POSSESSED WITH DAMON

Blur is approaching Moscow. Ten years after the fashion for Britpop music began, its founders lost guitarist Graham Coxon, turned into a trio, recorded an album in Africa under the supervision of Fatboy Slim, and booked rooms at the Metropol Hotel. On the eve of the Moscow concerts, Grigory Goldentsvaig went to Britain and discussed with bass guitarist Alex James the problems of life on Mars.

There is a column of dust and the smell of marijuana over the field. I shake pieces of hay from my trousers. A skinny little man with angelic curls, looming somewhere in the distance, shouts across the entire field: “So why don't you kill me?” This is the Reading Festival - the oldest exhibition of rock and roll achievements in England.

I have a grudge against the group Blur. The Blur group is ready to give interviews during the half hour when musician Beck took up residence on the main stage. I'm starting to understand what people who have a birthday on December 31st experience.

• Great, isn't he? - Blur bassist Alex James says about Beck. Alex is charming and terribly polite, but regret flickers under his side bangs - Alex would listen to Beck. The sympathy is mutual: when Beck squeezed closer to the fence at one of Blur's recent concerts, vigilant security broke Beck's rib.

The lanky bassist Alex is buried in a rock chair, so that all I can see are his hands folded on his chin and his sharp nose, turning like a locator. Alex is wondering why the Placebo group canceled their concert in Moscow. Hearing the word “terrorism,” Alex rises in his chair, winces and says: “Cowards.” Here, too, everything is fine with terrorists - so what now? Gardening?

The Blur bassist has a different style: for some time now he has been hosting a program about life on Mars on the Discovery Channel.

• We came up with it with my other martyr. Mars is now very close to Earth for the first time in many millennia. Britain sends research there

ship, and it so happens that I know the guy who is working on this project. We sat down together in the studio and discussed life on Mars.

• Why Mars?

• There is a good chance that life originated on Mars and was later transferred to Earth. It was warmer here, and meteorites began to attack Mars.

• Is the idea of ​​recording an album in Morocco also a study of life on another planet?

• Exactly! Just now, before Russia, I have a similar feeling - like on the way to Morocco. Otherwise, you'll never get further than Starbucks or McDonald's in the next block - and thank God I have a band called Blur. Western civilization has you in a vice; to get beyond it, you need to make an effort. Travel to the past, to the future. Like Damon in Mali, like us in Morocco. Africa blows the roof away: before you have time to look back, the roof is already gone. This takes time and money, but this is what helps you stay afloat.

• Damon promised that Blur would record the next album in Baghdad.

• Who promised? – Alex raises his eyes to his forehead.

• Damon.

• A! Damon. I see, Alex understands. – No, Iraq is, of course, the cradle of civilization. Only if you ask me, musicians shouldn’t get involved in politics - that’s what.

I ask Alex if he likes to take Damon down from time to time.

• On average, a couple of times a day,” Alex agrees.

The subject of our conversation is a man with a drooping lip and a tousled head, looking like a young math teacher.

matiki, which confuses the thoughts of high school girls, just like Alex, drowning in the chair at the next table. Blur frontman Damon Albarn gives an interview to MTV.

Those high school girls who Albarn was a peer are now closer to menopause than to losing their virginity. The son of the man who organized Yoko Ono's first concert in London took the country - and its neighbors, by the way - without a fight. Beatle-like melody and ironic lyrics, behind which there is a touching love for old lady England, did their job. The positive hero, a little clumsy, a little hooligan, turned out to be one of his own.

“The Blur cassette first came to me in 1991, when I was studying in China,” recalls Ilya Lagutenko, “my English friends slipped it to me.” I listened to it, liked it, didn’t find anything supernatural and happily forgot about it. Then, in 1994, I turned on satellite TV in London, started clicking buttons, and heard the song “Boys & Girls.” What, I think, is this wonderful song, who sings it? It turned out that these are the same Blur - very

changed for the better. London then lived with their album “Parklife”.

The music Blur played was called Britpop. There were no special innovations in it: Britpop - a response to overseas grunge - seized on the stylistic tradition of bo-x; carried out, so to speak, an audit of grandma's closet. Plush rebels with patriarchal guitars and household names - "Stain", "Suede", "Elastica", "Oasis" - turned out to be national heroes, and their conflicts became the main news of the Empire. Blur moved the release dates of the next single so that it would appear on sale the same day as the Oasis single. Blur's song was coming out ahead, but Oasis was winning the album battle. The leaders of the groups almost punched each other in the face, the country watched the developments without breathing; British pop, as The Observer put it, turned out to be no less profitable than British steel.

