The legendary British band Blur – the founders of the “Brit-pop” style, winners of a huge number of music awards. The band was born in the late 80s of XX century in London (UK). The original line-up: Damon Elbarn (vocal, author of texts and frontman of the band), Graham Coxon (guitar), Alex James (bass guitar) and Dave Rowntree (drums). The first full-fledged album of the group “Leisure” was released in 1991.
The history of creation
The group was founded by two childhood friends, Damon Albarn and Graham Coxon, who went to college together. Originally Damon Albarn played in another band, but due to changes in the line-up, he was soon joined by college friends Graham Coxon and Alex James. In this line-up, together with drummer Dave Rowntree, the band gave its first concerts in the summer of 1989.
One day during a live performance, a very unpleasant incident occurred with the band. They performed in one of the nightclubs, while some drunk visitor sprayed a gas can. The entire group spent the evening after the concert in the hospital, blindfolded.
The band came to the name Blur not at once, but only after the newly baked musicians were interested in the representative of the recording company Food Records. After heated debates and various options, the band members stopped at the bright and unusual name Blur. And already in 1990 the band goes on their first tour in Great Britain, and in October the first single called “She’s so high” is released, which is very warmly received by both public and music critics. The band was talked about in the most prestigious British music magazines, such as NME.
In 1991, the first studio album called “Leisure” was released, but the difficulties the band encountered while recording the album did not allow it to make any headway in the British charts.
In 1992 the band goes on tour to the USA, but numerous concerts bring only disappointment to the band members: America did not understand and did not accept the new British wave. Returning to England, Damon Albarn sat down in the studio to write material for the band’s new album. And so in 1994, a record called “Parklife” is released. The first track from this album titled “Girls & Boys” was well received by BBC Radio 1 and hit the top lines in the British charts. As a result, the album “Parklife” gained extraordinary popularity and held the first place in the charts of 90 weeks.
The long-awaited fame came, and the band won four awards of the famous BRIT Awards 1995 in the categories “Best Group” and “Best Album”.
Around this time, a real confrontation with the Manchester rock band Oasis began between the band Blur. It is surprising that the band members not only competed, but also felt an outright dislike and disgust towards each other. The apotheosis of the rivalry was the release of new singles of both groups on the same day.
By the end of the week the single of Blur group called “Country House” was selling much better than “Roll With It” Oasis (in ratio of 274 thousand copies to 216 thousand copies).
In early 1998, the band started recording another studio album of the band called “13”. The musicians immediately gave up the services of their previous producer Stephen Street and decided to work on a new sound. Having not found a producer yet, they decided to record three songs with the famous electronic musician William Orbit. It turned out that working with Orbit was very productive and interesting, so in the end Blur decided to record an album under his guidance.
After that, the band had several successful albums. To date, the last studio album of the band is “Think Tank” 2003. Since 2004, the band was on the verge of disintegration and did not produce new material. For six years the members of the group actively participated in the creation of other interesting projects. For example, Damon Albar, organized a virtual group called Gorillaz, which released two successful albums. In addition, he wrote a Chinese opera, gathered a new group to create the album The Good, The Bad And The Queen.
Guitarist Graham Coxon was engaged in a solo career all this time, drummer Dave Rowntree hit politics, and bassist Alex James went into business.
Nevertheless, in summer 2009 Blur returned: they gave several successful concerts at the famous British music festival Glastonbury. Although, there were quite significant changes in the composition of the band, as one of the founders of the band – guitarist Graham Coxon left. The year 2010 was marked by the fact that the band released a long-awaited single called “Fool’s Day” – the first joint work of the band since 2003.
