Blur's first gig was a decade ago, launching the odyssey that took them
from the Bull And Gate to the Budokan. As they dry out from Glastonbury
1998, Britain's most roadworn band go all misty-eyed about triumphs, disasters
and 'The Punching Game'...
It's 10.15am in the lobby of New York's moody Paramount Hotel. It's
also 1992. Blur are having a brunch meeting with the top brass of their
American record company, SBK. Alex James is 15 minutes late, and no-one
knows where he is. It transpires he's been out carousing all night, a hobby
he will refine to an artform in the coming years. When he finally rolls
in, Blur's manager intercepts him.
"Where have you been, Alex?" he inquires. "I've been
to the top!" declares Alex, who is still drunk. "Well, says Blur's
manager, "go upstairs, clean your teeth and come back down here to
the bottom." And there's your Blur Touring Experience distilled into
an instance right there. Hotel lobby. All-night drinking. A demanding foreign
record company. Business meets pleasure. Top meets bottom. And Alex is
late.
Blur's ten-year career is all too easily broken down into its component
albums, but an examination of their live CV gives a far more balanced picture.
From their earliest art-school happenings (their second ever gig, as Seymour,
was at a Goldsmiths degree show the year Damien Hirst graduated) to the
squealing stadia of the late '90s, your basic Blur gig hasn't changed that
much. The same four blokes, the same arch mix of punk rock and art wank,
danger and bubblegum, deadly seriousness and fairground fun. Just throw
in the odd standard lamp and mirror ball, and double the audience every
three years.
In the early days, Blur stoked up on beer and wine before they went
on. These days, they are allowed "one half of strong lager" before
showtime. The effect is no less intoxicating. As they topped the main stage
at this year's Glastonbury, Blur no doubt recalled their debut six years
earlier. It was daylight. They were on the second stage. Ned's Atomic Dustbin
went on after them. And Damon broke his foot after an argument with the
speaker stack. There have been ups and downs, triumphant homecomings and
misunderstood US legs. They've played linders and they've played blind
drunk.
Today, the band are gathered in a King's Cross rehearsal studio to prepare
for Glastonbury and reminisce over their live years. Next door, Rod Stewart's
band belt out 'Maggie May' with little respect for Damon's hangover - he
got back from Stockholm this morning at 3am after watching Chelsea win
the UEFA Cup, where he lost his shoe and his passport but not his horrible
Three Lions ring. ("The fashion accessory this summer," he insists.)
Alex, uncompromisingly bearded, was on a modest Pimm's bender and, as such,
looks his usual self. Graham's shorts are an inch from falling down. And
Dave's just back from a holiday in Morocco (don't get him started on Moroccans).
A staggering ten years down the road, it's time for them to stagger down
it one more time on a journey around Blur by gig. It's not always a pretty
sight, but there's a reasonable chance Damon will climb the rigging, and
they always do 'She's So High'.
Don't forget your toothbrush.
RAILWAY CHAPPEL MUSEUM, ESSEX
1998. Halfway between Halstead and Colchester on the A601, newly-formed Seymour make their live debut. Band's Goldsmiths College connection ensures arty crowd.
Damon: It was great. It was perfect. I felt, 'This is
something.' It was literally just an old train shed in this low key museum
that we hired out. The audience sat in a tube train carriage. We used my
Dad's old strobe light from the '60s.
Graham: It was on a viaduct,
a very high viaduct, about 1OO metres up.
Damon: There was
a pub nearby called The Swan where we used to go. And one of the things
we'd do when we were really pissed up was climb up and walk along the edge
of the viaduct. Really stupid thing to do. As for the gig itself, we were
drunk, but in a good way It was very innocent, pure - way before we got
sanctified by Dave Balfe. There were about 100 people there...
Graham: ...including parents. We wore tank tops.
Alex: It was Damon's 21st birthday, his sister's 18th and his Dad's 50th, so the Albarns had a big party. Damon's Dad's a bit of a mover and a shaker on the Colchester
scene so all the local glitterati were there. I remember Dave telling me
how loudspeakers work in the car. The first song we played that night was
called 'Long Legged'.
