Damon Albarn has revealed that he once considered pursuing a political career but was put off after a meeting with Tony Blair.
The Blur and Gorillaz frontman recalled a conversation he had with the politician – which took place “before he became Prime Minister” in 1997 – and it left him “terrified”.
“Politics is such a murky business. I would be lying if I said I hadn’t considered it when I was younger,” he told the Metro newspaper’s Guilty Pleasures column (via Contact Music).
“I even went and had a strategic meeting with Tony Blair before he became Prime Minister, but that terrified me so much. [I thought] ‘I don’t know if this is for me at all. I’m not a politician, I am a musician.’ ”
His words echo similar sentiments he made in 2015 in a Channel 4 interview. “I met Tony Blair and had a sort of premature insight into the dark mechanics of politics and at that point I honestly felt terrified about Tony Blair,” he said at the time.
He continued, “I picked up on something kind of odd about him that I didn’t understand. I was a bit scared of him, if I’m honest with you.”
Despite not pursuing a political career, his Blur bandmate Dave Rowntree did go into politics and unsuccessfully ran to be a Labour MP in the 2010 General Election before he was eventually elected as a Labour councillor in Norfolk in 2017.
Meanwhile, Albarn has also revealed that he took inspiration from the name of Britain’s nuclear attack defences for his song ‘Polaris’, from recent album ‘The Nearer The Fountain, More Pure The Stream Flows’.
He added: “A big anxiety of my adolescence was nuclear destruction. It has now become third or fourth on the list of imminent doom and Armageddon.”
Albarn continued: “Solar and wind and hydro are the only thing that is sustainable. Imagine in a country as small as Britain having 15 or 16 nuclear power plants. It’s terrifying.”
Meanwhile, the frontman recently showcased a host of new tracks from his solo album alongside Blur classics during his UK tour.
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