The Last Party: Britpop, Blair and the Demise of English Rock |  | Author: John Harris
Publisher: HarperPerennial
Category: Book
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Rating:  7 reviews
Sales Rank: 784555
Media: Paperback
Pages: 476
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 5 x 1.4
ISBN: 0007134738
Dewey Decimal Number: 780
EAN: 9780007134731
ASIN: 0007134738
Publication Date: June 21, 2004
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Product Description
'The loveliest -- and certainly the most human -- book about pop music I've ever read ! A delightful and humane soap opera, a real page-turner, full of rounded and entirely recognisable characters.' Jon Ronson, Daily Telegraph THE DEFINITIVE HISTORY OF BRITPOP -- BLUR, OASIS, ELASTICA, SUEDE & TONY BLAIR Beginning in 1994 and closing in the first months of 1998, the UK passed through a cultural moment as distinct and as celebrated as any since the war. Founded on rock music, celebrity, boom-time economics and fleeting political optimism -- this was 'Cool Britannia'. Records sold in their millions, a new celebrity elite emerged and Tony Blair's Labour Party found itself, at long last, returned to government. Drawing on interviews from all the major bands -- including Oasis, Blur, Elastica and Suede -- from music journalists, record executives and those close to government, The Last Party charts the rise and fall of the Britpop movement. John Harris was there; and in this gripping new book he argues that the high point of British music's cultural impact also signalled its effective demise -- If rock stars were now friends of the government, then how could they continue to matter? Britpop in numbers: /There were an astonishing 2.6 million ticket applications for the Oasis gig at Knebworth in 1996. 1 in 24 of the British public wanted to see them play. In the end the band played to 250,000 fans across two nights with a guest list that ran to 7,000. /'Definitely, Maybe', Oasis's debut album, went straight to No 1, selling 100,000 copies in 4 days and outselling the Three Tenors in second place by a factor of 50% /On its first day in the shops Oasis's second album, 'What's The Story, Morning Glory', was selling at a rate of 2 copies a minute through HMV's London stores. / By 1997 Creation Records (which had been founded 12 years earlier with a bank loan of GBP1,000 by an ex-British Rail Clerk Alan McGee) announced a turnover of GBP36million thanks almost entirely to one band: Oasis.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 7
 Well, *I* think it's awesome! December 15, 2004
Sakos (United States)
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
I ran across this book in London in the summer of 2003 right after it had come out. As an Anglophilic purveyor of English Rock music (say that ten times fast!), this book appealed to me from the shelf at least. I took a chance on it, and boy, I wasn't disappointed. For Americans like me who are into English rock, all we know is what we get from the CDs. I lived through 1990's America, while England underwent a cultural shift not seen since 1960's America. You can really experience it in this book, especially if you have listened to all of the great music that came out in that decade (Blur, Suede, Radiohead, Supergrass, Pulp) and avoid the garbage (Oasis, Menswear). Besides in-depth interviews and private photographs from some of the biggest players, you get two feelings from this book: One, the English music scene was really like a gang of friends for the most part (excluding the Brett vs. Damon and Blur vs. Oasis feuds). And two, it was a talentless [...] of a woman in Justine Frischmann who really drove two of the biggest talents of the decade, Brett Anderson and Damon Albarn, to fantastic heights by being the third point in their little love traingle. A fascinating read.
Britpop A to Z July 13, 2003
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
Great book. Everything you need to know about the mid-nineties scene known as Britpop. Now if only the film Live Forever would be available in the states I would be fulfilled. Definitly, not maybe buy this book.
don't patronize me tony blair March 14, 2005
Jean Kantner (Pennsylvania)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
this is by far the best book i've read about britpop. it's a must-read for anyone interested in blur, oasis, and elastica, amongst many other british bands. it's very insightful, giving you the full history on many different bands as opposed to just the more popular ones. also discusses the link between british music and tony blair.
Fascinating read January 20, 2005
filterite (Dublin, Ireland)
I was given this as a Christmas present and finished it within a couple of weeks. Whether you want to debate the whole issue of the link between Tony Blair and Britpop.....there are some links but they're not interconnected. It's true that Tony Blair ( or for the benefit of some Tony B(liar)) used the whole Britpop movement for political gain.....but that's only to be expected. He probably saw it as a calling from the disaffected nation of the youth ( if you've listened to him sometimes, he desperately wants to come across as a messiah ).
