- [indistinct chatter]
- [glasses rattling]
- [dog barks]
- [fanfare plays]
[baby coos]
["Song 2" by Blur playing]
[narrator] If you've ever been to
a wedding, a major sporting event,
a drunken karaoke night,
or a middle school dance,
then you probably know this song.
Whoo-hoo! ♪
[narrator] Or maybe this one?
You're my wonderwall ♪
[narrator] That, of course,
is "Wonderwall" by Oasis.
And before that, "Song 2" by Blur,
which is sometimes
just straight up called, "Whoo-hoo."
Whoo-hoo! ♪
[60's style pop music playing]
[narrator] Those were two
of the biggest songs
to emerge from the United Kingdom
since the days of The Beatles,
the Stones, and the British Invasion.
But in the '90s, before the Internet,
the average music fan
outside of Great Britain
had no idea that Blur and Oasis were
spearheading a whole new musical wave.
It was a wave that would rule Britannia,
dominating the UK charts,
selling millions of records,
seeding bitter rivalries,
and shifting the landscape
of British pop and politics.
This is Britpop.
[British national anthem playing]
[narrator] Ah! Jolly old England,
the land of dreary weather,
stately palaces,
the Union Jack, bobbies on the beat,
the Queen, quaint countrysides,
and a cheese farmer
who was at the very center
of one of the most important
music movements in pop history.
[cow moos]
[interviewer] What do you think or feel
when you hear the word "Britpop"?
[laughs]
Every time I hear the word Britpop
a little part of me dies.
I'm sorry, I know you're making a program
about how brilliant it was but bollocks.
[upbeat pop-rock music playing]
The most important thing that happened
to British culture in the '90s
was that art got really good.
And Blur had come out of this place
where that whole thing started,
Goldsmiths College.
At our first ever rehearsal,
we wrote our first single.
Right from the get-go,
we just made a really good noise together.
[melodic rock music playing]
But by 1992, we'd been mismanaged
to the extent that
we had quite a big tax bill to pay,
one that's enforceable
by imprisonment, if you can't pay it.
So, we fired our manager
and the only way to pay off the taxman
was to commit to
an enormous tour of America.
[grunge music playing]
[James] We arrived in America the day
that Nirvana's album Nevermind came out.
That record changed everything,
and we arrived bankrupt
with the old agenda.
You know, it's kind of a buzzkill.
[laughs]
All the music press
were talking about grunge,
it was the latest scene.
British music was completely irrelevant.
So, we had this huge three-month saga
of a steeplechase,
drinking really heavily,
playing shows in pubs and clubs
where nobody thought
what we were doing was relevant at all.
[rock music playing]
[Rowntree] It was quite a depressing
and frustrating time, really.
Grunge was huge in the charts
and we were a small band in the UK
and completely unheard of
outside the big cities in the States.
[harmonica wails]
I remember, specifically,
we went to a place called Mile City,
the kind of laughingly called "City"
'cause it was about
three houses and a truck stop.
[harmonica playing]
We got off the bus and somebody came
running up and asking for our autograph.
I thought, "That's amazing,
our fame has spread even to Mile City."
It turned out they'd never
met an English person before.
[laughs]
- [band singing "When Will We Be Married"]
- Lean Jimmy E ♪
You got your eye on Jimmy
A fine lad is he ♪
[Rowntree] The vastness of America
took us by surprise.
We'd driven
the length and breadth of the UK,
which just about fits into
one of the medium-sized states in America.
[chuckles]
On those interminably long US drives,
that's where we kind of had discussions
and ideas about how has
American culture shaped English culture,
kind of re-imagining what would
British pop music sound like
if Elvis hadn't happened.
We talked about
this stuff ad nauseam, at length.
It was that, really,
that was the genesis of what we did next.
["Rule, Britannia!" playing]
[James] When we got back
from that American tour,
it just completely gave us
a sense of who we are.
I don't think you really understand
where you come from
until you're taken out of that situation.
It just made us realize British culture
has been completely marginalized.
["Rule, Britannia!" continues]
We went into the studio
with the idea of writing something
very determinedly British,
something incredibly left field
and really different from grunge.
[playing slide whistle]
The record company were aghast,
they threw their hands in the air,
said, "British pop, British pop,
you're mad, never gonna work."
- [glass shatters]
- Oi!
