Are Blur really going to the dogs? Behind all the adoring screams,
we hear internal bickering, the tell-tale snii-ii-i-iff! of media
-centric decadence, a hollow champagne clink... Adrian Deevoy
finds them on the edge of a verge of a nervous break-up: "Bands just
fizzle out, don't they?"
Alex James, Blur's louche bass player, has a joke."What's 40 yards long, has no pubes and goes 'Aaaaaaah!'?"
Drag on cigarette, draft of champagne.
"The front row of a Blur concert."
It is shortly before Christmas and Blurmania has gripped, if not the whole world, then certainly a good
proportion of Middlesex. Up on the Wembley Arena stage, the four members of Blur - Damon Albarn, Graham Coxon, Alex James and Dave Rowntree - augmented by keyboards and a brass section, are mid-way through their two-hour show. The set list serves as a neat resume of the band's six-year career: there's a spattering of cod-psychedelia, some panic-stricken hardcore and even a soupqon of easy listening, but, for the most part, the set calls upon the misty-eyed melodramas and salty English vignettes that formed Parklife and The Great Escape. These are the songs the audience have come for.
You can almost smell the hormonal rush that greets the introductions to Tracy Jacks, End Of A Century and Charmless
Man, and the ballads For Tomorrow and The Universal prompt outbreaks of uninhibited shrieking. "Daaaay-mun!", they go, knickers a-fire. "Aaaliix! ","Graaay-yum!" And, when they get really over-excited, "Dave!"
Blur are on the home straight of a six-month tour. It's been a phenomenally successful but physically gruelling year. They are all unwell. A 'flu bug - the dreaded Blurgi - has most
of the band and crew on powerful antibiotics."This particular strain of 'flu," improvises Alex, embarking on one of many flights of intellectual fancy,"is due to the fact that the Chinese farm their pigs alongside their ducks."
"Shut up, you bollocker," says Graham.
The first time we encounter
Damon Albarn in the offstage flesh, he pads barefoot into the makeshift backstage canteen in Cardiff Arena. He's a dishy fellow - something to do with the fair hair and dark lashes. Or the combination of Pinocchio's nose and Steve McQueen's eyes. That and a smile that could charm the birds out of the trees.
His speaking voice, Estuary vowels with Cambridge cornering, is surprisingly deep and sibilantly precise. He is wearing, one can't escape but notice, a karate outfit. (It transpires that all of the members of Blur, Alex excluded, practise an hour's Tie Kwan Do - the ancient martial art of punching things - prior to the evening's performance, in order to exercise limbs, exorcise demons and focus their inscrutable minds on the task in hand.) Damon noisily tucks into a plate of potatoes and sweetcorn and studies the sports section of a roadie-discarded Daily Mirror. Suddenly he jerks to attention, ears pricked. Frowning now, he radars
in on the source of his discomfort. "Fucking hell," he snaps, moving with gathering speed towards the catering ghetto blaster. "Get this shit off."
Oasis's (What's the Story) Morning Glory? is unceremoniously ejected from the machine and the singer returns serenely to his nutritious vegetarian repast.
Across the room, a familiar voice is dispensing chunky knit philosophy and by the-yard advice to anyone listening. "That, you see, is the fundamental problem with your Italians", "You wanna put a bit of mustard on that, be lovely", "What? League or cup? We'll destroy 'em."
Phil Daniels, for it is he, is joining the tour whenever his acting work permits, to give the live version of Parklife the official seal of authenticity. For the band, the chirpy thespian's presence is seen as a blessing and curse, for he is marvellous company but also something of an unwise bedtime specialist. Both he and Damon are dedicated and knowledgeable Chelsea fans and are soon baffling non-followers with talk of near post misses, four across the back and Dennis Wise's ability to run off the ball. Football aside, the two communicate in a series of private jokes, knowing smirks and sideways glances. Phil, Damon reckons, is a great geezer to have around.
But when Alex is seen stumbling towards the tour bus the following morning, all stained-glass eyes and furry tongue, he can but croak one word of explanation for his condition and that word, accompanied by a rueful shake of his formidable fringe, is "Daniels".
Sickness, fatigue and over-famliliarity have left their mark on inter-band relations: Graham is grumpy and drinking too much, he thinks Alex is being a tosser; Alex and
Damon aren't seeing eye to eye, Damon thinks Alex is taking too many drugs and overdoing the pop star bit; Alex thinks Graham and Damon have sided against him and that Damon is becoming a little too megalomaniac for his liking. Dave sits on the sidelines and takes it all in. No-one can quite figure out what Dave is thinking. Graham privately suspects that Dave might be an alien.
