Without Blur There Would Be No Oasis

Britpop legends Blur have announced they are getting back together to play Glastonbury and a huge gig in London’s Hyde Park next summer.

Old rivals Oasis are part-way through a mammoth world tour and also take to the stage, at Wembley Stadium, just a week after Damon Albarn and Co.

The head-to-head blockbuster concerts bring back memories of 1995 when the feuding bands famously dominated the airwaves as they waged all-out war.

Here, Alan McGee – the man who signed Oasis to Creation Records – remembers one of pop’s most bitter spats.

IT was the biggest rivalry in music since The Beatles and the Rolling Stones.

The race for the No1 spot between Oasis and Blur back in 1995 was all over the national TV news and the newspapers.

It was an incredible career move for Oasis — our next album, (What’s The Story) Morning Glory?, sold 23million copies.

But I can’t take any credit for it — it was a fluke.

It happened like this: Oasis had a No1 with Some Might Say and as the boss of Creation I threw a party for them.

There was bad blood between Oasis and Blur but I invited Blur singer Damon Albarn to the party — after all, I was paying for it.

Damon and I used to watch Chelsea together.

I was always friends with him throughout that whole thing of everyone supposedly hating each other.

Damon came in peace to the party, I’m sure.

But when Liam Gallagher saw him coming in, he shouted: “We’re number one, you’re not, you’re not. We’re number one, you’re not, you’re not.”

Afterwards Damon, in his madness, changed the release date of Blur’s next single Country House to coincide with Oasis’s single Roll With It.

Genius

It was on the national news every night. It was incredible.

I don’t think Blur disliked Oasis — but Oasis genuinely disliked Blur.

At the time, they were three times bigger than us and they won that battle for No1.

But it was an incredible career move for us.

Without Blur, Oasis probably would not have got the airplay. It made us, in people’s perceptions, as big as them. Suddenly we were elevated to the mainstream.

Blur are a really, really great band.

I love Beetlebum, Song 2 and The Universal. They are all beautiful songs.

But they had one bad album — The Great Escape — which was released that year. All the others are good.

So Oasis kind of won the war. Out of it all came the 23million-selling (What’s The Story) Morning Glory?.

As much as the music is always more important than the hype, the whole thing in 1995 helped make them both really iconic bands.

It made them stand out and defined a decade.

Oasis and Blur, along with Pulp, were Britpop — they were the soundtrack for an era.

Both bands are incredible talents. I would go as far as saying Damon Albarn is a genius.

I’ve got a lot of respect for him as a musician — he jumped from Blur to doing hip-hop and pop with Gorillaz better than the Americans.

He’s an incredible talent, a musical genius.

And I love Noel Gallagher, both as a talent and a person.

I think Noel Gallagher is Neil Young.

Both bands have survived because people want to go to see them. It’s as simple as that.

Oasis’s shows next summer have already sold out.

I think it’s great for music that both Oasis and Blur are playing gigs next year.

Source: www.thesun.co.uk