When Blur famously pulled out of the Big Day Out 2014 lineup last year, they blamed “shifting goalposts” and “very challenging organisers.”
Now frontman Damon Albarn has finally expanded on those comments, discussing the reasons behind the band’s decision to cancel on the Aussie music festival just over a month before its kick-off.
Despite previously avoiding discussing the festival no-show due to legal reasons, Albarn has opened up in a recent interview.
“Okay, here it is – this is as frank as I’m prepared to be about what happened,” Albarn tells the New Zealand Herald (via FasterLouder).
“That was going to be the last Blur show – the end of playing together – and I didn’t want it to finish on anything other than a very positive note, because Blur is incredibly precious to all of us. But I was genuinely concerned that the whole [Big Day Out] thing wouldn’t be quite as spiritually conclusive as we hoped it would be, because we weren’t sure if the organisation was quite right, or supportive of our ambitions.” “That was going to be the last Blur show – the end of playing together…”
Albarn further explained that the Big Day Out organisers “weren’t being straight with me about things, which they needed to be, and at that point I became disillusioned because I didn’t want what we’d done throughout the year, with Blur, to be undermined or tarnished in any way, by a show that wasn’t going to be what we wanted to do.”
Blur were originally “thrilled” to close the Big Day Out on the ‘Love’ stage, custom-built to accommodate the Britpop veterans, following sets from co-headliners Pearl Jam and Arcade Fire.
“We’d been playing for six months solidly, around the world, so I knew that we would deliver a fantastic show,” Albarn tells the NZ Herald; “a great performance and a communal event, which everyone would have enjoyed… All I asked was that the organisation recognised that and I didn’t feel they did. So, that’s why, unfortunately, we couldn’t come,” adding that, “I am truly, terribly sorry to everyone that we let down…”
The shock Blur cancellation initially “completely caught us with our pants down,” Big Day Out promoter AJ Maddah admitted earlier this year, insisting the festival had done everything to satisfy Blur’s demands, including offers of sideshows. In a later interview Triple J’s Hack, following the completion of the Big Day Out 2014 tour, Maddah dismissed claims that the high costs of staging Blur were to blame for their pull-out as “nonsense”, instead suggesting that there it was internal intentions within the band that were the catalyst.
Though it looks like chances of a Down Under tour from Blur are now dashed, Albarn, who is currently promoting and touring his new solo album, Everyday Robots, says he’d like to return Down Under to perform in future.
“Don’t anyone forget that I had an absolutely brilliant time with Gorillaz only two years earlier in that part of the world – it was a fantastic experience – and I fully intend to come back and play there again, if I’m allowed. Until then, I understand I have to wait.”
The frontman is also in the rumour mill for the Splendour In The Grass 2014 lineup after being confirmed to play Fuji Rock in Japan this July, performing material from Everday Robots; today releasing a new track from the solo LP: ‘Heavy Seas Of Love’ featuring vocals by Brian Eno.
