GROOVES: Graham Coxon on saving the NHS, Easter eggs and Blur's Olympics gig
Published: 5 April, 2012
by ROISIN GADELRAB
TWENTY-TWELVE is looking good for Graham Coxon.
His eighth solo album has been released to an overwhelmingly positive reception and he’s due to play one of the biggest gigs this year – the sold-out Hyde Park 2012 Olympics closing ceremony concert alongside his Blur bandmates on August 12.
As non-starry as ever, Graham, who lives not far from the Grooves office, took the common man approach to the Olympic tickets lottery after his daughter said she wanted to go.
He said: “I applied for loads and I think I can watch some warm-up synchronised swimming or something. I’m not quite sure what we ended up getting. We threw our net quite wide.
“I think it’ll be quite exciting, I’m a bit nonplussed, so I’m not really bothered to be honest. I think it would be extremely stressful going over there but it might be great, wait and see. I just hate being herded by people with clipboards and radios and God knows what.”
As for the concert, it doesn’t sound like he has any secrets to give away yet.
He said: “We haven’t really discussed it yet, we know we’re going to do it but we haven’t got this mega-plan. I’m hoping it’ll be a really good thing to experience and hopefully a couple of surprises, but they may not be surprises by then.”
Graham’s album A+E came about through experimenting with drum machines and riffs at home, combining them with “cheesy effects” and “updating established ideas and perverting them”.
Graham, who also plays The Forum on April 25, said: “[The songs] seemed to be more about states of mind, reactions to city life and its unexpected moments and darker moments and over-exuberance, so it’s kind of like a party record but with some cautionary tales thrown in.”
“I suppose there are a lot of things in the album that are informed by news and documentaries about mainstream social scenes – big clubs and things like that you probably wouldn’t go in but you see people going in and coming out.
“The before and after is quite a big before and after, according to these news programmes anyway.
"It’s sort of exaggerated just like a programme like Booze Britain might be – an exaggerated account of one night out where they put together 20 incidents.
“If you go out you might only experience one of those but they put them together in such a way that you think it’s Armageddon. I suppose if you experience every mad thing that happened on any Friday night all in one hour then it’d be like the album.”
Graham retains creative control by playing all the instruments on the album.
He said: “It’s quicker because I know all the parts and record them. Rather than waiting for somebody to work it out for themselves and taking ages I just do it in one take.
“You have to split yourself into different roles. I have to be the bass player for an hour on one song and then... but it’s a good idea. You don’t go away for two hours and somebody’s thrown something into the song that’s kind of put all your ideas on the hoof.
“It’s not really a control freak thing it’s just my demos are pretty detailed and I’m loathe to change them. I expand on ideas that are there but don’t go off on a lot of different tangents, the idea sort of sticks. I find, like a photo, things start to develop and then become quite rigid.”
Yet despite his single-minded approach to his solo music, Graham fits effortlessly into his Blur role.
He said: “I kind of interpret and express what I think Damon is getting at and that’s my job. With a long-running relationship like that it’s difficult not to snap into a role you’ve been in for so long.”
So before Graham leaves, is he looking forward to getting any Easter eggs?
“Not really, I find them a bit disappointing, I like them when they come in a mug – you can at least use a mug. They’re just not that good. I like chocolate too much and so Easter eggs are always just, ‘eugh what’s this?’.
“When I was in America I had a Reece’s Easter bunny given to me and that was quite big and full of peanut butter. It was a bit of a mouthful so that was the other extreme.
“The NHS hopefully won’t go down the drain and the Tories are in power, yes, but it could be someone else and they’re all rubbish so I don’t really see the difference.
“I’m just a guitar player so I’ll leave that to the grown-ups.
“But the weird thing is the older you get you realise when you were a kid and you saw adults and you thought they knew everything, the older you get you realise you don’t know anything more than the kids and unfortunately grown-ups are running this country, and if you apply that sort of logic you’re in a lot of trouble – so basically big kids are running the world and it doesn’t look good does it?”