Damon Albarn

by Martin Roach

  From this all time low, Damon’s band could only improve. During the summer and early autumn of 1992, Blur tried to repair the physical, mental and financial damage they had suffered over the last eighteen months. Gradually, thoughts began to turn to new material and the band holed up in Maison Rouge to try to regain some focus and composure. The resulting second album, Modern Life Is Rubbish, actually faired worse than their debut commercially on its initial release, and enjoyed far less media coverage, but it was a watershed release. Even though many of the ideas were not complete, Modern Life Is Rubbish was a crucial sign of intent.

  At first however, things had to get worse before they could get better. With Blur talking up an English theme for the new record, the quintessential post-punk Englishman Andy Partridge of XTC was chosen to produce the sessions. Ex-Eurythmic Dave Stewart’s Church Studios in Crouch End were used for the sessions, but they were disastrous. Things did not start well when Damon introduced himself by telling the producer how brilliant ‘Making Plans For Nigel’ was – a track actually written by Partridge’s ex-XTC cohort and now-rival Colin Moulding. The band was still drinking profusely and they struggled to gel with Partridge’s studio approach. When Partridge was asked by XTC biographer Chris Twomey when it all started to go wrong he said, “When they picked up their instruments and started playing! It wasn’t totally successful. We didn’t seem to hit it off, I think I am a bit dictatorial, I know what I like and I don’t think they were delivering what I thought they were capable of. Maybe they thought I was pushing them a bit too hard. Maybe it was the ‘difficult second album syndrome’ for them.”

  Only three Blur tracks were recorded at these ill-fated sessions: ‘Sunday Sunday’, ‘Seven Days’, and ‘Coping’ as well as an ill-advised cover of Buggles’s ‘Video Killed The Radio Star’ but none ever surfaced. Blur felt Partridge was trying to mould them into another Jesus Jones, and they were suspicious of Balfe’s commercial motives (they later wrote ‘When The Cows Come Home’ specifically about Balfe’s approach). They refused to use the sessions and Balfe – having paid for them – was furious. Meanwhile, Graham had bumped into Stephen Street at The Marquee for a Cranberries gig and Blur began to push for his reinstatement as producer – at least with Leisure having recouped, Blur enjoyed a degree of independence many of their peers sorely missed. Balfe eventually acquiesced and so their now famously fruitful relationship was renewed. It was late autumn 1992 by now and recording went so well that the album was complete just after Christmas. However, they still weren’t in the clear yet – when Blur took the proposed album tracks to Balfe in the New Year, he rejected them, saying that they needed at least another two singles. Damon was stung by the criticism, but went away and wrote the tracks the next day, calling them ‘For Tomorrow’ and ‘Chemical World’.

  Before the public got a taster of the new material, Blur played a low key one-off gig at the Fulham Hibernian, supported by the most unlikely of musical opposites – the fashionably ‘PC’ Huggy Bear and The Salvation Army Band. At the show, a select number of free one-sided copies of a track called ‘The Wassailing Song’ were given away to 400 lucky punters. The rest of the nation had to wait until the new single in April.

  The importance of ‘Popscene’ in Blur’s rebirth after the debut album has been scrutinised in great depth. However, their next single, ‘For Tomorrow’, is actually of greater significance, despite also being a commercially muted affair. Without ‘For Tomorrow’, Balfe refused to accept the album and Blur’s difficulties could have continued indefinitely. Musically ‘For Tomorrow’ was a considerable progression from Blur’s previous work, even ‘Popscene’. Coming after nearly a year’s absence, there was considerable pressure, particularly since their last effort had failed so spectacularly. Damon himself raised the stakes by calling the new single “a ‘Waterloo Sunset’ for the 1990s”, but this time his confidence seemed justified (albeit a little exaggerated). The single was a melancholic tale of London life, complete with killer ‘la la la’ chorus. It is ironic that someone who had been repeatedly lambasted for banality made his biggest lyrical breakthrough with such a line. Suddenly, Damon was a worthy lyricist – his vision of the contrast between romanticised London and the grim Westway of reality conjured up visions of grey tower blocks and modern day greyness. Damon superbly reinforced his new vision with a spoken piece laid over the closing choruses which spoke of Primrose Hill, London ice, and Emperor’s Gate. Vocally he also rose from the plaintive dregs of shoe-gazing and baggy and assumed an arrogance and control that were surprising and highly appropriate. Against this, the music sound-tracked his new theme ideally, with weird twists on music hall melodies, finely detailed guitars and wandering, adept bass lines. The sparse drum structure and string arrangements mixed a sense of lush depth and bare simplicity. When hooked together by that classic pop chorus, it was a blinding comeback single, and probably Blur’s first epic record after four years of trying. It was to be a single of pivotal importance.

