Noisey采访 part 3
Famously this was Damon’s break up album. How were things within the band at this point?
[Titanic pause.] Well! Things are better now: we’re a bit older and a bit wiser and a little bit more focused. So much waffle’s been written about all that, you don’t really want to write any more about that! It’s all documented in laborious detail!
2. BLUR (1997)
Things were starting to deteriorate and we weren’t getting along as well as we had been, but despite that we managed to come out with songs like “Beetlebum” and “Song 2” and “Look Inside America,” which is one of my favorite Blur songs of all time. It was something of a fresh start where Graham took the lead and got involved with the production with Stephen Street. And Graham sang a song! “MOR”—which we got sued left, right, and center for. It’s quite clearly a Bowie rip off! It was another time where we decided to park where we’d got to, and move forward by taking a big step sideways. “Beetlebum” is a great live favorite and we play pretty much every track on that album live. “Song 2”—the song that launched a thousand car adverts! I think every car that’s ever been made has been advertised to that song. Plenty of other bands say they get sent the product that their music advertises, but I’ve never been sent a car. Never! “Song 2” came about incredibly quickly. Everybody had an idea: I had an idea for the drums going into that session—“Wouldn’t it be interesting if I did this and Graham I could bounce ideas off each other.” I think that’s how it started.
When you finished “Song 2” did you think this is going to be massive?
They all feel like that to me! Even “Essex Dogs” sounded like a hit single to me! I think bands are the worst at knowing what their hits are going to be. That’s what record companies are usually best at. I find it much easier with other people’s materials to hear the singles. You’re so emotionally invested in your own stuff, it tricks you into thinking other people are getting that emotion back, but you are because you put your blood sweat and tears into making the music, and that feeds back to you when you listen to it. That’s why every songwriter thinks their new song is the greatest song ever written and you can’t convince them otherwise until nobody buys it.
Do you ever listen to the lyrics Damon’s writing at the time?
In general that happens last: Damon does a guide vocal which is ordinarily just nonsense syllables strung together and you put that down with the tune. Sometimes the guide would stay and he’d pretend he’d written some lyrics. Like on “Song 2”—that’s just the guide vocal. We tried re-recording it many, many times but we could never get it as good as the guide, so we just kept it and Damon wrote down the nearest sounding words to his nonsense syllables. He may remember it differently, but “Wah lah wah wah” became “When I feel heavy metal.” It was called “Song 2” because it was the second song on the list of songs pinned to the studio wall—as you think of song names you scribble them on the board but “Song 2” never got a name.
1. MODERN LIFE IS RUBBISH (1993)
This was the record that meant we could have a career and we weren’t going to be one hit wonders. Modern Life Is Rubbish was a big risk and it was a raging battle with the record company to even be allowed to record it because it was going to be radically different. At the end of it, when we finally delivered the album the label, Dave Balfe wrote us a very nice letter apologizing for being such a pain and that he actually thought the record was very good. I found the letter the other day when I was going through a load of old correspondence from the 90s. A letter on Food Records headed paper and it ends with a kiss!
It didn’t graze the charts—it wasn’t a commercial success at all. Had we not followed it up with Parklife that could’ve been the end of our career. “For Tomorrow” is the first track on that album and it went on to be one of our most popular songs even though it’s not an obvious choice. We had lots of stuff on there that might have been shot down in flames, “Intermission” and “Commercial Break”—which were songs we’d do live during the Seymour days before we changed our name to Blur—we put all that stuff on and it might have had people running for cover, but it made a lot of people who might have dismissed us before sit up and think about us as a band.
We were making music rooted in English sensibilities and the classic English bands of the 60s, like the Kinks. It was music we liked and we thought the kind of music we were making had the potential to kick off something different. Turned out we were right and if it hadn’t have worked out I wouldn’t be speaking to you now. I’d be some bitter old bloke in the pub, cigarette in hand, sunglasses on, and a bad haircut. As it is I’ve just got a bad haircut!
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