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 Back to: Archive · 1994
Quadrupedia!

From the NME, 25 June 1994. Article by Steve Sutherland. Photos by Steve Double.




It could have been the cider. It could have been the song. It could have been the fact that this was just about the only place they could be together without her brother or his mother walking in on them.


Whatever, when Blur went into 'To The End', he came over all romantic and one thing led to another, a hand held, a clasp undone and, before either of them knew quite what they were doing, they were at it, screwing down at the front, standing up against the stage, oblivious to those around them, lost in the lights and the passion and the music. And each other.


Graham thought he saw them but couldn't believe his eyes. Two 15-year-olds, one a punky schoolgirl screamer, one a flash nouveau mod. Humping in the hall? Nah! Surely not.


But Alex saw them all right, seated back on his amp, stroking the bass.


"It was beautiful," he says backstage between gulps of bubbly. "Just beautiful..."


This is Aylesbury Civic Centre, the last night of the 'Parklife' tour, Blur's final British date before they headline the NME stage at Glastonbury. And shagging down the front is a perfectly apposite finale for what's been going on for the past two weeks.


Damon, who's stretched out exhausted on a sofa clutching a big 'I Love You' sign that he'd bought for Justine at a truck stop, has been through six pairs of shoes on this tour, torn from him when he dives into the adoring crowd. More than once he has asked the crowd to return them, cheekily claiming he's not Jesus and he can't go barefoot. But the crowd never believe him. "J-e-s-u-s", they chant back at him and, he admits with a grin, it's as close as he's ever felt to immortality.


There's sweat running down the walls in small rivers but, for some unfathomable reason, Graham has changed into full army combat fatigues, tin helmet and all, and is screaming "INCOMING!" whenever anyone approaches. Dave is very quiet in the opposite corner, drinking soft drinks, avoiding the booze which Alex, manfully, has taken upon himself to consume singlehandedly. Slugging from his second bottle of champagne ("One can't drink champers from a plastic cup now, can one?"), he explains how he arrived home with Graham after the Shepherd's Bush gig the other night and settled into a serious brandy session unaware, until his girlfriend came home, that the whole flat had been burgled.


"There was a keyboard missing and... some other stuff," he slurs good naturedly. "I hadn't noticed. But I couldn't bring myself to care. I mean, I never give beggars money in the street or anything so, y'know, fair's fair..."


He saunters off in search of a disco. Damon pulls some sodden betting slips from his top pocket. "People have been throwing them onstage," he grins. "And since the album came out, we've heard that some owner has named his dog Parklife!"


"That's nothing," says Graham, snapping momentarily back into our world. "On the Japanese version of the 'Parklife' CD, the dog's eyes light up and when you open it... it BARKS!"


There's a commotion at the door and a bunch of fans are let in for autographs. One wants her arm signed, one's been to every show on the tour...


"Here goes my big mouth again but... the reason we're doing so well is because, at this particular moment in time, I don't think there's another band that have qualified what they're about in the world as much as we have," says Damon, signing away. "We've come to a point where we've really met our market full on. I know it'll change but, right now, it's all ours. When we started, I really wanted to be a part of something but we're out on our own now."


He laughs at his arrogance.


"Untouchable."




It wasn't always this way, and that's what makes tonight - and other recent nights of Blur's triumphant 'Parklife' tour - all the sweeter. Not so long ago, it was pretty nearly curtains for Blur. They were perpetually drunk, disillusioned, becoming crap and scared half to death of what was happening to them. They played The Hibernian Club in London to less than 400 people - all that was left when the party fell flat after the bright pop promise of 'She's So High' and 'There's No Other Way'. They had management problems and faced financial ruin. They'd reached the point of collapse fruitlessly touring America and, to top it all, their record company seemed convinced their future lay in becoming an ersatz Jesus Jones.


Blur's reaction was to hit the bottle with a vengeance, getting too pissed to care. It all came to a head in the winter of 1992 at The Town & Country Club (now The Forum) in North London. Blur were headlining an NME charity bash and they were absolute rubbish. Damon came on stage and told the crowd they might as well all go home because the gig was going to be crap, and then spent much of the set headbutting the speakers. He also inadvertently managed to stab a mic stand into the head of one of the security guys and the band fled the premises fearing for their lives.


On top of everything else, there was another band further down the bill that night who, suddenly, everyone fell in love with.


