'I thought Blur's 1995 seaside gig was a hoax,' says editor

Weeks after playing to 27,000 fans at Mile End Stadium, Blur set off on a tour of traditional seaside resorts

At the peak of their chart battle with Oasis and following their first stadium gig, Blur switched tack and headed to some of the country's far-flung small music venues as part of their 1995 Seaside Tour.

Thirty years ago this month, the four-piece boarded their white double-decker tour bus bound for traditional beach resorts on the edges of Britain.

Locations included Clacton, in three of the band's home county of Essex, Bournemouth, Cleethorpes, Lincolnshire, and Morecambe, Lancashire, before they signed off the nine-date circuit in Gorleston-on-Sea, Norfolk, on 20 September.

In the weeks before the tour, Blur had emerged triumphant in the media-charged race to number one in the UK Singles Chart with their record Country House, beating Oasis' Roll With It.

Blur had also performed to 27,000 fans at Mile End Stadium in east London and won four accolades at that year's Brit Awards.

John McNamara, the former editor of the Advertiser newspaper, was sitting in an office when he saw Blur's announcement of a gig at Gorleston's Ocean Room about a mile (1.6km) away - which he thought was a prank.

"I remember vividly talking to people in the office and thinking it was a hoax - that's where the excitement level was," he said.

"They were at the height of popularity, they had the number one single, they had a new album coming out," he added.

John McNamara took this previously unpublished photo of Blur frontman Damon Albarn at 1994's Parklife show at the University of East Anglia, Norwich

Mr McNamara had shot photos of Blur in Norwich during their 1994 Parklife tour - and remembered both how good the band sounded and the fans screaming for front man Damon Albarn.

Mr McNamara, who lives in Lowestoft, Suffolk, said he thought he had been alerted to the Gorleston gig by a fax from the band's press team - and was pleased his stock of live photos had given him an "ace in the hole" for his story in the freesheet.

BBC Look East's TV cameras captured the band arriving at the Ocean Room, with singer Damon Albarn accompanied by bodyguard Darren "Smoggy" Evans (right), to who Blur would go on to dedicate their 2023 comeback, The Album of Darren

Blur - formed by Albarn and guitarist Graham Coxon, who met at Colchester's The Stanway School, drummer Dave Rowntree, also from the town, and bassist Alex James, who grew up in Bournemouth - set off on the Seaside Tour from Cleethorpes on 12 September 1995.

Fittingly, it was the day after their fourth studio album, The Great Escape, was released.

As the Cool Britannia movement was starting to surge, Mr McNamara found the nation's blossoming mood matched by the crowd's high spirits on a warm evening outside the venue, which has now closed.

Blur drummer Dave Rowntree, who went on to be a Labour councillor in Norwich, was greeted by crowds in Gorleston, near Great Yarmouth

"There were masses of people everywhere - all the pubs were open and they were really busy," Mr McNamara said.

"It was a supercharged atmosphere.

"Even though I had privileged access a year earlier to take pictures, where I could have reached up and shook hands with Damon Albarn - it was more exciting in Gorleston.

"For that to land on your doorstep was massive: it was the shock, novelty and excitement all rolled into one.

"They're a great live band and they were superb that night," he added.

An advert for the tour appeared in NME

While 800 people filled the Ocean, a circular domed building, not everyone could get hold of a paper ticket in time, including a 14-year-old Jon Rogers, who had cycled to a Gorleston High Street music shop only to find tickets sold out.

He was told to try to get in on the door instead.

"Sadly, it was pandemonium and I had no way of getting in," he said.

"I remember getting down there early and I could see Blur on the roof during the day... waving down to the crowd.

"I was jealous of some people I recognised from school, queuing up with a ticket in their hands," he added.

In an era before online sales, not everyone made it to the venue, local ticket agents or got through on the phone in time to buy a £10 ticket for the tour

But in a full circle moment, Mr Rogers - who now runs local Britpop night Common People with friend David Powles - has since welcomed Blur drummer Dave Rowntree to DJ twice and held an anniversary tribute at the Ocean Room in 2022.

"It felt like a lovely idea," said Mr Rogers, who lives in Aslacton, near Norwich.

"But the Queen died the day before - and it wasn't busy, but we still had a good night and it was nice to hear those songs in that same space," he added.

Jon Rogers remembered his classmates being excited by the prospect of seeing the Britpoppers perform down the road from their school

As unlikely as the tour seemed on paper, Blur's penchant for storytelling about everyday British life - punctuated by some bouncy guitar-driven pop melodies - made them a perfect fit for a quintessential seaside jaunt.

Rowntree told BBC Scotland, while on a car ferry to the Dunoon date, that it had been an orchestrated plan to send people to a "load of seaside towns" to report back what looked the most "interesting".

Newspaper editor John McNamara initially thought Blur's gig announcement for the small Norfolk town was a prank

Yet in a 1995 documentary B-Roads, which followed the band on their travels, Albarn was more introspective about the tour's purpose.

"You have to find out what being famous is like... a lot of people have got to go on this voyage of discovery about fame and never return to what they were beforehand," he said.

"The trick is to balance the two... so doing a very small tour... when we could have been playing anywhere we liked, was a way of addressing that need to balance things out," he added.

Blur arrive for the London premiere of Blur: To The End documentary about the band's most recent reunion and album

Now, with a resurgence in interest in the Britpop scene fuelled by Oasis' summer reunion, Albarn cautioned his one-time rivals about the emotions involved in Blur's 2023 comeback, adding how he tried to avoid nostalgia in a recent interview with The Sun.

But with Rowntree having just released a photo book capturing the band's early days - and Seaside Tour venues such as the Ocean Room and Clacton's Oscar's now closed, there are plenty of people reminiscing.

"The Ocean Rooms… is such an iconic venue for us locally and it brought the venue alive - it was the juxtaposition of a big band playing at the Ocean Rooms and it looked normal," said Mr McNamara.

"These are the gigs you remember all your life."

The striking Art Deco building - known locally as the Ocean Room - closed down in 2024