"Oasis are the Spice Girls on drugs"
"Oh dear, that's really naff. I'm not that much of a shag athlete, I'm really not."
"I'm not saying it changes governements,"Damon lies,"but it definitely contribited, in some convoluted way."
Here's an edited version of the recent article in SPIN magasine.
"Another sunny day in pop," chirps Alex James, Blur's celebrated bass-playing Lothario, stepping off a plane and gazing into the light blue canopy over Rome through huge, round, thick-framed, yellow tinted "Miami" glasses.
Pop. Amusing spectacles. The past. The horror! Or maybe it's just...Alex. Whatever it is, Damon Albarn, Blur's vocalist, songwriter, sometime Britpop icon, disapproves and, whitout a sound, snatches the offending apparels-gauche, crunches them gleefully between both his hands, and replaces them on James's nose, all buckled up and lens-less.
SPIN[later to James]: "That wasn't really very nice, now, was it?"
James [ grinning] : "Well,y'know, he's a bloody...cunt."
Three days earlier, in a London recording studio, Albarn's legs are splayed over a leather sofa, his great-big-blue-eyes dripping with shine. Spooky. He's in a philosophical mood, buoyant health and sportswear casual, his voice an octave deeper than it's ever been (he says its because "I let go of Damon the...whatever it was I'd become. Some think...the devil. Maybe I was.")
A reportedly humbler man than the one who earned the reputation as Britain's most arrogant pop star, Albarn, now 29, is nevertheless far from the contented tae kwon do. Englands current musical output, he grouses, is "ignorant, mind-numbingly repetitive, unexperimental, " it's culture "neurotic, snoobish, homogenized, class-riddled, a profoundly conservative floating ... pop factory." No one, he's saying, ever got "the point" with Blur. They've never celebrated Being British; rather, they've "used caustic humor, intelligence, to highlight the staticness of everything, The logical conclusion to Britpop," he concludes, " is that now we've got a new government."
(After The Great Escape)
"Everyone just realised the values of being in a band, and each other, more than ... all this stuff getting in the way. Alex was out of control, Graham was becoming a profoundly ugly drunk. So I came to terms with the fact that the band was going to finish, that my life as a pop person was coming to an end."
Disillusioned, he decamped to Iceland, has something of a spiritual awakening ("It's not God, even though I try to define it all the time,") took up tae kwon do , and began work on an assumed solo carrer. Istead, it was the catalyst for the hoary old idea of making the music, above all, count.
About Oasis...
DAMON:"The reality is that Oasis are the same as the Spice Girls --simple, accessible, popular music. In fact. the Spice Girls have sold more than Oasis now, so they can't even hold on to being the biggest-selling act in Britain." Twently long minutes of florid anti-Gallagher vitrol later, he'll conclude," Oasis are the Spice Girls on drugs."
Another sunny day in pop, another half million people seeing "Song 2" and "Beetlebum" played live. Alex James feigns camp disinterest : "We don't get out of bed for less than five million." James gestures out of the hotel's cast, glass-fronted foyer at the majesty of yonder Rome. "This," he grins, "is the luxury leg of the tour."
It is under these conditions that James, 28, shines brightest -- a man of infinite lust for the good and glamorous life, a trash-pop enthusiast (today's favorite : Boney M) with a penchant for phrases such as "it's a jungle in here" and "where's Hostility?" (Hospitality.) An International Playboy, perhaps. "Oh dear," he balks, "that's really naff. I'm not that much of a shag athlete, I'm really not."
He misses the old days, though, when he and Coxon "used to get drunk together, that's all we did, take acid and go on the radio and just blow raspberries because it's funny." Graham Coxon, conversaly -- Stephen Street once called "the best guitarist I've worked with since Johnny Marr" -- sips his cappucino and contemplates creative-death-by-pop life. The man who, in May 94 said "Ofcourse I'm a hedonist, what else is there to live for anyway?" is now teetotal (as is Dave Rowntree, after his own vigorous bid for everlasting oblivion ended three years ago) other than the occasional "jazz cigarette." Gone are the striped cardigans, wiggy spectacles, and haunted look of the erswhile Reluctant Modfather. He now wears black and quiet confidence.
"Me giving up drinking was like a miracle," he ruminates earnestly, He was a 27-year-old alcoholic when the "crisis point" happened.
"I realised I was embarrassed, embarrassed about being in a pop band and embarrassed about being seen as a pop musician. My only ambition was to get through the next tour and the next tour. And alcohol helped, of course."
A lifelong alternative music obsessive, despite those relentless Kinks-fan presumptions (about which he fells "quite hideous"), he [Graham]views pop music as "fucking wank. Horrible. That's all over now. I've only just come to the conclusion I'm a musician."
SPIN: That's absurd.
"I know," he blinks, "and that was only last year. I like the idea of taking music seriously. Now that I don't have a social life, or any friends, heh heh. It's much better."