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Back to: Archive · 1994

From the NME, 8 October 1994. Article by Keith Cameron. Photo by Kevin Cummins.

Rudy Salinas has driven his scooter all the way from Pasadena, zig-zagging through the Sunday morning traffic for the best part of 45 minutes. His friend Colin has come along, too. It is, they insist over coffee and cigarettes in the lobby of Hollywood's Roosevelt Hotel, no problem.

After all, they know the route well from the night before. Then, Rudy and Colin had hared it home from The Palace just round the corner from here, drenched as much with euphoria as sweat, on a sense-smooching high from seeing their favourite band play an awesome show.

Not only that, but their heroes had spotted Rudy's bike parked up against the fence by the backstage entrance to the venue. It was hard to avoid: a secondhand Lambretta, not unlike the one Phil Daniels rode in 'Quadrophenia', painstakingly customised to incorporate a red, white and blue arrow motif and the name of Rudy's favourite band stencilled on the visor. It would, his favourite band insist, make the perfect prop for the next morning's photo session.

Bands, by definition, are always late; similarly their fans make a point of being early. So Rudy and Colin sit in the Roosevelt lobby and talk. Their conversation revolves around England, of which the two young men have a meticulous knowledge typical of obsessives who have yet to set eyes on the object of their obsession. The recently acquired football results are dissected. "Manchester United lost to Ipswich?!" Rudy shakes his head in disbelief. He asks whether Camden Town's mod mecca Blow Up is as good as it appears from the magazine articles he's read. And how is Carnaby Street these days? A tourist trap? He nods and smiles but the look in his eyes says he'll go and check it out all the same if - no, when - he comes to visit.

Rudy's heroes arrive and we make our way outside. On the way, Rudy points to the football on the television and says he much prefers the version that originated in England in the 19th Century and was soon embraced with enthusiasm by virtually every country on the planet, with the notable exception of the United States of America.

Yes, he had been to see some of the World Cup matches. "My father's Argentinian," he smiles. "So it was real exciting. We saw them play Greece, y'know, when Maradona scored? They had a good team but without him they totally lost heart."

Suddenly, under the glaring Hollywood sun, the wonder of what is happening becomes apparent. This Argentine-American kid is besotted with the music and culture of a nation his father's countrymen were sent to wage war against a mere 12 years ago. His Lambretta is adorned with several Union Jack flags, that nation's most potent, and confused, symbol of identity. And sitting admiringly on his scooter is his hero, the singer in his favourite band, England's pre-eminent purveyors of post-Modernist pop.

"It's very kind of you to have brought it all this way," he says. Rudy's face glows with pride. This is the 1994 reality of Blur in Los Angeles and it feels bloody magic. Just ask Rudy Salinas.

The 1994 unreality of Los Angeles is hitting Damon Albarn, Graham Coxon, Alex James and Dave Rowntree firmly between their hungover eyes as we stroll along Hollywood Boulevard. Seeking to clear the collective head after the rude early afternoon wake-up ordeal of a press conference held for the benefit of local college media pups, they are instead bombarded by a succession of quintessential LA booby traps.

First, it's a polite "thanks but..." on the vast selection of OJ Simpson paraphernalia, from tapes of the 'OJ Rap' ("free!"), to maps of the murder scene, to a huge range of pro-OJ T-shirts; even the most outrageously pro-OJ designs which more or less say, 'The bitch deserved it - we love you, OJ!'

A little further on, Alex, Damon, Dave and Graham stop to gawp at a shop window displaying an exhaustive, nay exhausting, range of flimsy linen scraps apparently intended for use by women as underwear. A video screen confirms that those of the species who have chosen against enhancing their breast size with the latest radioactive compound need not apply.

Then, a man wearing a T-shirt that reads 'F*** God. God can suck my little black dick' warmly greets us and asks to have his picture taken with Damon. He then inquires whether anyone would like a game of chess. All around, the food is fast, discs compact, petrol unleaded.

