Apparently, finding a taxi in Lucca is very difficult; if half the city is locked down for a Blur concert, it’s even worse. Four years after the last time, I’m back in this city to conclude the Damon Albarn trilogy: already seen him with Gorillaz and The Good, The Bad & The Queen, this time it’s the turn of the last band I thought I’d see live this summer – not to mention in my entire life. I never would have hoped for it.
I’ve been in Lucca for a few hours, all the bus stops are suspended and the hope that a taxi will stop begins to waver: it’s July and I slightly need a shower and a clean t-shirt. After an almost biblical wait, a vehicle finally stops at the lay-by from which an old man comes out, all bent over and looking like someone who has definitely had enough of living. Without too many pleasantries, he grabs our suitcase and makes me and my father sit on the back seats (first of all I notice the absence of a GPS, instead there’s only a very old Nokia hooked to the air conditioning vent, that’s obviously off); shortly after he asks us – or rather, orders – to squeeze in to accommodate a couple who were waiting with us. I usually don’t talk to strangers, but with the English I always make an exception: our taxi companions are called Dan and Holly, they’re from London, and they too are in Lucca for the concert (“how is it that you didn’t go to see them at Wembley?!”, I naturally ask them). Turns out they’ve been Blur fans basically for ages, they’ve even seen them play in Colchester when nobody was giving them attention yet: Dan also tells me that he can be seen crowd surfing in Starshaped, the 1993 documentary that I’ve now lost the count of how many times I’ve seen it. “I had a lot more hair back then”, he’s keen to point out.
To be honest, I hadn’t seen Starshaped in years, and it’s one of the things I plan to do once I get home – “to get over the post-concert melancholy”, I think. It’s just an hour-long and the image quality is awful, but watching it I remember why of all the documentaries shot on Blur (including B-Roads, famous for mysteriously disappearing for years and magically reappearing a few months ago) this is the one I love the most: maybe because it shows one of my favourite Blur periods, or that the wacky and lo-fi style of the shots – as a “fly on the wall” – can only be defined as a series of visual notes of the chaos that was the band in its early days, or perhaps what is really left with me is the sense of nostalgia for an era that I haven’t experienced.
Starshaped begins with the iconic shot of Damon, Graham and Alex running excitedly towards the camera – while Dave Rowntree instead takes his time – with Intermission in the background and in full Modern Life Is Rubbish outfit: suit jacket, jeans and Dr Martens. After a series of black and white images of airport waitings, blurry landscapes from the window, and boredom and excitement on the tour bus bound for Reading Festival, the band welcomes us in very English manners in 1993: “Hello. We’re in a service station, on a motorway, in a country”. Just long enough to memorise three of the places we’ll see the most in the documentary that we’re sent back to the summer of 1991: their first album Leisure will be out in a few days and the boys prepare for their performance at Reading by partying late into the cramped spaces of the bus, despite the orders of the tour manager Ifan (already exhausted after just three minutes of documentary) to go to sleep. Blur are still a new name and their rise in indie circles has just begun: backstage at the festival we see young, clean-shaven faces looking around with curiosity and nervousness; there’s Damon Albarn who spies with wide eyes on the audience waiting for them, before walking on stage with a bit of uncertainty. The studio version of There’s No Other Way soundtracks the flickering shots of the band and crowd, as well as local wildlife at the festival. In fact, one aspect of Starshaped that shouldn’t be underestimated is that it’s also an interesting document of fashion and subcultures of the early 90s: in a sequence that now after 30 years we could define as historic, we see indie kids, shoegazers, grunge fans, hippies, metalheads, punks, all camping next to each other.
To introduce the next chapter, future Blur return: the four are sitting in a sad and impersonal cafeteria, smoking in silence and having the distraught air of someone who has survived unspeakable hardships; the difference with the innocent and carefree faces we have seen until recently is evident. “The thing they asked us was what was it like being in Blur last year, in 1992”, Damon says. “And as you can see, no one has anything to say about it.” The following image probably sums up what has just been said perfectly, and reminds us that there’s nothing glamorous about the summer tours of an emerging band: Albarn vomits on the pavement just outside an airport – with that dark suit and sunglasses alone he could pass for a hungover James Dean lookalike -, then he catches his breath and opens his arms. The show must go on.
