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The Great Escape...
Mental
breakdowns and now the boot from his beloved Blur, 2002
has been a traumatic year for wayward guitarist Graham
Coxon. Phil Sutcliffe discovers a man back from the
brink.
  've got a
bronchitis-y, asthma-y, post-cold thing, so I didn't
sleep well. And I was up very early because it's my
daughter Pepper's first day at nursery, so I was making
sure she had fruit and yoghurt and nappies, finding socks
and getting her clothes on," says Blur guitarist
Graham Coxon, without drawing breath.
Pepper is two and a half and Coxon shares
care of her with her mother, his former girlfriend, Anna,
who moved in a few doors down from his home in London's
Camden Town when they slip up "a while ago" (he
won't be more specific). So today he has already
delivered Pepper to the nursery, picked her up later in
the day and then, when it was time to skateboard and talk
about his latest solo album with Q, handed her over to
Anna. And it's still only afternoon.
"It's quite exciting, really," he
allows, embarking on a paternal eulogy. Its conclusion:
"I've gone from being a total baby myself, kicking,
screaming and demanding this and that from the tour
manager, to being the tour manager of a real baby."
A fundamentally quiet man who became
eloquent at fame's insistence, Coxon is actually shouting
this account of his personal life just to be heard above
the piped music, traffic and adjacent diners who are also
yelling across the coffee cups in an open-windowed Camden
café.
Which probably explains Coxon's next
thought: "I'd like to get away to a more simple
existence on the land. I've always dreamt about that
stability, that peacefulness. Maybe everybody's 20s are
supposed to be really insane, but a band sucks you in
then spits you out and you think, Oh God, what do I do
now? I suppose I could have existed a lot more quietly
when I was in Blur."
Was?
"I
did say that, didn't I?" he muses, maybe
wondering how deliberate that slip of the tongue was.
A rumour has been flying around that you've
been sacked.
"Yes. No, I'm not out of Blur. But I'm
not in Blur. I'm not lying to you. But I'm not
necessarily telling you the thruth."
Coxon laughs.
"It's difficult. This is being
negotiated now and I don't want to piss on my own shoes.
Officially I'm still in
 the group. But
maybe spiritually I haven't been for a long time... When
is this published?"
October.
He ponders then proceeds, quite evenly,
though with lenghty pauses to weight the fissile
potential of each step.
"Well, 2001 was a funny year for me. I
was in two different psychiatric hospitals in March and
then November. There were problems with booze and
depression - I've been sober for 10 months now. Early
this year I did a week with the boys in Damon's studio.
Then he went away for two months and I thought, I'll do
my own album. Then in May I was back in the studio with
Blur for about four days. And that was it."
What happened?
"Our manager, Chris Morrison, told me
my services weren't required anymore. It was something to
do with my attitude. Although I felt I was going about my
work honestly, perhaps they mistook honesty for attitude.
There's a total problem with honesty and communication in
Blur at times."
People will presume you had a huge bust-up
with Damon Albarn or maybe Alex James.
"No, not at all. No row. No clash. I
think it was purely professional."
Not "musical differences"?
"No [laughs].
Differences of opinion. No, not even differences of
opinion. There was nothing spoken."
Well, you once said, "Damon always
thinks I'm in a mood with him, but I'm not. The truth is
I'm suffering from deep embarrassment". Does that
apply here?
"Oh yeah. I'm like that with a lot of
people. Out of shyness I don't phone them and that turns
into an epic of not calling them because I'm embarrassed
that I haven't called them. Alcohol helped me get over
that."
You've been friends with Damon since 1980
and you used to believe you and Damon would "be in
each other's lives musically forever".
"I think it's true. [Grins]
I'll be collecting Blur royalties forever, won't I?
Whether it will go beyond that, I don't know."
Have you talked with anyone in the band
since you were sacked?
"No. They sent me a tape of the bits I
played on. I like them! It seems to be a good process
they're going through, like a non-stop Xeroxing of ideas,
seeing what comes out. They certainly can carry on
without me. When we started, we needed each other an
awful lot, but now sometimes I don't really think it
matters who is involved as long as there are songs and
sounds to make. I have no idea if anyone's taken over
from me."
What's your take on Damon's ventures outside
Blur?
"Erm. I will say that the Mali music
confuses me. I think you've got a lot of balls to imagine
that you can do something like that better than Paul
Simon did."
"You
stabbed me in the back... You two-faced fuckin'
fake/Die, Taylor, die... You're a scum-suckin' shitty
guy/So die, Taylor, die" (Song For The Sick).
Read his lips. "Taylor isn't Damon or
Alex," says Graham. "He's someone specific who
I won't talk about. Or Taylor could be me - it's me that
I hated. None of this record is anything to do with
Blur."
The Kiss Of Morning is Coxon's fourth solo
album in five years, a brisk series triggered, in 1998,
by Albarn rejecting his first batch of compositions. As
previously, the unbridled approach invites a commercially
discouraging range of comparisons: Incredible String
Band, Pantera, Dr John, Cream, John Otway. Even so, for
those who relish his pungent eclecticism and let-rip
emotions it has an involving tale to tell: the dragon
alcohol slain, but the lady love lost.
The Coxon story in a nutshell? "She was
my girlfriend, though I was mean... I turned my back on
her true love... And my drinkin' dragged me down"
(Mountain Of Regret); "Livin' with your battered
head in a can... You're lying' and you're dyin' and you
scream and shout/But you can never seem to get the
sickness out/The madness and the sadness and the
suicide" (Do What You're Told To).
But now you're off the booze.
"Yeah, well, I've done it a few times.
But not very well. You become reliant on it for fuel to
get over your own social inadequacies, to be able to let
go. I have an addictive personality. There's this picture
of me, aged four, the last one at the table with this
Christmas pudding in front of me absolutely destroyed.
I'd eaten every bit although I was abolutely stuffed. I
was thinking about that selfish and destructive effect
you can have on somebody. Threatening suicide, for
instance. That childish thing spurned lovers do.
"I used to wake up and think, Two hours
'til the pub opens, what am I going to do? I was always
pissed off with myself that I wanted to drink. I was very
angry with everyone. The Blur boys had to put up with me
being completely insane with anger. But it feels
different this time. That's what the album title, The
Kiss Of Morning, is about. Sun streaming through the
window and waking you up. Yes! All that hippy positive
symbolism..."
Blur
fans have always fussed over Graham Coxon. The
avatar of this fretfulness is the website "We All
Love You Graham" Temple (http://members.tripod.com/calig/). Its now outdated
manifesto reads: "Our beloved Graham is sad. Not
only is he sad, but sad, drunk and poorly. We must try to
help the lad."
"Bless them," shrugs Coxon.
"But I'd hate anyone to think that I'm cartwheeling
through space. I've got plenty of friends outside
Blur."
Still, he returns to his fond Arcadian
imaginings and Coxon dreams of a move to Kent; a place
with a garage where he can take his motorbikes to pieces
and learn to use a plough. Bizarrely, he's more than half
serious. In one of his new songs, It Ain't No Lie, he
writes about "Wandering around Camden Town/Feeling
like a fishy in a can".
"I think about Pepper and about my
mental health," he frowns. "I don't know
whether it's my age or because I'm a father, but the city
seems full of every evil possibility.
"When there's some sort of renaissance
happening to your life, some things have to be put on
hold while you concentrate on what's really important.
You can't juggle millions of things. Well, I've tried and
it doesn't work. I'd rather not juggle. Just hold."
Phil
Sutcliffe
Typed up by Veikko's Blur Page
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