But they still travel together, sleeping, watching kitsch, ultra-violent kung fu films and complaining about Graham's love of high volume hardcore.
"The passage from irresponsible adolescent to level-headed adult is difficult enough," says Damon, ever the diplomat, "but when you're spending three quarters of your year on a tour bus drinking, it becomes extremely hard. I think we're handling it quite well."
Dave is more forthcoming: "It got to the point on our interminable US tour where one morning we all had a black eye," he laughs.
"Within a three-day period, we'd all managed to twat each other."
"Oh, here he comes," sniffs the
tour manager taking in the lanky vision of perma-fag, scarf and overcoat that is the alfresco Alex James, "Bloody Withnail."
Alex smirks, but he has other things on his mind as he enters the chintzy lobby of this particular hotel. For tonight's show is in his hometown. This, he tells you proudly, is the hotel that his grandfather worked in, the self-same four-star establishment that young Alex was frequently reminded was the very best hotel in all of Bournemouth. Had he not applied for the position of top pop star, Alex could well be working here serving cream teas to creaky toffs. Instead ,he is staying in one of its best rooms with a view of the sea and a view to drinking the place out of champagne as soon as the gig is over.
Before the show, Alex meets up with his family and friends in the band's dressing room. He ostentatiously opens a magnum of champers and his parents toast their son and his bandmates. They're classic parents, the sort of people Jerry and Margo would have had over for a mixed four-ball and a fondue in The Good Life.
Dad discusses computers with Dave, Mum musses Damon's hair and fusses over the food, Dad's friend, as Dad's friends are contractually obliged to do, expresses a keen interest in "having a look at the gear". Alex's sister tugs at the loose fabric of her sibling's supposedly tight trousers and says, "Alex, you're getting too thin." He looks delighted.
As the show begins,Andy Ross, the man who discovered Blur and signed them to Food Records, slips behind the guitar tech, sidestage. Watching him silently mouth albng to She's So High, the band's first single, and flush with pride as the entire crowd sings the middle eight of Country House ("Blow, blow me out, I am so sad, I don't know why"),is a touching sight indeed.
To observe Blur's stagecraft at such close quarters is riveting. Dave Rowntree has mastered the art of making the most complicated drum fills look effortless. Alex James plays some tortuously difficult bass whilst simultaneously smoking a cigarette and, at one point, opening a bottle of champagne with one hand.
Despite having earlier described himself as "probably the best guitarist in . . . Britpop", Graham Coxon is an astonishing musician. His restless playing style, all chord slides, rapid pulloffs, mini-arpeggios and fractured runs seems to owe more to his saxophone training than any conventional guitar tuition.
Just as Coxon is lost in his own world when he performs, Damon Albarn is pure repertory theatre from the moment he hits the boards. Pouting into the wings, gazing forlornly into the middle distance, appealing to the Gods, wagging his finger at the naughty audience, clutching his aching heart and tilting a butter-wouldn't-melt expression to the light like Mark Lester in Oliver!
Apres gig, agreed by all to have been a thing of great beauty, Graham begins to get drunk. This kicks off in the dressing room with a bottle of feisty red, then proceeds to the tour bus where he drinks another and plays a CD of incidental cartoon music and begins to bite people's legs; it continues at a small student venue where fellow Food label-dwellers Dubstar are playing and triple Scotch and cokes are two quid. It winds up, by now incoherently, back at the hotel bar with a champagne and lager finale, during which Graham loses the plot completely and thumps an innocently by-standing Andy Ross square in the face.
All is forgiven (or, in Graham's case, completely forgotten) the next morning. Smoggy, Blur's beefulous Wolverhampton-twanged head of security, cheerily reports that before retiring, Graham had punched him as well, for good measure. "He doesn't mean it," Smog shrugs. "It's just his way of dealing with the pressure."
A week later, the tour is finished, having culminated in two further nights at Wembley Arena. But the year isn't over and
Blur's schedule remains tighter than Jon Bon Jovi's trousers.