"Yeah, Suede," reminisces Damon, still wincing at the memory. "We just went into self-destruct. There was this general sense that we were redundant and, quite naturally, we couldn't handle it."


Damon was awoken the morning after the gig by Dave Balfe, founder of Food and one-time member of The Teardrop Explodes. Over beans on toast he informed Damon that, as far as he could see, Blur were all over. He'd seen it all before with the Teardrops - the over-indulgence, the bad attitude - and he gave the band a month, tops. In short, he told Damon he'd blown it.


"That was totally rock bottom," remembers Damon. "All we had left was ourselves in a studio in Fulham. But, when you've got absolutely nothing to lose, you sometimes come out with your best material."


"Our pride was very bashed," recalls Graham, "and we decided that it wasn't good for us mentally to be in that anxious, paranoid state."


"Part of it was like driving a car and wanting to crash it so the responsibility of driving it isn't there anymore."


So Blur holed up in Fulham, eased off the alcohol and started plotting their future.


"The fact that Suede were doing so well really helped," admits Graham. "I remember we came back from America and suddenly Suede were everywhere and we were crap. That was weird. I went down the Underworld and no-one wanted to talk to me. I was yesterday's guitar man. And it mattered! We don't like people stealing our thunder! We tend to think that we've earned a right to a certain amount. It's that simple. And we're very affronted when we're ignored."


So Blur determined to regain their territory, their focus sharpened by adversity.


"I'm pretty brutal," admits Damon. "I don't fear aggression. Obviously, I don't wanna get my 'ead kicked in, but I don't mind arguing. Y'know, some people, it affects their whole being when they're in confrontation, but I'm not like that. I enjoy a good barny."


So began a war of words in the papers between Blur and any other band who dared to release records that sold more than theirs (which was just about everybody around the time 'Popscene' stiffed). Suede became a special target because they were the darlings of the press, Brits nominees, Brats winners and recipients of the Mercury Prize while Blur were out on their uppers. Not only that but Damon's girlfriend, Justine, soon to form Elastica, was Brett's ex. So this was business and personal.


"Hmmm. Look, I don't wanna talk about the Suede thing because I've exorcised all of my little hang-ups," says Damon, picking his words carefully. "I imposed them on myself in the first place and they were probably unnecessary but it helped them in the first place and it sure helped us. But now I think it's quits. I mean, we're pretty similar really. I object to some of the things I've seen that I've said. Y'know, I'm very negative and it's unnecessary sometimes."


But is the rancour really over? As recently as the June issue of French magazine Les Inrockuptibles, Graham accuses Suede's Bernard Butler of ripping off his guitar style: "Why? Because Mr Butler was Blur's guitar roadie for two years... he spent hours crying on my doorstep for us to take him on tour."


Damon, meanwhile, is quoted as saying, "This is the first time we've spoken about this, because we didn't want to come across as vindictive c***s. 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."


Blur's reaction, when NME confronted the band with these quotes at the time of their publication, was a vague denial that they ever said such things. And, to be perfectly fair, the journalist who did the interview can no longer find the tape to substantiate the story.


Damon squirms when he's asked about it now.


"That's not... that's not... that's not true y'know. Thank God it didn't go any further. I've learned my lesson from that. I will not say another thing ever again."


Are you saying you didn't say it?


"Oh, I didn't... I didn't say it in that context anyway."


Long pause.


"For the record, I think Suede are a very important band but they've got to go through similar things to what we've been through. It hurts when you see yourself ignored and other people taken notice of."


"Those quotes were taken extremely ridiculously out of context," says Alex coolly. "I don't want to waste my time talking about that. It didn't ring true. Maybe 18 months ago, the four of us, drunk, talking about it one night. But not now, not while we're Number Five in the charts."


So you can be far more magnanimous now Blur are successful.


He smiles. "Absolutely."




The upturn in Blur's fortunes came when they recorded 'Modern Life Is Rubbish', an LP which effectively reinvented them. Ignoring record company pressures, they cut loose from the post-baggy loser scene and reappeared as sharp, sophisticated, streetwise lads about town. All the bitterness and disappointment of the previous year had been used to fuel a fierce new determination not only to stay together and succeed as a band, but also to enjoy the crack as it was happening. And suddenly it all paid off. Blur actually became the band that Damon had always said they were going to be.


