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Back to: Archive · 2001 An article on Graham Coxon. From Total Guitar magazine, September 2001. Thanks to Emma Thatcher for sending me this! Blur's reluctant guitar hero - Graham Coxon. The man behind such classic riffs as Song 2 and Coffee and TV invites TG into his home to show us his favourite gear, talk about Blur, solo projects and why Noel is lazy. "Solo albums are weird", decides Graham Coxon, the Blur guitarist who's just released his third. But there's a bad weird and a good weird, and Coxon's solo efforts definitely fall into the latter category. Borrowing from folk, punk, rock and even touching on blues and jazz, his records are likeably lo-fi providing insights into how he deals with fame and fortune, giving up alcohol, insecurity, loneliness and even tributes to his favourite skateboarder. As such a shy, self-effacing character, it's strange that Graham should be the member of Blur who has the solo career. But then, bassist Alex James has the Fat Les project to keep him happy and Damon Albarn is enjoying making bizarre and freakish pop music as the voice of Gorillaz' 2D. Maybe it's not so strange, after all, that Graham should go solo. This way his material isn't censored by hitmaker Albarn, the straightman toning down Graham's maverick musical streak. And the Blur guitarist has never been predictable. A self-taught player whose fascination with effects pedals and any other weird noises he could conjure out of his guitar, Graham is nevertheless also writing great and memorable riffs not to mention perfect pop songs, as his decade with Blur testifies. Since the release of his first solo album The Sky Is Too High in 1998 on his own label Transcopic, Coxon hasn't hung around. Soon after recording and releasing 13 with Blur, he released his second album The Golden D. Now he's back with his third effort, Crow Sit On Blood Tree - his best and most accessible work yet. Equal parts punk to folk (yeah, you heard right) it's something of a schizophrenic record, angry and paranoid one minute, hushed and gentle the next. the guitars buzz with feedback on some tracks and are carefully fingerpicked or softly strummed on others. In typical Coxon style, he utilises plenty of interesting chords and chord changes on the album, too - especially on the Nick Drake-ish All Has Gone or on the sublime folk of Too Uptight. Sounds mad but somehow it all comes together. Total Guitar meets up with Graham a day after he's finished editing the five short films he made to accompany the LP. ("They're abstract - mostly one-take or not much editing - psychedelic things . They're not meant to be pizazz-y or big deals. I just wanted to get away from that whole expensive thing and the nu-metal mind control cycle") Coxon is everything new metal isn't: quiet, softly spoken and dead polite. And for such a supposedly private individual, he seems comfortable enough with us being in the Camden house that he shares with his baby daughter Pepper. Organic vegetables are being delivered to the house as we arrive. His house is cool and well-ordered, save for a box of Pepper's toys and acoustic guitars that he's brought down ready to be photographed with. Is this the same man who used to have a stash of alcohol under the chair of his amp, which he swigged his way through when Blur were at the height of their fame in the mid 90's? Seems so. At Graham's suggestion, TG adjourns to the back garden, (hey it's sunny) to ask pertinent questions about Gorillaz, the new Blur album, 'unlearning' the guitar and whether he'd ever really wanted to be in Sonic Youth. But first, the album. It's been recorded, mixed and mastered in just two weeks, a dizzying brief period of time. "People have been saying that this one's been done really quickly but the first one was done in five days, the second one in ten days and this one was done in two weeks with a weekend in the middle." Graham begins, "I'd done some preparation for the album before with a tape recorder, just demo-ing and sketching out ideas. I like to get all the stuff really organised before, so I'm not stuck in the studio for longer than it takes to press the record button and perform, and when it comes to two weeks recording, there shouldn't be any sitting around at all. it doesn't take long to record an album; it's all the other stuff that takes ages." As far as song writing is concerned Graham says he finds it a relatively easy process - on the whole. "I find certain bits difficult. Constructing the songs, really. I've always liked songs that aren't of epic proportion," Bohemian Rhapsody being his idea of hell. Graham's own songs couldn't be further than the grandiose sounds of Queen, and they come about almost inadvertently. "I dunno where You Never Will Be came from," he muses. Maybe from listening to Jimmy Page, as it's almost Led Zeppelin-ish in its sound? "Yeah, I really liked that guitar. I woke up after a day of recording and just sang that riff into a tape recorder, then I did it. I don't like thinking too much about things or analysing them. A lot of the songs are just recorded on a dictaphone in the bathroom. That's exactly how Hurt Prone came about. I just started playing it and that's how it turned out." Talking about his solo project is gratifying even for Graham, who absolutely hates doing interviews. But he can't hide his excitement; it just seems he gets such a buzz out of working just on his own (he played all the instruments on this album, like the others). One of the biggest reasons for this is, "You have the chance to record things quick and cheap. I just put together Crow... on a little studio on the Camden Road. Just recording something for next