Blur's File On Coxon

Damon Albarn has revealed the motivation behind punk-driven album track, 'We've Got A File On You', suggesting it was the band's reaction to losing founding guitarist Graham Coxon.

Speaking in a recent interview, Albarn said that recording the track - in which the band repeatedly scream and shout the chorus over pounding guitars - was a means of (temporarily) filling the Coxon-shaped void.

He told XFM: "In the absence of Graham it was getting very frustrating, not having any of that sort of madness on the guitar.

"I think we just said, 'let's do it, turn the amps up and just scream for a minute.'"

But Albarn, who said that the song was "about paranoia", also insisted that Blur's trademark guitar-led sound was never solely the influence of his former bandmate.

"It was never exclusively Graham's heritage," he said. "It was all of ours and that's how we formed a band, and when we were Seymour that's what we were all into totally.

"But in a way we've had quite a public existence and shared how we as band feel quite openly over the years, and so it's become the received wisdom that Graham's the one who likes angry music and the rest of us just 'Well, whatever'".

As previously reported, Coxon - who left the band late last year - features on just one song on the new album ('Battery In Your Leg'), though Albarn is confident it won't be the guitarist's last contribution to Blur.

"It's the only thing that when Graham did come back to the studio briefly worked," Albarn said of the track.

"It was just really quick. I remember I'd been waiting around for everyone to turn up and when I sat on the piano it came out very quickly. The idea of singing a song about us and we all came in and just did it really quickly. Everyone's parts wrote themselves.

"It was really nice, but that was kind of the sole moment that it made sense of being a four-piece still. But y'know? That's evidence that it still works, as we've said, I'm sure there'll come a time when we'll make music again together."

Blur's seventh studio album, 'Think Tank', was released in the UK on Monday (May 5).

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