At Elstree Studios to record a performance of Country House for the Christmas Top Of The Pops, we find Damon slumped across a canteen table wearing a pair of Elvis shades and nursing a nasty hang-over. He blearily recalls
having been "smeared across the walls" of a Soho drinking club the previous evening and being so drunk that he entertained the idea of visiting Stringfellows for an unnecessary nightcap.
Beside him, Graham is mournfully fingering a livid red scab on his chin (the result of an absent minded moment with a Gillette Contour),understandably sheepish about the Boumemouth out-burst. But time is a great healer and it's not long before spirits have lifted and Blur are busily debating who they'd shag if they were gay.
"I'd shag Christian Slater," declares Damon. "I probably wouldn't be able to get an erection with a man but he's a beautiful bloke."
"I think it's better if blokes can admit that they can have crushes on other blokes," says Graham carefully "I've probably had crushes but never really sexual crushes on men."
Later, in the cramped Top Of The Pops dressing room, the subject of money arises. Alex, as he is not yet here, is unanimously declared the most financially prudent member of Blur. "He's a fucking right tight-arsed bastard," says Graham, before casually mentioning that he himself has just bought a house in North London.
"God," says Damon, "I can't imagine you with a mortgage."
"I haven't got a mortgage," says Graham growing increasingly uncomfortable. "I bought it for, you know... cash."
As attempts to put 1995 into perspective continue, the inevitable subject of Oasis arises.
"The only thing that
we've really got in common with Oasis is the fact that we're both doing shit in America," says Damon, ignoring the fact that Graham is quietly strumming the opening riff to Roll With It on an acoustic guitar. "But I like Liam. He's the heart of that band. He is the band. And he's a good singer. I think he does really well considering some of the fucking twaddle lyrics he's given to sing."
Talk of the shadow cabinet, consciously or otherwise, galvanises Damon into stern bandleader action. "Next week," he says sharply to Graham, "we've got to start some serious guitar work on the new album."
Soon, Damon says, he intends to take a short holiday with his girlfriend before full-time work on the new LP begins: "Goin' to St. Lucia, man. (Adopts thick Jamaican accent) Spend a week smokin' big spliff and lovin' ma woman good."
Graham chops out a little reggae rhythm.
"Actually," Damon sighs, snapping out of his reverie and suddenly sounding like a character from one of his own songs, "it won't be like that at all. The mother-in-law's coming with us."
With Top of The Pops masterfully
negotiated after just three rehearsals (one scampishly undertaken with Damon on bass, Alex on drums and Dave on appalling lead vocals), Blur head barwards, hell-bent on over-refreshment.
As he gets the round in, Damon divulges his philosophy of karmic niceness. "Always be pleasant to people," he warns, "because you never know when you'll meet them again. I worked in the bar in the Portobello Hotel when U2 used to stay there a lot and one night Bono was really rude to me and I've never really forgiven him.The Edge, on the other hand, was always really polite."
He thanks the barman generously for his help in securing two pints of Guinness and lowers his lips towards the white foam as he ponders the first question.
Did you ever imagine yourself reaching this point in your career?
No, not specifically. But I'd always felt that if I kept on doing it that at some point I'd do something really good. The thing I'm most proud about after having come through this tour is that we're established now. We're not going to go away. That's an enormous barrier to have overcome. I'm jumping up and down and can't wait to go and
make another album now. Half of what the creative process is about is mustering that enthusiasm and I'm very enthusiastic and confident now. It's not about taking drugs or shagging girls or
having lots of money, it's about something unique inside your head that just triggers off the right chemicals The last time it happened was when I realised that Oasis were selling more albums than us. It made me feel very competitive. Then I let go of that and it was enormously liberating. I
realised it wasn't as important as I'd made it in my head.
Did you feel jealous of them?
It wasn't jealousy. I'm in an incredibly fortunate position on every level. My girlfriend, Justine (Frischmann, Elastica), is also in that position. People must look at us as a couple and feel sick.
Do you and Justine feel in competition wfth each other? Elastica have, after all, probably been more successful in America than Blur, Oasis and Pulp put together.
No, not at all. We're a partnership. Just because you never see us having our photo taken together doesn't mean that we don't work together. We're getting it sorted out, but we don't rub it in people's faces. We could've milked this situation like shit, out every night having our pictures taken, but we don't. Neither of us likes going out to places like Browns and getting in the tabloids.
Ever abused your position as a pop star?
Yeah. But we're veering into that area where talking about it creates more trouble than it's worth. I don't any more. If it had made me happy, I'd still be doing it. But it made me intensely miserable.