to nothing - I like being able to make those decisions. Expensive studios are a bit of a waste of money, really, and they just cause more problems than anything else. When I recorded this, I did it with all these Russian Valve mics and that was it. I'd like to do stuff with other people, but I haven't had the confidence to do that until now, or to even entertain the idea. I'd quite like to work with people who aren't known, but of the people known I'd like to work with the more rootsy orientated people like Billy Childish (prolific obscure punk and poet) and Beck. The reason I like Beck and Billy is because their music doesn't feel like commerce especially Billy. Pop music is commerce really, that's why I don't like it." Back to playing all the instruments then: Does Graham consider himself a guitar player or a musician? "Probably a musician. Being a guitar player is one of the things I do. I really like drumming." Graham also plays saxophone. "That's why I'm quite happy doing my own things because it means I can explore other areas. I'm always thinking about what I am gonna to do next." So what prompted his decision to do the solo project in the first place? "Errmmmmm," Graham wonders. "To see if I was capable of anything like that to start off with," he determines. "And then I just started writing songs. I found a new tuning on the guitar and songs started forming, so I thought I might as well record them, just to see what happens. I wasn't even gonna release the first one." Fortunately, Graham decided to set up his own label - Transcopic - and put it out. And just like Blur, Coxon's music is constantly evolving. We've noticed a strong folk element creeping in..."I've always been interested in forms of folk in Britain." Graham nods. "I've been recording some stuff upstairs already." But the new album already seems more imbued with a folk feel - especially compared to the more aggressive and abrasive sounds of The Golden D. "D'ya think so?" says Graham sounding pleased. "The NME thought it was country. It's not country at all," he says bewildered. "I think the folk comes from the tunings, very traditional English folk tunings. Like DADGAD. I've been using that a lot. And there's another one... flat on the A and the G as well...no, flat on the B, actually. It's a dulcimer tuning or something like that, I think it's something Ewan McColl used." Tunings have been something Graham has used much in the past with Blur. "On the records, it's been about half standard, half not," he says. Graham is enjoying playing his new material a lot mostly because, "I like humming the melodies I've created. I used to like tuning all the strings to one note and then bashing the strings. It's quite harrowing when you hear of players who use all these tunings and you don't, and it seems very complicated. but if you work at it, you stumble across your own tunings you feel comfortable with." From singing on Blur tracks You're So Great and Coffee and TV, to providing the vocals to whole albums, Graham's voice is sounding a lot more confident and there's certainly more of a vocal range than on the last album which mostly evolved around wild punk howls.. "Yeah, I really enjoyed singing on this one. There's some pretty bad singing on it but some singing that I really like. I'm enjoying it more and more, giving myself new challenges. I think it's acceptance of how your voice is - there's no point being pissed off cos you can't sing like Otis Redding." He smile. "But I think my guitar playing's got worse." Really? "Maybe the stuff I've been into, I've never really been into really technical stuff." He still plays everyday, though. "Not, like, really pushing myself and learning new things, but just to keep my hand in." Round the time of Blur's eponymous fifth album, Graham even spoke of 'unlearning' the guitar. What did he mean about that? "It was just some of the bad habits I was getting into when I was playing. That's when I started playing different instruments, like banjos. And then using different tunings and playing slide guitar just to gain some enthusiasm. I was really encouraged by those American groups [Sonic Youth, Pavement, Dinosaur Jr, etc] who had more to do with experimentation technique. American alternative music has always been more soulful than UK indie music. It's a lot to do with how they record their music. With Blur the record company and management would always make sure we got an expensive studio," he says sounding sorry that he hasn't had to slum it. Graham has always been keen to demystify guitar playing, so much so that he even wrote the names of the chords above the lyrics to the songs on the sleevenotes of Modern Life Is Rubbish. He himself learned from "songbooks and chord boxes and stuff, " As for tab, don't even ask. "I can't read tab." He pronounces it as if it's an alien word. "It really does my head in. I was trying to read a tab for And Your Bird Can Sing on the internet and I just couldn't. I just worked it out in the end. That's why I couldn't work out Ewan McColl tuning before - it's really dumb as it's so obvious. But I'm a bit thick when it comes to notes and scales and things." This is part of the reason, it seems, that Graham has been so reluctant to talk to guitar magazines in the past, plus the fact that he finds it 'difficult' to talk about guitars, "They're just tools, really, for your ideas." Coxon might not be a technique expert, but he is able to provide the perfect antidote to flashy solo-ing: the slide solo on Country Sad Ballad Man is Coxon's Jonny Greenwood-style Paranoid Android solo moment. "It's not a slide solo, though - it sounds like that because it's all string bending. I played it on a really out