You may be wondering (though perhaps you’re not) about the title of Blossoms’ Number One album, Gary. Who the chuffin’ hell is Gary? And why did they name their album after him?
As it turns out, it's a reference to an 8ft fibreglass model of a gorilla that was stolen from the front of a Scottish garden centre in March 2023. One of those classic ‘and finally’ stories, Blossoms heard about it on a radio news bulletin whilst out on tour and frontman Tom Ogden had a sudden brainwave of writing a song about the missing ape.
"I'm under the impression that anything can be a song, if you approach it in the right manner," Ogden told the BBC in a new interview. "And 10 years in, you're always looking for new things to write about.”
"I found the story entertaining when I heard it on the radio, so just as a laugh I went away (and said) I'm going to write a song about it. I mean, if the song wasn't very good, it would have never seen the light of day. But I rated the song."
Since then they have named the album after the song and now no Blossoms show is complete without a replica of the original Gary lurking over their shoulders stage left. "It has connected with people," the singer said. "I didn't anticipate it, but I knew I wanted to have something that made people go, what's that?
"Even if people think it is ludicrous, it's an entry point. And people were just ready for a bit of fun, I suppose. You can sense there's something in there which has connected with people for all ages. There are kids who love Gary, and then you've got our age, and then you've got older people.”
Blossoms, you sense, aren’t too hung up about cool. This is a band who teamed up with Rick Astley to play Smiths covers and have released a special edition of Gary that includes their versions of the likes of I Want To Dance With Somebody and Lady Gaga’s Telephone. And it has to be said, this light-hearted, ‘hey whatever’ approach has worked for them. One of the few British guitar bands to actually sell records over the last decade, Blossoms can now fill arenas, indeed they played their biggest gig in August, to 30,000 people at Manchester’s Wythenshawe Park.
They’re back in the city this week, but instead of a couple of nights at one of Manchester’s many arenas have, typically, chosen to do something a bit more playful. They play a one-city mini tour, starting at Academy tomorrow night before visiting the Ritz, Albert Hall, Victoria Warehouse and Apollo.
"We thought it would be nice to play all the venues that we’d played on the way up and make a week of it, and make it a bit more interesting for the fans," Ogden explained.
