Fifteen years after their T in the Park debut, iconic Britpop band Blur return. They�re The Beatles of our generation, says By Barry Didcock

BLUR first played at T in the Park in its inaugural year, 1994, in a packed and sweaty King Tut's Wah Wah Tent. I remember it well because, even at the time, it felt like an epoch-making event. They played Parklife, their recently released third album, almost in its entirety and in many years of going to T in the Park - in many years of seeing many bands - it remains a personal highlight.

This was the summer before the summer of Britpop, of course. Parklife had topped the album charts, but the Blur vs Oasis chart battle that would mimic the Beatles and Stones rivalry of the 1960s was a full year away yet. In 1994, indie rock was still getting over its Madchester hangover, still half hoping Primal Scream would kickstart the party or that the second Stone Roses album would be as good as the first. They didn't. It wasn't. Instead, it was Blur, Oasis and Pulp - also on the bill that day - who rang the changes.

This month, 15 years on from that first appearance, Blur return to T in the Park. Before then, they will play to an estimated 150,000 people at two concerts in Hyde Park. A similar number will watch them tonight when they headline the final day of the Glastonbury Festival. Seven years after guitarist Graham Coxon left and six years after they officially split, this is one reunion that is proving madly popular.

Why? The reasons aren't hard to fathom. In the albums that followed Parklife, Blur proved themselves one of the most creative units in British rock history, a band with a knack for capturing a moment or a mood, distilling it into a great pop song, then moving on to the next thing.

Looking back, then, it's clear we had Blur and Oasis the wrong way round. One lot were gobby northerners who liked to talk about The Beatles, the other were effete southerners who preferred The Kinks. It was an easy (and convenient) mistake to make.

But it's Oasis who have turned into the Rolling Stones, the endlessly touring one-note rockers with the trail of celebrity girlfriends. They've even had their very own Altamont moment - at this month's Murrayfield gig when a fan was kicked unconscious as security guards looked on. The only difference this time was the Hell's Angels wore G-Star jeans and beanie hats and, luckily, the attack wasn't lethal.

So it's Blur, restless and ever-evolving, who are the real Fab Four. Like The Beatles they blazed through one decade in a kaleidoscopic whirl of musical styles before disbanding early in the next. Like The Beatles they were riven by internal disagreements. And after the split, the two men who were the band's creative engine continued to journey outwards, away from the mainstream. Just like The Beatles.

Since leaving the band in 2002, Graham Coxon has released three solo albums and founded his own label, Transcopic. But it's singer Damon Albarn whose career has developed in the most far-reaching ways. Soundtracks, operas, world music, cartoon pop stars, supergroups - you name it, Albarn's done it. The synthesis of ideas and styles that informed Blur's music informs his solo work too.

I interviewed him in 1999 ahead of Blur's second T in the Park appearance. Mostly we talked about 13, the confessional album released that year which charted in painful detail the break-up of his relationship with Elastica's Justine Frischmann. But Albarn had other things to say which, in retrospect, gave strong clues about the direction he would eventually take. I learned that he had moved into a flat with graphic novelist Jamie Hewlett when he and Frischman split, that he was looking for new challenges, that he was tired of being a pop star.

"Once you stop trying to compete in that classic pop way, you don't worry about making mistakes," he said. "Once you stop reading the NME, the world opens up again. I find that the whole image side of things gets in the way of making music. I prefer to be in the position where I can just make music and then other people can do all that side of things."

Shortly afterwards, Hewlett became a partner in Gorillaz, the Manga-inspired project in which the identities of Albarn and his musical collaborators were hidden behind cartoon creations. The first album, the self-titled Gorillaz, was released in 2001 and nominated for the Mercury Award that year. Although it was the bookies' favourite, Albarn rejected the accolade and had the album withdrawn from contention. He hasn't been nominated since. A second Gorillaz album, Demon Days, appeared in 2005 with artwork that mimicked The Beatles' Let It Be cover. Together, the two albums have sold over 10 million copies. Albarn and Hewlett have also created an opera, Monkey: Journey To The West, which premiered at the 2007 Manchester International Festival.

In 2000, Albarn visited Mali in the company of Oxfam and began a love affair with African music which resulted in the Africa Express series of gigs. Like Coxon, he founded a record label, Honest Jon's. The label has released albums of Nigerian afrobeat, British folk music and traditional West Indian calypsos as well as Mali Music, a collaboration between Albarn and local Malian musicians.

Finally, there's The Good, The Bad And The Queen, a supergroup consisting of Albarn, Paul Simonon of The Clash, Fela Kuti's drummer Tony Allen and Simon Tong, guitarist in The Verve. An album of the same name was released in 2007. Albarn has called it "a song cycle that's also a mystery play about London".

The Beatles never did get back together, of course, though the rapprochement which took place between Albarn and Coxon last October had elements to it that would have made John Lennon laugh. It took place over an Eccles cake in a London teashop and was done in under a minute.

As yet there's only vague talk of new music from Blur, but in the short term that doesn't matter. What does is the chance to experience the band live again, to hear songs like Parklife, To The End, No Distance Left To Run, Tender, Country House and Beetlebum. And, if they play Song 2, to throw your hands in the air and go "Woo-hoo!"

Blur headline T in the Park on July 12. Coverage of Blur's Glastonbury Festival headlining show is on BBC Two tonight from 10pm.