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Back to: Archive · 2006 Interview with Graham Coxon Words: Michael Leonard. Pictures: James Cumpsty. From Guitarist magazine, April 2006.   'Going solo' was always a tricky career move, and the fate of Britain's 1990s guitar heroes suggests it's not getting any easier. Suede's Bernard Butler did okay for a couple of albums but he's since returned to his partnership with Brett Anderson. John Squire's solo records? Good guitarist, but where's the singer? Nick McCabe has all but retired after his in/out stringweaving with The Verve. And Oasis's Noel Gallagher seems so wary of the potential pitfalls he's now vowed to never ever make a solo record; preferring to ride out the storms with his brother. But then there's Graham Coxon. His departure from Blur in 2002 may have been the result of many clouds - addictions, resentment, bad communication, anything else you can think of - but he's since hit the sunshine of a solo career. Today, at Camden venue Koko, Graham Coxon is starring for Channel 4 on its inaugural Album Chart Show. Three hours before showtime, there are already kids mooching outside hoping for a glimpse of him. In his dressing room, Coxon sparks a cigarette and sips coffee. "I had a breakthrough, I think," he ponders of recent years. "My life just became calmer. I gave up drinking. My priorities changed as I had a young daughter. The group [he means Blur] didn't want me to record for the Think Tank album... so I took it as a sign to leave. Things just changed. But the pool of calm I came to after rehab somehow allowed these other songs to bubble up." And what songs. Coxon was never regarded as the prime architect of his band's sound - Blur singer Damon Albarn took most credit for songwriting - yet going it alone has dramatically brought Coxon's talents into focus. Early solo albums such as The Sky Is Too High and The Golden D were spiky, but Happiness In Magazines (2004) and new album Love Travels At Illegal Speeds (just released) prove Coxon can pepper guitar pop with all the essential ingredients: singalong tunes, wit, a tug of sadness and great playing. Right now, he seems on a roll... "I'm not sure. I started putting out my own songs in 1998 and I've just been trying to keep on. The last two albums I've taken a little more time over, yeah. But it's odd; people believe that as a songwriter you can make big decisions about the direction you take. I'm not like that. I take what I get. So I wouldn't say I've taken a more commercial attitude towards songwriting, but maybe my attitude towards production has changed on these last two records..." This is true. Coxon's earlier solo albums revelled in lo-fi sensibilities of muffled vocals and scabrous guitars; there were tunes there, but it was as if he was trying to keep them buried. Indeed, the new Love Travels... and 1999's The Golden D could be the work of different people... "But The Golden D was made by a different person," he insists. "When I recorded that I was messed up with alcohol, I had a lot of anger and resentment. The album reflected my state of mind... as did the other two even more despairing albums after that [smiles]. Y'know, my records have been... chronological, is that the word? Basically, they really reflect me at that time." And this one is almost thematic again; like all the best pop, it's a relationships album... "Yeah, and it's all born out of trying to figure out why I'm so confused about them still. If I'd fallen in love and got married at 26, things might be very different. But knowing me, I would have got divorced by now anyway, which would have sparked off four albums of depressing, hideous noise. I've always thought too much and too hard about things, since adolescence: relationships, why we're here, all the big questions!" But you seem a lot more at ease now: there was a time when you declined any interviews, let alone one with a guitarist's magazine... "I don't mind interviews, really," he counters. "They make me talk about what I've done. And that helps me work out why I've done it."  Love Travels At Illegal Speeds is, again, a solo record in the purest sense. As with his five other albums since 1998, Coxon writes all the songs, plays drums, percussion, bass, all the guitars and sings. A few friends prod keyboards and strings and Stephen Street - a trusted friend from his work on Blur's Modern Life Is Rubbish and Parklife, as well as Happiness In Magazines - again sits in the producer's chair but that's it. Coxon seems remarkably self-sufficient. "I don't make my job very easy, I never have done," he notes. "But I like it this way. I don't like sitting around in the studio doing nothing and I'm a bad teacher. Teaching someone else parts is horrible, and I haven't got any patience." One might think that the dynamic of making a record solo with Street would be very different to Graham's sometimes fractious time in Blur, but he says not: "It's exactly the