Beetlebum

This isn't a Valentine's Day post

When Damon Albarn did heroin it sounded like love. I remember the single “Beetlebum”, about Albarn's skag use, coming out. I was 10. My brother had just left home. I was his shadow. He'd make me mixtapes on cassette throughout my childhood. It was how we bonded. I later adopted the practice.

When he left, it was my first experience of missing a person you're obsessed with. I'd count down the days till he would visit or I'd visit him. I was melancholic when he arrived knowing he'd have to go again. That was a strange sensation as a child; this impending dread wrapped up in the joy of reunion. Time was no longer unconscious to me, I now valued every second of it. My brother leaving home was my first taste of deep sadness.

That's when music took over the void. Without someone to constantly interrupt or join on the sofa playing Mariokart and Donkey Kong or go driving around Glasgow, I had a Walkman and headphones. We became inseparable – me and the machine – and I became a lot quieter, more observant. I started on a path of fierce independence as a girl, which gave me the emotional security I have now I guess. But I'll always be scared of losing people.

Anyway, “Beetlebum”. I was reminded of it a few days ago in the celebrations by music outlets of Blur's self-titled fifth album that was released 25 years ago in 1997.

I was 10, I loved Blur more than Oasis. I always loved Blur more than Oasis. In the great infamous chart battle between the two Britpop bands in 1995, when Blur moved their single release to the same week as Oasis, I backed Blur's “Country House” over Oasis' “Roll With It” to Number 1, and felt smug in my vindication when they succeeded. I was definitely a little snob. I decided that there was far more potential for Blur's sound to evolve and diversify, and I found their music more interesting, humorous, biting and emotional. Oasis appealed as the people's band; working class heroes, brash, aspirational. When I put their poster on my wall, my Dad frowned at Liam and Noel Gallagher the way his mother did at him for listening to “Mick Jaguar” and the Rolling Stones. But Oasis' music had a ceiling. Also the Gallaghers' monobrowed Mancunian swagger wasn't as pretty as Blur's Damon Albarn and his Essex boy indie spin on Leo Dicaprio's floppy-haired charisma. Damon was way more beautiful than Liam.

I adored him. Fifteen years later I found myself sitting at his desk at his own Studio 13 under the Westway in West London, listening to his new solo record, which upon release he signed and doodled all over as a gift to me. Swoon. Sometimes I think the '90s might have been the last proper decade. A time that was at once pushed to extremes and yet defined by its limitations. The '90s knew itself. I don't think the same can be said of a decade since. Does that make sense?

Anyway, I was listening to “Beetlebum” while watching the sunset over Los Angeles yesterday evening, imagining what it taught me about love when I first heard it, as I then imagined that's what it was about. It's an anxious song, defined by Graham Coxon's dirgey guitar chugs, and Alex James' muscular bass. The verses are really tense and riddled with trepidation, concerned about what distress this so-called Beetlebum has caused. Albarn is obsessed with the Beetlebum like a moth to a lethal flame. And when the chorus hits, he bursts into technicolor with a warm refrain, coming up on the high of another lovebomb.“And when she lets me slip away/She turns me on and all my violence is gone/Nothing is wrong, I just slip away and I am gone.” Then it's back to the comedown verse. “She's a gun,” sings Albarn. “She'll suck your thumb/She'll make you cum.”

It's about how Albarn used to get high with his girlfriend Justine Frischmann of the band Elastica, with whom he had a public, indie fairytale relationship with. They were the coolest couple in cool Britannia; King and Queen of Camden Town. They burned fast.

Yes, Beetlebum is about heroin. But it's more than that. It's about the sometimes volatile lure of romance. It's about how love is a wild drug. It's about codependency. It's about the need for more than what you're offered. It's about going out of reality to be in a fantasy, only to come crashing down and out afterwards. It's about the ways in which that doesn't sustain you. It's about the cold sweat of the morning after and the transient heat of the night before. It's about unhealthy love; a love that's defined by the lust of chasing highs and abating shame. It's about seeking a salve in the thrill, about numbing the chaos inside, about fucking the pain away. It's about sabotaging yourself in favor of following the dragon.

On their fifth self-titled album, Blur were mid-identity crisis. They had almost broken up, they had grown tired of the Britpop scene after being dethroned by their rivals, and they had looked further afield to America for influence. As Graham Coxon discovered his guitar affinity with US rock bands such as Pavement and Mott The Hoople, Albarn grew up a little and started to write about himself instead of creating the characters that defined their previous albums, whether on Parklife or Modern Life Is Rubbish. The collection of songs here secured them their then biggest US success, spurned by the irresistible freakout of “Song 2” with its brutish drums, iconic guitar line, and Albarn's bleet of “woo-hoooooo!”, which became ripe to soundtrack every car commercial and sports advertisement from there on. Blur landed on the map in a new way, in a way that would set up their futures, both in this band, and in as-yet-unborn projects, notably one of Albarn's current day jobs – Gorillaz.

[Me interviewing Damon in 2020]

I was hiking through the park, thinking about “Beetlebum” and thinking about love. What have I learned about love. I don't know. We all learn something, right? I think I've learned that it can come on like a mind-altering chemical that takes you prisoner and robs you of your senses. I’ve learned that it can be far more subtle than that and creep up on you when you didn’t ask it to, when the time is wrong, when it’s fucking awkward but perhaps more reasonable. I’ve learned that whether you’re experiencing it with someone or not, there's a part of it you're always alone in, and that sometimes that part outweighs the loud bits and becomes even louder. I’ve learned that for love to work, you have to grow next to someone, not always as a unit. I’ve learned that love far rewards patience over impulsive action, and that taming your heart for yourself is the strongest guarantee as an offer to the person who’s fortunate enough to receive.

But love can never be the Beetlebum. Love should not destroy you. Love should set you free.