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 Back to: History
Gimme Shelter

From Blur: 3862 Days, the official history © 1999 Blur and Stuart Maconie.

The NME, in association with the homelessness charity Shelter, were organising benefit gigs in the summer of 1992 under the banner 'Gimme Shelter'. One such gig, at the Town and Country Club (now The Forum) in Kentish Town, was to be headlined by Blur with 3½ Minutes, Mega City Four and Suede as support. At this point, many would have disputed that billing, feeling that Suede should have been headlining. In fact, the running order was to work in their favour, as is often the case. Particularly given Blur's performance. Blur's preparations for this prestigious gig were to start the day with afternoon drinks at The Good Mixer.


The Good Mixer now is merely a crowded student indie pub but in the summer of '92 you could pop in and still find the indie glitterati having a quiet pint and a packet of smoky bacon crisps. On the day of the infamous Gimme Shelter gig, Blur no doubt started out in this calm fashion. 'The Mixer had become our base,' says Graham. 'We'd soundchecked and were killing time and Alex and I went into the Mixer for a couple of drinks. Andy came later then Dave and Damon.'


Ask Dave Rowntree about the day now and he will still blench. 'OK, here's what I remember. We were sharing the bill with Suede and they were the darlings of the time and that made us pissed off and depressed. We'd gone from feeling we could do nothing wrong to feeling we could do nothing right. They'd been supporting us for years and suddenly they were bigger than us. So we all went out in the afternoon and got right royally pissed up. Damon had bought a new shirt and tipped a bottle of wine all over it so I offered to go home and wash it and meet them in a couple of hours.'


The session got more and more punishing as the afternoon wore on... or wore off, more accurately. Alex and Graham actually got lost in Camden, Graham's neighbourhood. 'Ridiculous but that's the state we were in.' They decided to visit every pub in Camden and miraculously wound up at one directly opposite the Town and Country Club.


Here, not surprisingly, accounts vary. Andy Ross thinks, 'I turned up at six and all four were pissed. They were an absolute shambles. At the time I was their mate and not talking to Balfy so I sat down and had a few drinks with them and they were completely and shockingly pissed.'


Dave insists he was not at the pub. He remembers next seeing his comrades at the venue. 'I got back a couple of hours before we were due on stage and everyone was in the dressing room by then. I'd left them narked but jolly. When I came back the mood was pure poison. You walked in the room and knew that this was a place that no right-thinking person would want to spend time in at all. If there had been guns in the room, everyone would have been shot. They'd been in a pub across from the T&C all afternoon. People could barely walk. But everyone was fully compos mentis and f***ing angry.'


Damon drunkenly wandered into Mega City Four's dressing room swigging from a bottle of spirits, where he proceeded to lecture the group on the evils of American culture, as their singer Wiz later reported. 'He just kept saying how much he hated the place and how all Americans were w***ers and how he f***ing hated gigs and he was trying to get us to agree. We just sat there listening and I remember thinking, We're not from the same planet as you, mate, and then one of our band just opened the door, pointed him towards his own pissed-up dressing room and pushed him out.'


The band staggered towards the stage, nearly insensible. 'Before we left the dressing room,' recounts Dave, 'I thought, I've got some catching up to do here, and necked drink after drink, but even then I was still comparatively sober by the time we got on. I could see my instrument. We walked on stage and Damon said, and I quote, "We're so f***ing shit you might as well go home now. This could be the worst gig you've ever seen." And he was right.'


Damon's opening announcement - so refreshingly different from 'Are you ready to rock, Cleveland?' - has now passed into legend. However, there are some dissenting voices who seem to recall a ramshackle but bracingly punkish set. Indeed, Blur authority and Graham's drinking partner Biffo claims it is still the best Blur gig he has ever seen. Graham is similarly enthusiastic. 'It's very frustrating when your brain wants your fingers to do certain things and your fingers won't. You know when you write phone numbers down in pubs and you get home and you can't read it? Great show. I'd like to have seen it.'


