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Back to: History "I'm attracted to trauma" From 'Blur The Illustrated Story' © 1995 Paul Lester. I went on the road with the band in June 1991, and was surprised - make that 'startled' - by their bacchanalian, corybantic capacity for excess. "We've got whisky, gin, vodka, brandy, Southern Comfort, light ale and lager," the barman of a Bristol hotel offered one group member, probably Graham, as we relaxed in the lounge after a gig, only to be met with the response, uttered in complete seriousness, "I'll have all of that." Most astonishing were Graham's no-holds-barred revelations to me on the band's tour bus on the journey between Bristol and Ipswich. I had previously described Graham as 'self-destructive'. Here, Blur's guitarist upped the ante with some serious psychotic reactions. It would seem worth repeating most of our conversation now, not least for the insight it offers into the mind of a member of one of the country's best-known bands, and a band often mistakenly perceived as vacuous, bumptious fun-merchants. "I went to a mental hospital for two weeks once," Graham started. "But I wasn't mental, I was in the only normal ward in Colchester. There were all these old men wandering around with two miles of ash hanging off their fags - they were great, they'd go out and get me Superkings. "I had anaemia, see. It was great. I had ulcers, too. I got them on the last tour with The Soup Dragons - I was clinging on to the seats, almost passing out with pain, and I was totally bleeding inside. Being in a band doesn't help cos you have to drink and smoke all the time. "I was on a ferry with my old girlfriend around the same time," he went on, "and I'd bought these Gitanes, and they were killing me. And I dropped to the floor and started going a bit unconscious, and my girlfriend - who was bulimic, by the way - was just kicking me and going, "Get up, Graham! Stop showing me up!" And I was lying on the threshold of the toilet, and people were just casually stepping over me. "I'm attracted to trauma," Graham added, as if he need to. "I like things like that. I'm a born martyr. Damon always says I'm like one of those old poets who carried handkerchiefs around with them and kept going into fits and saying, "Oooh, I'm feeling a bit giddy!" "Do I scare people? Perhaps a bit. Alex does, too, although in a different way - he's just so laidback. I'm not. The other week, my current girlfriend was giving me a hard time, and I sat against the wardrobe, and I just started bashing my head against it till I started getting fuzzy vision. "Another time, we all went out and I got really drunk on champagne and Jim Beam and found myself walking in the middle of Notting Hill with no hope of getting home. And then I got run over. I don't know how the f***ing hell it happened, really. I just ran into the road and got biffed up in the air by this car. It was really f***ing hilarious. I was brought to by this copper, and I just said, "Am I dead?" "I had such an awesome time! I was living in these college halls, and when I went back there to see my girlfriend, Jane, I was concussed to f***, I had blood all over my face and I was limping and blabbering on about nothing. I had to be sedated. I was absolutely off my head. I started making sandwiches and cutting my fingers and there was blood everywhere. Just amazing... sedation... wow. "I've pretty much done everything I ever wanted to," he decided, before offering this chilling conclusion to his rabid, livid stream-of-consciousness: "I reckon I could die and I'd be happy. Yeah, I'd like to think I could commit suicide now..." One can only wonder what Smash Hits would have made of that little lot. |