Damon: After the gig I ended up in a cornfield
with a girl I fancied at the time, which was a nice end to the evening.
We made our own little corn circle.
Dave: I got off with somebody in the train.
Alex: We blew everything up. It was chaos in
those days. We used to end up pouring wine all over ourselves.
DINGWALLS, CAMDEN, LONDON
Early 1990. Bottom-ending the Mancunian 'Indie Dance' bill of New Fast Automatic Dafodils and Too Much Texas, Seymour begin to prick ears on the London music scene
Graham: Andy Ross [from Food Records] tried
to get into this gig but he was too late.
Damon: He was too drunk
Graham: He was too late and too drunk. They wouldn't
let him in. We got maced by the bouncers. I think our mate Adam flashed
at one of them.
Alex: It was our first paying gig. Adam was
like mine and Graham's dad that summer - we'd left college, living in a
squat in New Cross, and he was kind of tough and older than us. He ended
up getting his head kicked in. I remember him drinking a bottle of neat
Pernod and saying to the singer of Too Much Texas, 'You've got a tasty
little packet', and then grabbing his balls.
Dave: I drove
all the equipment back to the house while the rest of them got maced.
JB'S, DUDLEY
27 April 1991. Having signed to Food and changed their name, mop-topped, Penguin book-shirted Blur cause stir, entering the Top Ten with second single and first album.
Damon: This was the first sense of real mania.
We really hit it off with the Midlands crowd, they were really into it.
A massive stage invasion. Euphoric. On that tour, we played Bristol Bierkeller
in the same week as we'd been on Top Of The Pops doing 'There's No Other
Way'. 'A certain journalist from one of the music papers was there, being
really sleazy, telling little girls that they could come into the dressing
room if they gave him a kiss. But JB's was the first gig where we ever
made any money. We were on a percentage and we absolutely filled the place.
We got about £450, more money than we'd ever seen ever!
Graham: We came away with about £90 each, after petrol. I thought,
'We can buy jeans now!'
MARQUEE, NEW YORK
1 November 1991. On the first of many uncomfy US jaunts, Blur secure a 'niche' audience only with wild, punkstyle shows. American record company SBK fail to get joke.
Alex: I got off with Damon before that show.
I remember us going out the front and snogging each other in the audience.
Then he went out the back and got a BJ...
Damon: It was our first
gig in New York. I got drunk and ended up climbing on the ceiling. They
had one of those sprinkler systems with water pipes and I climbed across
them. I landed in the lap of our record company boss. We were great at
that gig, really punk.
Graham: We kicked ass. We guys rocked.
I decorated all my amps with plastic soldiers. I think we were quite a
spectacle. A lot of those early shows, we couldn't finish the set because
the equipment would be trashed within 15 minutes. Damon would jump on Alex
and they'd be like a drunken giraffe coming towards me. My pedals would
come apart and we'd all end up in a heap. I suppose that's quite exciting
to watch. The American shows were like that. I don't know if the quality
of music was any good.
Alex: You've got to remember it was
our first time in New York. We did Toronto and that was pretty mental,
then Boston, and I'd been up all night drinking and we got to New York,
in a limo with a phone in and everything, and there were skinny, beautiful
girls everywhere. 'Woooaaarr! New York, I fucking shit it!' You go fucking
crazy. We really pissed the American record company off. At Food you'd
have Dave Balfe saying, 'Your drinking's good but you're really not taking
enough drugs' - he really did say that! We thought that's what record companies
were like! But you go into SBK and it's a bunch of fucking lawyers. Journalists
were complaining to the record company about us stinking of booze.
BRIXTON ACADEMY, LONDON
7 April 1992. As youngest and cheeriest of four-band travelling gloomathon Rollercoaster tour, Blur meet musical heroes The Jesus And Mary Chain, My Bloody Valentine and Dinosaur Jr.
Damon: That was a confusing
tour because in many ways we didn't fit in.
Dave: The thing
was, everybody was pretty shy on that tour. We were feeling quite out of
our depth, I think. When you get a bunch of people like that you fill them
with as much drink as they can drink.
