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Selected quotes taken from 'In Their Own Words' by Mick St. Michael, published by Omnibus Press.
EARLY YEARS
"When I was at school, I never had any interest in pop music. Graham was the one who always knew about all the bands. I was just on this 'This-is-what's-gonna-happen' thing. It never really occured to me that I'd be doing anything else. I guess that makes me a pretty one dimensional person but...
"My Dad was into psychedelia, y'know. He was one of the prime movers in the psychedelic movement - Keith Albarn, he put on Yoko Ono's first exhibition. I wanna be as important."
"Damon wasn't liked at school, and I thought he was a vain wanker."
"I always thought my parents were absolutely dead right. I was going against the grain in a weird way, by continually following my parents. It seems to have worked for generations in my family - generations ago, we were a Quaker family, conscientious objector, then hippies, then whatever sort of hybrid I am."
"I was a part-time agit-prop-Marxist-red-flag-squat-punk with a blond Mohican."
"My music teacher has recently been sent to prison for being a buttock fondler, which may explain why I never took music lessons."
"Places like Colchester celebrate the mediocre, y'know? I don't really have any fond memories of that place at all. See, places like Colchester stifle you. It's one of those places which isn't quite poverty stricken. There's a strong inclination for people to just get their lives out of the way. And that is the centre of what we hate. Everything we do has a subtle jibe at that suburban way of thinking."
"I was always a workaholic, but I just didn't have any work."
"I played in the school team but I was always more interested in music. I started playing the violin at the age of 12 and the two didn't really match. Music always seemed to be linked to Chelsea... and bad behaviour. Music and bad behaviour; that's what I do."
"Seymour was the more radical, non-bite sized, unfriendly face of Blur."
"I've completely grown up in public. I didn't know what it meant until it had happened to me. I thought it was one if those precocious people said, like Jodie Foster. But I have had to grow up in public over the last year, because I was still a teenager at the age of 26."
"We were young, good looking and in the best band in the world." |
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BLUR ON BLUR
"We're a band who could completely and utterly change everything. The scale that we're working on is so enourmous. We're trying to reach absolutely everybody. The whole world."
"I think my period of 'otherness' was just part of a transition from one mode of living to another and not really proprt depression (although there are strains of it in my family), and I don't mention it because I don't want to jump on the misery bandwagon. If anything it's because I loathe the idea that pop people ar in a position to hand out some kind of DIY guide to depression and suicide."
"Thats why I joined Blur. I thought Damon was a bit of a wanker but he had the keys to a recording studio"
"We like to think we can do anything that anyone else can do."
"Am I a pretentious git? Probably. You've got to work out what your idea of being pretentious is. If it means you're positive about what is happening, but nothing's kind of concrete yet you're really excited about it, for the hardened cynic - which we all are anyway - it does come across as pretentious."
"We've always been too friendly, too clever and too good looking for a lot of people."
"We're not New Age hippies by any means, we just hate the nihilism that has existed in this country for so long. You don't get it on the continent. They've got a much healthier attitude toward being young. The English really don't like show-offs. They love it when you fail. Well fuck them. We're not going to."
"Graham has obsessions. At the moment it's American hardcore. They last from six to eight months, and it's very hard for him to see anything else."
"There's only one band in British pop who would call their album 'Modern Life Is Rubbish'."
"We've said nothing in any of our interviews - we're probably the only band in history to do that. Dave just says nothing. Alex just says nothing in an Alex way. Graham says nothing in a very negative way. I say nothing in a roundabout way.
"I still haven't defined where I come from. I know it's very important to people, because I've made a career out of glamorising the working class."
"We're miles better than spokesman anyway - they're all wankers.
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ROCK & ROLL
"Being in a band is like having a mental illness, living in an institution - you become completely obsesed and ruled by your environment. And our environment is the music press, our feelings, our friends and the audience. We work exceptionally hard. We came off tour and we've gone straight into demoing the next album immediately."
"The best thing about being in a band is that you can allow your insanities to develop. And get paid for it."
"Ad Rock from the Beastie Boys is coming tonight, Alex spent a night driving round New York with Jimmy Destri of Blondie. But to be honest we don't attract celebrities. Because we don't do that many drugs, the whole aura is not people hanging out and getting really out of our faces. We don't really work like that, apart from Alex."
"There's a lot of great music being made in Britain. If punk was about getting rid of hippies, we're about getting rid of grunge. It's time kids stopped listening to American rubbish."
"Rock 'n' roll's got a lot to do with rebellion. And the first thing you rebel against is your parents. Did you ever start to emulate everything they thought was shit?"
"...It's quite scary when you get reports that 'Girls & Boys' is getting played 70 times a week on KROQ. You see I think it's important for a couple of British bands to go over there and do it completely on their own terms. My biggest hang-up with America is that it's a one sided thing. They sell their culture wholesale, McDonalds-style to the rest of the world and they're not interested in anyone else."
"Of course, I'm a hedonist. What else is there to live for? The rest is just killing time."
"Pop people are defects. Pop people are funny in the head and the more pop they get, the funnier their heads become. Pop begins in bedrooms and ends up in supermarkets."
"When my flat was burgled, I hadn't noticed. There was a keyboard missing and... some other stuff. But I couldn't bring myself to care. I mean, I never give beggars money in the street or anything so, y'know, fairs fair..." |
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FASHION
"I've gone Ralph Lauren mad. Well you've got to haven't yer? It's about half the price here (in Los Angeles)."
"I genuinely don't know why we get roped into all those things. People say we've changed the way we look, but I was wearing a suit at Glastonbury two years ago, when the whole world had gone crusty. I'm not going to say we're ahead of our time or anything though. Maybe people just like us."
