Blur’s Damon Albarn on the Coachella audience: “They’re sort of on their own planet”

15 April, 2024

Damon Albarn of Blur performs in concert during the day 2 of Primavera Sound Barcelona 2023 on June 1.

Blur‘s Damon Albarn has opened up about the audience and attendees at Coachella, saying that “they’re sort of on their own planet”.

The legendary Britpop band – comprised of Albarn, guitarist Graham Coxon, bassist Alex James and drummer Dave Rowntree – took to the annual music and arts festival’s main stage on Saturday night (April 13).

In an interview with KROQ before their set, Albarn said: “I don’t know, it’s a weird one Coachella when it comes to audience you know. It’s hard to know sometimes because they’re quite sort of on their own planet really,” after being asked if he was surprised by how excited and crazy the fan reaction was to the band playing the festival.

Elsewhere in the chat, Albarn and James explained how they came to play Coachella this year. “We all got a phone call around 10’o-clock at night,” began the frontman with James adding “Which is not normally a good thing, when it’s management 10’o-clock you know. Usually it means trouble.”

“[Management] was like ‘Do you want to do Coachella this year? You’ve got five minutes to decide’. That was it and I suppose we were just like ‘Well, ok. I know we said we weren’t going to do anything more but we’ll do one more’.”

Later on in the night during their set, Albarn aired his frustration live on stage while performing to an unenthusiastic Coachella crowd.

Blur delivered a career-spanning set on the Coachella main stage, including fan favourites like ‘Song 2’ and ‘Popscene’.

However, Albarn was visibly irritated when attempting to perform a call and response with the US crowd during ‘Girls & Boys’.

“You can do it better than that,” he told attendees at one point, which was met by a quiet crowd. When he still didn’t get the desired response, the frontman said: “You’re never seeing us again, so you might as well fucking sing it. Know what I’m saying?”

Though the frontman shared that this would be the last time the crowd saw the legendary Britpop group, the band are set to return to the Coachella valley for weekend two of the festival this weekend (April 19-21).

This weekend, Blur performed tracks from their 2023 album ‘The Ballad of Darren’ including ‘The Narcissist’ and ‘St. Charles Square’.

They were also joined by the Torres Martinez Cahuilla Bird Singers, a group of tribal singers from the area local to the festival’s Mojave Desert, California setting.

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