Graham: We were playing
a pretty screwed-up set with B-sides in. It was quite an arty set, and
we'd made a film to play with it.
Damon: At Brixton I took my trousers
and pants down. Graham looked so embarrassed, and I quickly realised how
stupid I looked and I fell to the ground to try and make it look like an
accident.
Graham: J Mascis asked him if he was gonna whip it
out again the night after.
Damon: It was filmed by a Canadian music channel and funnily enough we increased in popularity there.
Graham: That was the most rock n'roll tour in the world. Lots of
vodka and smoking and lots of noise and late nights. It was ace. Those
bands were my heroes - part of the reason I wanted to be in an indie group
in the first place was because of those people. I got on particularly well
with Kevin [Shields] and the Bloody Valentines.
Damon: I remember seeing Graham on the carpet in the hotel bar being hoovered around in the morning.
Alex: That tour was steeped in alcohol. You'd get
to the hotel, Jim and William [Reid] would be in the bar, so you'd have
a drink, then Kevin Shields would come in - top guy, and the Valentine
girls were lovely. It just didn't stop.
Dave: It's amazing how little we knew about what we were doing then.
Alex: We still thought we were on holiday. It was indie dream heaven! 'Tonight,
you'll be going bowling with J Mascis and The Jesus & Mary Chain, and
you can have as much booze as you like.'
Dave: That tour was
the origin of the Punching Game. You'd all sit in a row and have to punch
the person on your left. The last one left sitting on their chair was the
winner.
GLASTONBURY
28 June 1992. Having apperently peaked after number 32 placing for 'Popscene', Blur get drunker. Damon breaks his foot on the second dtage, as captured on 'Starshaped' video.
Damon: We were the only people at Glastonbury
in suits! We really stood out. None of us had been before. I climbed right
to the top of the lighting rig - I was really drunk again - and when I
got down, I was jumping into the speaker stack and I toppled it over and
I didn't get away in time. Bosh! I finished the rest of the song in agony.
And we went on and did an encore. I remember hopping off stage and seeing
Justine sitting in the corner with a cigarette going [affects posh voice],
Are you OK?'
Dave: I only remember it from watching the film
of it. I didn't see it happen.
Alex: We were like bouncy little
teenagers. We'd drink and make loads of noise and go fucking mental. I've
broken Damon's nose on stage before. Violent.
Dave: I try not
to look when Damon's climbing the rafters. It encourages him. Still, the
kids love it.
TOWN & COUNTRY CLUB, LONDON
23 July 1992. Blur reach premature burn-out after their second demoralising US tour, cacking up NME organised charity gig through strong drink and allowing younge Suede to steal show.
Damon: Why did that day start so badly?
Graham: We soundchecked very early and we decided
to go for a drink... We met Jon Fat Beast [indie promoter and Carter USM
stooge] and his then-manager. Me and Alex got completely lost in Camden,
so we decided to go to some pubs, basically. Dave was at home with his
laundry.
Dave: Damon had spilt something down himself and I
said I'd stick it in the wash and come hack in a couple of hours' time.
When I got back everybody was on the floor. It was like a different band!
So I necked beers for the next hour-and-a-half to catch up.
Damon: We were drinking with Leo [Finlay, tragically-deceased sometime Select
scribe] weren't we? God rest his soul. There were weird vibes at the gig.
Suede were on, and everybody absolutely loved them, and we'd been away
in America and we were totally lost in every sense of the word, ludicrously
off course. I came onstage and the first thing I said was, 'You might as
well fuck off home because we're going to be shit.' And we were shit, and
I got more and more pissed and frustrated, and I was bashing my mike stand
around and I hit one of the bouncers in the pit and he had to go to hospital
to have stitches. Balfe rang me up the next morning and said, 'I've got
to see you now.' It was like going to the headmaster's office. He said,
'If you don't get your act together in the next six weeks, you're off the
label.'
Graham: When you're drunk onstage, your mind wants
your hands to do things and your hands can't manage to do them. I don't
really remember very much of it.
Dave: There was one pre-Blur gig where I was so drunk I sat down at the drum kit and realised I hadn't
set it up.
Alex: We used to see how drunk we could get, didn't
we?
