A love-letter to Blur
The longest love affair of my life continues
Tomorrow my favourite band - Blur - play at the 1000-capacity Floral Hall in Eastbourne.
I’ve got a funny story about that.
I fell in love with Blur when I was in Year 8 at school - so I would have been 12 or 13. I can’t remember who first played me Girls and Boys, but I was instantly hooked. My best friend loved them, my next-door neighbour loved them, and so did my older, cooler cousins. We transferred our prior obsessions with Take That and East 17 onto Blur and we went all-in. I was completely besotted with them all except Dave (sorry Dave). I initially fell for Damon’s doe-eyed charm and cheeky grin, before deciding that Alex’s curtains and academic persuasions were cuter. Within a few months of them becoming my favourite band, I had switched allegiance once more and settled on Graham as my preferred love interest. There was something about his specs and that mop of hair and his awkwardness that melted my precious 13-year-old heart.
I threw myself into being a super fan. I wore my Parklife tape out. I recorded all their performances from the TV - The Chart Show, Top of the Pops, Jools Holland, and TFI Friday - and rewatched them over and over again; the video stickers emblazoned with aggressive instructions to my family: DO NOT TAPE OVER. I saved my pocket money to buy all the magazines they were featured in - from Smash Hits to Select - and spent my weekends cutting out clippings and posters and pictures, creating an elaborate collage on my bedroom walls. I wrote song lyrics in my diary, and made lists of my favourite songs from each album, debating the relative pros and cons with myself. I had the video of Starshaped, and watched it on repeat, preferring the candid camera shots on the tour bus where I felt like I got to know them, to the chaotic European festival sets. When it came around to Christmas and my birthday, my requests were largely Blur related. I painstakingly wrote out my list, one year even including instructions to exactly where in Virgin Megastores my parents could find the poster I had my eye on.
I loved this band. Yes, I was a teenager and full of hormones - of course I loved them - but it was never just about their boyish good looks. I genuinely loved their music too. I was absolutely obsessed with the song This is a Low and would play it over and over. There was something about the softness and heaviness of it, the push and pull; the layered guitar solo, and the imagery of the country and the coast that captured my heart. For a time, I listened to Sing as I fell asleep, finding something haunting and soothing in its wall of sound. After a while, Modern Life is Rubbish quickly overtook Parklife as my favourite album: I revelled in the musical variation: from the heavy annihilation of Oily Water, to the strings on For Tomorrow that made my heart crack in ways I didn’t yet understand; the wistful blissful fuzz of Blue Jeans and the dreamy dirge of Resigned. I argued with my mum about why I shouldn’t turn it down. Blur were my introduction to ‘proper’ music and a gateway drug that led me to countless other artists and bands that would become the soundtrack of my life.
As I got older, music remained my obsession. I went through other phases, but I never wavered in my devotion to Blur: they’ve always been my number one. I love their ability to experiment; to release material that feels adventurous and unique, yet always completely and utterly them. Each album holds a different place in my heart and has seen me through a phase of my life. They’ve remained my musical constant from 13 to (almost) 42 - it’s been quite a run. I’ve managed to see them on almost every tour they’ve ever done. During the reunions of 2009 and 2012, I regressed to a teenager: waiting next to the radio to hear the first play of Under the Westway, and queuing for limited edition records from 6am on Record Store Day. I joined the official forums and contributed occasionally; I loved being part of a bigger family of people who felt the same as me. I went into my overdraft to buy box sets I didn’t need, and I listened to their back catalogue from start to finish multiple times. I travelled around the country - to Southend, Margate, Plymouth - overjoyed to see them in smaller venues, as well as two trips to Hyde Park and that magical set at Glastonbury in 2009. I watched the No Distance Left to Run documentary rapt, my heart overflowing with affection for them all. It felt like watching a group of my friends: the speech patterns and mannerisms, and dynamic between them all so instantly recognisable. When the excitement of that period died down, I transferred my attention to Gorillaz, and to Graham’s solo records. When I lived in America, I missed the excitement around the release of The Magic Whip, but consoled myself by getting tickets to the NYC show at Madison Square Gardens.