["Parklife" by Blur playing]
I get up when I want
Except on Wednesdays ♪
When I get rudely awakened
By the dustmen ♪
Parklife ♪
I put my trousers on
Have a cup of tea ♪
And I think about leaving me house ♪
Parklife ♪
I feed the pigeons
I sometimes feed the sparrows too ♪
It gives me a sense
Of enormous well-being ♪
Parklife ♪
[James] We arrived to play a festival
and we'd just written "Parklife,"
"So should we start with that then?"
- [stomping]
- The drums start, the bass drum,
and they're all like,
"Whoa, we like this."
Hands in the air,
they're jumping up and down.
And, uh, we got to the chorus
and a pair of knickers hit Damon
and a bra hit me in the face.
[laughing] I was like,
"Wow. Something's just changed."
All the people ♪
So many people ♪
And they all go hand-in-hand ♪
Hand-in-hand through their parklife ♪
Know what I mean? ♪
Parklife ♪
Parklife ♪
[tires squeal]
Parklife ♪
All the people ♪
[Rowntree] Top of The Pops was
the main music program on TV at the time.
There were only four channels on the TV,
not the 4,000 that there are now.
And so, an appearance on that
meant pretty much every young person
in the country would see you.
And suddenly,
we were playing much larger shows.
We were getting mobbed.
And they all go hand-in-hand ♪
Hand-in-hand through their parklife ♪
We supplanted the tail end of grunge
and completely pushed out
what was going on.
It was as if suddenly
it was okay to be British,
it was okay to be English again,
you didn't have to be embarrassed.
There was definitely
something in the air at that time.
Parklife ♪
[British march playing]
[narrator] Blur's success with "Parklife"
made the English music press take notice.
Now, the thing is,
England is what you might call
a mono-culture.
There's one time zone,
a handful of TV stations,
and, in the days
way before the World Wide Web,
just four music magazines,
all based in London.
These magazines
had a voracious appetite for stories
and an insatiable need
to find the next big thing.
[Price] Britain, at that time,
was being suffocated by American rock
and American culture.
Grunge was all about baring your soul
and singing from the heart,
and being authentic,
and being real and credible,
and not having any frills or any artifice.
And to quote The Smiths,
"It said nothing to me about my life."
['60's psychedelic rock music playing]
[Price] The pop tradition of this country
is a bit more playful, post-modern,
about the knowing wink.
[dinging]
That had gone away
for at least half a decade.
Blur, they were pioneers
of British guitar rock
in the tradition of The Kinks,
of that kind of playfulness,
and the press ran with it.
And next thing you know,
the seeds of Britpop had been sown.
["Great Things" by Echobelly playing]
Savage & Best was a publicity firm
and we were very intimately involved
in PR-ing the bands around at the time.
You know,
a lot of them run around in our office
and we'd do photo sessions in the office
and go to gigs together,
or going around London together.
We found bands
quite young in their career,
often stumbling across them in pubs.
I wanna know what love is
Is it something I do ♪
We found Suede in a local pub,
and then Verve playing to about ten people
in even smaller pub, and Echobelly.
All is fair in love and w*r
Or so they say and so the saying goes ♪
But I've seen more broken hearts
Than you can count ♪
[Madan] It happened for us
very, very quickly.
One of the first shows that we ever did,
it was so rammed,
I mean it was illegally rammed,
you couldn't breathe in there.
The ceiling
actually collapsed on us. [laughs]
And we carried on performing.
- [crowd cheering]
- [fixture rattling]
[Madan] It was full
of record company people,
it was definitely a buzz going on.
And the press
was so determined to create the scene.
You had to be in
with the right journalists.
You had to basically have a kind
of authentic Britishness about you.
You had to look a certain way.
I remember going to a pub in Soho
and there was Blur in the corner
wearing the same clothes as us.
And we just clocked each other,
and it was like a kind of
something in the air, knowing.
In that scene,
if you ticked the right boxes,
you literally rode a wave.
I wanna do great things ♪
I don't wanna compromise ♪
I wanna know what love is ♪
Is it something I do to myself? ♪
Something I do to myself? ♪
Something you do to yourself? ♪
[Harris]
This thing is still not called Britpop,
I don't think that word's kicking around.
But it's pretty obvious
that being in a four-piece indie group,
influenced somewhat by the past,
there's money in those hills, right?
I can remember
being asked to write a piece
celebrating how great
British music had got.
Ten Great Britpop Moments.
And I don't know why I chose that word,
I just needed a word,
and I probably nicked it
from somewhere else.
