When Blur staged their Great Escape ... to Dunoon

All a Blur for sleepy Dunoon

In September of 1995 Blur – Damon Albarn, Graham Coxon, Alex James and Dave Rowntree – had just released their fourth studio album, The Great Escape. They had also won what was billed as ‘The Battle of Britpop’, with their single, Country House, edging out Oasis’s single, Roll With It, to the top of the UK charts.
Blur make their way to Dunoon on the Gourock ferry (Image: Newsquest)

Now Blur were embarking on a Seaside Tour, taking in such resorts as Cleethorpes, Dunoon, Morecambe, Eastbourne, Clacton, Bournemouth, Brighton and Great Yarmouth.

The quartet’s gig in Dunoon’s Queen’s Hall, on September 13, aroused considerable advance interest not just on the Cowal peninsula but across Scotland too. It even made the national TV news.

As the group sailed across on the Gourock ferry - they even clambered on top of their tour bus at one point - newspaper photographers and a crew from BBC TV’s Reporting Scotland were on their trail.

“We basically set out some people to look round a load of seaside towns”, said Rowntree, and the “most interesting” resorts were put onto the itinerary. Albarn said: “We could not wait to play Dunoon. We looked all over for somewhere to play in Scotland and Dunoon seemed perfect”.

GMTV's man in Scotland, Ray Stewart, had visited the Clyde Coast resort to gauge the opinion of the locals. “What do you think of Blur?'' he asked them. According to a report in the Glasgow Herald, the response was remarkably consistent, with a typical reply along the lines of: “I don't like him as much as John Smith”. (Smith, the Labour leader who had died in 1994, had been born in Dalmally and educated at Dunoon Grammar School).

News of the Queen’s Hall concert had been announced early in the summer, and the near-one thousand tickets were quickly snapped up.

Mark Jones, who ran the local record shop, Marlyn's Records, had to organise extra deliveries of `The Great Escape' from the record company. He said: “The gig has been really hyped-up and has caught the imagination of everyone in the town - even though most people in Dunoon didn't know who Blur were before all this”.

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One 90-year-old resident of the town told the Evening Times: “I've been wondering what all the fuss is about. Are they a pop group? I just hope the young ones behave themselves”.

It was the biggest concert in Dunoon since a visit by Pink Floyd in 1968. Recent attractions prior to Blur had included the pop duo Peters & Lee, as well as Acker Bilk, and Kenny Ball and His Jazzmen.

As it turned out, Albarn and Coxon nearly missed the ferry that would take them to Dunoon when they accidentally locked their keys in their hire car. Ferryman Kenny Beattie, aware that they risked missing the sailing, rang the police and the car-hire company, who arrived just in time to open the car door for them.

Over on the resort, Dunoon resident Bob McKinley drove Blur's limousine, and before the gig he took them home to meet his family – his wife, Eleanor, and daughters Karen and Lorna. “Everything happened so quickly”, said Eleanor. “The girls were big fans before Blur came, now they cannot believe their luck”. A grateful Blur namechecked the McKinley’s during the show.

Blur's Alex James (Image: Lewis Segal)

Fans without tickets gathered outside the venue before showtime in the hope of getting in. Reports suggested that some people sold tickets for up to £70.

The Glasgow Herald’s report the following morning said: Before last night's show Albarn and his three Blur cronies … hopped into a presidential, black, chauffeur-driven stretch limo less than 50 yards from the entrance to the seafront venue of the concert, the Queen's Hall.

“They idled in a side street with no particular place to go on Dunoon's circling main drag, a film crew recording their inability to cruise in traditional head-turning rock star manner.

“A carload of local youths were quick to seize the opportunity to wind Blur up. ‘Roll with it, Damon!’, one of them cried, hanging out of the passenger window, reminding Albarn of the latest hit by Blur's supposed deadliest enemies, Oasis”.

Blur fans with tickets for the Dunoon gig (Image: Newsquest)In 2010 a contributor to the Blur Live Audio Archive project website, writing from Canada, recalled: “I was at the Dunoon gig with my mate Mark...tickets like gold dust! Was given a pair by a local record dealer! Recall it was a very 'lively evening...probably more folk outside than in! Strong police presence....bit bizarre..but that's the west coast of Scotland for you!

“Biggest thing I think had happened in the wee toun for a long time....band was in excellent form...a real hark back to small venue gigs...atmosphere was...well as a gig should be...fantastic!! Coupled with bar at back of venue..reminded me very much of the Barrowlands Ballroom...what more could one ask for!!”

A few months ago Blur fan Callum Robertson shared his memories of the gig with the Greenock Telegraph. Back in 1995 he was a purser on the CalMac ferry that took the musicians to Dunoon.

Dunoon revels in a knees-up for the nineties. Blur, Queen's Hall, Dunoon

Callum, 47, said: "It was well before the days of camera phones - it was the days of Kodak disposables! Remember this was before the internet or mobile phones, so we didn't even think of taking cameras.

“I worked for Cal Mac and was on the Saturn and the Jupiter ferries. I was working on the day, and was going to the concert at night at Queen's Hall in Dunoon. I got my tickets from Rhythmic Records in Greenock, and it was just before Country House was released - and Matt Lucas was the support act.

Dave Rowntree signs autographs for fans in Dunoon (Image: Lewis Segal)"My friend Sandy Thompson and I headed to the gig. Blur were travelling over on a tour bus and sitting on top of the tour bus and casually chatting to all the car deck passengers.

"The concert was brilliant. There were only a couple of hundred tickets, and that was a time when they were doing a tour of small towns and villages all round the UK.

"They did all their big hits from the albums Parklife and Modern Life Is Rubbish - and it was around the time Country House was about to come out as their big single. I chatted to them briefly - and they said they said they were enjoying the scenery and coming to Scotland, and we were asking them about the Battle of the Bands with Oasis!"

Blur went on to perform two well-received shows at Glasgow’s SECC at the end of the year.

Albarn in action at the SECC, November 1995 (Image: Newsquest)As it happens, Albarn remembered seeing a decommissioned submarine lying in the Holy Loch during his visit to Dunoon; two decades later, the memory helped inspire a track, The Selfish Giant, on his 2014 solo album, Everyday Robots.

Speaking to The Scotsman that year, Albarn said: "It was a beautiful misty evening. There was a single submarine in the loch - why it was there I don't know. I had a very strong image of the loch and submarines and walking down the main drag in Dunoon after the gig, going to someone's house for a party, and a song came out of it”.