waiting for soundcheck. In a few hours, his band will take the stage of this 2000-plus-capacity venue to the cheers of a sold-out crowd. It's the biggest show Blur's played in New York, but Damon isn't congratulating himself. Instead, he's searching for an answer to a tricky question: What sets Blur apart from their British brethren?
"Well," he finally replies, "we're one of the only bands from Britain that hasn't been sued for plagiarism in the last couple of years."
Albarn's obviously having a dig at several recent UK artists who've liberally applied the fine art of borrowing: Oasis, Menswear, even Elastica, the group led by Damon's girlfriend Justine Frischmann. But his quip also says something about the band's method. Blur doesn't steal riffs, words, or melodies from the great bands before them. Instead, they pick up something less definable: a style that's distinctively British, pleasantly familiar, yet not always easy to trace. The Beatles, Kinks, and Small Faces are there certainly, along with Madness, Squeeze, and XTC; hints of Jam-era Paul Weller and the Buzzcocks' Pete Shelley can be detected in Albarn's vocals. But Blur's music is meant to be enjoyed on its own terms. And on those terms, the songs on their latest album, 1995's The Great Escape (Virgin), are unqualified successes, by turns jaunty and bittersweet, gracefully melodic and elegantly witty.
"Some bands have their sound as soon as they start," Damon says. "We don't have a specific sound, so we can be flexible."
Guitarist Graham Coxon puts it this way: "None of us limits our experience musically."
And drummer Dave Rowntree chimes in, "We're interested in music, full-stop."
Along with bassist Alex James, Albarn, Coxon, and Rowntree formed Blur in 1988. (The band's original name was Seymour.) Of the four, James is the only one who wasn't classically trained.
"I'm the real one," he says with a chuckle. "But then playing bass is easy, isn't it? You just do the opposite of everyone else."
Rock trivia note: Damon's father was the lighting designer for the experimental '60s jazz/rock band Soft Machine. Signed to the British Food label in 1990 after only a handful of gigs, the band recorded a debut album (1991's Leisure) much in the vein of so-called "neo-psychedelic" bands like the Stone Roses; Albarn and his cohorts discount it now. Blur's rapid growth over their next two albums, Modern Life Is Rubbish (1993) and the widely acclaimed Parklife (1994), can be put down to two factors: Albarn's "discovery of myself as a songwriter," and the growing influence of Damon's spiritual godfather, Ray Davies. Albarn was a latecomer to the Kinks' oeuvre, but he made up for lost time; five years after picking up his first Kinks greatest hits collection, Damon was singing a duet with Davies on British TV's The White Room. The song was "Waterloo Sunset," in which one can detect the same concerns that drive Albarn's writing: the day-to-day lives and eccentricities of (mostly) regular people.
"It's quite thrilling," Damon says, "when you realize that there's a link between what you're doing and the people you've always adored and considered icons. I don't mean to compare myself to them, but you realize that it's all part of a tradition that's gone from folk songs to music hall to pop. It's a classic English formula. Sad but happy songs."
Like Davies, Damon is the primary songwriter in his band. Though keyboards are his main instrument, he generally writes on guitar because "I'm not very good at playing it, so I'm forced to be simple. If I wrote on piano, I'd write big sentimental ballads all the time. Sometimes it's better to be inadequate when you're writing songs."
With tunes and lyrics in place, Coxon, James, and Rowntree are left to put their stamp on the material. Coxon's unfailingly tasty guitar parts are the highlight of many a Blur track.
Damon comments, "He just makes the songs better. It's integral to the whole thing."
Alex: "He's the best guitarist of his generation."
Graham's response to his bandmates' praise: "Fuckers. They never talk like that when I'm in the room."
A good example of the magic Coxon works can be heard on Great Escape's "It Could Be You." Graham takes Damon' basic progression (C-Bb-Am-G), breaks it up with choppy strumming that never reveals a full chord at one time, and adds a slightly dissonant sus4 (Eb) to the Bb, sliding up quickly to an E before hitting the Am.
"That note's part of the song's main theme," he explains, "and so that's why it's in there. You've got to use the melody as much as you can. Also, I do like using funny chords."
Musically and lyrically, there's great intelligence at work in Blur's songs. Whereas Oasis' music is immediately accessible, Blur's is full of layers, marked by irony and detachment. Such traits have never gone over big on these shores; they tend to make rock 'n' roll fans suspicious. Sitting at the Roseland bar, Damon sounds confused yet resigned to the situation.
"Our playing a place like this and selling it out quickly is purely because we've worked at it. We've come here every year for six years and slowly played bigger places. It's not a fashion thing. We're not here because we're on MTV all the time. We don't get played on the radio. We've worked hard."
Blur's show later that night illustrates just how hard they work. In his green polo shirt and slacks, Damon looks a little geeky, but he's a surprisingly commanding frontman, roaming the stage, climbing up on speakers, jumping on top of his keyboards. Graham is the picture of intensity, focusing in on his guitar so much you'd think the thing would explode, as he recreates the multi-tracked parts from Blur's albums on one instrument, blending rhythm and lead with devastating precision. Alex seems less interested in the P-Bass that's strapped to him than in the cigarette dangling from his mouth or the cup of unspecified liquid that's never far away, but the stunning basslines he pumps out belie that apparent nonchalance. Dave's drumming holds it all down, combining jazz stylings with primal rock energy. (The live band also includes two horn players and another keyboardist.
"We take a four-piece horn section out with us when we can afford it," says Alex. "But I don't think we could fit any more people onstage for some of these gigs."
Live, Blur can be as bouncy or punky as you might expect. But on more ambitious selections like Parklife's "This Is A Low" or The Great Escape's "He Thought of Cars," they go way beyond expectations, summoning up a sense of pure pop grandeur. Irony be damned; deep down, this band does mean what it plays. Once this US tour is over, Blur plans to go back into the studio. All four agree that their goal is to have another album out by the end of the year. Will the fifth time be the charm in America? Damon professes to be past caring.
"I'd rather be civilized than fabulously wealthy."
