Graham Coxon - London, UK, Spring 2004
By: Toby L
'Ruffles,' ponders Graham Coxon in the cafeteria of his North London rehearsal-rooms, rubbing his face in what has become a curious, trademark fashion. 'You can only get them in America. Ruffles; they're good crisps, potato-chips. Yeah - they were very strong, weren't they, being corrugated; you could always get a big dip on top of them without them snapping... Sour-cream and chives, and all that sort of thing.'
Despite the seeming playfulness, Coxon is a relatively broken man when rockfeedback comes to provide the other half of a one-on-one meet this afternoon. He's just seen a deeply affecting film which has placed him in official Introspection Mode on all that occurs around (more of which later).
Bad timing for such self-analysis - he's already got the small matter of a debut UK tour to think about with his new group, and today sees one of the last full-band run-throughs prior to four warm-up dates across the country, the week before a top-40 placement of his return 'Freakin' Out' single. Pressure is bountiful.
'I think we've got a lot more to play now,' reflects Graham, contrasting his new ensemble's predicament to that of prior bandmates which joined him on a few, low-key dates nigh-on four years ago. 'I mean, God knows what we played at those shows back then; there wasn't that much to play. Now, we can do a lot more calm stuff. I think it was quite a crucial few years between that time and now, in my development as a person, and an emotional animal. I'm a lot calmer now. That time of my life was pretty... well, there were just lots of hefty things going on. I'd just become a father too, so I was just a bit confused. I didn't really go jollily on tour, in 2000.'
It was that year that also saw another vital performance - Graham Coxon's last public-show as guitarist with Blur at the Scott Walker-curated Meltdown festival. It was a salaciously special evening, an opportunity for one of the country's most substantial acts, in humble surroundings, to grace an eager few thousand with an obscure set of album-tracks, b-sides and an epic finale, 'Black Book', that suggested a thrilling future.
Yet the latter was not to be. Inter-band turmoil ensued, and Coxon fled in 2002. No-one could have anticipated it: one of the UK's most important bands of a quarter-century broken apart in a rift that was made public over the pages of the flaccid, squalid music-press. Yet, whatever the war of words indulged upon, one thing was evident: Coxon became a free man.
'Once I wrote a song ('You're So Great') that had got on the 'Blur' album, you get into the habit and become addicted to the feeling of accomplishment from writing a song; it's quite a good feeling,' explains Coxon over his solo-endeavour becoming more pivotal in his daily regime. 'It becomes part of life, and it makes life a lot harder in a way... it becomes a jaded search for a line of poetry that runs through life... to quote Seymour Glass via JD Salinger. It brings more effort to your life. I do get quite grumpy and sad if I haven't written a song. My mood can change quite dramatically when I write a song.'
Your early solo-records - 'The Sky Is Too High'; 'The Golden D' - they're enlaced with resentment, woe and pent-up angst...
'They're all an exorcism, really,' he concedes. 'I think that's what music is. And I definitely, obviously use it in that way, and it goes too far for me sometimes. I have been a bit indulgent. But you can't do something about your state of mind and the songs that are given to you, from wherever they come; you have to make do with what you have. I guess, mentally, I wasn't too healthy, and whether I wanted it to or not, this was communicated in quite a lot of my music, and still is...
'... Apart from this new one, really... Though there are some sad things on there... It's quite clear that when I'm writing about someone else, I'm just writing about myself, though it only becomes obvious to me after I've finished recording, actually.'
Ah, yes, the 'new one'; humbly referred to, yet Coxon's finest work without a shadow of a doubt. Whereas past releases of the glasses-wearing noise-aficionado have hinted to, and achieved, greatness in doses, 'Happiness In Magazines' is pure artistic grandeur from track-to-track: fast, exhilarating, unashamedly melodic, and boasting some of Coxon's finest axe-wielding, bar-none, in his 15-year career: angular; bluesy; groove-based; dissonant chaos; Sonic Youth-esque guitar-neck wracking - it's all catered for compellingly.
And testament to his prior efforts, the sheer honesty of much of the subject-matter is still cripplingly overt.
Graham grins on the matter of openness. 'There have been songs that I was going to record for 'The Kiss Of Morning' that Mike Pelanconi (producer) just said, 'You can't record those; just leave them in your diary!' And I'd be like, 'Oh, maybe you're right.' I guess people may not have been able to stomach them.
'It (the candidness), I suppose, has come about through the music I've listened to. I was a big Peter Hammill fan, particularly an album he did called 'Over', which is pretty much laying it all on the line... I just wouldn't know what else to write about; I can't really do a Blur and write about people travelling to work on trains. I just don't know much about it.'
But when you were in Blur, did you not have apprehensions about such subject-matter being raised in the first place?
'It wasn't really my job,' he shrugs. Some of the lyrics were amusing and pretty good for some of those things, the narrative kind of songs. Really, I was just trying my best to back up the stories with sounds, and that took up enough... I suppose one of the first Blur tracks was one of my songs. But Damon isn't maybe very open about some of the things I am open about, really; I mean, it's silly not to admit you're an emotional kind of creature. If music is your outlet, then I think I'd go crackers if I wasn't to put it to that use.