  Oddly enough, on its release in April 1993, ‘For Tomorrow’ only reached No.28, so in many senses it was as much a commercial flop as ‘Popscene’. The video promo was directed by Absolute Beginners director Julien Temple but even this failed to incite extra sales. Crucially however, Blur were not plunged into the spiral of destruction they had been after the commercial death of ‘Popscene’. They were convinced their new focus was valid and that the already completed album would open a rich new stream of thought that ‘For Tomorrow’ only hinted at.

  The core of this fresh angle was immediately apparent with the photo sessions for the new project, entitled ‘British Image No.1’. Blur were no longer the pretty faced, bowl-haired teen idols – instead they wore turned-up jeans, Fred Perry shirts and cherry red Dr. Martens, with sharp suits and trimmed hair, sharing the photograph with a huge Great Dane. When Blur went on a photo shoot for a weekly paper in an old Jag as well, it brought back memories of The Dave Clark 5, but they were casting their net much further than that. There had been hints of the new Blur at both the Reading and Glastonbury festivals of 1992, where the sharp suits and some new songs were previewed. However, the real extent of their new focus only became fully apparent on the release of their second album, Modern Life Is Rubbish. They’d had the germ of the idea for some time, and many of the tracks for months – it was worth the wait.

  The band set their stall out on the inner sleeve with an oil painting of them on the underground in full ‘British Image No.1’ regalia. Through a mixture of infectious pop tunes, dark melancholic ballads, and a lyrical progression equivalent to Roger Hargreaves winning the Booker prize, Blur produced an album that made Leisure seem like someone else’s record. Thematically, lyrically, musically and visually, Modern Life Is Rubbish was nothing short of a complete rebirth.

  The British focus was the crux of the whole transformation. The album was originally going to be called England vs America, and then British Life 1, but both were disposed in favour of Modern Life Is Rubbish which the band felt was more universal and reflected the themes in the album more accurately (the actual phrase was taken from a piece of graffiti on a wall near to Marble Arch). Yes, there had been elements of that on Leisure and more hints with the brassy Englishness of ‘Popscene’, but it had never been articulated to this degree before. This was a very English record, peculiarly London-centric, and unashamedly so.

  Lyrically, Damon was unrecognisable. Some credit for that must go to Justine, his girlfriend, (whose own band Elastica would soon start to take off) who frequently scolded Damon for his lyrical laziness and pointed him towards her enormous record collection. The spoken paragraph that closed ‘For Tomorrow’ was just the start – the whole record was a London montage full of the underground, the Portobello Road, traffic jams, peeping toms, adverts, commuters, check-out girls and the rush hour. Damon sang about Sunday colour supplements, Sunday roasts, McDonalds and sugary tea, Songs of Praise and Mother’s Pride. Whilst grunge ranted on about self-loathing and anti-consumerism (even
though it had become utterly consumerist itself), Damon was singing about catching a bus into the country, Essex man and the joys of Saturday markets. He was now cramming decidedly awkward language into pop songs such as “carotene tan”, “TV guide” and “the Westway”. The English suburban malaise was viewed with a mixture of fascination and regret, as he introduced us to a range of characters, relationships and rituals through a predominantly narrative style. From being a lazy, reticent by-stander, he was now a biting social commentator.

  Vocally, Damon dipped into several record collections for inspiration. Julian Cope, Bowie, and every band who had ever sung with a London accent were talked about in the media and those influences are clear to see. At least he had dropped the awful reedy whine of the debut album, with a deeper maturity giving his voice a serenade quality.