Dave: At any gig, no matter how it went, you'd always get
some yes-man coming in the dressing room afterwards and saying, 'Well done,
lads, it was great!'... Except for that gig.
Damon: A couple of
days later we were all walking down towards Pall Mall and these two lads
in a van screeched up and said, 'Best gig we've ever seen!'
READING FESTIVAL
28 August 1993. After well-received 'Modern Life Is Rubbish' album and prop-heavy tour, Blur mark their rebirth in a tent - while headliners The The fail to rock the main stage.
Damon: Everyone knew: this is it. You know when the gig's yours.
Graham: We didn't have any of
the big props, just crazy lights. I remember being amazed by it. It was
a very intense show.
Dave: It was like having an hour-and-a
half long orgasm.
Damon: That's how new bands get through.
Every few years, these festivals don't have great headliners, and then
a band that's on the up plays the tent and everyone goes to see them, and
it becomes legendary. I remember sitting in the hotel afterwards and I
had the editors of the Melody Maker and NME sitting either side of me,
and I just thought, 'Things are really starting to work out here...'
Graham: You must have been like the Devil.
GLASTONBURY
26 June 1994. 'Parklife' tops the chart in May. Britpop explodes, Blur headline second stage on Sunday and hold the world in the paw of their hands (Oasis were on earlier in the afternoon.
Damon: The sun went
down during 'This Is A Low' and I'll never ever forget that. If the audience
are in the right frame of mind that song's beautiful to do.
Graham: We had a regime set up by that time. For an hour before the show
you can't have a beer.
Alex: By then we were putting a bit
of craft into things, rather than just going for that totally visceral,
push-the-boat-out approach.
Dave: If you go down the road of
selling a gig purely on energy, it only works half the time, and it doesn't
work at festivals.
ALEXANDRA PALACE, LONDON
7 Otober 1994. First 'event' gig. In front of 8,000 punters, with a bill including Supergrass, Corduroy and Pulp, Blur bestride the planet. Or En-ger-land, anyway.
Graham: We went to have a look at the venue,
and I remember thinking we'll never, ever fill it, because it seemed so
vast.
Damon: I had a massive panic attack. Ludicrous. It takes
8500 people.
Dave: I had that same feeling when we supported
The Cramps at Brixton Academy in 1990. I thought, 'Jeeesus! There aren't
enough people in the world to fill this!' I found Ally Pally quite nerve-wracking.
Alex: We broke even on that gig, except I left a £200 guitar
in the back of a taxi on the way to Club Smashing afterwards.
Graham: I liked it when everyone had gone and you could see millions of plastic
cups.
COLCHESTER'S SIXTH FORM COLLEGE, ESSEX
16 December 1994. Helping to raise £3,000 for an orphanage in India, secret, students-only, no-press gig is organised by Damon's music teacher, whose 17-piece orchestra support
Dave: It was actually at my old
school, so that was a bit weird. I'd stood in that very same hall in assembly
every morning for seven years.
Damon: It was quite a nice thing
to come up with, getting the school orchestra to do arrangements of Blur
songs. It was my old music teacher Mr Hildreth's idea. They played 'Parklife',
'End Of A Century', 'Tracy Jacks', 'Girls And Boys'... it was quite sweet.
We wouldn't let the Colchester Evening Gazette in, because they were always
giving us bad reviews. They'd always been very bitter.
Graham: After
the gig we went to Colchester Arts Centre with all our parents and the
teachers and jumped about.
Alex: That gig didn't mean the same
to me, as it wasn't my school, but it's always nice to go back to Bournemouth
- we try and slip a show in every couple of years. It's what you dream
of doing when you grow up: returning triumphant.
MILE END STADIUM, LONDON
17 June 1995. Emblematic to point of parody, Blur do East End sports stadium and it rains. Quixotic bill: The Cardiacs, Wire, Dodgy and Sparks. Crowd: 35,000. 'Country House' debuted.
Damon: I'll tell you what's
significant about that gig, it was the first time that lads and indie kids
all went to a gig together. It was the beginning of that explosion. Oasis
took it further, but we instigated it. If it had been a sunny day, it would've
gone down as a very big event. It stopped raining just as we went on.
