It's very difficult to describe from this distance just how exciting
For Tomorrow by Blur was back in 1993. It was, though, and like them, hate them, or erroneously write them off as cockernee knees-up chas and dave chimney sweep music and nothing else besides, the fact remains that during a genuinely threadbare and uninspiring stretch for homegrown pop music, it came thundering along like, as the head of their record label put it,
"a knight in shining armour". While
For Tomorrow stalled outside the top twenty, for better or for worse it set the tone and the template for the much bigger events that lay ahead. You would have to be a currently serving leader of a political party to dispute or dismiss that, frankly.
To be entirely honest, I was already excited enough about the return of Blur as it was. I'd been a fan since their first single
She's So High/
I Know (nobody
ever remembers
I Know), and had seen them live three times by the time that
Leisure came out. Although I cannot claim that this is how I would have put it at the time, looking back it's clear that - much like a certain Andrew Collins writing in the
NME - I had sensed something in their uneven recorded output, particularly in the b-sides, that hinted at a far greater potential when many of the other bands I liked at the time merely left fans hoping that they would scrape together enough half-decent material to make up a worthwhile album. I also - to some derision - stuck with them when the tide of opinion briefly turned against them, and was so keen to get hold of the largely ignored
Popscene - still my favourite single of all time, incidentally - that I persuaded my distinctly unimpressed father to pick up a copy on his way back from work on the day of release.
Although they largely managed to hide the turbulent making of
Modern Life Is Rubbish from their fans at the time, it was still obvious that Blur had been suspiciously quiet for a long while, and anticipation was steadily building; not least when Mark Goodier announced on Radio 1 very early in 1993 that he had heard some advance tapes of the new material and 'couldn't wait' to play it on the radio. When he did finally give the first public airing anywhere to
For Tomorrow, I recorded it off the radio and played it so much that I actually damaged the tape. A couple of weeks later I bought the single - on several formats, as this was the height of 'Part 1 of a 2CD set' marketing madness and I wanted as many new songs as I could get - and then a couple of weeks after that the album. It would probably prove scientifically impossible to even vaguely estimate how often I heard
For Tomorrow during that month alone; and even then not only in the same form as I'd taped it off the radio.
Hidden away on Part 1 of the 2CD set was the 'Visit To Primrose Hill Extended' version of
For Tomorrow, more or less identical to the shorter radio-friendly version except for a minute-long section towards the end where the band and the brass section go off on a stroll around the chorus chord changes. This is more than just a looped section yanked from elsewhere in the track, and is an entirely new diversion that fits perfectly with the musical mood and the theme of the lyrics; in some ways it also echoes the hurtling-across-London antics of the promo video, despite not actually accompanying them. However, I have long had a theory that this was actually supposed to be the version used for
Modern Life Is Rubbish, but was swapped with the more familiar edit at a late stage for not especially clear reasons. And if you'll keep your hands on the rails and try not to be sick again, I'm about to share that theory with you.
First of all, there's the small matter that the version of
For Tomorrow that
did end up on
Modern Life Is Rubbish is exactly identical to the one clearly labelled on the single itself as the 'Single Version'. There is absolutely no variance between the two whatsoever, and they have exactly the same mix, exactly the same length, and exactly the same lyrics. This is, it has to be said, something of an anomaly in Blur's otherwise famously meticulously documented sleeve credits, with the only comparable incident being when some formats of
M.O.R. erroneously claimed to feature the 'Road Version' when they didn't. There could easily have been another more obscure reason for this misleading description finding its way onto the finished article, but the suggestion that it originally needed differentiating from the album version in some way is plausible to say the least.