Hearing the word “Oasis,” Alex James begins to deny, mumble something incomprehensible, and with his entire appearance makes it clear that the Oasis group is the last thing in life that interests him. The battles of the Britpop titans are a thing of the past - as is Britpop itself.

Now the Blur leader rarely appears in Britain. A little flabby Al-

Barn trains with Malian musicians, rents a studio in Morocco, teams up with Michael Nyman and Fatboy Slim, and in between invents the band Gorillaz - the first virtual pop project of the 21st century. With the end of the marketing campaign called Britpop, Albarn shattered into a thousand pieces, like the mirror of the Snow Queen, stuck on the albums of Massive Attack or Marianne Faithfull, in soundtracks, gossip columns and news reports: “Damon Albarn is doing America”, “Damon Albarn is going to Iraq” - Damon Albarn, who had not written anything worthwhile for a long time, had fallen out with the guitarist and co-author Graham Coxon and in no way resembling a beautiful rebel, is found absolutely everywhere.

“Everything that happens to us happens naturally,” explains Alex. – We spent a year fiddling with the album “Think Tank”, and in the end we crashed in Morocco, on a f...ing truck through the jungle. You have to endure this, you know? Graham's departure allowed me to tinker with the rhythm a lot,

and now we have an awesome sound.

– Quite a radical way to improve sound.

– Imagine, we never talked about what was happening with the group to those in the background. I have no idea what Damon is thinking right now. He'll record a new Gorillaz album, I'll come up with another project, Blur will land on Mars for Christmas.

It’s time for Alex to go on stage, for me to go to the festival field. Somewhere in the distance, in the spotlight, the leader of Blur and the inventor of Gorillaz appears, his jacket fits a C plus. On the right, Alex moves his bow across the double bass. On the left is The Verve guitarist Simon Tong, who was replaced by Coxon. Behind him are three happy mulattoes on backing vocals. Albarn rushes to the front - and naturally falls off the stage. Miraculously, the surviving artist welcomes the crowd to “this, what’s-its-name, Britain” and starts, to the delight of his fellow citizens, the Britpop anthem, the song “Boys & Girls”. He rushes towards the crowd, almost jumps, but freezes dangerously close - and returns to the stage, hunched over a tiny analog synthesizer. Tries to demonstrate throat singing. Doesn’t look like Tuvan analogues, before Pava-

Rotty is also far away from him. Albarn sobs plaintively: “Boo-hoo,” and it’s hard to believe that this very “Boo-hoo” - one of the main cries that rang out in the 90s - was once repeated by at least three groups of the first echelon of the Russian Federation.

The heated Reading relieves him of the obligation to sing seriously. Albarn stops in half a step - he has everything, as always, almost. He's almost likeable, almost giving it all, almost jumping into the crowd. Blur is a spot of pastel colors. Safe quality almost rock and roll.

– Do you know why it’s dangerous to play in a successful group? – Alex asks.

– At some point you begin to consider yourself talented in absolutely everything.

- What?

- In everything, I say. I want to write a book - but I still need to reinvent the wheel, invent an anti-gravity machine, build a spaceship, learn to ride a horse, master yoga, become skilled at cooking and make a movie. But you have to be realistic. Working in a rock band means thinking about music 24 hours a day.

The New Musical Express newspaper, which gives full length to the heroes of the Reading Festival, politely mutters something about Blur in three lines. Reading, meanwhile, respectfully and indifferently listens to Blair’s new dance from “Think Tank” - to explode with the whole world on the song “End of a Century”. Fifty thousand people are absolutely happy, and Blur will one day repay this moment.

“They are a subject of 100% interest in Britain, because they are the same guys as absolutely everyone living in this country,” says Ilya Lagutenko. “They know for sure that they are loved for this.”

In fact, the last event that brought Blur into the spotlight was Alex's wedding (the release of the new album was pushed into the background).

“If you read the newspapers,” Alex reasons, “it turns out that there is nothing more important than another divorce.” I see this as a movement towards a global village. People want to know what's cooking under their neighbor's lid. The difference is that if before it was a shame to read glossy magazines, now it’s a shame to get into them.

Alex scratches his nose. He ponders what could be the reason for a new explosion of interest in Blur, and finally says: “Probably if we died.” It would have worked. THE END