Perhaps inevitably in this environment, some of the so-called freaks and weirdos seem a good deal better adjusted than those deemed by mainstream society to be 'normal'. At a pedestrian crossing a well-dressed man sidles up to a young woman and tells her that his dinner date for the evening has blown him out but he'd be happy to take her instead. The girl ignores him. "C'mon," he says, in all seriousness, "I'll pay you!"

Damon, unusually, is lost for words. Not so Alex. "Imagine this for nine weeks," he says, negotiating a generous slice of pizza, his American tour sustenance of choice. "It f***ing does drive you nuts."

So nuts did America drive Blur two years ago that ever since they have taken positive steps to ensure it will not do so again. Most pertinently, they decided to have nothing more to do with that archetypal totem of Stateside roadlife: the long, gleaming, silver, tinted-window penis substitute that is the tour bus. Now they fly. LA is the third port of call on a short nine-city hop that encompasses most of the major, relatively cosmopolitan population centres: New York, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, Toronto,...

All are selling out well in advance. Audience reaction varies from enthusiastic to hysterical. And Bumfluff, Idaho is conspicuous by its absence from the schedule. For the good of their health, Blur have decided to leave America's homogenised heartlands in blissful ignorance of their charms.

"We'd rather pay a little more money and retain our sanity," says Damon, back at the calm of the Roosevelt's David Hockney-styled pool. "I suppose it's just that we don't have that romantic idea of getting completely wasted and travelling across deserts. I mean, we have done it and it is a mad spin but we're not in search of anything here. A lot of bands come in search of something they haven't found at home - we're quite content with what we've got at home and this is just a bonus. We're just not that kind of band. The word was used at the press conference today, but we are quite 'civilised'. We're what we are. I'm a middle-class, educated white. I'm looking for different things out of pop music, not what it appears you should be looking for... But you've seen it from being around us for just 24 hours how it can wear you down."

In that short space of time Blur had shown the sort of form that helped salvage their career from the doldrums of 1992 and sent them on the way to their current happy situation: namely, an inexhaustible taste for being Blur at all times. Barely two hours after checking in at the hotel following a five hour flight from New York, Damon was happily whisked away in the NME's snazzy rented Chevy convertible to Santa Monica beach. There he braved the surf for some drenched-jean photo-ops (as indeed did 'All In The Line Of Duty' lensman Cummins) and generously got the ice-creams in.

Stopping over briefly at the Roosevelt for a change of trousers and to collect Alex, Dave and Graham, it's then off to Pasadena for a live radio interview at KROQ, LA's "world famous" "alternative" radio station. Like many establishments in this city also claiming global renown, it's debatable whether KROQ's fame really extends much beyond the boundaries of the US, or even California, far less the entire planet. Such is the hubris of a nation whose multi-ethnic patchwork has left it prone to the delusion that most of the world now lives here anyway - and why the hell not, buddy?!

What is beyond dispute is that KROQ provides gainful employment to one of LA's rock'n'roll institutions, who also happens to be a major Blur fan. Back in the '60s, Rodney Bingenheimer was Davy Jones' stand-in on The Monkees, but would soon make his name as Ligger To The Stars. The GTOs, Frank Zappa's groupie protégés, immortalised him in one of their earliest songs: "We have a friend named Rodney Bingenheimer / He has a dutchboy haircut and he's five feet three... He's so amazing you should see his walls / It just screams 'Get in there with the pop stars!'"

Over a quarter of a century on and these details still apply. Rodney is a little guy with bobbed hair and he insists that Blur come and see his KROQ locker, adorned as it is with snapshots of himself with stars of the brightest magnitude, from Elvis Presley down. Actually in most of these "with" translates as "slightly behind and to the left", but it's an impressive array nonetheless. The impulse to enquire whither the incongruous inclusion of Twiggy sitting on a giant radio is tempered by the suspicion that Rodney was in fact there all along, but obscured by the radio.

Blur pose for the obligatory photos with Mr Bingenheimer, stoical in the knowledge that when Rodney is 70 he'll be pointing them out to the bemused class of 2015 and saying, "There's that Damon Albarn - what a guy he was!"