As time has passed, my love of music, and somewhat inevitably, my love for Blur has faded. I still listen to music daily, and I’ll still turn a Blur number up if it shuffles on in a playlist, but as with most people I know, the energy I previously poured into following bands has waned. With life throwing ever bigger and wider curveballs into the mix, I simply don’t have the time or inclination to obsess over music anymore. Case in point: I didn’t even buy tickets to Blur’s Wembley shows when they were recently released, which would have been unthinkable to me even 5 years ago. I’m pretty sure I’ll end up going, but we’re moving house around that time, so I can’t commit yet. That’s the headline reason, but there are also a couple of other voices at play: the sensible one that thinks it knows what's best for me, who is telling me it’ll be draining, that it’s too expensive, that I’ll get a backache, and be ruined for a week. And underneath that, there’s also a kinder, more subtle voice that suggests to me that I don’t need to go. That I can still love the band and not go to the show if it doesn’t quite work out. That I can make a decision closer to the time when I have more information. I like the quiet voice. My self-proclaimed super-fan identity gave me a sense of belonging and community for years, but it’s also been a bitch on my nervous system: all those early starts; all the attempts to get tickets and merch: sitting there sweaty, biting my nails as the clock ticked down, my identity so tied up with what I could achieve. All that standing around. All those train journeys. I feel a strange mix of sadness and relief when I realise I’m not as bothered about it all as I used to be.
Then a couple of weeks ago, the announcement: they’re playing a show in Eastbourne again - the very first place I saw them live.
Back to that funny story.
In 1995, Blur announced, as they’re apt to do, a small run of warm-up shows to support a bigger tour and release of The Great Escape. Imagine my face when I found out that one of those shows was in Eastbourne. EASTBOURNE. Not Brighton - the bigger, cooler city, where I wasn’t yet even allowed to go on my own, but quaint old Eastbourne, scene of many a ballet class, cinema outing, and shopping trip of my childhood. My next-door neighbour, Kelly, and I could not believe it. We begged our parents to be allowed to camp out at the venue overnight (which some hardcore (older) devotees actually did). They said no, predictably, but we compromised at an early drop-off: they dispatched us to the queue, which was already snaking around the corner from the box office door at 5am on the 14th August. Bleary-eyed, we bit our nails anxiously for 4 hours, but easily secured the precious tickets. With them in hand and riding a wave of elation, we went to Our Price and brought the Country House single (on tape, naturally), making our contribution to the infamous Britpop battle. Then, there was nothing else to do, but wait a month for the day to arrive where we’d see our idols in the flesh. Our parents got us copies of the local paper, who’d run a story about the ticket sale. Pre-social media, being in the paper was a BIG DEAL, and I circled our sleepy faces in the queue with pride.
A week after I turned 14, the morning of September 16th dawned, and Kelly and I and our besties Gill and Laura, set off for Eastbourne on the train, brimming with excitement. We went into the shopping centre and got a McDonalds, and then walked up to the theatre, joining the queue at the slightly less ungodly hour of 10.30am. This time there were only 20 or 30 people ahead of us: we were amongst the most committed! I remember feeling a flush of excitement and pride at our devotion. We huddled together in the dampness of the day and talked and waited. And then: the horror. I realised I had lost my wallet - the wallet containing my ticket. I remember very little else about this part of the day, but can only guess that it was full of panic and tears. I do remember calling my mum from a phone box, and her coming in to meet me in the shopping centre. Kelly and Gill stayed in the queue (we were not going to give up our precious spot easily) while Laura and I and my mum retraced our steps. We went everywhere we’d been previously, we contacted the shopping centre security, we trawled the streets. We might have even called the police. I know I walked the road from town to the venue countless times that day. I have no real memory of how the afternoon transpired. I know I was devastated, but I don’t think the thought ever crossed my mind to give up and go home. As the queue grew in size, the excitement around us heightened while my inner despair deepened.
Around 6.30pm, an hour before the doors were due to open, things were getting a little overwrought. My mum was still around - again, I can’t really remember what she’d been doing all afternoon - but I know that she could sense my desperation. At a certain point, she looked like she’d had an idea, turned on her heel, and walked up, past the crowds, towards the venue door. A few minutes later, she was back, beaming. She yanked me out of the queue, and forced me up to the door - ‘they’ve put you on the guest list!’ she exclaimed with a flourish, pushing me towards the doorman, presumably to get a good look at me so I could be easily identified when the doors opened. My mum: what a legend. Apparently, she told the doorman that she had a photo of me in the paper, queuing at 5am, and that he just had to let me in. I don’t know what other magic words she threw his way, but he actually believed her, and he actually took pity on me, and he actually put my name on the list.
