Who are the real Britpop kings? This doco puts Blur v Oasis to bed
Blur versus Oasis? I never bought it back in ’95. Memories of the Sherbet versus Skyhooks beat-up lingered, for one thing, and someone was always resurrecting the Beatles versus the Stones nonsense after a few drinks. Call me undiscerning, but all those bands seemed perfectly grouse to me.
I’m less sure since Oasis opted to cash in their cute sibling warfare schtick for a mega-hyped “reunion” tour. It’s just the two Gallagher brothers plus ring-ins, so we can forget authentic band chemistry, let alone new material. Creatively bankrupt nostalgia is fine, but it’s hardly the breakfast of champions.
Blur perform at Wembley Stadium.Credit: Madman
Then there’s Blur: To the End, a new documentary by London filmmaker Toby L, on limited release around Australia this month. Its intimate, moving study of a “legacy” rock act in dignified evolution documents everything Oasis is not: a band of brothers reunited by love, honesty, mature insight and creative inspiration.
Toby L’s first gig, aged 10, was to see Blur at the 1200-seat Wembley Arena at the height of the 1990s Britpop wars. Hence, the empathy in his eyewitness account of the making of their 2023 reunion album, The Ballad of Darren, and their climactic two-night Wembley Stadium debut in front of 80,000 fans each night.
He also worked with Liam Gallagher on the concert film Knebworth 22, so he opts for the “apples and oranges” argument when pressed. But on the subject of commercial versus artistic merit, it’s not hard to see which way he leans.
“I can’t speak for Liam and Noel and the rest of the Oasis camp,” he says, “but they’ve made no bones about what they wanted to be in their career: they wanted to be really successful. I mean, one of their album covers has a bloody Rolls-Royce parked in a swimming pool. They were there to come up from nothing and smash it.
“The great thing about Blur is that they are purists. I can say, with the privileged access we had … that they couldn’t, and they wouldn’t [reunite], unless there was a purpose and a meaning to it. It’s for the audience, it’s for their music, and it’s for their friendship. And those are the right reasons to do it.”
It’s the friendship, reforged through the wringer of big-scale recording and touring machinations after long estrangement, that cuts deepest. Early in the film, after throwing his arms around schoolfriend Graham Coxon, bassist Alex James and drummer Dave Rowntree in his Devon country house, singer Damon Albarn is a sobbing mess during playback of a new song that draws on the unspoken loss of his marriage.
“That was a great leveller,” says Toby L. “I think 98 per cent of musicians would have been like, ‘Right, clear the room, get that camera out of here, we’ll regroup tomorrow’. That would have been entirely valid as well. But credit to the guys. They really wanted everything to be captured in its raw, honest state.”
There’s “more honesty; a bit more gratitude”, Coxon confirms at one point in the film. “It’s like a marriage, innit? You can be right, or you can be happy,” Rowntree quips later. “Success will mess you up far worse than failure,” James reflects through the fog. The whole slog, Albarn says at one weary juncture, is for “the brotherhood of these c---s who I’ve known since I was 19″.
Alex James and Damon Albarn in Blur: To the End.Credit: Altitude
Having stuck with Blur for all of these 30 years, my favourite thing about Blur: To the End is that they mostly look a fright.
Unapologetically aged, unshaven, limping and dishevelled, Britpop’s cutest indie band has opted out of the Peter Pan ruse of the classic rock reunion in favour of values and insights that are more mature, enduring and – at this stage of the long game – useful.
“I really didn’t want any theatrics or faux jeopardy,” Toby L says. “We live in a time of great artifice and, frankly, bullshit … A lot of viewers seem to be grateful to them for their openness because it’s not often you see a stadium band talking about their feelings to that extent.
Damon Albarn at Wembley Stadium in Blur: To the End.Credit: Altitude
“Truthfully,” he says, “I think the only way to achieve relevance is to be more than one thing in your career, whether you’re Radiohead, where it’s been multi decades, or the Clash, where it’s within a decade. If you’re able to surprise people with your eclecticism and your music, that’s what makes you endure beyond the era that you started in.”
Apples and oranges, of course. But I still reckon those first two Oasis albums were great.
Blur: To The End and Blur Live At Wembley Stadium are screening in the “Brit Rock to Brit Pop” sidebar of the British Film Festival which runs from November 6 to December 8.
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