It happened at Reading Festival. Blur were playing the second stage tent on a cold Saturday night while, on the main stage, The The were boring the bollocks off the freezing crowd. Gradually, as if by some pre-arranged signal, people turned their backs on morbid old Matt Johnson and started heading for the tent where Blur found themselves the focal point of the festivities and, by common consent, the hit of the whole weekend.


"That was amazing," recalls Damon, beaming at the memory. "It was the first time that I was ever in control of my performance. It was a lovely feeling having that whole audience singing along. And I suddenly realised what we were, I discovered the key - that sort of call and response reaction, that eclectic quality of gathering lots of different kinds of people together."


"I mean, we played Norwich the other night and there were 15-18-year-olds at the front and, at the back, there were men with beards - and great beards at that! And they were all singing. And that's the way I've always seen it. You see, I wasn't particularly into the rebellion thing when I was a teenager. I didn't read the NME and get into all that one-upmanship. I've always thought that music is there for everybody."



Catching up with Blur on the 'Parklife' tour is much like attending a post-Cup Final knees-up. Everybody supports the same team. Everyone sings along. Before the band comes on, there are even mass renditions of The Kinks' 'Sunny Afternoon', Small Faces' 'Lazy Sunday', numbers from the soundtrack to Oliver and, ulp, Bruce Forsyth's Generation Game. Yeah, hang that DJ!


Damon's right, no-one can touch Blur right now. One guy I know reckons the Friday Blur gig at Shepherd's Bush Empire is the best he's seen since The Clash at The Music Machine. Totally punk rock, he reckons. Gutted he didn't go the night before. Can't stand the album though, just got off on the charge of the crowd, swooning along with 'To The End', breaking into mass pogo for 'Tracy Jacks', going completely moshpit mental to 'Parklife' itself. This is pure celebration, the likes of which we haven't experienced since those heady days when Primal Scream toured 'Screamadelica'.


Damon saw the Scream on that tour and, although he doesn't have much time for drug mythology, he could see how the chemistry works.


"I can appreciate that we generate a similar feel but I just don't share the same vision. We did all our drugs before we were in this band," he laughs.


Damon has been quoted as saying that Bobby Gillespie should quit while he's ahead and open a Rolling Stones museum in Brighton. Reminded of this, he smirks. "Yeah, well it's important we all hate each other isn't it?"


There are tales of a run-in with Oasis too. It seems that, after NME's Undrugged Question & Answer session at King's Reach Tower, the Oasis lot ended up at The Good Mixer pub in Camden where they happened upon Graham and harangued him mercilessly until they were thrown out.


Some say that Blur - inventors of New Lad when they dressed as mods and sprayed that wall in Clapton with 'Modern Life Is Rubbish' for last year's NME photo session - were a little lacking in bottle when faced down by the real thing in the shape of the perpetually feuding Gallagher brothers.


Damon laughs. He won't be responsible, he says, for legitimising a generation of thinking hooligans.


"It's important that Oasis are rude about everybody and that they get drunk. That's what people like you want, and you encourage them. Fair enough. It's nice, isn't it? But it's nothing to do with me. They came to see us in Manchester and they were very pleasant boys. Very nice."


He's grinning.


"I'd like to see that as a quote. Oasis are very nice boys."


Damon is aware, though, of how careful he must be not to allow any image to get out of hand. Harmless, chucklesome old Madness are still plagued to this day by thick bastard skinheads and Blur have refused offers to play scooter rallies or to appear on the cover of Scooter magazine for fear of the wrong association.


"We're very aware not to unleash the nasty elements," he says, "though, personally, I think I'm too camp to attract those people anyway. 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 let's face it, we all play up to what people expect of us. The trick is to realise that and to tell yourself that there's gonna be a cut-off point and you're gonna go on to do something else. Because the world will change anyway. That's the exciting thing for me. That's the motivation for being in a band - the fact that's it's always moving. You constantly have to be on your toes."


Damon sheepishly likens himself to David Bowie in that, although he may not always be able to stay one step ahead of the pack the way Bowie did in the '70s, at least he thinks about it. He's seen the desperate things others get up to when they feel their tiny moment of fame slipping away. Talk inevitably turns to Morrissey and the selfish mean-mindedness that makes him use an organisation as pernicious as the BNP as a tool in his struggle to create outrage and keep himself in the headlines.


