Bit of a Blur

by Alex James

  Riots, Fights, Guns

  There were a lot of bands playing at the festival and there was a girl dressed up as a cowboy dobbing out Jägermeister, which we didn’t have to pay for because we had special badges. We went onstage really late and by that time we had drunk all the Jägermeister.

  It was one of the times when the band was drunk and better for it. It was a tiny club and it was packed. There were people outside who couldn’t get in. Everybody was drunk. The sound man had been warned not to turn the PA up too loud. I’d heard him scream, ‘FUCK OFF!’ to the man from the record company. Inspired, we all turned everything up to maximum and let it rip.

  The crowd went totally berserk: a mob of moshing, surfing, stage diving and screaming. All the crap with the remix and the manager and the people who thought we were from Manchester flew out the window and we played better than we’d ever played before. We could all play really well by then. We knew exactly what we were doing and we were brilliant.

  It was the perfect recipe. A pissed-off and pissed-up, passionately anticipated band with a lot to prove playing in a packed venue. We whipped up a frenzy. It was everything you’d hope for if you were in a band or in the audience, but it was absolutely out of control and the venue cut the power after the third song. The crowd started to riot. They were destroying the place and we had to run for it. We got out before the police arrived, but a lot of people were arrested.

  The radio station had never seen anything like it and washed their hands of us. The record company were aghast and they sent a bossy lady down to keep an eye on things. They were threatening to pull the finance for the tour, which would have meant no T-shirt money and big trouble. The bossy lady kept putting her hand on my knee and looking into my eyes.

  The next show was in Ithaca, New York State, in a small bar. Jim Merlis, our American publicist, had fast become a friend. He was always asking me to say, ‘Cheers.’ He really liked the way I said ‘Cheers’. I really liked the way he said, ‘Coffee.’ ‘Corfee.’

  His girlfriend’s parents lived in Ithaca. We were invited to dinner at their home. They are physicists working at Cornell University. Bob Richardson won the Nobel Prize for Physics when he discovered superfluidity. He said he was as surprised as anybody that he’d found it. He stumbled across it when he was cooling some helium down to a very low temperature and the helium started doing weird things. He said that if you stir a superfluid, it spins forever. ‘Forever?’ I said. He smiled and nodded. It was during the asparagus hollandaise that I realised I really liked these people. They were both highly intelligent. I asked them questions all night. We talked about cosmology a bit. I didn’t get to talk about those things very often, and my mind was full of it, from the astronomy book.

  We went along to the local radio station in the morning. The DJ instantly identified himself as a buffoon. He had appalling coiffure and perfect teeth. It was a disaster from the moment he opened his mouth and introduced us as ‘the Blur’. From Manschester. He asked Graham what he thought about the new Seattle sound. Graham said he fucking hated it. Our hapless host put a record on straight away and flew into a rage. Radio stations can be fined for broadcasting swearing on the airwaves, but it was Graham’s flat refusal to engage in platitudes that had really riled him. After the adverts we were back on air, but someone accidentally said ‘shit’ again and that was the end of it. We were hauled up before the director of programmes to apologise. He seemed like quite a nice bloke. He said, ‘Just don’t fucking swear on my airwaves.’

  The tour staggered slowly along the East Coast. In the taxi on the way to the 9.30 club in Washington, DC, I felt Damon bristling next to me. He must have been pulling faces at the dudes in the next car, because as I looked up one of them had pulled a gun out and was pointing it at him.

  By the time we got down to Atlanta for a couple of days off, I was the only man standing. The Beastie Boys were staying at the hotel, which was on Peachtree Street. Everything in Atlanta is on Peachtree Street.