But by the spring of ‘95,
it's kind of everywhere.
[Britpop music playing]
[Price]
We, in the press, were sitting around
desperately waiting
for something to happen.
We were looking for people
with personalities,
characters to write about.
When a handful of bands came along
who were vaguely similar,
nostalgic, retro, very English,
we were only too keen
to group them together
under this banner of Britpop.
Britpop was all about
discovering a new band every week.
We were very much A&R,
we were the talent scouts,
we would discover
these brand new bands and write about them
and put them on the front cover.
You would hear stories about
this group here had been
a heavy metal group until three weeks ago,
then they'd all gone
and bought Fred Perry shirts
and they were suddenly
singing songs about cups of tea.
Sometimes you'd kind of keep
the music much the same as it was
but change the clothes
you were wearing and, hey, presto,
you were part of this mood.
My band, we were sort of
scooped up into Britpop,
we were more of kind of
a DIY punk aesthetic,
and then by the time
we got to our first album,
we're all, like, wearing polo necks.
We were teenagers,
so we didn't know any different.
It was a really fun time
to be young and in a band.
Money was sloshing around
in the music industry,
people were buying guitar records
who'd never bought guitar records before.
You had bands like Lush,
previously part of
the shoegazing movement,
who were suddenly selling
a lot of records because of Britpop.
[shoegaze music playing]
Lush started as a shoegaze band,
and was kind of post-punk.
It was actually almost anti-commercial.
One of the criticisms of Lush was that
they could have been this pop band,
yet they muck it up by sort of
putting too many guitar effects,
not understanding that we like that bit,
actually, that's why we do it.
But there was a part of me
that thought, "Don't be scared of a hit!"
Blondie was with me for a summer ♪
He flirted like a maniac
But I wouldn't bite ♪
I'm weak ♪
Here's the hand claps
and the bit where all the music drops out,
and the little,
"You get the picture," you know? [laughs]
Let's give it a go, then.
Save your breath for someone else ♪
And credit me with something more ♪
When it comes to men like you ♪
I know the score
I've heard it all before ♪
Ooh, you're such a ladykiller
Always on a winner ♪
Shoegazing and grunge, at their worst,
had a bit of pompousness about them,
that were a bit humorless.
"Oh, come on," you know?
"Let's not be that serious."
You know, that was quite liberating,
that you didn't have to be scared
of pushing that side of you.
You think you're such a ladykiller ♪
I just bet you're still there
Posing in the mirror ♪
Hey, girls, he's such a ladykiller ♪
But we know where he's coming from
And we know the score ♪
[Damon]
Good evening. I'm Damon from Blur.
I'm here to introduce myself
and some of the best bands in Britain,
performing live here in the studio
on Britpop Now.
Three years ago, if you were in a band
that was not Nirvana or a diet Nirvana,
you were nothing.
Well, I think all that's changed now.
British bands are no longer embarrassed
to sing about where they come from,
they've found their voice.
[Harris] All of these groups, they were
all kind of London-based groups,
and they were true to the classical
art school notion of British music,
they thought they were making art
and they were, right?
Then comes this five-piece band
from Manchester led by these two brothers
who basically knock on the door and say,
"Ah, never mind all that, rock and roll."
It's like someone gate-crashing a party.
[glass shattering]
[trumpet fanfare playing]
[narrator] Oasis came out of
the northern factory city of Manchester.
They were part of a long line of bands
that included The Buzzcocks, Joy Division,
The Smiths, Happy Mondays
and The Stone Roses.
[burps]
See, this North/South divide
is a big thing in the United Kingdom.
The middle-class South is depicted as
stuffy, pretentious and, well, a bit soft.
Meanwhile, the other end of the country
is typically seen
as working class
and "a bit grim up North."
But one label head,
hailing from way up in Scotland,
was bent on recruiting Northern bands
and throwing a spanner
into the Britpop works.
Creation tended
to sign working-class bands.
We never really signed middle-class bands,
but I would have signed an aristocrat
if they had an amazing tune.
I wasn't a snob about it.
Glasgow was having
a "City of Culture" week,
the pubs were open all night,
and I walked in and there was
a lot of mouthy altercation
between this band
and the two Scottish security guys,
and a deal was brokered
'cause I kind of said,
"Oh, just let them on
for two songs, whatever."
They played "Rock 'n' Roll Star,"
"Up in the Sky,"
then they played a Beatles cover,
"I Am the Walrus."
