Damon Albarn

by Martin Roach

  In a now familiar ‘Damon technique’ in times of trouble, a change of scenery was in order, this time Morocco. Recording for the first post-Coxon album was shifted to North Africa. “The whole country is mesmeric,” Damon enthused to The San Francisco Chronicle. “I went on a recommendation from some of my fellow musicians in Mali who were playing one of the sacred festivals they have in Morocco every year … We settled down very well and basically lived there for a month and a half. I was writing lyrics and singing in olive groves. It was a very elemental record. There was no sort of restrictions. It was just how it sounded like in the middle of the desert.”

  How it felt there on the other hand was extremely hot. The sessions took place in August in baking Marrakesh heat, with the temperature limiting how much work could be done during the day. Everyone involved were also hit with food poisoning courtesy of the local cuisine. “We all lost about a stone and no-one could be more than twenty minutes away from the nearest toilet,” says Hillier, recalling the time Blur discovered that Moroccan Life Is Rubbish. “It was 200 yards to the house where the toilets were and we had a bike outside and every now and then you’d see someone legging it back to the house.” Similar to the London sessions, there was a feeling of ‘anything goes’: Dave Rowntree idly tapping a beat on flightcases being wheeled off a truck was recorded as was Damon jumping up and down in an old truck parked outside, which made a satisfying squeaking noise. Cook flew out for five days and worked on three tracks, managing to find a use for Damon’s squeaky truck jumping.

  When time ran out in Morocco, the band decamped to Devon, where Albarn had bought a farm. The gear was packed up and shifted to a 200-year-old barn where final parts were recorded and the album was mixed. An early taste of things to come – eagerly awaited by those concerned about the involvement of Cook and the potential for a move into dancier territories – was the self-released single ‘Don’t Bomb When You Are The Bomb’, a virtually guitarless slice of Krautrocking electronica. Damon was quick to head those ‘Blur Go Dance’ headlines off at the pass. “It’s definitely a rockin’ record,” he told NME. “It goes from punk rock to hip-hop to prog rock. Two tracks we’ve already finished doing with Norman are amongst the most rock-oriented tracks we’ve ever done. Neither of us wanted to play on [his] past glories. He’s a devotee of The Clash, and I love The Clash, and that was where our tastes met.” In the end, Cook’s named appeared on only two tracks on the album, with Blur and Ben Hillier receiving the lion’s share of the credit along with the production assistance of London in-house producer Jason Cox.

  Back in London, Albarn’s political aspect – something he had tried to keep away from his musical persona – was coming to the fore. In January, he was seen on the streets of Westminster voicing his concern about growing storm clouds of war over Iraq. As he stood with protesters sporting ‘No War For Oil’ placards, he was an obvious target for reporters looking for a famous face to ‘sex up’ the story. “There has always been a sense of unease about this war and as it gets closer I think that is manifesting itself on the streets,” Damon told the BBC. “I feel that it is something that I was brought up with, that war is never an answer. In this particular instance I don’t think emotionally the country has any stomach for it. I don’t think we have been consulted as a democracy. It is the wrong war.” Albarn said he believed Saddam Hussein was “a monster who is the creation of the West anyway, so if we are going to depose him, we need to look at the elements in the West that created him.”