When Blur started, you rather pretentiously claimed to have no records, just books.
Well, I was very fucking odd. Idiotic really. But it was jarring,so in that sense it worked. We weren't the leaders of our genre but that ability to jar helped us survive getting started.
Has your self-confidence ever waned?
After Leisure, the first album, I had a very hard time. And rightly so. It was a shit album. There's a few good songs but I was an appalling lyricist. Lazy, conceited, really woolly. I hadn't read enough. Or rather, I'd started reading a lot of books but hadn't finished them. But the main problem was that I'd spent quite a lot of time trying to get there. I had enormous drive.
You're similar to the young Sting.
Probably. He was very driven and I was prepared to do virtually anything to succeed. Not turn into Boyzone or something like that, no disrespect to them, but I did go in for a few rather alarming manifestations. Damon Albarn the pop star you know today has got it wrong on several occasions.
Was there anyone whose career trajectory you particularly wanted to emulate?
Obviously David Bowie. During the period between Hunky Dory via Low to Scary Monsters. Hunky Dory is one of the greatest albums ever made. Obviously in the '80s it went very wrong
for Bowie, but it doesn't matter because he had
10 years of wonderful work. I've met him quite
a few times now and each time you meet him,
his eyes have changed colour. Sometimes
they're brown and blue, and then next time they're all blue. It's very disconcerting.
Could the criticism that's often levelled at Mike Leigh be applied to you - that lyrically you're having a laugh at the working classes?
It wasn't laughing at any-
one in particular.They were just the fears that any sane person has. It sounds corny but I'm more compassionate now because I've suffered a bit more.At the height of my cockiness I was someone who hadn't experienced death or rejection or anything. I'd had a very good relationship with my parents, a very gentle, open-minded upbringing, but I became arrogant and I wasn't so much laughing at people as
appalled at the possibilities. The dead ends that people can go down.
But you were still writing about them from a superior position. You'd had it easy.
I didn't have it easy becoming famous. I worked hard and made a lot of stupid mistakes. I still do.
What did you think of Liam Gallagher's description of your songs as "chimney sweep music".
Well, I do have a big Oliver! problem. I'm completely besotted by Lionel Bart. There's a great story about him: he'd made a fortune, he was richer than any of the pop stars, worth something like £50 million in 1964, and when he was at his most wealthy and bon vivacious he hired this chateau in France and flew 50 or 60 friends out there for this amazing weekend party. Then he just disappeared and a year later he got a bill and none of the people had left the party. They'd stayed for a year and he hadn't noticed. Then he sold all the rights to his songs. But I just think he's wonderful. You look at him now and he's still got a beautiful face. The man was on it big time.
Have you seen Oasis play live?
No, never.
Their audience is much older than yours.
Would you prefer that to the screaming girls?
Well, it's weird. We'll call it the Screaming Girl Thing for want of a better term. But with the Screaming Girl Thing, people carry those experiences for a long time. They may never forget it. So in that respect, this tour has given people a lot of strong and very positive feelings.They haven't been to gigs before, but they've seen something which isn't cynical but is working at that level. So, in that respect, I know it will pay off in the future. Obviously, that 28-35 male, beer-drinking audience is truer to my own life experience, but going to see a band is more of a throwaway thing to them. They've lost that magic of going to their first gig, which a 14-year-old hasn't.
He Thought Of Cars and The Universal paint a pretty grim vision of the future. Did growing up in the '80s do that for you?
That's something that no-one seems to draw on from my generation. Kids now seem to take it for granted that there is no Cold War. I was a Reagan-Thatcher kid and we were convinced that the
world was really a very dark place with sinister people behind the Iron Curtain. CND was huge. Everyone in my school drew the symbol on their books and bags.
If your vision of the future is so bleak, would you consider having children?
My head wants to adopt but my heart would dearly love to have my own child. But I really can't justify it. I'm a very bleak person.
And what if Justine wanted to have kids?
She's as bleak as me. That's why we get on so well.
Are you depressive?
The only depressions I've had, I've managed to
sort out. I'm a great believer in sorting yourself out.
You don't have to run to a doctor immediately.
Do you ever worry that you're turning into your father?
My father's pretty cool. He's just spent six months
in Mauritius starting the first art foundation course there. He's had six months living on beach in paradise, so no, I'm not really worried about turning into him.
Do people assume you're rich?