While at KROQ, the band successfully negotiate a pre-recorded interview with Rodney, as well as the on-air stint with a DJ known as Sluggo. This proves enlightening for several reasons, not least Sluggo confirming the status - in America at least - of 'Modern Life Is Rubbish' as Blur's lost album by raving about the huge change in style between 'Parklife' and "the last record 'Leisure'."

Also revealed is the boys' aptitude as agony uncles. In an attempt to whittle down the number of callers vying for free tickets for tomorrow night's show, they suggest repeating the formula of the Lovelines show they had done the previous day in New York. Cue Misty, a girl who lived on the same street as Guy Of Her Dreams and thought he shared her feelings but just wasn't sure. What should she do? "Well that's a hard one, guys," guffaws the gamely irreverent Sluggo. "Whaddya say?"

"Flash yer tits at him, love," comes the response of tall, sensitive, doe-eyed Alex. We make our excuses and leave.

The evening's festivities took us first to the Rainbow, a moderately obscene restaurant popular with Hollywood's teased hair and tits brigade. Apparently we had narrowly missed sharing airspace with the drummer from Motley Crue, but all was worthwhile when Alex caught the fancy of a gaggle of the aforementioned TH&TB (Ladies Chapter).

"Bachelor party?" enquired one, hopefully.

"Yeah," replied Graham, "it's Alex's last night of being a bachelor."

"Him? Oh wow!" She returned to her posse, fluttering eyelids and muttering to the effect of "what a waste!"

At the special request of one of its weaker-willed members, Alex's party then moved on to The Viper Room, the allegedly cool celeb hang-out owned by Johnny Depp and forever doomed to be remembered as the place where River Phoenix took one hit too many of crap drugs.

Until the members of Blur visited, that is. As far as they are concerned, The Viper Room will forever represent an over-priced piss-poor suburban disco with knucklehead security. As Kevin C got into big trouble for daring to take a photograph and the less than star-studded crowd shimmied uncertainly to an old Prince record, Damon observed that he didn't need to come to LA for a night out like this.

After roundly booing the Viper, alternative plans were hastily drawn up to visit a bar-with-DJ affair called Smalls. Here it was more like business as usual, as locals of varying degrees of loveliness strived desperately to impress each other while the drunken Brits staggered around, against their better instincts, being impressed. A noble scene that your reporter would have missed thanks to the doorman's petty minded insistence that ID be produced in order to gain access to his illustrious establishment, were it not for Alex smuggling me his passport.

The only trouble then was to convince our local friendly enforcer that the cherubic chap with the cheeky grin could possibly have been me at some point over the past 15 years. By no means surprisingly, he was having none of this, but eventually relented out of boredom and granted access to this gilded place of sin.

My reward? The chance to drink mini-bottles of Newcy Brown and frug desperately to 'Neat Neat Neat' by The Damned. "I think I've turned into a donkey," said Alex as I returned his passport. Time for bed is ever I heard it.

America has long been regarded as Blur's nemesis. It was here in 1992 that their tour disintegrated into alcohol psychosis and brought the band as close as they have ever been to splitting. In interviews it has been pilloried as the exporter of junk fashion and sub-standard standards of music, while on record it has been blamed for the slow asphyxiation of England's essentially decent indigenous culture.

The sole instance of crassness on the otherwise superlative 'Parklife' is 'Magic America', a pointedly snide dig at the place "where there are buildings in the sky and the air is sugar-free".

How, one wonders, do Blur's American fans take to it? Are they aware of the ironies? Or do they think this is a song saying America is magic?

"I can't believe they would," says Damon. "You've got to remember the audience that comes to see us are... I mean, they drive around on Lambrettas! They're slightly out of place as it is. I think that's what we like about them. The Blur audience in America is the most dysfunctional of all the dysfunctional tribes."

A close appreciation of Blur's LA tribe was afforded at soundcheck time on Saturday afternoon. Left with the task of transporting the band to the venue on time, we cram the four of them on to the back shelf of our Chevy and set off on the short drive from the Roosevelt to The Palace. "Great fun, this," enthuses Alex. "Just like The Monkees."