  Just before the album’s release, there was a reminder of how things used to be. The good old days of knees-ups and punch-ups were brought back with the release of the documentary feature film, Live Forever. Touted as ‘Britpop: The Movie’, the film had started life as a documentary about Oasis and the rise and fall of Creation records before developing into a larger piece about the mid-1990s British music explosion with Blur vs Oasis as the central motif. Deciding he would only proceed if he got the involvement of The Big Three – Blur, Oasis and Pulp’s Jarvis Cocker – John Dower’s film is nostalgic and surprisingly non-post-ironic. It’s also very funny, with hilarious offerings from the Gallaghers, Cocker and side players like Louise Wener of Sleeper. “I’m not going to be the guy who goes and makes the film about Iraq or Afghanistan, I’m just not that sort of film-maker. I guess I have that English thing of wanting to take the piss slightly. This was a real Carry On moment for British popular culture – Carry On Britpop – it felt like a slightly ludicrous time. I did become immediately nostalgic for these great characters. Only in this country could we turn a battle of the bands into a pantomime class war.” Noel Gallagher manages to sum up the film, the movement, the pages of newsprint written, John Harris’ Last Party book and the whole Blur vs Oasis malarkey in one crisp statement during Live Forever, when asked on camera by Dower about Oasis being deemed the working-class heroes compared to Blur’s more middle-class status. “I worked on building sites,” states Gallagher, clearly enjoying every moment, “that fundamentally makes my soul purer than theirs.” Interestingly, Damon’s interview takes place in what appears to be a working-men’s club. Gallagher’s is in a baronial throne room. “Damon was the first person who agreed to be in the film,” says Dower. “He said to me, ‘Pitch me the film.’ So I pitched him the film and he said, ‘Do you know, it’s the perfect time to make this film, I really want to do it.’ And he was really enthusiastic. And then on the day of the interview he turned up in a very strange mood, I was slightly thrown by him … but it made for a good interview!” Damon comes across rather oddly in Live Forever and his contributions aren’t particularly funny, intentionally or not. “I’m not a film-maker who stitches people up… I have nothing to hide,” recounts John Dower. “Then just before the film came out, his people started to ring up saying Damon needs to come in for editorial approval … and the day he came in to look at it, he was in a completely different mood, he was very bouncy and he said, ‘I want to do my interview again!’ I told him that’s not fair on the other people in it. ‘Okay, I’ll just watch it.’ He watched it and he was really big about it. He said, ‘I’m true to myself and I like what you’ve done, I get a kicking off the Gallaghers but nothing new there!’

  As preparations were underway to release Blur’s new album – now named Think Tank – and perhaps to draw a line under the Coxon issue, an announcement was made about the guitarist’s ‘replacement’. Only it wasn’t to be a replacement at all. Former Verve guitarist Simon Tong – who’d been writing and rehearsing with borderline Northern supergroup The Shining – was unveiled in the first week of March at an industry event in London held by Blur’s new label, Parlophone. The event was away from prying eyes and a carefully worded statement made clear that Tong was there to help the band out for live performances only – he wasn’t the new Coxon. He’d already been rehearsing with Damon, Alex and Dave. ‘He’s a lovely bloke and he’s fitting in,’ was the drummer’s assessment to industry website OTWS. “He’s done the impossible, really. He’s come into what could have been a very awkward situation with a bunch of people who all knew each other and have done this for years and he’s fit in perfectly.” Damon was inclined to play down Tong’s role a little at the time, making everything appear very casual, perhaps to avoid fans putting too much pressure on Tong and his role within Blur. “He’s just been basically learning old stuff and playing together and trying to get some kind of sound together that is our own,” the singer told Under The Radar. “Cause it’s the most depressing thing, I think in the world, if you try and recreate the past and fail. So it’s best just to sort of really have an attitude of, ‘Well, this is how it sounds now so let’s really get involved in how it sounds now and feel comfortable with that.’”