  I asked to be put through to a Beastie and said, ‘Hey, I’m Alex from Manschester, what’s up?’ He didn’t want to come drinking. I went to a bar on my own and met a girl called Michelle. She had an Alfa Romeo Spider and she took me on a tour of the city. There are a lot of people who want to have a good time in Atlanta. We went to a gay bar, a lesbian bar, a college bar. We went everywhere. It was a great city and a great car. She drove fast while slugging tequila from a bottle. She said she had another car and the B52s had used it in the video for ‘Love Shack’. They were friends of hers. As I try to recall the weekend we spent together it feels like I spent it inside that video. She personified everything about the song and I wondered at the time if it had been written about her. She was a singularly striking presence. Everywhere we went everyone seemed to know her. She was from Athens, where R.E.M. are from. She told me she had been Michael Stipe’s girlfriend. Much later on, I mentioned her to him and he said, ‘Uh-oh!’

  It was unusual to meet anyone beautiful who hadn’t been involved with another musician. I discovered that I’d shared the model from New York with Jesus Jones’ keyboard player, who I’d met in Freud’s a few weeks earlier.

  Michelle gave me her address in Athens and the next time the band were in Atlanta I got someone to drive me to Athens to look for her, but I never found her again.

  We wound all around the South, through Texas and back up north to Chicago and Minneapolis. The gigs were going brilliantly, but the organs of the mass media were focused on Seattle. I was in an alcoholic stupor and drank beer for breakfast. I had two black eyes, one from Dave, the other from Graham.

  Graham became very lively in drink. Dave just got on with it quietly. I can’t remember why Graham punched me, but I was always annoying him. He became very distressed when Audrey Hepburn died and listened to loud, doomy music in the front lounge on his own for days. Even though we fought, we were united. There was never any question of us not wanting to be in a band together.

  It takes three days to drive from Minneapolis to Vancouver, a terrifying thought. Dave asked if I wanted to learn bridge and we dealt the first hand as the bus pulled away. We were still playing when we arrived in Vancouver.

  We’d stopped halfway in a place called Miles City, Montana. Cities everywhere have similarities, and tiny places do, too. We could have been in a village in the African bush. It was hot and dusty and there was a prefab supermarket that never closed, a motel, a few houses and car parks. A local approached one of the crew for their autograph; they’d never met anyone from England before.

  I went for a walk with Damon. When I was wandering around somewhere I’d never been before, as I often was, I found it hard not to get lost. I usually walked in a straight line. It served me well, the straight-line principle. I never get lost heading in a constant direction. We walked out of Miles City and kept on walking, and pretty soon we were out on the searing plains. It was sweltering and hazy and ever so quiet. I spotted a squashed snake in the road, and all of a sudden noticed another. Then there were squashed snakes everywhere I looked. I was wearing shorts and plimsolls, and I didn’t have my cricket bat with me. Damon is never scared of anything. He said, ‘Just watch where you’re going. They’re just snakes, they’re not going to bite you.’

  I recognised that I was in one of those situations that I only seemed to get in with Damon. A similar thing had happened in Alabama when the bus had stopped in a lay-by. We sprang from the bus and ran as fast as we could through the fields until we were out of breath. I found myself standing next to a waist-high, muddy tower. I said, ‘Look at this! Strange! Looks like a nest.’ I peeked in the top, and there was a huge spider as big as a fist in there. I said, ‘Good job we spotted that!’, then we realised that the whole swampy field was high-density spider accommodation. They were huge, and they were everywhere. The bus driver had been winding us up about them. He’d said if you get bitten by one of those critters, all you have time to say is ‘I’ve been bitten by a f—’ before you died. He was
definitely lying, but we weren’t in a good place. There were flies landing on us, and a lot of whirry bugs bombing around, the sort that really big spiders like to eat. The whole place was humming, really noisily. It was only when I stood still that I realised I was sinking into a bog. It was unpleasant, and we crept out of there very carefully.

