Damon Albarn speaks out on Blur’s Big Day Out cancellation

In a candid interview with the New Zealand Herald, Damon Albarn has said organisers at Big Day Out festival were the reason Blur pulled out of this year’s tour.

"They [the organisers] weren’t being straight with me about things, which they needed to be, and at that point I became disillusioned because I didn’t want what we’d done throughout the year, with Blur, to be undermined or tarnished in any way, by a show that wasn’t going to be what we wanted to do.”

Blur were locked in on August 1 last year to play Big Day Out 2014 through Australia and Auckland. The headline slot alongside Pearl Jam, Snoop Dogg and Arcade Fire was intended to mark the Britpop luminaries’ final shows together on a global reunion run, however their cancellation on November 24, just eight weeks out from kick-off, stunted ticket sales and sent the festival’s new promoter, Soundwave’s AJ Maddah into public damage control on Twitter.

Since Blur released their statement on Facebook - where they called the cancellation “a shock” and said BDO were “constantly shifting goalposts” - the band had kept relatively quiet, even warning media they would not discuss the cancellation for legal reasons. Now, Albarn has opened up to the New Zealand newspaper in an interview that was held to promote his upcoming debut solo record, Everyday Robots.

“[…] The whole [Big Day Out] thing wouldn’t be quite as spiritually conclusive as we hoped it would be, because we weren’t sure if the organisation was quite right, or supportive of our ambitions.

"We’d been playing for six months solidly, around the world, so I knew that we would deliver a fantastic show, a great performance and a communal event, which everyone would have enjoyed. All I asked was that the organisation recognised that and I didn’t feel they did. So, that’s why, unfortunately, we couldn’t come."

While Big Day Out swiftly replaced Blur with Deftones, The Hives and Beady Eye, this year’s festival was drastically undersold compared to previous years.

Albarn told the New Zealand Herald he intends to return to Australia and New Zealand to tour his solo LP.