  Musically, Modern Life was a complex yet direct pop album, and a veritable pop encyclopaedia. The array of instruments at last drew on the band’s technically trained past with, amongst other things, a Solina organ, timpani, sleigh bells, Casio keyboards, drum box, Moog and melodica being used. To enrich the scenario still more, Blur also used slightly more unusual sonic tricks, such as a shopping PA system, a Butlin’s tannoy, a typewriter bell, a triangle and even a Black & Decker. Graham’s immaculate guitar work was now free of his MBV fixation, whilst Alex had also developed enormously from the days of their debut. Dave was improving too, and his exact precision nailed down the Blur tracks to an infallible beat. The Duke String Quartet added more texture to the record, but overall the pop elements took second place behind the punk edge, with songs like the storming ‘Advert’ taking centre stage. There were pub knees-ups with ‘Intermission’, acoustic moods with ‘Blue Jeans’ and soft smooches with ‘Miss America’. The instrumental variety maintained the level of interest throughout, and was cheekily rounded off by the two daft instrumental tracks ending each side, ‘Intermission’ and ‘Commercial Break’. Both were strong hints of future work and older influences. There were, of course, dull moments such as ‘Resigned’ and the lyrically questionable ‘Villa Rosie’ but these were in the minority.

  The effect of this musical melange was to create a very parochial sound, which clearly threw up references to a litany of English bands. From hereon, Blur would be plagued for some years by constant but largely justifiable references in the press to peculiar British groups. It is true that some aspects (but not all) of second-album Blur fit neatly into a lineage of clipped British pop. In Modern Life you could hear traces of Madness on ‘Sunday Sunday’, The Kinks on ‘For Tomorrow’, Buzzcocks on ‘Colin Zeal’ and The Smiths on ‘Blue Jeans’ to name but a tiny few. To claims that Blur were just recycling the past, Damon had a perfect answer. He claimed that as the 1990s had such mountains of precedent, that no band could possibly be completely original, and so it was better to consciously use that past to recreate something new. In doing so, he was cleverly excusing Blur from claims of retrogression, as this extract from NME shows: “Modern Life is the rubbish of the past. We all live on the rubbish, and because it’s built up over such a time, there’s no need for originality anymore. There are so many old things to splice together in infinite permutations that there is absolutely no need to create anything new.”

  The entire list of reference points has been well documented elsewhere. Suffice to say that Modern Life was dramatically at odds with Leisure on this point. Whereas the debut record had been very much an album of its time, complete with incumbent baggy beats and phased guitars, Modern Life was anything but that. Blur were now scouring the musical past, taking pieces from here and there as required, covering almost everything from music hall to electro pop, as long as it was English. It was a record inspired and heavily immersed in another time and yet, paradoxically, it was a very modern album.

  In May 1993, the most unfashionable thing to release was an intensely Anglophile concept record, full of English suburban detail, based around a third person narrative of everyday people’s sterile lives, and mixed with a distaste for all things American. That is exactly what Modern Life was. It should be acknowledged not because it pays homage to the likes of The Small Faces, The Kinks, and Madness, but because it did not draw from Led Zeppelin, Neil Young and all of the godfathers of grunge. Maybe the album will not be remembered as Blur’s finest, but it is certainly their bravest.

  * * *

  Unfortunately, not everyone was convinced. The album was released to a mixed critical response, although most reviewers did at least acknowledge the progress made since their last long player. As with their previous two singles, the album did not initially fair that brilliantly in the charts either, reaching No.15 then dropping out of the listings three weeks later. By now however, it was almost as if Blur were too involved in their world to notice. Sure, they were disappointed it didn’t make more of a commercial impact, but they couldn’t help but feel positive. The corresponding press campaign was not exactly ubiquitous, with only one cover feature, but the articles that were published dramatically underlined Blur’s new stance. In fact, Damon’s increasingly accomplished interview technique meant that he quite often articulated the germ of the idea more proficiently in the media than on the actual record.

