Graham Coxon interview: Major chords

Published on Thursday 7 May 2009 16:02

GRAHAM COXON IS PREPARING TO play with some bandmates again. He is looking forward to working with a "groovy rhythm section" and talks about "a slow shedding of my control issues". It sounds like it could be a big deal. He's referring to his tour in support of his latest solo album, The Spinning Top. Oh, and after that he'll be playing a few gigs with some old chums called Blur.

Coxon has long been admired as one of the UK's most gifted guitarists, but he has been particularly in demand in the past few years – recording with Paul Weller, playing on Pete Doherty's solo debut, Grace/Wastelands, contributing to John McCusker's Under One Sky suite alongside some of the country's finest folk musicians, as well as immersing himself in his solo work.

But it is the imminent comeback of Britpop titans Blur which is, inevitably, generating the most heat. Although the group never officially split, there has been no new music since the Think Tank album in 2003, when Coxon was either ousted from, or walked out on, the recording sessions, according to conflicting reports at the time. Frontman Damon Albarn remarked that there could be no Blur without Coxon and, less than a year ago, was quoted as saying "Blur is over".

During the hiatus, Albarn launched the hugely successful Gorillaz, and intriguing projects such as his Monkey opera; drummer Dave Rowntree developed his computer animation company and trained to become a barrister; bassist Alex James got into cheese farming and wrote a rock-star memoir. News that all four had met up to mend their fences fuelled speculation about a reunion; then Albarn and Coxon shared a stage for the first time in almost a decade at this year's NME Awards show.

"Over the last two years, I was warming more to the idea," says Coxon. "It wasn't like we had any great bust-ups and had to work very hard at being friends again. We took some years apart and we've all come back together casually and suavely. I think there was more of a problem in other people's heads than there was in our own.

"Obviously there were things that hurt us all about each other's behaviour, but I think over the years it became clear to us that it wasn't that much of a big deal.

"Reading Alex's book reminded me of a lot of the more positive sides to it all. I suppose it got me feeling kind of nostalgic but it also got me to feeling that we were such old friends that we all deserve to have a good time together again." The word from the rehearsal room is positive. "There's a lot of clowning around still. I really am enjoying looking over and watching Damon ape about and be daft in between singing. It's a lot like old rehearsals always were, except it's a happier thing because it's not drudgery."

But Coxon is candid about the darker side of Blur's disintegration. "I crashed at the end of my twenties," he says, referring in part to his excessive drinking habits. "Pretty much all of us did at some point."

The friendships couldn't take the strain, and Coxon felt divorced from his fellow band members. "When you get success, there is the pressure to maintain the success, and Damon must have felt it more than anyone because he was having to come up with the songs," he explains. "The joy gets squashed out of it. You need a break from that sometimes, and you need to explore if you've still got anything other than reacting to pressure inside you, if you've got any other music, or if you've still got a brain, or if you're still emotionally attached."

Coxon already had an alternative outlet, releasing a succession of ruthlessly lo-fi, emotionally stark, self-produced albums on his own DIY indie label.

The Spinning Top is Coxon's seventh solo record, and the third on which he was worked with Blur producer Stephen Street. Unlike previous punkier efforts, it reflects his growing interest in acoustic music and love of guitarists from the 1960s folk boom, such as John Martyn, Davey Graham, Bert Jansch and John Renbourn. "My take on any kind of music is that it was probably better in the 1960s. I'm not saying that any music made now isn't any good. But what was influencing me most was how music was recorded and how it sounded in the Sixties – the innocence and naivety and rawness. The rawer the better for me, really. I like to hear the graft."

Yet Coxon also cites the sophisticated sounds of late 1960s concept albums such as The Zombies' Odessey & Oracle, The Pretty Things' SF Sorrow and the rock operas of Pete Townshend as an influence on his decision to order the songs as a narrative, following a man from birth to death. "I think the story got more elaborate in my head than it is on the record. It's not like Peter and the Wolf. I realise I can be quite contrary and maybe frighten people away with just what my albums are called. I didn't want to be too heavy or write tons of liner notes about it. I didn't want to be a tourist guide."

There may be some distance between folky concept albums and knees-up Britpop anthems, but Coxon says he has found it inspiring to revisit Blur's back catalogue for their series of outdoor shows, the most anticipated of the summer.

"A lot of the songs seem to have more of a charge these days. Those songs were written and recorded when the music industry was in full health and was still being extravagant. Now it's all f***ed. So songs like The Universal and This Is A Low seem all the more poignant. They're quite prophetic."

• The Spinning Top is released by Transgressive Records on Monday. Graham Coxon plays King Tut's, Glasgow, tonight. Blur headline T in the Park, 12 July.