  But we had wandered into snake territory this time. Damon was wearing sandals. He’d found a stick that he was whacking and swishing around in front of him. My strategy was more the creeping-along-quietly approach. He walloped a big cactus and said, ‘Don’t be a poof!’ I said, ‘Well, why are you trying to fight them, they’ll get out of your way if you give them time.’ We’d seen quite a lot of live ones by now. They were rattlesnakes, and if you listened carefully you could hear the odd rattle and hiss. A man with a rifle appeared on top of the hill we were headed towards. He was in full survival nutter gear: big boots, fatigues, ammo belt, combat jacket, peaked cap and mirror shades. He was performing some kind of drill or ritual. He’d take a few paces then drop on one knee and take aim with his rifle. It would still have been alarming even if every time he took aim he hadn’t been pointing his gun directly at us. His movements were jerky and insane. He was definitely trying to scare us; whether he was going to shoot us remained to be seen. I thought probably not, but when you’re in the desert and a particularly strange man is pointing his gun at you, you can’t be sure. Damon is the only person I’ve ever known who would use a bent stick to front up a man with a gun. It was the second time that fortnight that someone had a gun on him and I’d been right beside him. There was no cover. I thought it was best to ignore them both and concentrate on not standing on a snake.

  America had been frustrating in many ways. We didn’t fit in. We weren’t from Manchester, or Seattle. The remix greeted us everywhere we went. Graham was beside himself about Audrey, Dave was very quiet. People kept pointing guns at Damon. I had two black eyes. We crossed the Canadian border and it felt like someone had flicked a switch that made everything all right again. We’d been playing in bars, mainly, in America, but the venue in Vancouver was huge. We went along to the radio station, and ‘There’s No Other Way’ was number one in their chart. Everybody was really pleased to see us. The presenter knew that I was from Bournemouth and liked cheese. He knew that Damon liked Hermann Hesse; that Graham was a painter and Dave was the quiet one. They were all asking about ‘the Boston Riot’, enthralled and laughing about the bad remix. The station had been playing the album cut of the track. The presenter said that the Seattle sound sucked. Seattle is the next town south down the coast. We were being hailed as the saviours of music. We were fêted. It was Damon’s birthday, too.

  The venue was on the waterfront and there were speedboats for hire. Graham and I didn’t have any ID but the speedboat man recognised us and let us take one. I was just opening up the throttle when our record came on the onboard radio. We opened her up and spent the afternoon zooming around the harbour.

  Back at the venue, things weren’t going so well. The dressing room was the smartest, newest, cleanest one we’d had on the whole tour and Damon and Dave had demolished it. They’d taken the ceiling down and were starting on the walls. At some time previously there had evidently been a food fight and a beer-throwing contest. The people from the radio station had come along to hang out and thought it was brilliant. I went out to the bar with Damon. We were celebrating his birthday and being number one in Canada. There was a bottle of Tabasco on the bar, for Bloody Marys. He said, ‘Watch this!’ and necked the whole thing. Temporarily, he went into convulsions and was sick. Then the hiccups started. They were the biggest hiccups I’ve ever seen. There was an element of sneeze in each hiccup, and each one possessed his entire body. It wasn’t deadly serious, but we were supposed to be onstage in twenty minutes. We went on late. I smashed a guitar and a few drums. Having destroyed backstage, Damon tore into the front of house. Dave swan-dived into the crowd and was devoured, so I finished the drums off. We hadn’t done that for a while. It is very satisfying to make a lot of noise and break stuff.

  I bought a flute in Seattle the next day. All the kids had sold their flutes and violins and were taking up guitar and heroin. The flute was a real bargain, solid silver. We worked our way down the West Coast, playing on a boat in San Francisco. That’s a great city. Playing on a boat doesn’t work, though. When we came onstage, everyone rushed to the front and the thing practically capsized. The captain stopped the show and we had to wait until the boat was moored alongside the quay to start playing again.

  It struck me once more that there are so many places I could live and be happy, and so many people I could do it with. A little success gives a perspective on life’s embarras de richesse, but London was home, and where the girl that I loved was.

  Regroup

  America had fried us. We’d thrown ourselves right in. We’d come out still standing, but we were still totally skint. EMI released another single, ‘Popscene’, a tougher-sounding record than anything we’d released previously. It stalled outside the top thirty. Radio weren’t interested, we didn’t get on Top of the Pops and we were suffering quite a backlash in the press. We ignored grunge. We didn’t look like anybody else or sound like anybody else.