Everybody used to ruin Beatles covers.
At that point I thought,
"That's f*cking amazing."
I said, "Who's in charge of the band?"
They went, "This guy, Noel."
I went, "Go get him."
Noel Gallagher comes on out
and then I just went,
"I'm McGee for Creation Records,
do you want a deal?"
It's the best move
I ever made in my bloody life.
["Rock 'n' Roll Star" playing]
I live my life in the city ♪
There's no easy way out ♪
The day's moving just too fast for me ♪
I need some time in the sunshine ♪
I've gotta slow it right down ♪
The day's moving
Just too fast for me ♪
[Hewitt] First time I saw Oasis play live,
I was absolutely staggered by them.
It was sort of like
this UFO had landed, bang!
"Who are these aliens?"
They didn't smile, they didn't try
to endear themselves to the audience,
they didn't do the,
"Hey, how's everybody doing?" bit,
they just played their songs
and left the stage.
"If you like us, great,
if you don't, f*ck off."
[police siren blaring]
[Hewitt] They came from
a real working-class area of Manchester,
they lived in a council house.
And one of the things about Manchester is,
they do have a bit of a chip
on their shoulder about London.
So here was this working-class band,
foul mouthed and didn't give a sh*t.
The media can take the Britpop
and stick it as far up the back entry
of "Country House" as they can take it.
We're a universal rock band,
we're not Britpop.
Oasis were gonna get big
whether they called it Britpop or not.
Blur partly opened the door for Oasis,
but Oasis were very different to Blur,
really, really different kind of music.
Calling them Britpop,
it was just a convenient tag
for the media.
Tonight I'm a rock 'n' roll star ♪
Tonight I'm a rock 'n' roll star ♪
[Skin] I remember seeing Oasis
for the very first time,
the songs were absolutely astonishing.
We hung out a bit and met them,
they were, like, working-class guys
but from up North.
So they were the same vibe as us,
they were who they were.
There's a lot of edge and great things
come out of working-class culture
because we have something to fight about.
Our stories are different.
Oasis had a legitimate backing
from working-class culture
in a way that a lot of the other artists
that made it at the time didn't.
We were on the same label,
so they put us on a tour together
and there was such a level
of authentic admiration
from working-class boys.
It was quite shocking to see
that it was real,
it wasn't media-made.
You only had to step outside
the bubble of trendy Britpop London
to see how much love
there was for that band.
You're not down with who I am ♪
Look at you now
You're all in my hands tonight ♪
Oasis came out
and they just did not give a f*ck.
And they came all g*ns blazing,
all swagger, all attitude,
and I think everybody else
just didn't know what to do with that.
Know what I mean? [laughs]
Oasis kind of fit into that lad culture,
which was much more
of a tabloid area of interest
than Britpop ever would be.
Tonight I'm a rock 'n' roll star ♪
Tonight I'm a rock 'n' roll star ♪
Lad culture was people saying,
"I want to go out and get drunk,
if I can get laid, great."
"I wanna take drugs,
I wanna listen to music,
and I'm gonna go and watch football."
[crowd chanting]
Whatever the lad culture dream was,
it was what Oasis were doing:
being hugely successful, drinking loads,
taking lots of drugs,
barely knowing what day it was.
That was the kind of
Loaded magazine dream.
[reporter] What about Justine of Elastica,
do you really fancy her then?
Yeah.
- Are you going to go for her?
- No, she's gonna go for me.
[Berenyi] It was the press,
I just remember them
absolutely wetting themselves
with delight.
[laughing]
You know, blokes
who were quite dull people,
who suddenly felt that this
was their liberating moment.
I might do a photo sh**t with the NME,
suddenly it's all like,
"Can you turn up in a bikini
and kind of like
spray champagne everywhere?"
It was like, "The f*ck are we doing here?"
Know what I mean?
- [all clamoring]
- [shutters clicking]
The lad culture was not just Oasis,
it was everywhere.
It all got a bit sexist
and it all got a bit, like,
traditionally white male.
Like, "Ugh. Really?
Are we going backwards?"
I didn't really identify with that,
it was something the straights were doing.
[laughs]
Oasis!
[laughing]
[Savidge] I don't think anybody expected
Oasis to be quite so big so quickly.
Once Oasis arrived, the attitude of Blur
became slightly more laddish
because they thought,
"We're getting left behind here."
"We've got to try and pretend
to be a bit more butch."
