52. ‘For Tomorrow’

Single, released 19/4/93. Also on ‘Modern Life is Rubbish’. Produced by Stephen Street.

‘For Tomorrow’ was written overnight on Christmas Eve/Day 1992 at Damon’s parents’ home in Colchester. His father Keith later berated him for keeping him awake all night. (During the same holidays he wrote ‘One Born Every Minute’, which he describes as “the Kinks song Ray Davies never wrote” and insists will appear at some point). It was obvious from Damon’s initial demo that this was a potentially career-changing song, not least for the universality of its “la la”’d refrain. “Everyone, wherever they are in the world knows what la la la means,” Graham explains. Damon asked for – and got – girl backing singers, whom Street instructed to sing like Thunderthighs on the classic Mott the Hoople singles. The band also used a string section for the first time, The Duke String Quartet, led by viola player John Metcalfe whom Street knew from Durutti Column days. Owing to the song’s ELO-like pop structures, Jeff Lynne was considered as producer at one point.

The finished song was probably Blur’s finest achievement to date, a sweeping, operatic tour de force that holds the attention from the first staccato chord of B-major (which thenceforth breaks up every first and third line of the verse with increasing vigour). The verses and choruses and beautifully complementary, the former stately and majestic, the latter a sauntering Tommy Steele vignette. Damon acknowledges the lyrical influence of the album ‘Well At Least It’s British’ by ‘50s songwriter Alan Klein, featuring ‘He’s a 20th Century Englishman’. The phrase ‘Modern Life is Rubbish’ is taken from a legendary, stencilled graffito (now washed over) on a wall on the Bayswater Road near Marble Arch. Two other versions of the song exists on double-pack CD and 12-inch and, while the acoustic version is inessential, the ‘Visit To Primrose Hill’ version is highly recommended for its central baritone brass section, featuring the Kick Horns, in which the song unravels and then knits itself together in fascinating fashion.