Matters turn a good deal more Monkee-esque as we approach the Palace. Noticing a sizeable gathering of diehards, here four hours before the start of the gig solely to catch a glimpse of the band, our folly becomes apparent. He we are, with the hottest British band in America virtually standing up in an open-topped car, thinking we could casually drive up and stroll in unmolested. Oh no...

"OH NO!!!" the band chorus in horror. "Kevin!" yells Damon. "Get us f***in' out of here!" To the anguished screams of several hundred, predominantly female, Blur-ites, Cummins puts the foot down and we speed away from the gig, pursued down the street by a string of excited fans who aren't about to give up on their quest so easily.

We turn the corner and for the car park via the back entrance, but this ruse has already been spotted and Blur are authentically mobbed as we pull up. Girls are quivering with hormonal agitation, and the lads ain't so steady on their pins either.

In the safety of the dressing room, Alex reveals that such instances of teen mania are not unusual.

"In Chicago I went out of the gig and got in a taxi, and the car got completely swamped. The driver couldn't move and the police came along and arrested him for obstructing the highway!"

"Toronto's like this," considers Damon. "Probably worse. It's only in areas where the record has been big. You know what it's like in America, we're big in LA but you go 50 miles down the road and we're completely meaningless. In Canada 'Girls And Boys' was a Top 20 hit, so it's a sort of teeny thing there."

"People get the mickey taken out of them here if they say they like us," chuckles Graham.

"But it's great to be seen as exotic," adds Damon.

Which is ironic when you consider that the modern notion of America grew originally out of human seeds transplanted from England.

Damon: "It's great landing at Newark Airport. My grandparents live near Newark in Lincolnshire and it's extraordinary to see this sprawling metropolis and think of a little market town in Lincolnshire.

"Sometimes, like today when we were walking down Hollywood Boulevard, I just suddenly realised how impossible it would be to live here. I get scared."

Graham: "I don't think I'd ever go out. I haven't really enjoyed going out in the evenings here either. I don't understand the bars here."

Damon, sympathetically: "They're not like The Good Mixer, are they? It's just that in Britain you do to a degree have a choice whether you go to McDonalds or not. But here there is absolutely no choice, however you try and avoid it. This is their culture, they haven't got an alternative. This is what they are."

And you do still have a choice in England?

"Well, I don't think we necessarily have a choice, but it is very clear that it's something that has grown over something that's a lot older - and not necessarily better, but a lot older. There are just more layers, whereas here it's one mass." He sighs. "But I'm tired of making those pre-elementary comparisons between the two."

Because you realise it's more complicated than that?

"Yeah, I do. I think on 'Modern Life Is Rubbish' it was a little naive, the sloganeering. I mean, it worked, to a degree, for us. But this album has moved on from that now. It's not really what we're saying anymore. In a sense the rebellions have happened and are happening. Kevin's car was sitting there today and this black guy was walking past. I literally walked towards the car and he said, "I'm not gonna steal it'.

"There's these mechanisms that everyone in this country has. I suppose it's just their way of dealing with it. But this is a culture where everyone's just dealing with it. You don't get the sense that anyone's got any idea of how to change it or how to improve it. So everyone's got these defence mechanisms constantly going off."

Your antipathy towards the so-called Americanisation of English culture is well documented. Isn't there a sense of guilt here, because you realise that a lot of people back home find it attractive and seductive?

"Yeah," sniffs Damon, who sounds like he might be coming down with a cold after yesterday's ocean frolics. "I think everyone finds it attractive. In that sense, America's willingness to share its culture with everyone has resulted in everybody being American. The whole world is American. And the only reason that happened is because Americans were such a disparate bunch of people. Everyone is American."

"It's strange how Americans find European things glamorous," ponders Dave. "I was thinking about the shampoo bottles at the hotel - they say 'European Shampoo'."

It's an attempt to convey sophistication. You see it in other countries originally colonised by England, like Australia where the TV ads for upmarket products will often have English accents but for stuff like beer or cheeseburgers the local patois takes over.