[laughs]
[guitar rock music playing]
[bubbling]
Blur were kind of middle-class boys
and they were kind of trying to dumb down,
they were putting on Fred Perrys
and sort of singing in c*ck accents
and "Parklife!"
"Yeah, cor blimey, geezer," and all that.
I mean, they were good records,
but it just didn't sit well with Oasis.
It wasn't really part of any plan,
getting into a fight
with another band, but
you know, it was a lot of arrogant,
c*ck young men,
added to the fact that there was
massive amounts of booze involved,
things were bound to go awry.
Blur, suddenly they're
acting like they're lads
ready to beat the sh*t out of Oasis.
I don't think so!
You wouldn't want them to be.
I'm not even saying,
"Oh, what a bunch of wusses."
I'm actually saying that they were
being encouraged to be these sort of
bloke-y pricks, actually.
[blowing raspberry]
[McGee]
Blur sort of just saw it as a game.
They misjudged how serious Oasis
were about the whole thing,
because they wanted to k*ll Blur.
[gushing]
[whistle blows]
[glasses clinking]
[narrator] Spurred on
by the Manchester lads of Oasis,
Britpop blasted out of London
and became a national obsession.
Now the Northerners were
eating the Londoners for dinner
[crunching]
and things were getting tense.
The evening news and tabloids
reached a massive circulation,
much bigger than the music press,
and they stoked up the fervor
between classes and cultures
across the country.
Today, this would be a Twitter flame w*r
lasting no more than a few hours,
but back then, for one whole week,
all eyes were on the Battle of Britpop.
[boxing bell dings]
[Ross] I'd always been extremely careful
to make sure that our release dates
fitted in comfortably
with the opposition's.
It made no sense for us
to collide directly
with our main competitors,
which, at the time, was Oasis.
If someone said in a pub or something,
"You know, Oasis are putting
their record out at the same time,"
"Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no
I don't think so,
you're having a bit of a laugh."
"Don't wind me up, mate."
We assumed that they would be
complying with common sense,
in terms of their release schedule,
except common sense and Oasis
don't necessarily go hand in hand.
[Noel] They accused us of moving
our single to coincide with theirs.
The reality of it is, they know they
brought their single forward
to coincide with ours.
They know that's what they've done.
They know that.
It's bloody obvious
it was not our schedule.
They started it
and we were just responding.
They announced the release date
for their new single,
so we thought, "Right.
We'll announce ours on the same day
and go up against them, head-to-head."
They then, I think still to this day
a rather cowardly act,
moved their release date
so it would no longer clash with us
and then we moved
ours again so that it did.
You gotta roll with it
You gotta take your time ♪
You gotta say what you say ♪
Don't let anybody get in your way ♪
'Cause it's all too much
For me to take ♪
Two of Britain's most popular pop groups
have begun the biggest chart w*r
in 30 years.
The Manchester band Oasis
and their archrivals Blur,
released new singles today,
each hoping to reach
the number one spot next week.
The music industry
hasn't seen anything like it
since The Beatles fought it out
with The Rolling Stones in the '60s.
I find the key
That lets you slip inside ♪
Slip inside ♪
Kiss the girl
She's not behind the door ♪
Behind the door ♪
But you know
I think I recognize your face ♪
But I've never seen you before ♪
The pop world is buzzing
at the confrontation
between Oasis and Blur.
Both bands are desperate
to get the number one slot.
There's a lot at stake,
neither wants to finish second.
The rivalry between
Oasis and Blur is bitter.
Both groups actively dislike each other.
I think we gotta
get back to rock and roll,
not Chas & Dave chimney sweeping music.
We released a single on the same day
because it was either that or a punch up.
And we thought there'd be less bloodshed.
You gotta roll with it
You gotta take your time ♪
You gotta say what you say
Don't let anybody get in your way ♪
'Cause it's all too much
For me to take ♪
[Laverne] You've got a song
about working-class culture.
You know, just saying,
"Sod it," and rolling with it
and going with
your circumstances as they are,
versus a song that's
literally called "Country House,"
which is something that rich people have.
City dweller, successful fella ♪
Thought to himself
"Oops, I've got a lot of money" ♪
Caught in a rat race terminally ♪
I'm a professional cynic
But my heart's not in it ♪
I'm payin' the price
Of livin' life at the limit ♪
Caught up in the century's anxiety ♪
- Yes, it preys on him ♪
- Preys on him ♪
He's gettin' thin, try the simple life ♪
He lives in a house
A very big house in the country ♪
There's nothing better
than a good old battle of two bands
that really f*cking hate each other.