"To be honest, I'm more worried about his records which I think are... if not appalling, certainly not great," he says of the former Smith who he recently likened to the Fonz trading in his leather jacket for a suit and tie. "Y'know, he's lost all enthusiasm. That renders all the rest of it impotent really, that the music isn't up to scratch. He wouldn't have to bother with the outrage if it was.


"I've always found subjects like this difficult because I was brought up in Leytonstone in a very mixed environment. From a very young age I had completely digested colour and homosexuality because my home environment was so much a part of it. Then I moved to Colchester in my teens when my dad got a job at the art college and I was actually quite shocked because I found myself in Essex, in this environment where you couldn't express yourself, you couldn't wear funny clothes and there were no black people.


"I mean, I can't believe I was born English. Why wasn't I born Spanish or West Indian? Other races seem to enjoy everything so much more. The English are mean-spirited and, yeah, I'm disappointed and ashamed and all but that's us, isn't it? That's me. I suppose our songs are just telling each other how crap we are. All my songs criticise this country. They're all about characters who are fed up and trying to get away. But they've got nowhere to go. There are mini King Canutes everywhere."


He laughs, and then relates a story about how crap and mean-spirited the French are too. It seems he recorded a version of 'To The End' in their native tongue for the French record company to release, struggled over it as his French isn't up to much. And were they flattered he'd made the effort? Were they f***! They turned it down flat. "So you see," he says, mock-sulking, "we're all as bad as each other."



There are times when Damon's strident rhetoric has been taken to be about the width of a privet hedge away from xenophobia. The Face superimposed a Union Jack behind him on a recent cover and another paper dimwittedly used the headline 'Our Culture Under Siege' to introduce a Blur feature the very same week that the BNP's Derek Beackon began his mercifully short reign as councillor.


"The notion of being lumped in with that sort of mindless ignorance is horrible," states Damon, eager to put the record straight. "But, at the same time, I think it's a shame that the music we write doesn't get through to that side of this country. I feel that's an inadequacy on my behalf. I really want to write music that is more universal. I see so many limitations to what we do.


"I've got to divorce myself from writing songs that have that semi-detached quality and go for shopping centres. This is the way I think about music and that's why people get confused about us. I want this album to reach that Britannia Book Club level. Y'know, take your trousers down at the Brits and then come back with an album that competes with Garth Brooks but is intelligent. That's the future for me. I can't see any alternative really."


He recently discovered that Julio Iglesias has sold 160 million records. That keeps his feet on the ground. Right now Blur would be content selling a million. Still, 'Parklife' entered the charts at Number One, knocking bricklayer's philosophers Pink Floyd off the top, and showed they were making headway towards reaching the listeners his heroes reach. In Damon's view, people like Prince, who are neither rock nor pop but simply great songwriters, touch people's lives irrespective of creed or colour. And that, he says, is what he hankers after.


Oh, he can see the purpose in all the Sensers and Fun-Da-Mentals, he understands their impetus to exist, but he is constantly disappointed that their music isn't populist, that it's too content to reach no further than the converted. Damon's role model for the perfect pop star is Jerry Dammers, who managed to infiltrate the charts with his anti-racist anthems and political fury embodied within songs everyone could sing.


"The Specials were a high point of British pop culture and it's something I really aspire to create again," he says. "Still, that whole British thing we went on about... I think there are better bands in Britain now than there have been for a long time. So it's working and I really think it's gonna work in America."


Blur?! America?! After all they've said about not giving a monkey's toss about making it there!


"OK, it doesn't really matter but, at the same time, it's quite scary when you get reports that 'Girls And 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.


"The British bands that have done well in America are the ones that have compromised themselves. Like Radiohead. That's not a criticism of them. I'm just saying that's the way they did it. But you don't last in America like that. There's not one British band who were prepared to play the game the American way and have then gone back and been accepted by an American audience a second time around."


Graham says that he refuses to go back until Blur have sold half a million records in America. Last time, he says, all the tedious travelling and insincere gladhanding and compensatory drinking put him in a rest home on his return.


It's this refusal to work for the Yankee dollar that led to Phil Daniels - the actor Blur have often publicly admired for his roles in The Who's Quadrophenia and Mike Leigh's Meantime - performing 'Parklife' on the album. While his contemporaries Tim Roth and Gary Oldman relocated to Los Angeles to seek their fortunes, Daniels has remained in London and, according to Blur, stayed true to his roots.


