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Damon Albarn has revealed how Blur's now-cancelled show at Australia's Big Day Out was planned as the last the band would ever perform together.
The band were scheduled to headline the touring event in January and February, but were forced to pull out of the show due to 'poor organisation', only to be replaced by Beady Eye, The Hives and Deftones. Now, in a new interview with the New Zealand Herald, Albarn has revealed it was planned as a farewell show.
"This is as frank as I'm prepared to be about what happened," Albarn said. "That was going to be the last Blur show – the end of playing together – and I didn't want it to finish on anything other than a very positive note, because Blur is incredibly precious to all of us."
Listen to Albarn's new solo track, 'Heavy Seas Of Love' below
"They [the organisers] weren't being straight with me about things, which they needed to be, and at that point I became disillusioned because I didn't want what we'd done throughout the year, with Blur, to be undermined or tarnished in any way, by a show that wasn't going to be what we wanted to do."
"We'd been playing for six months solidly, around the world, so I knew that we would deliver a fantastic show, a great performance and a communal event, which everyone would have enjoyed," he continued. "All I asked was that the organisation recognised that and I didn't feel they did. So, that's why, unfortunately, we couldn't come."
Damon Albarn is currently gearing up for the release of his own solo album, Everyday Robots, and will headline this year's Latitude Festival. Many British Blur fans will no doubt feel a little hard-done by to learn that the band were planning to say farewell to fans on the opposite side of the planet to their biggest fanbase, and the country where they had the most influence during the 90s Britpop era.
Below: epic photos of Blur's huge 2012 Olympic gig in Hyde Park