  He explained that their dreadful American experience had been the creative catalyst for this album, and that the endless shopping malls and bubble culture appalled him almost as much as the Americanisation of England he saw back at home. Damon told Puncture: “America wasn’t an option, so we concentrated on our own identity. We had started on the long road of odd pop.” Through the drunken haze of that terrible US tour, the obscene nature of the States had seemed all the more bloated and superficial, and by the time they arrived homesick back in Blighty, they loathed America, as he told NME: “We have stretched our sound considerably. When we were in America, England became this wonderful, fantasy place. The album is a soundtrack for a fantasy London, covering the last thirty years.” He also said to Melody Maker, “it really fascinates me now. I’ve really got into the idea of narrowing everything down to the Englishness of everything we do, so everything has much more force because it holds more relevance, you’re deliberately focussing on what you know and what you are as a result of your conditioning. It’s just an idea of paring yourself down to what you really are. This is a fascinating time to be English and it’s great to have things around that focus.” Other articles saw Blur spray-painting the album title all over London and a Clacton band stand, and Damon announcing “Modern Life Is Rubbish is the most significant comment on popular culture since ‘Anarchy In The UK’”. Damon was clearly proud of being English, and disliked what he called the “coca-colonisation” of his home country.

  Perhaps most controversially of all, in a Melody Maker piece by The Stud Brothers entitled “The Empire Strikes Back”, Damon said, “I’m not saying that everyone should put on a fake Cockney accent and sing about the Old Bull & Bush, but I do feel that our culture is under siege and we are losing it.” This article coincided with the election of BNP candidate Derek Beakon to an east London council and a growing fear of resurgent fascism. Damon carried on undeterred: “We should be proud of being British and not simply follow what comes from America.” As examples he cited ‘Olde Worlde’ pubs saying, “it’s just like Britain has become a holiday camp full of cutesy British people. The pubs have become a real plastic replica of what they once actually were.” He also slated American music by saying, “don’t tell me Nirvana have changed the face of American rock. No-one should kid themselves that anything happens in America unless the establishment thinks there is a buck in it for them. I’m fed up with people taking over the world on the back of that crass nonsense. And what have they got to say for themselves? ‘I’m fucked up.’ Fantastic.” Just in case some people hadn’t got the point, Damon also said, “We killed baggy with our first album, this one will kill grunge.”

  Like it or not, it was gripping stuff. This was all a very long way from the early days of Blur celebrating superficialit
y as an art form. The dramatic thematic change and contentious statements whipped up yet another controversy around Blur – some sensed the image change was just another thinly veiled attempt to manipulate the media just like the promotional schemes at the time of ‘She’s So High’. Others were not convinced that such a stylistic change could be genuine, although Paul Weller publicly backed Blur. Elsewhere, the “Empire Strikes Back” article in particular incited a barrage of reader’s letters for and against Blur’s stance. Many knee-jerk observers myopically talked about Blur flirting with fascism just as Morrissey had done so disastrously at a Finsbury Park support slot to Madness. Others saw it as intended, a genuine attempt to seize back the initiative from the all-conquering Americans. Damon himself recognised the dangers they might be toying with, but felt their sincere intentions would ultimately show through. Still, the band turned down a front cover of Scooter magazine and refused offers to play at scooter rallies for fear of inciting the wrong kind of following, a problem that had plagued Madness for years. Besides, the album was not unreservedly pro-Britain anyway, as he told NME: “It doesn’t hail England as some Utopian place. It doesn’t say England is a place of growth and happiness, there is an underlying decay.” In many senses Modern Life Is Rubbish was as much about a dying country as a vibrant one.

  Regardless of commercial success or failure, the underlying premise of the new album was central to Blur’s very survival: “We had to make Modern Life and we were disappointed when no-one got it. It was certainly the moment when things turned and we pulled ourselves together. We literally had very little to lose.” He also revealed to Select that “Modern Life was the beginning of us having an idea of what we wanted to do. If we hadn’t lost all our money, we wouldn’t have made the album so quickly but it worked.” Damon seems to have an unerring ability to stand outside and observe the current musical climate, and this is possibly one of his greatest strengths. With alarming accuracy, and at a time when Kurt Cobain could do no wrong, Damon recalls that the reserved reaction to Modern Life Is Rubbish merely fuelled their resolve: “We were at an all-time low and I remember going to the record company and saying, ‘You’ve just got to let us do it, in six months time you’ll be signing bands who sound English because it’s going to be what everyone wants.’”