"It was one of the biggest thrills of my life when he performed with us at Shepherd's Bush," says Damon. Daniels had arrived in a fast car, straight from appearing in Carousel in the West End, and had launched into the song hunch-backed and manic, like he was playing Richard III. Damon was genuinely scared.


"I didn't know what he was going to do. In the rehearsal, he changed the words to 'Damon's got a brewer's droop' so God knows what he was gonna say." As it turned out, Daniels restricted himself to a clipped tirade against Man United (both he and Blur are Chelsea supporters) and the mutual appreciation society reconvenes at Glastonbury.


"That will be the greatest night," says Damon. "I can't wait. 100,000 people, all singing along to 'Parklife' will be..."


He shrugs, for once genuinely lost for words.



Considering Blur's loud and aggressive campaign against America's cultural colonialism, and their constant griping about the successful invasion of grunge which triggered all those daft reports about the death of British pop, were Blur affected by Kurt Cobain's suicide?


Damon nods: "It was very strange, actually. I'd just been through a month of working ridiculously hard during which I went through 12 countries in ten days and I was suffering from nervous exhaustion.


"It was horrible because, at the same time that I was on the front covers looking the ironic, chirpy Englishman, there were all these other covers with these harrowing pictures of this quite beautiful man who was the same age as me who killed himself.


"It was 'orrible. And then Ayrton Senna died. There was a real air of..." He laughs self-consciously, "End of the century. Y'know, everything blowing up."


So is he optimistic about the future?


"The way I perceive optimism is having the ability to set yourself goals and achieve them and... function. So, in that sense, I am. Sometimes it's difficult to find yourself new goals. But I always want to try."


One of his long-avowed ambitions was recently fulfilled when he appeared on Ned Sherrin's Radio 4 current affairs chat show Loose Ends: "I was on with JP Donleavy," he says proudly. "I thought they'd have me for breakfast but they were very kind."


It appears that the world is his oyster.


"I don't wanna come across as satisfied," he says, "because I'm not. It's just that the success of 'Parklife' and this tour have given me a lot more confidence. Uh... having said that, though, I hadn't actually watched myself doing a gig for three or four years and I recently saw myself on MTV.


"It was very strange because I'd gone through the last three years thinking I was maybe a bit eccentric but, y'know... quite suave. And what I saw on that stage was a geek!" He laughs. "I was utterly shocked at what a clown I am."


Just as well the others are so cool then. The way Alex sits around playing bass on the ballads is pure insolent sex.


"True," he laughs. "It's Blur. I mean, Damon Albarn hasn't got a great ring to it, has it? And I keep getting called All Bran."



Cows. We're talking about cows. As you do. Because Blur headline the NME stage at Glastonbury on Sunday night, and because Blur are fit as a butcher's dog, a band in their prime, the very best of British, they have been chosen to star on the NME Glastonbury cover. So what to do with these city boys to make the photos work? Damon, bare-chested, gone native in the country. That's our idea.


"Nah, cows. We want cows. And not just any old cows," shouts Damon. "We want Friesians."


Friesians? Why Friesians?


"'Cos they're black and white," he laughs. "Totally mod."


But, of course. He can see the headline now: Mod cow disease!


The NME's Glastonbury preview for Blur

Unless your mates live in a lead-lined box it is unlikely that they have failed to become enthralled by the charms of these spunky young men singing about boys, girls, girls, boys and parks. London loves Blur. Glastonbury loves Blur. Small flat villages in Belgium love Blur. And you? You would have to be a person of not inconsiderable stupidity not to love Blur too, me old ducks. Ahem.

Expect: Chim-chiminee, chim-chimenee, chim, chim, cherooo.
Do not expect: Hello Glastonbury, fancy a Pimms?


From the letters page

"After attending a superb Blur gig at the Brighton Event, imagine my surprise a couple of hours later to see their singer Damon entering the 7-Eleven as I passed by.

"Feeling obliged to utter some sycophantic rubbish in the direction of my hero, I waited outside for him to reappear. As I approached him, he beerily staggered out with a selection of junk food, turned to the front of neighbouring Curry's and proceeded to urinate enthusiastically in the porch.

"During protestations from Justine Elastica (his girlfriend), I decided to pass by this opportunity. On reflection I thought - is this really the behaviour we desire from our supposed idols, those we look up to? Of course it is. Respect is due to you Damon, how wonderfully laddish and unaffected you are."

- Grant W, Brighton