"In England too, even," observes Alex. "The Mr Kipling ones are the most intelligent, where he says 'exceedingly good cakes'. You know nobody with any taste eats f***ing Mr Kipling cakes, but it kind of made you feel secure."

So are we looking at an irreversible trend here?

"Oh completely," says Damon. "It's no longer a trend, it's a way of life. And in a sense we're making our living out of giving an occasional rant to the press about it. I just wish I could understand what I was really angry about. I'm not really sure. But I don't think any of us are anymore, and that's the reason why it's so all-pervading, the sense that we've arrived in the future but none of us know exactly why we did arrive here. We stopped being optimistic as a species."

How else are we supposed to live with the chaos we've created?

"Yeah. When the body suffers pain endorphins are released. So these are mental endorphins we're living on."

The preliminary title of 'Modern Life' was 'Britain Versus America', wasn't it?

"Probably would have sold twice as many over here if it had America in the title!" guffaws Alex.

Blur aim to start recording their next album in December or January. They already have 15 songs written for the mooted final part of the 'Life' trilogy and anticipate it will be out by early summer 1995. Three albums in three years - an atypical work rate these days when record companies prefer to milk each album dry for up to two years at a time. They ascribe the phenomenon to single-mindedness, discipline in the studio ("We get there are 11, have lunch at one, finish at 10 and go down the pub") and the fact that they don't do serious drugs.

"Well, I just hope we never have Evan Dando pestering us," says Damon. "We're not really in a band scene at all and it is mostly because of that. It's just the way we choose to live our lives."

"We're just boozers, really, that's what we are," shrugs Alex. "It's as bad as anything else but you get spared the claptrap. It's a good pop drug."

"And," adds Damon, "the best thing about it is you can't even pretend to be creative on alcohol, because you just wanna go down the pub!"

Isn't it odd that heroin is somehow regarded as a glamour drug here, whereas popular British culture deems junkies the lowest of the low?

"Like smokers over here!" laughs Alex.

Exactly! You read about junkies in LA who won't smoke because they think it's bad for them.

Alex: "It's a no-smoking taxi of a place."

Dave: "They're very big on getting you to turn the sound down as well. All the club-owners are permanently paranoid they're gonna get sued by someone who goes deaf."

Damon: "Everyone can sue everyone. And unfortunately the rights that people tend to make the most of are the ones that enable them to make money. Like the woman who sued McDonalds for $2.4 million because her coffee was too hot. It burnt her lap, she tried to open it as she was driving along in her car."

Dave: "Basic human right, isn't it, to drink your coffee while you're driving!"

Alex, fuming to the subject: "And what the f***'s going on with the milk here as well?!"

"But in Britain," counsels Damon, "she would be the one in the wrong. Here it's McDonalds. It's an insane set of opposites that apply here."

Maybe so. Nonetheless, Yankee and Blighty seem united in their fulsome appreciation for the Blur-band right now. They do admittedly lay on a quite magnificent show - and the Palace crowd had been warmed up to singe-point by the estimable Pulp, support act for the whole US tour - but as 'Parklife' spirals into the hearts of a generation as 'its' album, Blur are obviously on hem-tugging acquaintance with Him upstairs. What can possibly be beyond them now?

Alex: "This sexline show in New York with people phoning in their problems - the answer to every question was 'talk to the other person!'"

Damon: "Yeah. 'I think my girlfriend's a man'. 'Have you discussed it with him or her?' 'No'. There was one brilliant woman who rang in saying, 'I like to swallow - I just wanna know, how many calories is it?'!"

Graham: "She could tell what the bloke's diet was, as well. We told her it was a pleasurable way to go on a diet. Stay on the spunk!"

"So you see," says Damon, "we are interested in this country. And maybe one day Blur will do an American album which is all about American people and it'll go on and sell as well as 'Parklife' has in Britain. David Bowie did it brilliantly with 'Young Americans', and I've always thought at some point that will happen. But it can't happen until it's right, otherwise it's... Primal Scream."

Ha! You're not seriously thinking of betting against 'em are you? 'Central Parklife' - they'll lurrrve a bit of it.