It's almost like the Republicans
and the Democrats, isn't it? [laughs]
It really divided everybody.
[Rowntree] Anyone could put
whatever onto this chart w*r
and say, "This is about The Beatles
versus The Stones,
rock and roll versus art music."
It was a blank canvas for people
to write whatever piece they wanted.
Into the laps of the press
falls not just two records
coming out on the same day,
but the North versus the South,
the middle class versus the working class,
everyone went crazy.
[reporter 2] Today, lines seemed to
be drawn along the North/South divide.
In London, Blur were favorites.
Coming from London,
that's why I support them, really.
I'm a Blur fan,
want them to get to number one.
Oasis, definitely.
Because they're
a Manchester band and we're the best.
I think Oasis have a better following.
- Not Oasis.
- [reporter 2] Why not?
Um, I just don't think
they have much to offer.
I mean, the whole country
was obsessed with that.
It was on News at Ten.
You don't get pop music on News at Ten.
[Rowntree] It wasn't a slow news day,
actual things were happening in the world,
which were pushed out of the way
by journalists standing outside
record shops interviewing people,
saying, "What did you buy, Blur or Oasis?"
[laughs]
[Ross] People could go
to William Hill bookies
and you could bet money
on this great battle.
Oasis were favorites
to be number one that week
and we were six to four.
The whole thing was mental.
And the entire country seemed
to decide which side they were on.
It was insane.
[laughs] It's hard to see why
that would be important,
but it mattered,
for some reason it mattered.
Blur or Oasis?
- In the country ♪
- Doo, doo, doo ♪
- In the country ♪
- Doo, doo, doo ♪
In the country ♪
[boxing bell dings]
[crowd cheers]
[Rowntree] Blur won the Battle of Britpop,
as it later came to be known.
We should have won an award for that,
that was the marketing event
of the decade, really.
[Ross] I wouldn't say it was
the best song that Blur ever released,
I don't think it was
the best song Oasis ever released.
The main reason that we
became number one that particular week
was we had better formats than Oasis.
That's as mundane as it gets.
Our missiles were
better than their missiles.
[McGee] I think they did two CD singles,
7-inch, 12-inch,
so they had an extra format.
To be honest, it was the best thing
that ever happened to Oasis.
Oasis, at that point,
were like 500,000 albums in Britain
and Blur were
two million albums in Britain.
Going head-to-head, this mad rivalry,
it only elevated Oasis.
They got us on News at Ten
and they got us that kind of exposure.
They were marketed
very, very, very slickly.
We just put the records in the shops
and whatever happened happened.
It was like, we went in at number two
and they went in at number one.
But it's like when "Strawberry Fields"
went in at number two
and Engelbert Humperdinck went in
at number one. It's the same thing.
It hurt when they lost that battle,
when "Country House" was number one
and "Roll With It" was number two.
They tried to cover it up, but,
you know, as I said to them,
"You probably lost the battle
but you're gonna win the w*r."
- [silverware clinking]
- [heroic orchestral music playing]
[narrator] While not achieving
historical significance
on the level of the Battle of 1066,
the Battle of Britpop crowned Blur
the titular heads of the movement,
with "Country House"
their first number one,
until "Beetlebum" two years later.
Oasis were left to lick their wounds,
but they were about to throw
a big counterpunch.
[slurping]
["Wonderwall" playing]
Today is gonna be the day
That they're gonna throw it back to you ♪
By now you should've somehow
Realized what you gotta do ♪
I don't believe that anybody ♪
Feels the way I do about you now ♪
I got a CD-R from the band
and I put it on,
and thought, "My God,
it's gonna sell a lot of records."
It's one of these records that
you just knew, "This is gonna be big."
I wasn't that smart.
I managed to put out in America,
"(What's the Story) Morning Glory?"
as the first single.
It bombed, and then
I quickly put out "Wonderwall."
I don't believe that anybody
Feels the way I do about you now ♪
It's just got this kind of
emotive melodic pull to it.
It kind of sounds like a love song
and bits of it are a love song,
bits of it are completely nonsensical
but it doesn't matter,
it's what it sounds like,
it's not what it's saying.
Oasis became as big as they were,
not because of their great lyrics,
it's actually
despite their terrible lyrics.
What's a wonderwall, anyway?
I mean, what is it?
