Afternoon:
10°c
Retrospect is a fine thing. Back in the Britpop era — a time of Stella Artois and Loaded magazine, Kangol hats and Gareth Southgate, the closest my generation would ever come to a Summer of Love — the band that captured the national mood was Oasis.
However, while we didn't realise it then, the band anticipating the national mood, not to mention the band you still want to listen to today, was, of course, their rival, Blur.
The rave reviews of last night's Glastonbury appearance, and of this month's earlier comeback shows, confirm that this was the real band of the Nineties. The quartet released their first single in 1990, and their last with their original line-up in 2000, following the contours of the decade perfectly.
In that time, though they never had the depth of Radiohead or the invention of Massive Attack, Damon Albarn and his bandmates made an extraordinary range of pop, flirted with art and politics and even now, collectively and individually, continue to surprise. Oasis, meanwhile, continue to peddle the same blokeish boozalongs.
Blur were the first band I ever saw live when, aged 14, my sister and I went to Wembley Arena for the Great Escape tour of 1995. It was a strange show — I remember a moody Albarn and a stage set strewn with fibreglass props of British icons.
Reading between the lines now, the band were uncomfortable with the Britpop we loved even then, ready to move on to the next thing — yet this in itself was a movement they created. When the Nineties began, and rock fans were in thrall to American grunge, Albarn championed a uniquely British music that could allude to vaudeville, dog racing and shipping forecasts, The Beatles and the Kinks. He was ridiculed for songs such as the sublime For Tomorrow (1993) but by the time Parklife came out in 1994, and British art, music and fashion were on the ascendancy, the nation was ready to turn him into a superstar.
Meanwhile, his volatile guitarist Graham Coxon held court in booming Camden and louche bassist Alex James hung out with his Goldsmiths art school contemporary Damien Hirst in the Groucho, and London swung again.
It's often forgotten that this all happened at the fag-end of the John Major government. Yet when the political establishment caught on and Tony Blair launched his New Labour project, Albarn was one of the first to raise a questioning note.
Invited to the Commons in 1995, he was reportedly told by Blair: “If you're still successful come the next election, we could do business together.”
Appalled at how seriously Blair was apparently willing to take him, he disentangled himself — and snubbed Blair's notorious Cool Britannia party of 1997. That now seems remarkably prescient.
As Britpop imploded and the optimism of the Labour victory faded, Blur were looking to America and producing their best album yet. Beetlebum (1997) is surely one of the strangest songs to have made the British No1 — and this was followed by the even bleaker Tender (1999), which pre-empted the Milliennial angst that would soon fall on the country.
Since the band went on hiatus in 2003, Albarn and co have continued to pursue an eclectic list of extra-curricular activites — cheesemaking and Chinese opera, Mars missions and cartoon supergroups, even drummer Dave Rowntree's bid to become an MP.
Few bands have accommodated such a range of energies, and certainly, no other since The Beatles have done so while consistently scoring top ten hits. When the news that they were reforming came out, it was entirely clear from the reaction that this was the real band of our generation. Can't wait for Hyde Park this Friday.