Graham: I was satisfied with my performance, but not with what I
wore - a blue towelling shirt like some old darts player.
Damon: We weren't going to put 'Country House' out, but we got totally carried
away by how well it went down at Mile End. With hindsight it was probably
a foolish thing to do - it led to a lot of things a lot of people could've
done without, and could've really screwed us up badly. But the crowd loved
it. I don't think the bill we had was particularly good apart from The
Cardiacs. No one was available.
Dave: It was more of a statement
than the bill at Ally Pally It was quite confrontational. We thought Wire
was a coup. They were booed off. I was hoping we'd get booed off as well.
Alex: Two days later, we had to go off and play pubs in America,
so there was always that balance. I don't think we suffered from thinking
we were gods.
BUDOKAN, TOKYO
8 November 1995. Having visited Japan for every album, 'Great Escape' tour sees them graduate to legendary 15,000 seater Judo Hall. Recorded for Japan-only live album
Graham: I remember Alex coming up to me
before we went on and saying, 'Do you know how much money you're going
to make in the next two hours?'
Damon: We earned £50,000
each for two hours' work. That's how much money you make... if you've ever
wondered why people do these big gigs! We also play a lot of small gigs
in Japan, it's important to do a mix. It's nice playing the Budokan, because
it's amazing to see that many people in a totally seated venue.
Alex: You always make money in Japan. It saved us from going bankrupt in
the early days.
Dave: The Budokan was a hallowed thing for
me to do because when I was little, my friend's brother had Bob Dylan at
the Budokan and we weren't allowed to touch it.
Alex: I was
sober this time we were in Japan and I loved it.
G-MEX, MANCHESTER
30 November & 1 December 1995. Temporary victors in the Blur-Oasis fued signed to Virgin in the US, Blur do a 16-date sellout arena tour of the UK and are screamed at by small girls for the duration.
Damon: The Point
at Dublin was brilliant, but G-Mex was the best. We filmed it for the Stereotypes
video. It was the most amazing gig as far as crowd reaction goes.
Dave: The Japanese had always screamed - they're a nation of screamers
but they have a very particular pitch, unique in its ear-splitting quality.
The European girl scream is also odd.
Graham: You soundcheck,
then you go onstage for the real thing and you might as well not have soundchecked,
you can't fucking hear a thing.
Damon: It was disconcerting
for us. We'd arrived in this strange place: considering our history it
was bizarre that we'd become a teen band. By the end of that tour we were
all confused, shagged out and disillusioned, and we didn't really want
to go on. You can enjoy it in a certain sort of way.
Alex: You
get used to it. You live in Pottyland, that's just where you live. Damon's
very dismissive about it now, but it was fucking fantastic. Graham went
hedgehog, he curled up into a ball. I think it quietened Damon down a bit.
It was five years of trying to get in the papers, and five years trying
to stay out of them.
Dave: As far as I was concerned, we were playing
left-field, weird artpop, posturing and making a nuisance of ourselves.
And yet here were thousands of teenage girls treating us like Take That.
It was like going shopping for apples and coming back with a motorbike.
It's very nice to have a motorbike, but it's singulary inappropriate. I've
just come back from a holiday in Marrakesh. It was fantastic but I'm not
fucking going there again.
KNUD, GREENLAND
29 August 1997. Eponymous rethink album raises critical profile and saves band. Subsequent year-long tour takes in Australia, Far East and Greenland for first time
Damon: Greenland was pretty insane. There were only
1200 people there but considering there's only about 45,000 in the whole
country and it's the size of Australia, that's quite a good turnout. They
had bleary eyes. It was like, 'Leave your rifles and harpoons outside.'
Graham: There were loads of old men, all wrecked.
Dave: It
was a culture shock. I'd much rather have gone to Greenland on my own as
a private individual. For me, it's totally the wrong way to see places
like that. I can't have a spiritual experience if I've constantly got the
tour manager phoning up, going, 'Hotel lobby. Ten minutes.'
