Blur as we know them were born in 1989 when the band signed to Food/EMI. Showing immense resilience for ones so punchable, they survived early controversy (a scantily-clad woman on a publicity poster for debut single She's So High), a hit single (There's No Other Way, UK #8) with at least two world-class riffs in it and a drummer hell-bent on spending as many nights in police cells as hotel beds. Debut album Leisure announced the arrival of a spunky, inventive new band with pop suss warped by art-punk eccentricity. Yet Blur had more in them: namely, a revolution in the sound of English popular music. Like most revolutions, it was hard won. 1992 should have seen Blur ascend to the next level but mismanagement had left them close to bankruptcy and an infernal American tour, arranged to plug the financial hole, saw an unhappy, drunken band at each other's throats. It is no coincidence that the most desolate song on Blur's heartbreaking 1999 album, 13, is called 1992. Their salvation, as is always the case with Blur, came through music. Second album Modern Life Is Rubbish reintroduced the idea that specifically English rock music could be cool, and by the time their third album, the legendary Parklife, emerged on 25 April, 1994, the rest of the UK had caught up. Defined not only by album sales but culturally too, they were the biggest band in Britain. The Great Escape (1995) refined the sound palette and conceptual framework of what the press dubbed Britpop, but Blur - unsettled by the experience of pop fame and driven on by naturally subversive instincts - were already moving on. 1997's Blur album even had a track called Movin' On, and was an about-face - scuffed and noisy and un-English. In Israel, reports Dave Rowntree, journalists excoriated them for killing Britpop but America - hitherto resistant to their charms - took the explosive Song 2 so much to heart that they asked for it to soundtrack the unveiling of a new Stealth bomber. Blur declined. Not about to repeat themselves, Blur followed up with 13, a more radical adventure in sound influenced by the cold vistas of Albarn's then semi-home, Iceland, and the disintegration of his relationship with Elastica vocalist Justine Frischmann. Blur parted company with Stephen Street, their co-producer since There's No Other Way, and welcomed aboard William Orbit, who refereed a truce between organic punkpop and new-fangled technology that holds firm today. In 2003, Blur are two-thirds teetotal, one-third a father, three-thirds gagging to test their brand new configuration - saxophonist, percussionist, vocal harmony, a surprise around every corner - on live audiences.