  We did a tour of the UK with the Jesus and Mary Chain, Dinosaur Jr and My Bloody Valentine. From some quarters we were perceived as quite a lightweight pop act but we could hold our own with the noise heavyweights.

  The rollercoaster took further tolls on our health. I was drinking more and more. We were complete outsiders, with nothing to lose. We started dressing like we used to at college, Oxfam suits and big boots.

  It was a very quiet time for British music. There seemed to be nothing happening at all. The British media were only interested in American grunge bands. We were out of favour, but we knew what we were doing at last and when you know what you’re doing you just have to keep doing it.

  We recorded Modern Life Is Rubbish at Maison Rouge, mainly with Stephen Street. There was just enough in the band’s bank account to cover the rent, but when Justine didn’t get any jobs we were as poor as we’d ever been. Whenever we were in the studio the owner gave us fifty quid a day. Split four ways it was enough to buy lunch and a packet of fags. There were few distractions and we were able to concentrate on the one thing that we all really wanted to do, which was to make a great record. Modern Life Is Rubbish is my favourite Blur record. I think it’s our magnum opus. The scope of the album was vast. We were all listening to different music and pulling in different directions. ‘Musical differences’ are often cited as the reason bands disintegrate, but they are actually what make a good group great.

  By now we’d spent enough time in studios to know the difference between a compressor and a limiter. We weren’t bamboozled by how long it took to set the drums up or confused by click tracks and we started to become more adventurous. The songs grew from Damon’s home demos as before, but we developed most of them in the studio, rather than in rehearsal rooms, so we were able to take our ideas further. String quartets were added to some of the tracks, brass sections, oboe and orchestral percussion.

  I hadn’t worked with ‘professional’ musicians until we recorded ‘Popscene’, and at that time I wasn’t sure how we would measure up. The brass section had given the impression of a gang of painters and decorators as they unpacked their equipment. It was as if they were unfolding stepladders and unloading brushes. They splashed their bright paint all over the song. They played mainly by ear, just like we did.

  The string players had music stands and reams of manuscript paper. Their visits were more like a maiden great-aunt coming for afternoon tea. ‘Quick, tidy up those drum takes, they’ll be here in a minute!’ We weren’t really allowed physically to touch their instruments; fair enough, I suppose, but it did highlight a class division between classical musicians and rock musicians. We worked very differently from the string players. I’d never written down a single note.

  The four of
us rarely had to tell each other what to play, but with session players it’s vital to explain very clearly exactly what’s required. Working with these highly trained, accomplished musicians made me realise just how quickly the band worked together and how well we understood each other; that actually, one way or another, we had all become very good musicians ourselves. My confidence grew.

  Other songs sounded better completely raw, on the bone, as it were, and the four of us recorded those live. There were mad instrumentals and psychedelic expeditions; there was music-hall melody and mosh pit madness. It didn’t sound like anything else. We worked hard. Christmas was approaching, and we announced a show at the Hibernian Centre, right next door to the studio. The Salvation Army band opened the show with carols. A feminist punk collective called Huggy Bear played next and one of Damon’s old friends from drama college dressed up as Santa and gave away copies of an ancient carol we used to sing in the dressing room called ‘The Wassailing Song’. There were only about three hundred people at the gig, including the Salvation Army band. It didn’t get reviewed - not one music editor felt our new ‘British’ sound was worthy of interest. Even a bad review is a thousand times better than no review. It was the first time we played most of the Modern Life songs and they went down very well. Santa was stampeded by the faithful and to this day ‘The Wassailing Song’ is Blur’s most sought-after rarity.

  Outside of the four of us, confidence in the band was at an all-time low. The Food guys came down to the studio the next day and stroked their chins. I was in the middle of recording the bass on a song called ‘Star Shaped’. They listened to everything we’d done and shook their heads. They said there were no singles, and that it was ridiculous that a band with so much potential should be making such a doggedly British record. There was pressure from the American company for us to rerecord everything with Butch Vig, who had produced Nevermind for Nirvana.