How the Beastie Boys Saved Blur

Here's an interesting factoid about two of my favorite bands, the Beastie Boys and Blur. In 1992, Blur made their second trip to America. It was a complete and utter failure, as America was much more interested in the music that was coming out of Seattle at the time. To make matters worse, Blur's record company had lined up gigs in secondary markets, where the audience for an arty English band was even smaller. As John Harris writes in his great book Britpop, "the gloom was momentarily lifted [in Atlanta] by the news that their fellow EMI artists the Beastie Boys were staying in the same hotel. Blur telephoned their suite, in anticipation of a night's revelry. The Beastie Boys, unfortunately, told Blur to fuck off."

The trip went so badly that, upon returning to England -- and after a poor live performance -- Blur's record company threatened to drop them. Not to mention, their rivals Suede were on the cover of all the music magazines. Blur could have easily been swept aside. But Damon Albarn was more than equal to the existential challenge facing his band. Drawing inspiration from bands like the Kinks and the Jam, Albarn decided that the appropriate response to a music industry in awe of grunge and all things American was to go English. In a big way. Nothing about American music at the time spoke to Albarn, so he wrote the seminal track "For Tomorrow" which was to become the first single off Modern Life is Rubbish. Albarn sings about life in England over an intricate chord structure and (gasp) a horn section, something that hadn't been featured in pop music in years. Blur followed up with Parklife and The Great Escape and became kings of the movement they helped create, Britpop.

Blur's stylistic shift is well-documented, but the role the Beastie Boys played in it is not. When I first read about it in the book Britpop, I thought -- damn, what a lost opportunity: Blur and the Beastie Boys together for what would have been an epic night. But then I figured the Beasties diss -- along with a slew of other things -- helped push Blur to new heights musically, and for that I should be grateful. Listen to the difference yourself. Here's Blur's "Popscene", complete with hard-driving guitars, written to coincide with their fateful 1992 U.S. tour:

And now here's the quintessentially Britpop anthem "For Tomorrow". It's an incredible jump forward -- an advance of light years: