The great escape

Out of rehab, out of Blur and back to his musical roots, Graham Coxon wants to shed his past as a scruffy Britpop brat. John Robinson finds him sober but in good cheer.

resh back from a promotional visit to Germany, Graham Coxon strides into the designated Camden Town pizzeria with mixed feelings about his morning's work so far. On the one hand, he was up bright and early to demo a new song. On the other, he has made the fateful decision to remodel his own hair. "I've been bloomin' daft," he says cheerily. "Given myself a Pearl Harbour haircut."

It's this haircut that, in a fashion, will pre-occupy the former Blur guitarist for the next threequarters of an hour. In the absence of being able to smoke ("they chuff everywhere in Germany," he says, ruefully), he threshes his hair, kneads it through his fingers, and pulls it down over his eyes. Mod clothes, big glasses, this is Graham Coxon: one big nervous twitch, with a latte.

This, contrary to appearances, however, is also the "rewired, rebooted" Coxon. A graduate of The Priory, clean and sober since November 2001, this is a man who is entering his mid-30s with changed priorities, a broadly positive outlook, and some very nice shoes. Not only that, after several low-key, mildly dysfunctional punk-laced albums on his own Transcopic label, this is also somebody who has recorded their finest solo material so far.

Entitled Happiness In Magazines and spiritually indebted to long-standing Coxon punk pop favourites like the Cars and Split Enz, his new album marks a return to form and, after the success of debut single Freakin' Out, a return to a certain kind of pop stardom.

"Pop star is a funny word," he says. "I've never felt like a pop star, or acted like one. Pop stars are still those really cool people who only ever appear on Top Of The Pops. I was thinking about how the Cars used to look. I could never imagine them buying milk or watching TV and having some disgusting pizza at 10.30pm. I'm too aware of the cruddy side of my life to think I'm a pop star."

More significantly, perhaps, on a personal level, the album marks a return to his musical roots. It was with a fear of losing touch with them that Graham began his solo side-projects in the first place, a fear of betraying them that led to the period of personal chaos, self loathing and monumental drinking that ultimately coincided with his departure from one of Britain's most successful groups.

In October 2001, recognising that drink had "vandalised my mind completely, and might do away with me altogether", Graham checked into The Priory. Treated there for his alcohol addiction, and terrified that the programme might not work ("Like, if they can't help me out, then I'm really buggered ... "), he emerged in November confident that his demons had been vanquished. Previous attempts to stay sober - he went 16 months without a drink in 1996-7 - had failed; this time, he felt he had been talked around, and was determined to succeed.

"I was drinking to drown the voices that were asking me, 'What are you doing?'" he says. "It was linked to my experience of being in Blur: I felt a sort of rootlessness. I was happiest at the beginning when I thought we were struggling towards the same sort of goal. At the beginning the voice was quiet enough for me to ignore.

"As time went on, the music became, I guess, more angled towards commercial success," he continues, "and there were other issues that I was very much against, or didn't feel very much connection to. Like Britpop or lad culture, or football, or politics. That's when I began to get lost. And I began to wonder if the other people had been lying to me all along about what they wanted out of a group, and how they wanted to be seen."

You always seemed, though, very much like a united, collaborative front. "Yeah," he snorts. "Like Posh and Becks."

A couple of days after Graham checked into The Priory, Blur had gone into the studio to begin work on the album that would become Think Tank. After he left the clinic, Graham joined the band in the studio for a week before Damon left to go on tour with Gorillaz.

Now at a loose end, Graham began recording a solo album, the last of his lo-fi efforts, a particularly angry and disjointed piece of work called Kiss Of Morning.

After his next, two-day visit to the studio, however, Graham's manager received calls from the other three members of the group saying that they no longer required his presence. "I went into the bathroom just after he'd told me and I thought, 'Bloody hell, that stuff that happens with groups, that we never thought would happen ... it's happening to me now.' I didn't know what to do."

Eventually, he went to his lawyer. "He said, 'Well, this is kind of crappy. Do you want to leave?' So I said, 'All right.' And that was a risk, but I knew I had to get away from that situation. They opened the door for me to walk out. And I did. I came out and realised what my priorities should be and Blur really wasn't ... there."

Did you feel betrayed at all? "It makes me feel that of all the people who misunderstood me in the world," says Coxon, "they probably were the ones who had done so the most."

With Blur gone, Graham concentrated on re-evaluating his role and his responsibilities. Most importantly, maintaining his relationship with his four-year-old daughter, Pepper, who he looks after for half the week. On another, rather more lighthearted level, on having his 20s again. Having spent the years as a "scruffy, complaining little brat", he has decided to take a leaf out of the book of today's fashionable twentysomethings and up his sartorial game. In fact, to up his game all round, and do a better job of being himself: sober, and if at all possible, cheerful, too.

Happiness In Magazines has been part of this process. Filled with petty gripes, humour (an often-overlooked Coxon quality) and an occasionally earthy sexuality (likewise), the album has been helpful, as have the gigs he's performed so far. In sweaty, small venues, he has felt himself again doing something like proper work. In fact, there remains, as far as he can see, only one drawback to this new version of his life.

"It's difficult meeting girls," he says. "It's difficult meeting anyone, really. I have never, ever, struck up a relationship with a girl without booze. I'm 17 when it comes to that. I don't really have a social life at all, and when I do go out I somehow feel there's a neon sign above me just saying: 'Socially Inept'. Everyone's dancing, and loosening up. And I'm thinking, 'Shit man, a glass has just fallen off the table ... someone's going to slip on the contents and cut their knee.' I have to do something. And I end up, like at a Billy Childish gig, picking up broken glass like some caretaker, making sure these suave young people don't cut themselves."

Not a bad image for Graham Coxon, all round, perhaps: the romantic caretaker, content after all this time, to be picking up the pieces. Older - though trying to dress younger - and certainly wiser.

"I'm more accepting of myself, warts and all, not panicking about my bad points and feeling that I have to change them," he says. "I feel sad, but sadness has to go round everybody. It's temporary. It's happiness, that's the one you have to be wary of. It doesn't exist, really ... "

· The single Bittersweet Bundle Of Misery is out Monday. The album Happiness In Magazines is out on May 17. The tour begins on May 19

John Robinson

© 2004 The Guardian

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