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Life was a Blur
 realise that I’ve
been an arsehole for a long, long time," says Graham
Coxon calmly. "For maybe a quarter of an hour each
day I was probably quite nice, probably after three or
four drinks. And after that, I was a snarly, nasty,
bitter piece of work. Or hung over and snappy and
irritable."
Coxon is a recovering
alcoholic, single parent, solo artist, independent label
boss and, one might reasonably suspect, the
"former" guitarist of Blur. Today, he is in the
upstairs room of a pub in Camden, North London, sipping
mineral water and talking candidly about the past year or
so of his life. He’s had quite a time of it, even by
his standards, as one of the more eccentric, talented and
bloody-minded elements of the Britpop diaspora.
To understand where Coxon,
33, is now, it’s necessary to remember where he was
before. For those of us not seduced by the boorish
classicism of Oasis, Blur were the British
mainstream’s most compelling band of the 1990s. A
little too pushy and pretentious at times, no doubt, but
their blend of art rock, retro styling, social
observation and brazen commercialism made for frequently
brilliant music. As, indeed, did the volatile mix of
personalities: like Coxon, the guitarist who gave the
songs innovative punk rock angles while railing
incessantly against everything, not least his band. And
who appeared to be unfailingly drunk and embittered,
especially when Blur were the most feted group in the
country.
Coxon, however, gave up
drinking on 15 November last year, after a month in The
Priory. On 16 November, he started writing his fourth
solo album, The Kiss Of Morning. These folk and blues
songs - often shaky, roughly-formed and painfully honest
- touched on his alcoholism, but focused mainly on the
breakdown of his long-term relationship. Around the same
time, though, Blur were reconvening to make preparations
for their seventh album.
Over the past few weeks,
it has become apparent that Coxon almost certainly no
longer has anything to do with Blur. As he sits in
Camden, the other three members of the band are in
Morocco, finishing the album with the unlikely assistance
of Norman Cook, aka Fatboy Slim. A sober Coxon, it
transpires, was a lot harder for them to manage than a
stroppy drunken one.
"They think I’m
an utter loony, no doubt," he says ruefully. "I
think a lot of people thought I was easier to deal with
when I was drunk, because I would do as I was told. I was
quiet, I was in the corner, just doing my thing. I would
just acquiesce. I am on the Blur record. I was in the
studio with Blur. I’m just not in there now."
How does Coxon feel
knowing they’re in Morocco now? He shrugs.
"Glad I’m not there. I don’t want to be in
f***ing Morocco recording music. I never even wanted to
travel anywhere. When Damon [Albarn] wanted to record in
Iceland, I didn’t want to be away from home."
I ask him if he likes the
new Blur record and there is a long, long pause. "I
dunno, it’s not finished. It was a struggle for me,
to be honest, and that’s all I can say. I was only
involved in part of it." Will he be involved in
promoting it? "F*** no. No way." he laughs.
So, is he actually in the
band? "I can’t really say. When is this going
out? ... I’m not taking part in anything Blur are
doing right now. There’s nothing official yet. I
haven’t really been involved in anything with Blur
since May."
Was that his choice?
"No. Not at all." It was their choice?
"Well, they gave me no choice other than to get
distant from it." How does it feel? "Oh,
it’s great." So, if the choice hadn’t been
made for you, would you have had the courage to do this
yourself? "Maybe not. Maybe I could’ve carried
on being really unhappy for the rest of my bloody life.
But something had to give."
This year’s model of
Graham Coxon is not entirely unrecognisable from the old
one. There’s the same childlike awkwardness, the
still infectious enthusiasm for the music he loves,
coupled now with a way of expressing his feelings which
doesn’t automatically polarise into sulks and
tantrums. He talks, a little self-consciously, about
"striving for a simple life" and reading
self-help books - "help yourself books", he
calls them.