'It was a real low point,' reflects Alex now, 'but it did us a lot of good. That was the point when people saw we weren't just some arrogant upstarts, that we had something sort of real and intense. I think it was great in an insane way.'


Instruments and drum kits were trashed, gymnastics were attempted and failed miserably, and Damon tried continually to shoulder-charge a speaker cab off the stage. Several times, Alex and Graham collapsed in Buster Keaton-style pratfalls. Contrary to some later versions of events, the crowd did not leave en masse. Indeed, many lapped it up. It was funny and electrifying and unforgettable but in a rather desperate tragi-comic way. It was a band on the edge of a nervous breakdown. No, it was a band having a nervous breakdown right before your very eyes. Mike Smith remarks, 'I didn't think it was that bad. I'd seen them so f***ed up before. Damon was leaping on Alex's back and then they'd fall over. But of course Suede were on such a roll that it reflected badly on Blur. I dragged a girl along that I was trying to impress and she was like, "What the f*** is this?"'


Melody Maker's Jon Selzer seems not to have noticed that the band were near demented with drink and instead used the space to deliver a pompous, unintentionally funny diatribe against the youth of Britain, or at least that rather small section of it who might be reading his words, 'Blur are one long gloat, they offer nothing but contempt and you lick it up like all the shit shovelled your way because you're too numbed to care.' NME's Keith Cameron characterised it more pungently as 'Carry On Punk Rock'.


DAVE ROWNTREE: It had attitude but a bad attitude. I was thinking, Please, somebody break something so I can get off stage. We ought to have apologised to the homeless. That was a low. But not isolated. It was fairly common for us to be so drunk we couldn't play. There were times, frequently, we'd turn up, drink the rider and make them get us more before we went on and then drink that. Some nights it worked and was mad and enchanting and lunatic. But that night it didn't.


Chris Morrison straightforwardly asserts that, 'They were appalling, f***ing dreadful. They were in a complete mess backstage before and after. I said, "There's no point discussing it, I'll talk to you tomorrow."'


Dave Balfe, horrified by what he had seen, demanded a similar post-mortem. Ironically, on the way to it, a builders' van drew up alongside them and the driver wound down the window and shouted at the group, 'Best f***ing gig I've ever seen.' Less pleasantly, it was then on to Arlington Road and a meeting with Balfe. Damon remembers it well. 'Balfe said, "I've seen all this before with The Teardrop Explodes. It's all going to collapse and go wrong. I'm washing my hands of you." It was a tough meeting. Essentially he told us that we were probably going to be dropped.'


By the time the band got to Chris Morrison's offices just over the Thames in Battersea, a chastening hangover was upon them. 'Balfe had a conversation with them that lasted hours, telling them their careers were over. In my meeting they walked in and said, "We know, we know. We've arrived at a rule. No beers till half an hour before we go on." I said fine. If they'd come and tried to justify their behaviour to me, I'd have known there was no point me continuing. If people want to commit suicide on stage, which in my memory is what they did, then you have to let them. But they sat on the couch and admitted they'd been stupid and said they wouldn't let it happen again. They are intelligent lads after all.' The band still values Chris's supportive attitude. Damon points out that, 'Chris said we were f***ing idiots but he also made it clear he was on our side. Chris had seen a lot of these problems in his time with Thin Lizzy - problems with drink and drugs.'


'He said, "You can't build a career on this,"' remembers Dave. 'Perfectly right, too. We were at a stage where we couldn't have too many shows like that. "Popscene" had flopped and everyone was watching expectantly. We had a very hungover meeting and we all agreed to ban alcohol before the show apart from one beer half an hour before. I think that was at Chris's suggestion; he thought you do need something to steady your nerves. That was very reasonable. I think we were very worried that the gist of the meeting might be, "I no longer want to work with you and now we have to go to the police station because you killed a granny last night."'