'I do get a lot of comments and emails from people that say my stuff has somehow helped, and I think it can help. Being a depressive sort of chap, I'm aware that knowing other people feel like you, makes you feel less like a freak, and does give you more confidence, or allows you to know that you have brothers and sisters in arms that are feeling the same sorts of things, and that you're not alone. I think that's quite special.'
Is it fair to class you an eccentric?
'What, because I wear the odd, twee jacket, or occasional, courdroy trouser?'
No; it could be this very sincerity - there seems very little pretence...
'I refuse to apologise for who I am now. For a long time, I think I was slightly ashamed and self-reproachful. I'm still a bit self-reproachful; everyone has a funny old self-image, no matter who they are. So I try not to apologise for my thoughts, and I don't feel any different thoughts or urges from any other human-being, so there's no point feeling embarrassed. There's quite a few funny, little parts about sex in this album that I'd never really approached. But I just believe that it's all better out than in, in every possible way - whether it's gas, or your thoughts or feelings: it's better to just release and say it, rather than internalise and become ill.
'I am getting dirtier as time goes on. I think it might be a fact of life; when I was younger, I just didn't think it was appropriate - even though it was probably was - to let on that I was a sexual person, and I guess a lot of people then in turn saw me as not being that way. I still have to be slightly witty about sex; I'm very English about it. I can't go into saunas in the nude, like Germans. I'd love to be able to be that free, but I'm just not.'
Considering your new-found empowerment, how does it feel assessing your developing stages in previous albums of yours?
'I've been lucky to have had nice things said about all my records, really,' he humbly acknowledges. 'There's been the odd nasty view, or whatever, but most of the people have been pretty respectful, rightly or wrongly. As soon as you admit to being serious about something, I think it causes a lot of problems - I wouldn't call myself a songwriter now, you're suddenly giving yourself pressure. I always said my first album was simple music and simple poetry; it's just less simple now.
'I can write songs, but it does give me pressure now, because now I've made a record that people would suddenly recognise as an album of songs that do have commercial viability. I've already given myself a lot of pressure as to what I do next.
'I'm always writing. And, because I haven't really ever toured, I've had the time. I do write a lot, just the way I did a lot of drawing when I was at art-school, as it's part of the daily purge.'
'Art-school'; do you not wince when you see this phrase touted as a defining factor in many new bands, as a point of reference?
'Are they actually art-school-y type of people, though,' he argues. 'I'm sure many of them aren't. When I went to art-school, there wasn't really much of that; I went to a late-80s arts-school, and it was quite commercialist, but conceptual... it became commercial. There was a certain punk-rock attitude from people like Damien Hurst, in an acute business-sense, and they could sell you anything. That was a good scam. I suppose it's a good environment to get ideas from, but it can be very isolating if you don't fit into current trends.'
Ah, trends... in casual conversation, Coxon once confessed his preference to re-introduce the importance of dress into music...
'As a personality, perhaps people have a pretty abstract grouping of colours and gases of what I represent; I don't know if it's much to do with clothing. But in my own way, and in the 90s, I was being a bit passive-aggressive about the way I did things,' he ponders. 'I'd make a heck of a lot of noise on the stage and not particularly take care of how I looked, and complained a lot.
'But, now, I just want to have more fun, and I think, 'What's fun?' Well, shoes are fun, and clothes are fun. I do like seeing groups that dress interestingly. I'm just sick of the cagoules and the skate-shoes, and they're the remnants of the new lad, which are now prehistoric dinosaurs, hopefully, and it's all over. It was a load of crap; mid-tempo, anthemic rock, with trainers and lager, and being rude about women. I found it all a bit indicative of an insecurity for them.
'I'm getting annoyed by the current Levi's available in shops in England, where you can't get what you want. You can't really get 505s anymore. A nice jacket, anything that isn't too baggy. If you've got it, flaunt it, for both girls and boys. But, sometimes, I just want to dress up in baggy army trousers, or dress as a soldier. When it comes to performing in front of an audience, it's disrespectful to be dressed in trainers and be scruffy. (Then has an imaginary, staged conversation with such disobeyers of his latter rule): 'You're not going for a jog - you're f**king performing to people that paid to come and see you; pay a bit more attention.'
'We (points to band-members who are dining on an adjacent table) do look a bit motley really, but we do have meetings about what we're going to wear. Sweaters are good; you've got to wear a nice sweater; a good V-neck, some good slacks.
'I went to a tailor recently, just before Christmas, and I'd never done that before; it was a chap in Soho, near Berwick Street. Just because I wanted a bloody suit and I don't want to have to buy one of these new suits that's all wrong. General-purpose suits these days are really 'orrible.'
We worry for the depth Graham's just delved into, so make a fleeing escape to the safer terrain of discussing that new album again: was there not any apprehension to working with Stephen Street, chief-producer of past Blur material, on the project?