  Tong was not represented on Blur’s sixth album – Think Tank – which was released in May 2003. Graham Coxon was, along with Norman Cook, William Orbit, that squeaky truck in Marrakesh and some underwater cymbals. A big, unmade bed of an album, Think Tank is easier to admire than
it is to like. Opener ‘Ambulance’ has synth washes, honking sax effects, shimmying backing singers but not much by way of a tune. It’s as cool and knowing as the album’s Banksy sleeve – and just as difficult to relate to. ‘Out Of Time’ is safer ground, with Damon’s simple guitar riff, beautiful vocal and a Moroccan middle eight, its poignancy was focused by a video featuring life on board an American aircraft carrier. Released as a single, it was a good solid No.5 chart placing for a lovely song. The Norman Cook propelled ‘Crazy Beat’ ruffles things up a bit with its squelchy vocal effects, descending punk chords and frankly rum lyrics, before the summery swoon of ‘Good Song’. This track features the simplest, wolf whistle of a guitar motif that’s liquid sunshine over a lazy, croaky vocal from Damon. Gorgeous. Another single from the album, accompanied by a wistful two colour animated video by artist David Shrigley, it earned the worst chart placing at 22 that the band had managed since ‘Sunday Sunday’ in 1993. So there you go. ‘On The Way To The Club’ has the kind of dubby take that wouldn’t have gone amiss on the Gorillaz album with a jaded lyric that’s reflective of Death Of A Party and a Kraftwerk keyboard workout. The drug heavy ‘Brothers and Sisters’ explores similar themes and has Damon stating that we’re all drug-takers and then proceeding to list most of the options open to us, as if he’s chairing a Narcotics Anonymous meeting. Its waspy synths, hand-claps and lack of tune aren’t easy on the ear … and that’s probably the idea. ‘Caravan’ is a lo-fi ambient croon from Damon before ‘We’ve Got A File On You’ is that punk rock moment – albeit with a sense that it’s being shouted from a minaret. One minute palate cleanser duly delivered, ‘Moroccan People’s Revolutionary Bowls Club’ comes along like a North African version of Manic Street Preachers’ ‘La Tristesse Durera’ with unattractive keyboard settings; all very clever and worldly but a listener needs to be romanced as well as impressed. ‘Sweet Song’ – aided by William Orbit – does just that and is sploshed with the same liquid sunshine as ‘Good Song’, as Damon sings of a sweet contentment despite his own failings and those of others. The longest track on offer is ‘Jets’, a plodding piece with brushes, minimalist tune and more weird keyboard plinks – the synths seem to be on hand right through the album to counter the lack of Coxon’s sonic oddness. ‘Gene By Gene’ is a looped up Norman Cook job featuring that squeaky Moroccan truck and cymbals being abused by Dave Rowntree and Ben Hillier. “I told Dave that if you hit a cymbal and lower it into a bucket of water it pitch-shifts,” says Hillier. “So we got an old fish tank and filled it up with water and spent all day hitting cymbals and lowering them into the water, sampling them and making loops. Gongs too — anything we could hit and lower into water. Norman made a loop out of Damon’s squeaking sounds which fitted with the cymbal sounds and it turned into a tune.” Tucked at the back of the album is the track that bears the name of Graham Coxon alongside the remaining members of Blur. Billing itself as a ballad for the good times, ‘Battery In Your Leg’ features John Lennon piano stabs scrubbed down with familiar Coxon noise washes; it’s stirring stuff and you have to fight the feeling that it’s one of the album’s strongest tracks. That would be just too obvious wouldn’t it?

  With that thought in mind, it would be expected that the press would be getting a good run up to give the album a critical kicking. They’d had a good career, the most popular member had left … easy target. Amazingly, that wasn’t to be and the reviews were so glowing you could toast a crumpet on them. Uncut had it down as, “the sharpest, most imaginative and downright listenable album of Blur’s career to date … a grown-up alt.rock album of breathtaking potency and invention.” “Against the odds,” reckoned NME, “Think Tank is a success, a record which might not mean much to Strokes fans but which shows Blur’s creative spark is undimmed even while their stomach for the pop fight fades.” Mojo: “Invigorating and intriguing, as hummable as it is inventive … it’s also possibly the best thing Blur have done.” Praise indeed; so much so it was nice to have a note of dissent. One was provided by Graham Coxon in June. Prompted by a reader in Q magazine’s ever cheeky ‘Cash For Questions’ section, where music fans are coerced into asking artists things that the journalists don’t have the nerve to ask, the guitarist was asked what he would have done to improve Think Tank. “Chucked the computer out and actually worked on making music instead of playing with Lego electronics,” he offered. “And written songs.” In retrospect, he’s spot on.

  The album was released as the first thrust of the invasion of Iraq was underway, spurring Albarn into attending protest rallies and questioning his fellow artists about where they stood. “We’ve all had to stomach a type of horror which we maybe thought we’d never experience in our lifetime, and it’s now become a part of everyday life,” he told NME. “So I would have thought the responsibility of any open-minded artist would be to try to make some sort of sense out of the chaos we’re all involved in. I don’t know where the Michael Stipes of the world have gone.”

  By way of contrast to the gruelling tour schedules of the past, Think Tank’s live schedule was initially more geared towards its media profile, with showcase performances on ITV’s CD:UK and the BBC’s Jonathan Ross Show, an MTV special filmed in Camden and special ‘secret’ performances for fans and journalists in France, Germany and Spain. When the live work kicked in, there was a five-night stint at London’s Astoria before the festival circuit beckoned in America, Japan and the UK. In September, the Blur wanderlust of old reappeared and the band played two dates at the Gorbunova venue in Moscow.

