AnnieRowntree

Pop goes the Easel[2/2]

原文地址：https://www.rjsj.demon.co.uk/articles/suntimes/easel.htm

The Nichtkunst boys met up with Damon and Dave, and formed Seymour. With pudding bowl haircuts, flares and loose-fitting shirts, journalists labelled them as `baggy' - a musical genre forming around Manchester. Their first single, She's So High, sounded like a synthesis of the Stone Roses and the Happy Mondays, and charted at number 48 (with a rocket). But Blur proved they had staying power. They became `baggy-parody' and eventually `post-baggy'. But the fame and the drinking (the band's local was credited on the second album) was starting to get out of hand. One night, playing on the same bill as arch rivals Suede, Damon told the audience to fuck off home. He cut the face of security guards with his mike stand. Only Dave the drummer was sober. And he'd been at home all day doing his laundry.

America made matters worse. "They had us marching round every record shop in town going `Hi....we're Blur. You like us'" says Alex. The same week Nirvana's seminal grunge album, Nevermind, was released. Disenchanted American kids were enlivened with the new teen spirit. "And we're going [Alex sings in mockney, like Anthony Newley] `Hello gor blimey'." "Being British in the most cliched sense goes down very well in America" says Graham. "But we weren't. If we'd been acting like Benny Hill we'd have been alright. They love a bit of a chump. A good old English chump. But we were monsters." Blur never forgave America. In an act of supreme churlishness, they set about excluding an entire continent from their music. And created something that celebrated Englishness - Britpop.

Blur discovered their ironic suburban credentials, and started singing songs about dog racing, steam engines, trarsers and bowler-hatted commuters. Then came Girls And Boys ("our gay disco song" says Alex). A damn good knees-up about sexual orientation, and the first real Britpop song. Parklife (the video, the song and the album), with its dog track/form sheet/EastEnder pretensions, took Blur from also-rans to founders of the Britpop movement. It was a label that soon became tiresome. "I met this bloke from San Francisco" says Graham. "He'd come to London to find the Britpop scene. I was in the Britpop band, in the Britpop pub, in the Britpop city, and saying I hated Britpop. He didn't know how to take it." Blur made the scene - then split.

By now Oasis, the rock `n' roll stars from Manchester, were claiming to be the biggest band in the world. A rivalry, manufactured by the bands' record labels, started to take on a momentum of its own. It became personal. When Noel Gallagher of Oasis was asked his views on Blur, his answer was he "hoped they caught Aids". Liam Gallagher spent the Mercury Music Awards trying to pull Justine Frischmann, lead singer with the band Elastica and Damon's girlfriend. Blur brought forward the release date of their single Country House to synchronise with Roll With It, and beat Oasis to Number One. Damon had something to prove. "Wanting to be the biggest is a weakness in somebody. I slowly recognised that in myself. It was a flaw in my personality that I wanted to be the most famous - the most loved. I'm on top of that now."

The battle with Oasis was presented as pitbull v poodle, squat v townhouse, armpit v roll-on and north v south. Blur were always portrayed as the nice boys. "But around the time we were being seen as the angelic little goody goodies," says Alex, "at least two members of this band were totally out of control. And probably going to bed a lot later than Oasis." "There were all these dodgy photographs, taken in dodgy places acting dodgily" says Graham. "And getting run over. I was run over coming out of a party and nobody offered to help me. The photographers just took the picture, then rushed back to the party to see if anyone else was coming out." Smoggie/the Smog Monster, one of Blur's original Wolverhampton fans, was hired as personal security. "He was really hired to look after me and Graham" says Alex. "To carry us home at the end of the night."

Damon still can't understand why Oasis are so huge. He couldn't bring himself to write a song like Wonderwall - too simple. It's no coincidence that he nicknamed Oasis `Quoasis' - a bastardisation of Status Quo, a band who never use four chords when three will do. Blur have always prided themselves on being imaginative - sometimes a little too imaginative. On the new album, Damon plays the kazoo, Graham plays the Jew's harp, and Alex plays the vacuum cleaner. And Graham taught himself the banjo just because he was feeling a little "conventional" on guitar. Blur are obsessed with moving on. And taking risks. "Paul McCartney hasn't moved on" says Damon. "Everything is static in his life". Graham agrees. "Whereas Linda has moved on, with a growing range of satisfying vegetarian meals.

" Tony Blair, the ace face Of Labour's modernist tendency, wanted to harness Blur's sense of movement to help the Party. He turned up at the Q Awards two years running (stupidly naming Oasis as one of his favourite groups) before calling Damon's office to arrange a meeting. "I went in and he said 'Make sure you're selling just as many records when the election comes and we can work together'". "What did you say to him?" asks Graham. "Make sure you get a policy then?". Damon is actually more John Prescott than Tony Blair, and fashionably sceptical about a Labour landslide victory. But he was still flattered. That was then. Eighteen months is a long time in politics - Blair is probably trying right now to change the Spice Girls' position on a single currency.

Now Blur are back. They still eat in their regular cafe, a short walk through a Notting Hill housing estate known for crack derivatives. They still order cauliflower cheese and chips for Alex, who is dealing with yet another hangover, and pecan pie - that's two slices, four forks. Then four bowls of milky coffee, and back to the two-room studio to finish off the new album. They have learnt that in a studio this small, too many cigarettes can set off a smoke detector. But that gaffer tape can desensitise it nicely. "We built a studio because the neighbours used to complain about me recording at home" says Damon. "The neighbours fucking moved, Damon" says Alex. Pause. "Well, they weren't very nice neighbours" says Damon. Blur bicker like only best friends can. For a while back there, they forget how.

"A year ago we had to decide if we wanted to go on and become a real middle-of-the-road, tabloid-friendly, cheeky mockney stadium band" says Damon. "I guess the new album is the answer." Now they have to learn to play the whole game again, and that's going to take some adjustments. Damon has just been to his first music biz party for nine months, at London's painfully hip Subterranea. "It was the birthday party of some PR company, and I was there with the guys I play football with. [Damon plays left wing for Cup Band United FC in a London music league] Baby Bird was there - all these people who are just starting to get somewhere. It was weird. Someone came up to me to talk. It wasn't `How are you?' It was `What are you doing here?' Fame is a funny old game."