But first, some context. On August 26, 1991 (exactly two days after the concert at Reading Festival) Leisure was released, a debut album of its time and not particularly loved by the band, in hindsight. At the time Blur were a still unknown band, with a sloppy and questionable aesthetic: the eye wants its part, but the majority of the songs – strongly influenced by psychedelia and late 80s Madchester – are already considered outdated stuff; to this, let’s also add an incompetent manager (let’s name names and surnames: Mike Collins, and he can be seen in Starshaped with his face obscured as he wanders around the backstage of Reading) who runs off with all the album’s earnings. They’ve just started out and Blur already have a debt of 60,000 pounds: they hire a new manager, who to recover the missing money organises a huge tour of 13 exhausting weeks in the United States. But an ominous shadow looms, with Nirvana’s Nevermind coming out (according to Alex James) on the first day of the tour and the world finding a new obsession with the roughness and squalor of grunge: long story short, the dates turn out to be a total bust, and Blur go back home exhausted, disappointed, ignored and pissed off.
Going back to the documentary, the situation has definitely changed: in 1992 Blur inaugurate their battle to restore dignity to British music with the single Popscene, and at the same time they begin to work on that genre which will officially see the light shortly after as Britpop; on an aesthetic level, we go from the baggy clothes of kids in need of a shower to a more adult and more English look, with suits, Fred Perry and Dr Martens – clearly inspired by mod and skinhead subcultures. The prevailing atmosphere is one of determination, cynicism and arrogance.
The concerts become increasingly dynamic and deranged, with the first performances of the songs that will later make up Modern Life Is Rubbish: Damon jumps, climbs, rolls, slaps himself, grimaces and squirms while the others begin to occupy the stage with greater confidence. The energy reaches its peak at Glastonbury Festival, when during Day Upon Day Albarn throws himself at a giant amplifier that falls on him, almost breaking his foot. Meanwhile, popularity grows and alcohol flows freely: two ecstatic girls admit to follow them everywhere, a pissed Graham Coxon expresses questionable opinions on PJ Harvey, Damon Albarn is caught in the act while asking Ifan if he can have a few more beers before going on stage and the band entertains themselves with a very off-key a capella version of When Will We Be Married while traveling on the tour bus. But beyond the prevailing recklessness, Blur also indulged in calmer activities, as well as exploring the more popular aspects of British culture – something that would form a central theme in their subsequent production: lake swimming, breaks in service stations, mini markets and arcades (if you can’t get the Postman Pat jingle out of your head you have my full sympathy), trips to Stonehenge and lunches in dingy cafes serving cheap family meal deals.
The first chords of For Tomorrow open the third and final part of Starshaped: it’s July 1993, we’re at the Heineken Festival and Blur perform in front of a totally adoring audience the first track of Modern Life Is Rubbish, their second album that came out in May of the same year. The song is a hymn to resistance against the greyness of life and a celebration of their beloved London: the war against grunge and the Americanisation of Britain and Europe has officially begun.
Some of the questions that the documentary possibly raises are: in the midst of all this chaos, these beers and this aversion to Nirvana, where are Blur headed? Will this ambitious renaissance of British music work? We, viewers of 2023, already know how it went, but at that time it was a question full of risks and unknowns. Perhaps, the answer to these concerns lies precisely in the ending of Starshaped: Blur walk adorably holding hands on the same road on which they ran with so much enthusiasm at the beginning, united like brothers who watch each other’s backs and directed towards the new mission that awaits them; in the background, the sounds of traffic and the voice of the shipping forecast. After 58 minutes of pure madness, one cannot help but be moved by the beauty of this simple image: already in 1993, it was enough to understand that those four guys were destined for great things.
DISCORDANCE 