  When the album was left off the shortlist for the Mercury Music Prize that year, the band were oddly miffed. “I don’t need a fucking twat panel to tell me it isn’t as good as M People,” was Alex James’s pithy assessment of the situation. Damon kept his own counsel, perhaps wisely after he had jerked around with the Mercury panel in his Gorillaz guise. They had to console themselves with getting Q magazine’s ‘Album of the Year’ instead. With so many plaudits, 2003 ended with a rare critical stumble for Damon. Billed as a “journal of no-fi demos recorded in hotel rooms during Blur’s US tour”, the Democrazy album was a ‘brave to the point of foolish’ idea to release a disc of “ideas in progress” on the Honest Jon’s label. “I wanted people to have an insight into the music-making process … to unveil it. Literally, me and a guitar in a series of hotel rooms.” It did not get a warm reception from critics. The Guardian said it was, “occasionally brilliant and frequently irritating beyond belief. It is packed with interesting ideas, but is founded in an appalling self-importance. It is, you are forced to concede, a record not unlike its author.” And that was one of the better reviews. NME asked, “What illuminating revelation do we learn from the half conceived, cotton-mouthed rubbish that constitutes Democrazy? In full: ‘Thank Christ Blur usually finish writing their songs before they sell them, otherwise they’d be shit.’” The winner for worst review must surely be Dot Music with the following: “On the evidence of Democrazy, the wrong self-indulgent flake got fired from Blur.”

  The negative reviews were still ringing in Damon’s ears as Blur did a final tour of the UK to round off the year. On December 12, they played at the Bournemouth International Centre. They performed a mixed set – including the Coxon track ‘Battery In Your Leg’ – before finishing with ‘The Universal’.

  At the time of writing, this is the last time that Blur have played live for a very long time. For many, it felt like the end.

  Chapter 17

  DEMON DAYS

  If there’s one thing likely to fire the willingness to succeed of someone like Damon Albarn, it’s a bit of competition. And some good old-fashioned music industry gossip. These were things he was more than familiar with by this stage of his career but he was about to receive more than his fair share on both fronts.

  March 2004 saw the release of an astonishingly good single by Graham Coxon – ‘Freakin Out’. A hideously catchy slice of new wave pop with a finger-achingly fast riff, it was an absolutely clear signal that t
he previously troubled guitarist had more to his solo canon than odd, metallic folk. Lyrically, Coxon stated he had nothing to fear and nothing to prove. Odd that – given that scrawled across the inner sleeve of the Coxon-less Think Tank was the message, ‘I Ain’t Got Nothing To Be Scared Of.’ The critics loved the single and were wowed by the album that followed, Happiness In Magazines. “The best Graham Coxon imaginable,” said Q. Uncut judged it, “his most accessible work since Parklife.” The Guardian, tellingly, called it, “a great lost Blur album.” Maybe, just maybe, there could be another Blur album, just like the old days?

  The Blur rumour that really got people’s attention appeared not on a fan website or a music magazine but in a daily tabloid. The Mirror’s 3am gossip column – normally the natural home of wayward popstars and drunken soap actresses – boldly claimed that Coxon was headed back into Blur. Well, at least the headline did. A furious Coxon took the trouble to ring Designer Magazine – only Coxon would choose such a publication to rebuff a story in a British red top – to set the record straight. But while pointing out that, actually, he was about to start working with former Blur producer Stephen Street, he managed to make matters worse by confirming that he had met up with the other members of the band. “It wasn’t like a secret meeting; it was just that we didn’t tell anybody,” he told the magazine. “It’s nobody’s business, but it doesn’t mean there are any secrets. It was quite nice meeting up because we went through a lot together and we haven’t really seen each other to communicate one-to-one for quite a long time. There was quite a lot to say to each other. It’s good to see each other every now and then and I think we’ll see each other now and then in the future, but I think that’s really to mend stuff emotionally more than anything else.” From here on in, the foundations were laid for the ‘Coxon Returns To Blur’ rumour mill … and business would be brisk over the next two years.