of tune guitar and it was one of the things I did before I got into slide playing - try to sound like a slide without using one. A lot of it was bending two string up and down the fretboard. And I didn't have slack tunings either until later. The first time I did it was on You're So Great. And there's a couple of B-Sides where I've experimented with the same technique." Anti solos or no, there's no doubting that Graham has provided much in the way of inspiration for TG readers, and is something of an axe hero, admired and respected for pushing the sonic (guitar) boundaries. Keen to understate his mark, and in true Coxon fashion, he just laughs when we tell him this. But for a serious sec - how does he feel about his status as a guitar superstar? "I dunno, that's okay." He squirms with embarrassment. "I think a lot of guitar playing is to do with taste, really, as much as what you can do. And I've only 'pushed the boundaries' a bit cos I've always been bored with my playing, so I use a lot of pedals to see what I can do with them. A lot more 'old school'-style players would be too blues influenced from the 60's to do think about doing that. I was quite horrified when I saw Noel doing that delay pedal thing that I was doing on Essex Dogs, (Noel did it on Jools Holland, apparently - and 'the delay thing' involved Coxon 'trapping' things into his delay pedal then speeding it up and down with the delay speed to give it a very mechanical sound). "He did it really badly... Well, not really badly, just like he couldn't be bothered." says Graham, disappointed. One UK guitarist he does have time for is Matt Bellamy of Muse. TG mentions we interviewed Matt recently who commented that he really liked Graham's playing. "Did he?" Graham sounds surprised. "That's nice. I saw him on the Camden Parkway the other day and I was going to say 'hello' but I thought he'd probably tell me to f*** off." As for US guitarists, Graham singles out Pavement's Steve Malkmus as an inspiration. "I really like watching him, to just be able to actually see him playing more than listening to him on record. He's quite a unique player, and a bit of a jazzer at heart." J. Mascis is also given an honourary mention who, Graham agrees, made solo-ing acceptable to the indie fraternity. As for any of the new US bands, Graham admits he's "lost track a bit" although he says The Strokes are "alright". "I like the way they look and the music they're into." Blur's embracing of all things American - after the defiantly British Parklife - began with The Great Escape's Look Inside America. But by the time Blur was released, they'd gone into US overdrive, rejecting the cheeky cockney persona and forgetting where they'd put their Kinks albums. Graham insists they'd always loved American music and that they only said they didn't to tow the Britpop party line. The proof was in the pudding, as the sound of Blur owed much to the US alternative rock scene and the Americans - unsurprisingly - loved it, particularly Song 2. But for Graham fame was difficult. He's always been the most uncomfortable with it, shying away from the spotlight and preferring to concentrate on what he does best: playing guitar. Even before the Americans went crazy for Song 2 back when Blur's Country House beat Oasis's Roll With It to Number One, Graham even tried to throw himself out of a window when EMI threw a celebratory champagne style party - Damon stopped him just in time. "I just lost it completely," he shudders at the memory. Surely then he must have wished he could be in a strictly 'alternative rock' band, unconcerned with riding out the top 40 and attending record company bashes? He pauses significantly. "No. No, not at all," sounding happy that, given a Country House-style hiccup along the way, he's been able to do what he wanted to do. Still you can't help thinking what would have happened if Blur was The Great Escape part II. But it wasn't, and despite rumours around their 10th anniversary that the band were about to split, they're still firmly intact. So, what do the rest of the band think about Crow...? "They haven't really said much yet. Alex is always encouraging, he always says nice things. Dave doesn't say much. They've all been though. Y'know, even though the music I play isn't to their tastes. "I think it's good. I listened to it today. Part of the reason I do it is to make music that I like to hear. It's good to encourage yourself and see if you can do more. I think it's a more cohesive record than the last two...," He trails off hopefully. "It's weird. I think it's because of the Gorillaz thing; everybody seems more interested in what the other members of Blur are doing. So, c'mon what does he think of Gorillaz? "It's chart music, innit?" he concludes swiftly. Just like Blur's recent Best Of compilation which, Graham tells us, "was basically what the record company wanted to put on it." When a band put out a best of, it often signifies their demise. He shakes his head: "There's always been rumours. There's no reason for Blur to split up - we've still got more records to put out. We're not putting each other under pressure like we were in the 90's, we can put out a record whenever we're ready to do it." Blur are back in the studio already. Have they written many songs yet? "Damon's written some. But this album's gonna be interesting because we're all living in different centuries. I think Alex is in the 20th, Dave's in the 21st and I'm in the medieval ages. I just wanna play really heavy guitar over all the new songs," he grins, proving that despite his new-found love for folk there's still a considerable part of him firmly rooted in alternative rock. "But we'll see: I doubt they'll let me." |