"I had a lot of
therapy last year," he says, as people who’ve
had a lot of therapy do, "and I came to realise that
my twenties had been crazy. I’d done so much
complaining that I wasn’t really in control of what
was happening to me. It’s like that king who tried
to stop the tide: if you think you can control anything,
go to Brighton and see if you can stop a wave.
There’s no f***ing way, so why bother trying?"
The birth of his daughter
Pepper two-and-a-half years ago was the initial catalyst
for Coxon trying to re-evaluate his life. The break-up
with her mother in the middle of 2001 evidently made it
all the more necessary. More than anyone decently needs
to know about his trauma is recorded on The Kiss Of
Morning, an uncommonly emotional album. It’s
interesting to place it next to Blur’s last album,
13, which focused on the disintegration of Damon
Albarn’s relationship with Justine Frischmann.
Coxon’s grief is real and untidy, fluctuating
between rage and bitterness and abject misery and
melancholy acceptance. In comparison, Albarn’s
suffering seems terribly well "organised".
"I think the
record’s more focused on some obvious problems
rather than me being a screaming brat and not knowing
why," he says, "which the past ones seemed to
be about." Some songs, like the outstanding Good
Times, are hard enough to take for innocent bystanders,
let alone the protagonist. "I don’t listen to
(Good Times) very often," he admits. "What I do
with that one, I imagine maybe I’m in the Smoky
Mountains in America riding this horse for two weeks and
we get very close. And it’s about the horse …
No, it’s very sad. It’s about accepting the end
of a relationship when I’ve been kicking against
accepting it for a very long time."
Coxon is currently on
excellent terms with his former partner, even though the
split made previous ones in his life feel like "an
apprentice’s version". "Pepper has two
great parents, I think, who are really happy."
Unlike a year ago. "I
was in The Priory for a month," he remembers.
"I went in there really shitting myself. They told
me it was going to change my life. And it did,
y’know? They give you a chance to enter into a
spiritual thing and if you don’t bolt, or be a
cynical wanker like you’ve been all your life, you
can actually get something out of it. It’s not God
Squad or anything, it’s whatever you want it to be.
It could be a Spiritualized album, it could be the elves
and the fairies. It’s so you feel looked after, so
you don’t have to take all this weight on yourself.
It’s teaching you to be at peace with
yourself."
Why wasn’t he at
peace with himself? "Well, I’d drink because of
social inadequacy, or nerves, shyness. If I drink this I
can actually talk to people. I can make people laugh -
shit, people like me. Then it turns into a coping
mechanism, especially gigging. You’re all hyped up
after a gig and there’s nowhere to put the energy,
so you drink and you party and then before you know it
you’re up and down and all over the bloody place for
ten years. Then somehow you’ve got to get off it and
it’s really difficult, because it’s become part
of who you are. It’s a big change."
Coxon might sometimes talk
like a textbook recovering addict but, mercifully, his
music remains gristly and characterful. Albarn’s
side project, Gorillaz, is glossy and superficial, a
post-modern subversion of the international charts.
Coxon’s new album, meanwhile, is conscientiously
small-scale and personal, the work of a man who loves
music at its most spontaneous and unadorned. The first
single, the splenetic and appositely titled Escape Song,
hints at all the changes that have gone on in his life of
late. Most surprising of all, he’s even considering
leaving his beloved Camden.
"I’ve put a big
toe in the bath of Kent," he grins, "I’ve
bought a place for survival purposes and so Pepper can
experience something more of England than just Camden
Town. I was taking Pepper to school this morning and
there was a huge crack deal just round the corner from my
house, including about ten people. It was pretty nasty.
That scares me."
A more worthwhile
response, finally, than being a nervous wreck because of
his band’s success. "I’m quite a lot
happier," Coxon says, in what may be an
understatement. "I can give whatever I want my
fullest attention, whether it’s my music or my
daughter. Instead of being full of grudges and
self-obsessed nonsense, I actually just walk down the
street and think, ‘Wow, what a nice day’."
The Kiss of Morning is
released on 21 October on Transcopic
John
Mulvey
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