For one, warm July weekend last summer, London’s Wembley Stadium was brimming with music fans dressed in bucket hats and polo tees. It seems notable that now, nearly 14 months on, Blur’s Britpop rivals Oasis are currently embroiled in an online debate over fair ticketing, while Damon Albarn and co. continue to celebrate their successful reunion by releasing not one, but two documentaries about it.
Directed by the band’s longtime collaborator Toby L, the first of these films (To the End), came out in June and NME called it “a joyful and touching tale of a band crawling out of their Last Of The Summer Wine years to get all Spinal Tap once more”. The second film (blur: Live at Wembley Stadium), arrives three months later and feels more like a victory lap.
“We’ve been waiting all our lives for this,” says Damon after a punky rework of fan favourite ‘Popscene’. The crowd are united in their sheer excitement, proudly waiving homemade banners back at him. What the film tries – and mostly achieves – is to encapsulate the utter joy that rumbled through the stadium that day. It helps that the setlist is a thrilling mix of chart hits and deep cuts that really do deserve to be played through cinema-scale speakers.
Toby L rigged up more than 20 cameras to get close-ups of punters – and there’s even exterior drone footage to illustrate the sheer magnitude of the place. However, it’s pretty clear from the jump that the acclaimed filmmaker is trying to do something a little too ambitious with the army of cameras he’s got going. For the first five minutes, it’s jarring how quickly he slashes between shots of Damon, the crowd, guitarist Graham Coxon, bassist Alex James, the crowd again, the sky and so on. Whiplash, anyone?
When everything calms down, we get to experience some charmingly intimate scenes that you may never have noticed if you were in the audience that night. We watch the ash tumble away from all five of James’ mid-gig cigarettes (a funny contrast to Graham’s secret puffing on an Elf bar), drummer Dave Roundtree leaning over his drumkit to snap a picture of Damon lying down on stage, serenaded by 90,000 singing the final lines of ‘Tender’ – and the Essex maestro’s kiddish grin, adorned with that single gold tooth.
Highlights like a snarling, break-neck rendition of ‘Song 2’ have you wanting to get up and kick your legs in the air with the band, while Damon’s impassioned cries of “it looks like we might have made it” in ‘To The End’ are enough to make even the most stubborn of us a little weepy. You wouldn’t be alone here, as one of Toby L’s tight well-timed shots captures a fan, just as tears begin to stream down their face.
This really is one for the fans. There are leaps of joy, forehead kisses and even Damon putting a mic to Alex’s bum. It’s a proper love-fest. To some degree, blur: Live at Wembley Stadium is more like watching a bunch of teens successfully pulling off their first gig than 50-somethings at an all-time career high. It’s this mischievousness that makes them so endearing to watch.
Details
- Director: Toby L
- Release date: September 6 (in cinemas)