Blur Biography

However the album's sales, a relatively meagre 50,000 copies, wasn't too inspiring. In 1994 the band's reinvention was complete. They emerged with a pub swagger and mockney bravado for 1994's Girls & Boys single, the first to be taken from their new album, Parklife. Inspired by the characters in Martin Amis' London Fields, Albarn's favourite novelist, and with tracks such as Tracy Jacks and the title track featuring Quadrophenia star Phil Daniels,the album practically rolled out of the bookies and into a North London pub for an afternoon of lager and whiskey chasers. The album was also significant as a genuinely British riposte to the transatlantic onslaught of Nirvana-led grunge.

The album helped the band scoop four gongs at the 1995 Brit awards including Best Album and Band, which they offered to share with their main rivals Oasis. Blur's triumph caused Oasis frontman Liam Gallagher to swagger up to Graham Coxon at the awards bash and say: "Look me in the eye and tell me you deserve these awards."

The confrontation was just preparation for the rivals bigger battle in 1995 when Blur's single, Country House, was released on the same day as Oasis' Roll With It. Blur's nursery rhyme cockney singalong, complete with a Damien Hirst directed video, summed up Blur's 60%u2019s era caricature. Even Noel and Liam's mum Peggy came out on the side of Damon and friends! "They're a good group and their single is a very catchy tune," said Mrs. G.

Lazy Journalists drew comparisons with The Beatles and the Rolling Stones '60's rivalry. Blur were the southern softies while Oasis were the Northern working class heroes. Blur eventually won out, selling 274,000 copies to Oasis' 216,000. The Daily Mail said Blur's victory made it "hip to be middle class," while the guilt-ridden Guardian saw it as "a defeat of working class sincerity by arty-farty middle class pretension." Yeah, cheers. Damon called Oasis 'Quo-asis' while Liam branded Blur's sound "chimney sweep music." Long after the race had been won the hostility didn't stop. It reached a low when Noel Gallagher told the Observer that he hoped Damon would die from Aids.

Blur were now established as the kings of Britpop although their subsquent album, The Great Escape couldn't match the heady highs of Country House and was greeted only lukewarmly by the critics. Oasis would go on to steal Blur's thunder with that year's What's The Story, Morning Glory album. Damon and pals meanwhile retreated and came back with 1997's lof-fi, downbeat No.1 single, Beetlebum. The band's subsequent, eponymously titled album, would see them stretching and reinventing their sound yet again. While Death Of A Party recalled their earlier mockney swagger Song 2 was a glorious, US thrash-stealin' party rocker complete with a big dumb-rock chorus of "Wooh-hoo" which would become the band's biggest hit in America, adopted for everything from beer commercials to ice hockey goal celebrations.

The band took a hiatus after the release of the album, with gutiarist Graham Coxon releasing a respectable solo effort, The Sky Is Too High. Meanwhile the band were stretching themselves again, their work with producers and remixes including William Orbit, Moby, Adrian Sherwood and Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore had made them widen their horizons. In 1992 they returned with the gospel-tinged single, Tender, which reached No.2 in the UK charts. The resulting album, 13, was a difficult trawl. Damon had just split up with Elastica's Justine Frischmann which influenced the album's downbeat mood. The Coxon sung, catchy acoustic stroll, Coffee and TV gave the group another chart hit though.

A subsequent tour, in which the band gave scant regard to their early material, suggested they wanted to erase their Britpop past and forge a new identity. A Greatest hits set was released in 2000 to give the band time to regroup. Coxon released his second solo effort, Golden D, a spiky DIY follow up to his debut while Damon came up with the Gorillaz, the pop world's first virtual dub/hip hop outfit. The brainchild of Damon and cartoonist Jamie Hewlett, the creator of cult comic heroine Tank Girl, the spin-off project also drew in hip hop beats merchant Dan 'the automator Nakamura and ex-Talking Heads members Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz. 1991's Clint Eastwood single, a lurching, feelgood dub-hop outing, reached the UK Top 5. The album, Gorillaz, followed, earning the band a Brit awards nomination.

Tensions between the band became strained when they came to work on their next album, 2002's Think Tank. Relations between Albarn and Coxon reached boiling point as Coxon resented Albarn's dominance of the band. Coxon would quit the band halfway through the recording sessions which were being produced by Fatboy Slim. Consequently many of the songs on Think Tank sound like they're the work of a new band. With several Morrocan influenced tracks, including the single Out Of Time and the sleepy desert rhythms of Caravan, it%u2019s the sound of a band discovering new textures. They were almost saying, we could have recorded a pop album, but we didn't want to. The album was a reflection of Albarn's increasing interest in world music. He had already travelled to Mali to record the Mali Music album Toumani Diabate.

For some, Think Tank's evolution was confusing but Blur fans would respect the band's refusal to sit still. Blur had earned their right to musical experimentation after twelve years of constantly refining their sound. And they'd done their bit for British pop music. They had, after all, single handedly nailed the state of a nation and in former label boss Andy Ross' words, " they gave a kick up the arse to the British music scene."

Blur Discography