I am rich. I fucking am. There's no point denying it. I don't know exactly how rich I am, but I'm going to see my accountant next week to find out how much money I've got. I know roughly. I'm not that head-in-the-clouds.
You have, In effect, financially, at least, won the National Lottery.
But I've fucking worked for it! How can the National Lottery make people happier? How can it make their lives better? The standard statement from the Lottery winner who previously lived in a bungalow is, "It's not going to change me. All I want is a nice holiday and a new carpet." I don't think people should do the Lottery and I don't understand why people do. And I'd have said that when I had no money whatsoever.
What does money mean to you?
I've never been motivated bv money at all.
There's nothing inside me that really respects
it. I don't even know what to spend it on. I can't blow it on cars because I can't drive. Failed my test twice. I've started going home on the tube.When I had next to no money, I spent virtually all of it on taxis. Now I get on
the tube with my woolly hat pulled down over my face like a thug and get home for a quid.
Do you worry about the other members of Blur?
Yes. All the time. Like, Graham has a character change when he's drunk. I knew Graham before he smoked and drank. He is the sweetest bloke alive and he is the most gifted guitarist of his generation, No-one can fucking touch him and for that I'm prepared to put up with all his lunacy.
Does the amount of cocaine that surrounds the band bother you?
Everyone is taking drugs apart from Grahamand me.We are virtually the only exceptions in the entire scene. He drinks too much; I drink a lot but not as much as him and I smoke a bit of dope but that's it. There's a fucking blizzard of cocaine in London at the moment and I hate it. It's stupid. Everyone's become so blase, thinking they're so ironic and witty and wandering around with this stupid fucking cokey confidence. Wankers. I mean, I did it but I can't say I was a cocaine addict. And I can't say whether that was what triggered the weird experience last year.
You were having panic attacks.
Yeah, and they may or may not have come from taking coaine. After trying numerous remedies from acupuncture to back specialists, I sorted it out myself. Panic attacks are very much a modern condition. People don't talk about them but they should. They're terrible things to endure on your own.
Have you addressed them in your writing?
You often seem to rely on characterisation to address personal issues.
Country House is about panic attacks. I wrote it when Kurt Cobain died because I think he might have suffered from them. It's not about him, it's about myself, but I was feeling pretty fucking down and it somehow mutated into this jolly, uptempo comedy record. So, yes, I have written about myself through characters, but what I'm prepared to do with the next record is dismantle all that and go for a more personal record. I can sit at my piano and write brilliant observational English pop songs, but you've got to move on.
Do you ever feel restricted by Blur?
No, not really. I do other things all the time anyway. I've done the music for Trainspotting. It's a fantastic film. It's going to have the same effect on a generation as Quadrophenia did. It has that sense of, "This belongs to us and not you"
But will there come a point when, like Paul
Weller and Sting, you'll find you've taken Blur as far as you can and go solo?
I'm not going to turn into either of those, and I'm never going to turn into Let's Dance David Bowie. I'm more likely to go down the Tom Waits way of thinking. But, of course, yeah, there will come a point when I won't be able to perform in the way that I'd like to within the current set-up.
Is that what will split Blur up?
Who knows? Bands just fizzle out, don't they?
As the night is yet young-ish, Damon and Alex decide to head into the West End, where Alex's friend, the art world enfant horrible Damien Hirst, is having a party.
Before we leave, Damon gets momentarily flustered as he thinks he's lost a cassette from his guitar case. He finds it in his pocket: "Sorry about that. It's just that it's got the songs for the new album on it and it's the only copy."
It slowly dawns that he had just misplaced potentially the most valuable item in British music publishing this year.And now, possibly due to the relief, Damon has to go to the lavatory. "I need a pooh," he whispers. Alex exhales and pulls a copy of Robertson Davies's 800-page Deptford Trilogy from his pocket. "Damon," he reveals exclusively, "takes famously long poohs."
Finally clambering into the chauffeur-driven car, he announces that he'd like to see Babe.
"So would I," murmurs Alex, having made a hefty downpayment on oblivion. "What are they like live?"
"It's a film," shouts Damon. "You fucking rock monster!"
We drive in huffy silence for a while until The Beatles' Free As A Bird comes on the radio.
"Oh God," winces Damon, "can we have Radio Four on instead?"
"Yeah, "Alex slurs, feeling another joke coming on. "Whoever wrote this song should be shot."
