Access Interviews
Who is saying What, Why, When and Where

Headline:

From pop to opera

Synopsis:

He’s indifferent to money and drugs. He hates the celebrity circus. And he famously said no to Tony Blair — but yes to getting drunk with John Prescott. Damon Albarn tells all.


Everybody who has known Damon Albarn for any length of time comments on two things: his extraordinary self-confidence and his competitiveness. He is, by all accounts, alpha male in excelsis. His schoolfriend from Stanway Comprehensive in Essex, Graham Coxon – with whom he founded the band that became Blur – remembers how, in the early days, Albarn would drive them, uninvited, to other groups’ gigs and hustle a half-hour slot on the bill. “Damon was absolutely terrier-like, quite unlikable in a way,” he says.

After the band signed to Food Records (later acquired by EMI) in 1989, their go-to guy at the company, Tony Wadsworth, noticed how “Damon was so cocky he found it difficult to go anywhere without getting punched”. Wadsworth was convinced that Albarn would succeed: “He had huge talent and he was relentlessly ambitious,” he says.

Publish date:

2 November 2008

Author:

Robert Sandall

Source:

Sunday Times Magazine

Media:

Access Interview