When I was writing the song it went,
"And after all, you're my"
There was this one word,
it was, like, missing.
At our house one night,
I was playing the album Wonderwall.
Someone said, "What's that album called?"
I went, "Wonderwall."
And I went, "Just give us a minute
while I slip into the back room here."
"And after all, you're my"
There you go. And that was that. You know.
I totally stole it. Sue me.
And after all ♪
You're my wonderwall ♪
Your middle-aged man
walking down the street,
or middle-aged woman
walking down the street,
would like "Wonderwall."
They would hate "Rock 'n' Roll Star."
But, "Aw. I like that one,
it's nice that 'Wonderwall' isn't it?"
"Lovely, yeah."
You're my wonderwall ♪
"Wonderwall" is a great song.
Whenever I hear it
it kind of makes me smile.
I think it was difficult for Damon.
Every time he went to buy a pair of socks,
a person in the sock shop
would put on "Wonderwall."
Every shop you went in in London,
if you hung around for 15 minutes,
you'd hear "Wonderwall,"
it was all over the radio.
It just became the national anthem.
And after all ♪
You're my wonderwall ♪
[men cheering]
It's sorta hard
to critique "Wonderwall" now
'cause it's grown a life of its own.
I thought it would sell 10 million,
it ended up selling 23 million records.
Oasis did a great record and it blew up.
[reporter 3] Fans seem
to come from everywhere,
from the band's hometown, Manchester,
from Sheffield and York,
from Newcastle and Norwich,
- from Little Hampton and Luton.
- Y'alright, mum?
[Harris] Oasis keep upping the ante.
Playing Knebworth
was mind-bogglingly huge.
I think one in 22
of the British population
applied for tickets.
Which meant if you
walked down a busy street in London,
every five seconds you'd pass someone
who was enough of an Oasis fan
that they wanted to go.
We could have actually done 16 nights
at Knebworth, it was kind of crazy.
It was probably
the peak of the Britpop thing
because it was such a big event.
That became almost
the Britpop generation's Woodstock.
Whether you enjoyed it or not,
you kinda had to be there,
you had to say you were there.
I wasn't there.
[reporter 4] Oasis star Noel Gallagher
says he can barely take in the idea
of playing in front of
a quarter of a million people,
but such is the scale of the success
of the Manchester band
that two million applied for tickets.
Gallagher and his brother Liam have
become the rock phenomenon of the '90s.
[loud cheering]
[glass clinking]
[narrator]
The global success of "Wonderwall,"
showed just how massive
Britpop had become.
Back at home,
a cultural movement called Cool Britannia
sprung up in its wake
that expanded Britpop's appeal to film,
fashion, and even football.
It was like swinging '60s had returned.
An ambitious politician named Tony Blair,
head of the New Labour Party,
felt the mood
and saw a way to appeal to youth voters
by exploiting Britpop.
In arts and culture,
London is a world center.
Indeed, if you ask young people
the best thing about Britain,
they'll probably say
the pop music industry
the best in the world,
where British musicians and composers
now earn more in foreign exchange
than the steel industry.
Blair was clever.
He was obviously hip
and liked British music.
I got a call from,
uh, the House of Commons,
"Can you get all your bands
to come to the House of Commons?
Can we meet some bands,
can we use them as spokespeople
for the New Labour Movement?"
[people screaming]
[rock music playing]
[Harris]
Tony Blair was always at award ceremonies.
He was there at the Brit Awards,
inducting David Bowie.
He was a face that was around.
He's young, he likes rock music,
he's different,
this is a generational change.
[reporter 5] If you won 25 grand tonight,
if you win the prize,
what do you fancy doing with 25 grand?
Give it to the Labour Party.
[Harris] Noel endorsed New Labour,
he was there at the Brit Awards saying,
"Power to the people, vote Tony Blair."
[crowd cheering]
[crowd clamoring]
[Berenyi] I mean, I do remember
seeing Oasis hanging out with Tony Blair.
I thought, "Okay, so you're now
in with the establishment."
I don't think they knew that much
about the government,
I think it was all a bit of a,
you know, love-in.
[Skin] Politicians,
they just use you for their end
and to rub shoulders with you,
and once they've got that little bit
of reflected glory,
they're off to go f*ck up
some other people's sh*t, you know?
[McGee] People loved
Tony Blair in the '90s.
He was cool.
He wasn't that cool when
he decided to b*mb Iraq.
