10. ‘Mr. Briggs’

B-side of ‘There's No Other Way’ 12-inch and CD. Produced by Blur.

Blur were now taking their b-sides seriously. The business demanded many new (or unreleased) songs for multiple formats, and though privately uneasy about the morality of such a scam, Blur determined to make each of their b-sides different. They also realized that in them lay true freedom. Recording ‘live’ in small studios, without a producer and away from the sequences and Balfe, Blur took risks, tried musical experiments and nudged closer to the hazy suburban grail of Syd Barrett.

‘Mr. Briggs’ is their first song to tell a story. The apathetic Briggs is based on a Liverpudlian Damon encountered in early 1990 while living in a Greenwich bedsit. Dismissed as “a crappy Pink Floyd demo” by Graham's girlfriend of the time, ‘Mr. Briggs’ is not too far removed, thematically, from Pink Floyd’s ‘character’ songs such as ‘Arnold Layne’ and ‘Corporal Clegg’, and a Barrettesque note is struck with the humdrum lyrics: “He has a tree-bar heater but it don't keep him warm/If he bought another, then he'd have three more.” Graham’s three guitar tracks show the triple-pronged range of 1990 Blur: dexterous, bluesy chording; MBV-esque shrieking; and random, punky mischief.

“We still hadn’t gotten over the novelty of someone paying us to go into recording studios,” says Alex.