Then there's the conspicuously high profile that the extended version has enjoyed since then. More often than not, extended and alternate versions of familiar songs are - usually entirely reasonably - destined to become the forgotten and dispensible corners of an artist's discography, sidelined once they have fulfilled their intended purpose, and generally left off 2CD Deluxe Editions for 'space reasons'. The 'Visit To Primrose Hill Extended' version of
For Tomorrow, however, has been distinguished by so much disproportionate prominence that you could almost suspect someone somewhere was attempting to reclaim it as the official version. Not only did it find its way onto the 2CD reissue of
Modern Life Is Rubbish, it's also been the one that they've reached for whenever an official compilation or retrospective was in the offing, notably on
The Best Of Blur and
Midlife, and was specifically used on the long-lost dawn-of-the-Web 'Blurradio' project. It has also pretty much always been this version that has been played live, even when they haven't actually had a brass section with them. Meanwhile, in notable contrast, the 'Acoustic' version of
For Tomorrow that also showed up on one of the single formats didn't even find its way onto
Blur 21.
You do also have to ponder on why it would have existed in the first place if it hadn't been intended for a wider audience at some point. Blur rarely did 'long' versions of tracks for their singles, and out of their not inconsiderable discography you could only really point to the actual proper bona fide old-skool Extended Versions of
I Know,
There's No Other Way and
Bang, which date from a time when 'Indie-Dance' was still a
viable commercial prospect; full-length remixes of
There's No Other Way
and
Girls And Boys done primarily for promotional purposes; a number of 'guest
producer' reworkings fitting in with the musical ethos circa
Blur and
13,
few of which actually found their way onto singles; and last and by all
means least the 'Live It! Remix' of
Entertain Me, which was accidentally
released as a b-side to
The Universal instead of being mounted on a
flaming anvil and fired into a bin. On top of this, owing to several failed attempts at recording a second album, Blur at that point were already groaning under the weight of decent potential b-sides - ten spread across the various
Modern Life Is Rubbish-era singles alone, and a further half dozen or so shelved completely - so there was no particular need to go creating Extended Versions, especially for a song that was hardly going to be 'crossing over' with dance music DJs. More speculatively, the longer version prominently features top session brass ensemble The Kick Horns - who can't have come cheap, especially at a time when the album budget was rapidly running out - along with a couple of otherwise unused guitar lines from Graham Coxon, which doesn't exactly fit in with his usual waste not want not approach.
So, if it
was originally intended for the album, why in the name of all that is rational and logical didn't it end up on there? Well, one quite possible explanation for that is simply a lack of space. As the surplus of serviceable b-sides might suggest, there was no shortage of songs being considered for
Modern Life Is Rubbish itself; at least twenty were serious contenders at various points, and Graham has described the process of trying to cram in everything they wanted on there as 'horrible'. Everyone involved seems to have had a different opinion, and right up until the last minute the band were trying to get certain songs (notably
Turn It Up and
Miss America) removed and certain others (notably
When The Cows Come Home and
Young And Lovely) added, ultimately to no avail. Already a lengthy track even in its 'Single Version',
For Tomorrow came into the equation very late in proceedings, and even then there was to be a further complication; when the complete album was presented to them, Blur's American label demanded an additional track to appeal to a more 'grunge'-orientated listenership, and the result - bizarrely - was
Chemical World. For both artistic and commercial reasons, there was never any question of leaving this equally brevity-deficient new song off the album, so is it possible that the shorter
For Tomorrow was substituted to free up as much space as possible to accommodate it? It's also worth considering that
For Tomorrow might not always have been the opening track of
Modern Life Is Rubbish, and the longer instrumental section might well have made more sense elsewhere in the tracklisting.
All of this might well seem like a great deal of thought and effort devoted to something that's not even one of Blur's great what ifs, let alone one of pop music's great what ifs, but even so it's a lot more entertaining than splitting hairs over something you're not actually that interested in. And who knows, would the entire course of the nineties - not just in chart music - have run differently if a longer version of
For Tomorrow had appeared on
Modern Life Is Rubbish? Probably not, but it's worth thinking about. Possibly. If you want to know why
Colours and
Pleasant Education were missing from
Blur 21, though, then I'm afraid I'm fresh out of ideas.
You can find more of my thoughts on Blur and the road to Britpop in Higher Than The Sun, available in paperback here or from the Amazon Kindle Store here.
