Blur’s decision to bail on last January’s Big Day Out came when frontman Damon Albarn decided the music festival wasn’t doing enough to make what would have been the band’s final performances “spiritually conclusive”.
In an interview with the New Zealand Herald, Albarn took time to tell his side of the story after Blur copped a ton of flak for cancelling their headline spot alongside Pearl Jame and Arcade Fire one-month out from BDO’s launch.
The band made the announcement via social media, declaring at the time that they would no longer be heading Down Under due to “constantly shifting goalposts and challenging conditions of the organisers”.
Festival promoter AJ Maddah went on Triple J after the news broke, claiming the Blur decision was a result of internal troubles within the band.
According to Albarn, that wasn’t the case and the group were simply hoping to make their final shows together something to be remembered.
“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,” Albarn told the NZH.
“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.”
Albarn described BDO organisers as not being “straight with me about things”.
“We’d been playing for six months solidly, around the world, so I knew that we would deliver a fantastic show, a great performance and a communal event, which everyone would have enjoyed,” he said.
“I am truly, terribly sorry to everyone that we let down, but we just didn’t want to be anything other than what I felt we deserved to be – our best. If we’d played – and not been that – it would have let people down even more.”
David Albarn’s New Solo Album Revealed
According to Albarn, Blur won’t be re-banding any time soon, however he is on the promo tour in support of his upcoming solo album, Everyday Robots. The first single of the same name dropped earlier this month.
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