same. When I was recording in Blur everyone else would just go out of the room. Whoever was recording their bits with Steve [Street] would be there, but that would be it. So it's the same... I'm just there all the time because I'm doing the guitar, vocals, bass, drums... "What Stephen mainly did for me is with my vocal: I always enjoyed singing but it never really sounded like it. I was reticent, not very confident. On Happiness In Magazines I was trying a lot harder but hiding myself away behind a character that would be singing each song. But after touring that album, my voice just developed. I used to have the crappiest lungs, really. You know when you go to a medical and you have to blow into that tube really hard? After I'd been touring singing, I nearly blew the bloody end off! Amazing. "Singing for a year on tour really helped me find my voice, literally. I don't particularly enjoy my voice, but I have the sort of voice I liked in other people. I don't like people who can sing really great. I like Glenn Tilbrook's voice, Paul Weller's voice, Pete Townshend's voice. They're not great singers, but they have great English character to their voices." Of course, singing songs is a very different job to just playing them: some of the best guitarists struggle when solo precisely because they're required to play that dual role. Coxon admits that when he started to write songs that he'd also sing, it changed the way he played guitar. "In Blur I had a job to back up songs with guitars and, at times, I went very overboard. I think I made weirder noises back then, and I know some people miss that. It was a way of me stamping my identity on a record, I suppose, and I don't feel the need to do that any more. Obviously I like freaky sounds, but I also like good, considered, dry guitar tones: Rickenbackers, Telecasters, SGs, anything a bit chuggy," he smiles. "Those are my best tools." 'Considered' is an apt word to describe Love Travels... Coxon reveals that, typically, he wrote blues and folk-influenced tunes over the album's gestation period but decided they didn't fit his vision. He wanted this album, sonically, to reflect his formative influences: having been born in 1969 it's a mixture of what was handed down from his parents and the new wave of the late seventies. "I grew up on The Who, The Jam, The Cars, The Only Ones... I was in my hairdressers the other day, havin' a natter, and Joe Jackson's Is She Really Going Out With Him? came on the radio. What a song that is. And his other one, It's Different For Girls. They both have really sparse guitars, but really good guitars. I love that stuff; it still excites me. "It affected how I recorded. I've given myself more time, and I write more songs with electric guitars rather than acoustics, plus my little drum machine at home made me think more about the structure of songs. I know that I'm yet to make my best sounding music, though. "One day," he announces, "I'd like to record everything live with a group onto 50-year-old equipment. Why? Because modern-day recording really can be too easy. Having to bounce and jig things is possibly why older recordings sound better. I'm also very obsessive about snare drum sounds, which I know is really geeky. I like really snappy, trebly snare drum sounds. Again, it's from what I grew up listening to: The Jam, even Squeeze, had incredible snare drum sounds." And then there's your bass playing too; is that a different feel to playing guitar? "It needs discipline - so you don't play bass as if you're playing lead guitar. On the last two records, I think I've found my inner bass player. As far as influences, it's always Paul McCartney really, innit? Jack Bruce in Cream. And there's Andy Rourke too; The Smiths always had such great basslines." He'd hate to be called a muso, but Graham Coxon clearly understands music. In Blur, Damon Albarn would write the basic song but it seems it was often Coxon who arranged much of it. The classic Blur triumvirate of nineties albums - Modern Life Is Rubbish, Parklife and The Great Escape - all had CD booklets detailing guitar chord progressions; to many players, it was possibly their first encounter with major 7ths, 6th and suspended 4ths. "I do like jazzy chords and 7ths," he says. "And we wanted to use chords 'properly' if you know what I mean. The Beatles always used chords really nicely: they'd use 7ths correctly. There's such a lot you can tug out of a melody if the chord underneath is right, I think. I'll mess around with tunings; DADGAD, I'll dabble with. And I made a whole album [The Golden D] just because I discovered drop D." Away from the spotlight, Coxon entertains himself with the more erudite concerns of the maturing guitarist. He records folk songs on to his hard-disc recorder. He's mulling over custom luthiers too, as he's unhappy with the blend of his (Martin) acoustics with electrics on albums. He's even hanging around with Britfolk's elders. "I played with Bert Jansch