However the political aspects always seem to loom in the background. In the 80s, Paul Weller and Billy Bragg popping up as part of the Red Wedge ( horrible name ), which was a sort of Labour tie-in at the time as " Musicians against the Tories " which admittedly is a good idea but never amounts to much in the end. It ended in failure.....just like now when Bruce Springsteen et al rocking to get Kerry in.....see something here musicians don't make much of a difference!
It digs even deeper into Tony Blair's past when he used to be in a band and could do a striking Mick Jagger impersonation.....so no wonder Jagger got knighted! The 90s though was made up of new ideas. As the " baggy" movement died away and was superseded by America's grunge, various musicians ( Suede, Blur, Elastica etc. ) were thinking of something that was anti-grunge, that was gave themselves a British identity, " a sense of who we are " in a way. Steadily as it was built, the music press got more and more excited and had suddenly forgot about it's past politicking and other things and just forget everything and just be happy to be British and so on. To make this all the more clearer, in 1992, Morrissey was scorned upon for waving the Union Jack flag at one of his concerts. Within 3 years you were hailed as god for sleeping in a Union Jack duvet with your soon-to-be wife or play a Union Jack guitar in front of millions......well you get the drift of it. Funnily, the picture of Liam Gallagher and Patsy Kensit lying underneath a Union Jack duvet was to be mocked by an Irish magazine called In Dublin, where they had lookalikes under an Irish quilt. I say funnily, but in some ways it was as grotesque as the real thing. That last bit's not in the book but also it will tell you that most ( if not all ) Americans did not get to see that because, hell, an interview with someone from Seinfeld is far more interesting.
But rewind a little and we find that not only are the music press obsessed but so are the media which means a widespread cultural renaissance is in place. And while the general public are hastily looking for any little tidbit of information from their newspapers, we find that Blur and Oasis, who used to be at least friendly to each other, now go into a full on war for the number 1. The hysteria is palpable and duly enough Blur win and Oasis lose out.
What also should be noted is that there is a growing tapped interest by the Labour Party which started in 1994 and which they have to be seen with the coolest thing on the block. First Blur, then eventually it's Oasis which Noel Gallagher was invited to Number 10 to sip champagne and hobnob with the new prime minister.
And then everything seemed to go sour
With the whole Britpop ideal moving into more paranoid terms what with endless amount of hard drugs it seemed inevitable it would collapse. All the bands in heroin-stooped madness that all the creative juices just seem to curdle up and be spewed out like a really bad hangover. Everybody had moved on. If you were still playing Britpop by then you were sadly laughed at for jumping on the bandwagon while it had no wheels and was about to crash.
And New Labour......well by then perhaps the idea that New Labour wasn't really worth all the hype had dawned on everyone and while there wasn't a case of hopes being dashed but......well they promised more didn't they?
There is a hell of a lot more packed into this book that I'd run out of time and space trying to describe it for you. But to slim this down to an nutshell, to take from the song New Labour used as their party manifesto song from 1997 - D:Ream's Things Can Only Get Better. It was their promise to which the NME replied " Have you ever got the feeling you've been cheated "
Worthy, if selective, review of the Britpop phase in the UK July 18, 2003
3 out of 5 found this review helpful
Harris looks at the Britpop phenomenon in 1990's UK. Special attention is played to central bands Suede, Elastica, Oasis and Blur and to key personalities like Tony Blair and Alan McGee of Creation records. It's a worthy redux of the underlying commercial, political and drug-addled machinations of the Cool Britannia gang. Only Tony Blair remains newsworthy. Despite their arty, salt of the earth aspirations of these would-be Eastenders, it's clear they were in it for one thing - themselves. Harris likes to centre the development of the genre around the personal relationships of the central players - in particular, the Justine Frischmann, Brett Anderson and Damon Alban triangle of love, breakup, jealousy and narcissism. This makes for interesting reading as he blends in the context of Tory Britain, the failure of Red Wedge, tiresome US influences of Nirvana and dullards like Bruce Springsteen, post-Duran Duran and pre hip-hop happenings. The Stone Roses, Mondays, Inspiral Carpets, Smiths, Morrissey - they're all here too. Manchester and London are given equal credit. However, Harris gives far too much prominence is given to Elastica - bizarrely, there is no mention of what they're remembered for best - their Wire and Stranglers plagiarisms. The inclusion of Menswear as meriting any credit is a mistake too. They were purely bargain basement poseurs. A perfect reprise for anyone who realizes that the codology of Nick Hornby football luvvies and their awful taste in music provides no insight into the human condition, but is little more than middle England menopause.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 7
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