In 1995, the bands tussled for No 1 – and the Britpop crown. Our writer was on the inside of the mad-for-it contest. Does The Battle accurately capture this divisive moment? And what was Noel’s problem with risotto?
“At this point, it’s Israel/Palestine. Rangers/Celtic. No one remembers how it got started. All they know is, ‘I like this team and I don’t like that team.’ The whole country’s gone fucking mad. It’s what happens in a civil war – everyone starts thinking with the blood.”
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n a new play simply titled The Battle, those words are spoken by a fictionalised Damon Albarn, as he leads his band Blur into a contest with Oasis for a summer No 1 and the de facto kingship of Britpop. But then he recoils as he wonders what on earth he has got involved in. Musical considerations inevitably take second place to sales figures, as the brief, superficial friendship between the two groups curdles into a poisonous loathing, mostly on the Oasis side. And, ironically, the band that has a thoroughly uncomplicated relationship with fame and success – the one fronted by the dependably mad-for-it Gallagher brothers – ends up losing out to a quartet whose victory instantly fills them with angst and emptiness.