I was elated. My bacon had been saved! The relief was palpable. I barely had time to catch a breath when I heard a voice shouting from down the line: ‘Who’s the girl who lost her ticket?! Your dad’s on the phone!’ In the pre-mobile phone age, it was pretty common to call a phone box. We’d given my dad the number earlier that day so he could keep in touch and now he was phoning for an update. As I walked down the line, past all the other taller, cooler, grown-up Blur fans in a Parklife t-shirt that almost reached my knees, I felt like a self-conscious kid, but I was also too overwhelmed to care. I spoke to my dad and I told him it was sorted: mum had averted disaster, and I was going to the gig. Shortly after, my heart almost beating out of my chest, I locked eyes with the doorman, who ushered me through without a second glance, and that was it: we were in.
The irony of all of this is that I hardly remember anything at all about the actual show. I’ve normally got a photographic memory, but I draw a blank when it comes to the majority of the evening, probably due to the stress of the day. I remember Matt Lucas doing his Sir Bernard Chumley warm-up act, and wondering what the fuck it was all about. I remember Blur coming on and being completely bamboozled when everyone started jumping around - it was my first gig gig, my first non-arena show, and I had no idea what everyone was doing. All that time in the queue to secure those spots at the barrier was dashed away in seconds, as the force of 1000 people surged forward. I remember seeing my cousin Louisa crowd-surfing, and I remember Laura and I wiping the sweat off our faces in the loo. I remember being disappointed that I wasn’t on Graham’s side. I remember picking up a discarded ticket stub to replace my lost one. I remember my Parklife t-shirt being soaked through and shivering as the cold air hit us as we spilled from the venue. But I can hardly remember anything about the band: what songs they played, how they were, what they said, what they wore, any of it.
It doesn’t matter, it’s still a great story. My first gig, and the first in a long line of gigs by my favourite band. I didn’t get tickets to the Eastbourne show this time around. They sold out in seconds. I was strangely serene about it - I knew that the chances were one in a million - but there was a tiny part of me that still desperately wanted to go. I had one of those moments where I wanted things to go back to how they were before the internet: I wish I could have just gone down and joined a queue at 5am again.
This week has been really hard. Some people I love are going through some difficult stuff, and I’ve been on a ferris wheel of emotion. Yesterday, I went into work carrying what felt like the weight of the world on my shoulders. With nothing urgent to do, and no-one due to arrive for half an hour, I sat at my desk and turned on Spotify. And there it was - a new Blur single: The Narcissist. I turned the volume up loud and sat in my seat and just listened. I don’t know the last time I played a song without doing anything else. It was beautiful. I loved it. I felt that same feeling wash over me that I always get when I hear a Blur song for the first time: the jolt of familiarity, of recognition, interspersed with the delight of the new. 100% them, but refreshingly unfamiliar. There they are: my constants, my old friends.
Later I went on my lunch and I played it again. And when it had finished, I played it again, and then again. Later, as I walked to meet Karl after work, I played it again. I imagined the band playing it live; I saw Dave’s little grin, his head tilted to the right as he kept time; saw Graham biting his lower lip and flailing around the stage. In the car on the way home, I played it two more times. Each time I played it I felt an emotion tighten in my chest just a bit more. I can’t recall the last time I did this with a song, but I couldn’t stop playing it. It felt imperative but unconscious, I just kept pressing play.
As I sat on the bench in the park on my lunch break with the song in my ears, I felt a little crack of light seep into my bruised heart. I was wrung out and beaten down, and inspired and filled with love, and it was all happening at the same time and it was ok. I watched the pigeons and felt a light drizzle descend. I thought about the people I love, I thought about life. I thought about Blur: about this band that have accompanied me through so much, and the luck that would have it: that today, when I needed them most, they threw me a lifeline.
Unless I go down and sweet-talk the doorman, I’m not going to be able to go to Eastbourne tomorrow, but I’ll be there in spirit.
Thank you, Blur: I’ll always love you.