"My most treasured material possessions are these beads that I wear. My mum made them when I was about six, and in one form or another I've kept them on everyday since."
"People should be a bit more energetic. They're walking around like hippies - stopped, with greasy hair."
"The only image change is that I've got the money to buy more T-shirts - I wear the same clothes except more T-shirts!"
"There's always a chance with Blur that we'll appear in a video dressed as raving fruits or schoolboys or whatever. There's no guarantee that it's gonna be just Fred Perry's and giving it what the lads want. But lets face it, we all play up to what people expect of us." |
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OTHER GROUPS
"Suede - borrowed money, borrowed talent, borrowed quotes, borrowed time...at a good rate of interest."
"We really annoy our peers quite immensely. Which is ammusing. The Manic Street Preachers feel compelled to indulge in onstage outbursts against us."
"Mr. Butler (former Suede guitarist) was Blur's guitar roadie for two years... he spent hours crying on my doorstep for us to take him on tour."
"I think there are three Bob Dylans, playing simultaneously, around the world. I believe this because he always looks the same - dark glasses, scarf, big hat - and he sings every single song with the same note. One of the three is the real one. We played with him at a festival in Milan and I just knew it wasn't the real Bob Dylan."
"I'm not interested in other bands, I don't enjoy going to see them. I do like music it's not important to us as Blur. It's not relevant. Of course there have been great songwriters, but were just trying to start it all over again."
"This is the first time we've spoken about this (Suede v Blur), because we didn't want to come across as vindictive. We wanted to wait until we were at the top to reveal these stories. If we'd said all this two years ago, no-one would have believed us. I knew that my moment for vengeance would come. Public vengeance and personal vengeance. I wanted to prove to myself that I could dethrone Brett and his group of cretins. We'll see who's at the top of the charts in two or three years."
"Mick Jagger - he was brilliant. There's stories about him at parties, talking to, like, groupies in one room and then lawyers and accountants in another."
"Perhaps I'm biased, but Justine and Elastica have worked harder than any British band in America. They've done three six-week tours this year, and that's a hell of a lot. With Lollapalooza, it's four. And it seems to me that's the only way you can do it. We're just not one of those bands that can do it without just... loosing it." |
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BLUR VS. OASIS
"More than competetion with Oasis, though, it's competition with ourselves. We just want to do better than we've done before. We've never had a number one single. We want one."
"We thought this would be an easier way to settle our differences than having a punch-up - and hopefully less blood will be shed."
"The whole war-of-words has left me a bit saddened...It just got so ugly. And to say things like that doesn't really reflect well on them. I think they should re-assess their priorities. They'll look back on it when they're grown men and just think what dickheads they were."
"It's important that Oasis are rude about everybody and that they get drunk. Thats what people like you want, and you encourage them. Fair enough."
"I would have been disappointed if Oasis had got to Number One instead of us. But I think they're a really good band and this rivalry thing is just getting silly now. At the Brit Awards - and I know we won a lot and that annoyed them - when I said, 'This should be shared with Oasis,' I thought that was the fair thing to say. After that, they were fine in person but in public they were equally aggressive about the whole thing. When they got to Number One with 'Some Might Say', I went down to their party to have a drink and congratulate them. You know, they'd got something I'd been dreaming about my whole life.
"Suede don't really fit in. It's Oasis or us." |
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AMERICA
"Will Blur become successful in the USA? I'm not entirely sure what we do will translate well on MTV, because it's geared to that sort of juvenile thing, but I still have this wonderful dream that American kids will start to get it and actually understand what we're about."
"I've been to an American Football game in San Francisco, the Oakland Raiders, and I realised a lot of stuff about American culture that I hadn't realised before. The way of the whole thing is geared towards constant gratification. They like their pleasure highly organised."
"Detroit is the end of the world. Maybe we should do a cover of 'Ghost Town' tonight. It's the perfect place for it."
"Life for many Americans exists within these huge sheds, and you can eat and buy your shoes, listen to music and buy your health insurance. Almost go to the hospital. Jog. In these huge bubbles. And that really made us look at England and see how much of the American culture has been absorbed into a very innocent England. The Americans do it with an immense sort of pinache - they are lobotomised, sanitised automatons - but they do it with such pinache that you view it as a trait of being American. Whereas in England it makes me sick."
"The great thing about America is, it takes about at least five years for anything to wear of. It's ultra hip to be into Britpop, which is funny."
"We have got a fanatical fan base in America. When we were in Los Angeles, this guy showed us his Lambretta with all the names of our songs painted on it. It was amazing. But they're Anglophiles, it's hard to assess it all really, because your talking about obsessive people."
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REST OF THE WORLD
"The Japanese seem very insular, very self-contained. Like the way they mob us at the hotel. It's in your face but they don't say anything. It's very serene."
"The problem with Germans...no offence or anything but they're all Damon - they all want to be in charge!"
"You have to like Japan, a place where you can be described as 'handsome and atmospheric'. They're so well-informed but I don't know if they actually like us. Well on one level they do to rediculous degree. They like the West so much they're willing to change their physical appearance for us."
"(The Danish) were well up for it. They smelt like rollmops and sugar." |
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THE FUTURE
"The only thing we haven't done, which I want to try on the next album, is a really good quality muzak track, because I don't think theres enough of it. I really like the concept of muzak. It's musical medication."
"I've still not come to terms with mortality. I'm still immature about that. It's like if you get pregnant, you get happy hormones, who-gives-a fuck-hormones, and as I get older, I hope to get some of them."
"There is a contradiction in using the past and rebelling against the future. There is a contradiction in what we are."
"There's nothing more up to date and relevent than Blur. We're like The Jam, The Smiths and The Stone Roses we're in place and time." |