'No, not at all. The songs really wanted me to record them properly. And I recorded them the same way I recorded all of my past ones; they'd got a tempo, then I'd put a guide-guitar down, drummed to it, then put proper guitars over it, and then built it up. We took more time on the sounds of things, and the balance, mic-ing things up and just getting it right from the start. I also thought a lot more about arrangement-ideas and more instruments to use - there's French horns on one track. Also got to grips with a bit of percussion. It was recorded in a similar way to past efforts, but with more caution.
'Stephen's good, because I can be a little too perverse, and he's great at saying, 'Maybe that's a bit too much,' and he's usually right. I knew that, with him, I could get good drum-takes and good vocal-takes. He wouldn't allow me to be impatient and just say, 'Yeah, OK,' without us having got things spot-on. If I listen to some things on 'The Kiss Of Morning', particularly a couple of vocal-takes, I sometimes go, 'Hmm, if only we'd spent a little more time on that...'
Song-wise, 'People Of The Earth' notably stands out from the material, through its echoing of your prior released 'Thank God For The Rain' single (from LP #3, 'Crow Sit On Blood Tree'), which berated your local Camden streets and types; it's very cynical in its worldly dismissals.
'It's done in a light-hearted way on that one, but I do mean it,' he details. 'You get to the point where you want to move out of this country because it's such a shit-hole. I do like Camden, because I like being near it. I don't live right in the middle of it, because I don't want to feel it exactly on my doorstop so much. But, being just outside of it, has its own problems as well, because that's where a lot of the sneaky stuff goes on, out of the way of the sunshine. There are lots of drugs-problems, and no-one seems to care; not much is being done about it.
'Whether the influence of Camden is in my music, I don't know. I don't know whether an experience can prompt a kind of record-sequence, it could make you play angrily, though. But I'm a bit too old to just thrash.'
Too old?
'Well, I am older. I've gotta think about age. I'm 35. I'm really creaky. Hopefully this tour will stretch us out a bit; we're not going to do it really long, and make it drag on forever. I'm serious about it, but I want it to be fun, and I want to be able to see my daughter every few days. It wouldn't be fair to take her on the tourbus. She'd get so bored.'
Do you road-test your material on her?
'Pepper doesn't like me to play too much, but she responds to it. She knows it's me. She does sing along to things she recognises; she's quite quick. Peps is four this Sunday, and her grandparents are coming down to the house.'
Wow, you sound as if you're almost living a 'normal life'.
'I'm pretty settled. I've been concentrating on my domestic situation for a few years now. I think the majority of this thing of me feeling old is down to the fact that I don't drink and I am a father. I don't really go out; I haven't got a social-scene. Sometimes, I can go out and feel a bit on the shelf. I'll sometimes wake up in the morning and go, 'Oh, this again.' I'm a bit of a grumpy old git occasionally; I guess it's just general dissatisfaction, isn't it? Not so much grumpy; maybe just slightly sad. But we all get sad from time to time.'
Well, you'll be safe as long as you have music and art to focus on...
'I don't even like art,' he spits. 'I was thinking about it yesterday - I f**king hate art. It's rubbish. I think all of it, whether it's an idea - like Tatlin's Tower that never gets built - or whether it's Damien Hurst, it's a load of bourgeois bollocks. I'm fed up with it, even though I went to art-school and one thing to live for was to draw... In a way I do like Goya's atrocities of war, all those etchings and stuff... But I only get to use my work on album-sleeves these days. I guess I don't see the point in it all really; what is the point of art? I don't get much joy going to an art-gallery, falling into that library quietness and this awe. People walking around galleries really f**ks me off.'
Why do you feel the need to indulge in music then, itself deemed an artform?
(At once) 'It's like smell, isn't it? It's a lot more able to bend to your idea of what it is. Apart from if you smell fish - it's fish. But music is more instant to me. I like film, I love film. It's just pictures I get annoyed with. I used to have a lot of small pictures on my wall at home, but I don't have many of them now. Mirrors are different; they're quite good, because you don't have to see yourself in them.'
What are you doing in music, Graham?
(Pause) 'I communicate my own kind of impatience. I like a lot of early Who stuff, because it has that sensationalist quality, and I do need to be fed excitement when I'm listening to music; otherwise, the complete opposite is... well, I can go all the way to something such as 'Spirit' from Talk Talk, so it's extremes. I just like deep stuff.
He then goes off on a moving, poignant tangent. 'I was really weirded out recently, because some friends of mine were like, 'Oh you've got to see 'Lost In Translation', it's really funny.' So I thought, 'Oh right, I'll go and see it...' But it wasn't funny to me - it was the most beautiful film I think I've ever seen. I can't get over it. It's all been a bit of a troth for me, after seeing that film, and I don't know how to get out of it. It's just... perfect. It really seemed to be a mirror. I've stayed in that hotel where it's shot, and been in similar experiences to the people in the film. I could see me and both of them, what they were doing, the demands of photographers, and demands of everyone... and the overwhelming loneliness. And the music was triggering so much for me. I'm still reeling from it.'
When people see the words 'Graham Coxon', what do you want them to think of the character to which the letters belong?
(Pause) 'A special person...' He laughs slightly unsurely. 'I think that's all anyone wants to be.'
Take it from us; you've succeeded gloriously, Graham.
Artists in this article: Graham Coxon,