Alex: It's good to take your music somewhere like that and see if it is
music. We also did the Faroe Islands, after phoning Greenpeace first. But
they're fine about subsistence whaling - it's commercial whaling they get
the hump about.
Dave: Greenland is mud and whales, and you
can't sell mud.
Damon: It was a beautiful experience. Mesmerising
place. Last year there were so many great gigs. It was our best tour so
far.
Alex: We did something like 25 countries in 11 months,
three big tours of America. We had gold cards from three different airlines
last year.
Damon: The Thai royal family came to see us in Bangkok.
Alex: They were sat on thrones and had a 200-strong armed guard.
It was a new kind of mental."
Blur could talk on and on all day about last year's gigs and the "new
kind of mental" that has been elicited by the eponymous album. It's
as if they somehow recaptured something that they were in danger of losing,
circa teenmania, best typified by the short, sharp 'Song 2', and the "ludicrous
response it generates all over the world. It looked like Blur might implode
three years ago. Panic over. Ten years on from their Railway Museum gig
inception and they still haven't gone off the rails.
"We were playing 10,000-capacity venues in Australia for three
or four nights," boasts Alex as the band slope off to put some rehearsing
hours in, topped up with canteen tea and Idris ginger beer. "We could've
done stadiums!" (Alex's girlfriend's Dad lives out in Australia and
expressed worries that he hadn't seen any advertising for Blur's shows.
In fact, they were all sold out. They just didn't need to do any advertising.)
There is something endearing about how childish Blur look with their
oversized hip hop trousers and their skinny frames - the new, non-emaciated
Alex perhaps excepted - as they group-hug for the Select camera. You get
the feeling Alex still smokes because it looks cool, and if Damon's attempts
to reinvent himself as a soccer yob are anything other than a panic regression
response to turning 30 this March, then the Select psychologist will eat
his white coat.
It's all part of their enduring appeal. They are capable of demanding
£50,000 a-piece for two hours' work and they fly planes for fun,
yet they still look as if they can't scrape together the cab fare home.
After Glastonbury, they record their sixth album. And then they will tour
it, and it will be good. And they'll still play 'She's So High'.
They came, they saw, they left a lot of plastic cups.
PLUS SPECIAL GUESTS...
Blur's best bill-sharing mates.
The Cardiacs: Mile End, June 1995. One of many quirky support acts
on that rainy day - cutish cabaret oddballs untroubled by significant record
sales but loved to death by the few. Damon: "The Cardiacs at ULU was
one of the best gigs I ever saw in my life."
The Keatons: Played on the same bill as Blur at North London's Sir
George Robey pub, circa 1989. Alex: "They were like Wire and The Fall.
I liked 'em." But where are they now?
The Dandy Warhols: Since gone well overground, the freakish fops supported at the Roseland Ballroom, New York, 1997.
The Rentals: Supported on European leg of Great Escape tour 1995. Nerd-do-well
splinter group formed after Weezer went back to college. The singer looked
just like Graham. ("We even did a swap on stage one night.")
Whale: US tour, 1995. Blur's favourite Swedes. Blur's least favourite
Swedes were The Cardigans, who supported them in Europe, 1995. Their guitarist
came up to Graham and said, "We sold more records than you in Japan.
I am the tallest pop star in the world." Graham's riposte: "Thurston
Moore is taller than him."
Super Furry Animals: UK tour 1997. Damon: "I absolutely love them.
I listened to them every single evening, I think he's got a brilliant voice,
always spot-on every night."
Iggy Pop: Spanish festival, 1995. Graham: "It's always hard to
go on after him."
Saxon Estonian festival, 1993. Graham: "They rocked. And vodka
was 25p a litre." The bill included Sam Fox.
Mo The Man: Very early days. Performance art nutcase from art school
circuit. Also did puppet show. Alex: "When we went on there would
be beans and syrup on the stage. I recently spotted him working in the
London Graphic Centre in Covent Garden..."
Cornershop: The support that never was. They turned down Blur's '97
tour due to "other commitments".
REM: Alright, Blur supported them at Milton Keynes Bowl, 1995. Alex:
"I dropped my guitar into the audience - bv mistake - and we got banned
from playing Milton Keynes again!"
