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 Back to: History
The time Blur lost all their money

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

Who doesn't know the sickening, empty feeling in the pit of the stomach when, on dropping by the hole in the wall to pick up cash for the Saturday evening revels, we glimpse the chilling bright green minus figure balance on the screen before the card is discreetly sucked from sight and we are told to 'contact our branch'. Hasn't the pay cheque gone in? And what about that 200 quid balance we had on Thursday? This can't be right.


These are the thoughts, though scaled up by several indices, that raced through Blur's mind when they found, early in 1992, that they were penniless. Worse than penniless, in fact. Much worse. Blur's pay cheque really ought to have gone in. They had recouped the couple of hundred grand spent on Leisure's recording reasonably promptly. Despite aesthetic misgivings, the album had, after all, gone straight in at Number 7. They had hit singles to their name. They were pop stars of a fledgling kind. Unfortunately, their bank account told a different story. £40,000 was missing from their accounts and they were £60,000 in debt. Practically all of the money earned from Leisure had gone and, worse, creditors were springing up everywhere like Hydra's heads.


The realisation that their finances were lain waste dawned on them slowly. In Mike Smith's view, Mike Collins' days were numbered after his behaviour in New York. Now, as the band's accountant Julian Hedley began to uncover the true extent of the band's financial disarray, there were some hard questions being asked of him.


DAMON ALBARN: I don't remember how we got the first inkling. It wouldn't have been the band who noticed. Julian Hedley our accountant and Alistair George our lawyer must have realised that no one was getting paid. I've no idea why. I've heard wild rumours since but I can't see why it should have been malicious.


DAVE ROWNTREE: The way things worked was that whenever we needed money we'd go and see Mike and he'd give us some. Then we hired an accountant and a lawyer and one day our lawyer asked the accountant for a financial update. The accountant said, 'I can't tell you anything because Mike hasn't given me any details.' That rang alarm bells. Mike had always said to me on Friday or whenever he wouldn't see us for a few days, 'Could you sign a few cheques?' so I'd been signing blank cheques away. I didn't know any better. When it all came to a head and the lawyer requested photocopies from the bank, to my horror and embarrassment virtually every cheque had my signature on it. I resolved it would never happen again. Now I'm the one that reads all the contracts and legalese and it all stems from there. It really scared me.


Alex and Graham can both now recall the warning signs' the winking dashboard lights that should have told them the wheels of their car were about to fall off. 'I remember our tour manager saying, "So, do you think Mike's all right?"' recalls Alex. 'Looking back, some people were trying to tell us. I remember turning up to the start of some British dates one time and we couldn't get the gear out of the studio because nothing had been paid for and cheques were always bouncing. The VAT hadn't been paid and that brought things to a head. Luckily we had a new accountant and lawyer and they got on the case because you can go to prison for VAT.'


Graham now feels that they should have known something was wrong. 'We were flying club class to France and drinking nice wine on the plane and then we'd get home and have no money for cigarettes. We'd recouped on Leisure but where had all the rest gone? Then we started remembering signing all these blank cheques, mainly Dave, who was very upset, but you don't realise it's stupid.'


It's unlikely that we'll ever know how Blur's finances got into such an unholy mess but it would seem reasonable to say that Collins was not keeping on top of the situation. The moot point, i.e. whether he acted - or rather omitted to act - out of incompetence or malice, is something that has baffled the group and those around them for years. In a touching testimony to the forgiving nature of the human spirit, nearly everyone is now prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt. 'After all these years,' reflects Dave, 'I think it may simply have been human error but he should have at least gone for help. When you're in a position of financial trust, you have to do that. You have to declare if you're in over your head.' Mike Smith quotes an instance that supports the simple incompetence explanation. 'Mike thought it was important not to take tour support. But that money comes from a marketing budget, it doesn't come from the band's money. It's there to be spent with no comeback... and he didn't bother taking it.'


'He was doing some really daft things,' says Graham, 'I don't think he was evil but he was rubbish and he shouldn't have been managing us.' Damon regards him as 'someone to be pitied rather than despised.'


Balfe and Ross and accountant Julian Hedley are now similarly generous and willing to attribute it all to poor business sense. 'When money is unaccounted for,' muses Balfe, 'there's always two explanations. It's either been misspent or it's been spent appropriately but someone foolishly hasn't kept proper book-keeping and receipts. One is very bad and one is just bad. I think it was probably the latter.'


Several years and several million albums sold later, the Blur camp are admirably relaxed about what was at the time a near-crippling disaster, although they still aren't quite ready to laugh about it. Actually, that's not entirely true.


DAVE ROWNTREE: There's a guy called Mick Conroy who I'd known since Colchester days. I used to walk home from school with him. He went on to be in quite big stadium bands from America. Anyway, I knew that Mike Collins had managed a band he'd been in so when Mike Collins' name came up as our potential manager I took Mick quietly to one side and asked him about Mike. He said, 'Oh yeah, he's all right.' So when it all blew up I went back to him and said we had a funny business with Mike Collins and ended up losing all our money, and Mick said, 'Really? Blimey, that happened to us as well.'