[cheering and applause]
[reporter 5] A victorious
Labour Prime Minister
at the gates of Downing Street,
and a piece of political history.
And so, to this moment,
swept in on a tide of support
not seen in post-w*r politics
Tony Blair's election
had a lot to do with the youth vote.
All the people that liked Britpop
voted for Tony Blair.
[applause continues]
[Price] Labour's victory came in 1997,
which was the year
of the Britpop comedown.
We'd had this kind of moment
that was building and building
to this kind of peak of excitement
and then it had to crash.
I think the first time I thought
the wheels were coming off Britpop
was when I heard
the third Oasis album, Be Here Now.
While not being
a completely terrible album,
by their standards,
it was bloated and overblown.
Those songs weren't becoming anthems,
you weren't hearing them sung in pubs.
Be Here Now got rave reviews,
even when Noel Gallagher himself
thought it wasn't very good. [chuckles]
Everybody was so full of this giddy mood
of, "Isn't everything brilliant?"
that no one wanted to be the one to say,
"I think the party's finished now,
think we better call a taxi."
Things that rise quickly crash quickly.
We used to tour, and it would be
sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out
and it just became normal.
And then, literally,
I think, two years later,
I remember playing a university show
and it was half empty.
No one came to see us.
'Cause students are the first
to change over, they've moved on,
and the next lot of students
were into different music.
All of a sudden, Britpop was over.
You're like Sherlock Holmes,
"Who k*lled him?"
"Come on, Watson!
Let's find out who k*lled Britpop."
Britpop ran its course
because those bands ran out of steam.
Once you get yourself out of that label,
then you can start going places
which are far more interesting
than three chords and a Union Jack.
- [birds chirping]
- [cows mooing]
[James] I think at that stage we did need
to just go off and do something else,
'cause by that point, everybody was
putting trumpets on their records
and I'd be quite happy
never to hear another trumpet.
You can only write about, "Isn't it great
to be English at the moment?" for so long.
We felt we'd said
what there was to say about that,
the Englishness thing,
and we were starting to look at
modern American underground music
and shifting our attention back there,
really, back to that side of the pond.
It was just, like, back to basics,
just the four of us, keep it simple.
Strangely, that was
that was our biggest record.
["Song 2" playing]
Whoo-hoo! ♪
Whoo-hoo! ♪
Whoo-hoo! ♪
Blur coming back with "Song 2,"
it did feel like a sort of 180-degree turn
because only, what, four years before,
Damon Albarn had been telling me
I remember him saying,
"I've come to k*ll grunge."
And then Blur
makes this brilliant grunge record.
It's knowing, innit?
It's a bit camper than Nirvana ever were.
Whoo-hoo! ♪
When I feel heavy metal ♪
Whoo-hoo! ♪
And I'm pins and I'm needles ♪
I remember, I was in the pool
drinking a bottle of champagne
at eleven o'clock in the morning,
and we got a call saying "Song 2" has just
been added to super heavy rotation at MTV,
which basically just guarantees
that you'll have a massive hit record
And I ordered another bottle of champagne.
Yeah, it felt good, still does.
The time we had an American hit,
I remember that.
Whoo-hoo! ♪
Well, I lie and I'm easy ♪
[Rowntree] Pretty much every brand
of car has used it to sell a new model,
every kind of sports team has used it.
With massive great guitar and drum riff,
shouting "whoo-hoo,"
What's not to like about that?
[James] They're still playing that song
at American football games, aren't they?
People thought after Blur and Oasis,
that that was kind of it
"What are those guys doing now?"
Well, actually,
playing stadiums in America.
Whoo-hoo! ♪
When I feel heavy metal ♪
Whoo-hoo! ♪
Blur escaped its Britpop genesis.
It's incredible that the stuff
that we did 25 years ago
still resonates all around the world.
We made several missteps in our career,
you know, it has to be said.
Nowadays, if your first single
doesn't chart, you can forget it.
That's a shame
because it means that bands like us
probably wouldn't succeed now,
and obviously for me,
I think that's tragic.
For lots of other people,
they would think, "Thank God."
It's like the collapse of Rome,
that's the terrible, terrible thing,
is that
that kind of record company structure,
which had talent scouts in every venue
in London every night of the week
That's all collapsed.
All the music press is gone,
nobody watches telly anymore.
What do you do
if you want to be a drunk bass player
in a rock and roll band?
I don't know. I've started making cheese.
[cow moos]
[British national anthem playing]
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