and Davey Graham in the Hollywell Music Room in Oxford," he says, surprising even Guitarist. "And the night after Davey played with Martin Carthy, who I ended up having a great chat with about tunings. He's a great bloke..." Revisiting where we came in, who are Graham Coxon's true peers? He's 36 now, yet is suddenly being hailed on TOTP as "a really cool guy". Without him, Blur carry on as a brand but not a true band; and for maturing Britpoppers Coxon's records are a more seductive draw than those of his one-time colleagues. Does he feel like he has any peers? "That's difficult. It's like when people ask who I want to collaborate with. I think [Radiohead's] Johnny Greenwood is a peer, guitar-wise. I think we admire each other's playing and skills. But... I can't see anyone who's doing anything similar. "I can't put out albums like this forever: I'd get bored quickly and everyone else would. I always want to be free enough to do what I want, and develop any way that I want. And for people not to think I'm just genre-hopping. I'd hate that. I could record the next album on catgut guitar and that might be construed as experimental... but it would also be bullshit. I don't pillage musical genres and types; I know my place. [Who on Earth could he be thinking of? - Ed.] And I like heritage. I like the way the British nicked American music in the sixties and made it our own... British blues an' all that. And I think the roots of English music are so vast they'll take a lifetime to explore." Not that Coxon's hanging around. He now moves at such pace that Love Travels At Illegal Speeds was completed in summer 2005, and his next album - "it could be psychedelic pixie music," he laughs - is already half-written. He'll allow the rest of the world to catch up by touring solo again in March and then supporting the Blur-influenced Kaiser Chiefs on their first arena tour: a bill Guitarist has decided might be akin to George Harrison supporting Oasis... "That's an alright analogy," he laughs. "I guess I'm the godfather of 'urch rock', aren't I? Kaiser Chiefs are okay, though. It'll be nice to play big venues and try out the more sentimental side of the new album. Or just go for a total spazzoid set. I might sabotage it yet 'cos I'm proud of anything unfashionable. Fashion is... well, fashion is basically doing what you're told, innit?" Coxon once rued life in Blur thus: "Basically, we did what bloody Damon said." It's not going to happen again. Despite Albarn's thinly veiled overtures, rejoining Blur appears further away than ever for Graham Coxon. With today's showtime approaching, he's still thinking about his next solo recording session with no one telling him what - and what not - to do. "I just love being there for everything that goes to tape," he smiles, "I love the process. I love trying a drum fill in different places in the song. I love putting feedback here, feedback there. I just love creating sound and I could probably be happy forever just banging a little piece of plastic. Music is sorcery to me. It's magic." Over the years Coxon has played a lot of different guitars, moving from Gibson Les Pauls and Fender Jaguars in his early Blur days towards the modified Fender Telecasters he favours today - tellingly, when he was still at school, and before he even played, Coxon used to draw Telecasters on his exercise books. "I got a Les Paul and Marshalls early on in Blur because I was playing things off [The Beatles'] Abbey Road all the time," he recalls. "The most beautiful, warm tone ever is when I Want You (She's So Heavy) goes into that slinky rhythm and there's a guitar solo/vocal line... it's one of my favourite bits of music ever - incredible, beautiful. I based my whole sound on that for years. "But I don't have to be making such a fat sound any more. With my pedals and my amp distortion being quite driven, humbuckers would just make my sound too much. It would lose any real presence and aggression. That said, I do still use my Gibson ES-335 a bit when I want a real bluesy tone. You can hear that on Girl Done Gone [from Happiness In Magazines]. "And a fat sound is one reason why my gravy blonde Tele is so good. I got it from Vintage And Rare in Denmark Street and it looked like someone had hacked into it, had dinner on it... like it was a shed! But it had that PAF in the front position, that big old Gibson pickup. So you get everything: it's a really stinging, ringing Tele but if you switch on the PAF you get that beautiful rich Abbey Road sound. "I got a bit greedy with Teles," he smirks. "I've got a lot now. In the past I used a lot of reissue '59s, blonde/butterscotch ones. But when I actually played one from the sixties I realised just how beautiful and slim those necks were: on the reissues it's so thick it's almost like a Gibson. So I just decided from then on to buy old Teles. So that 'new' one with the PAF is a '68. The blue one I used a lot on the Live At The Zodiac [DVD] show is a Relic, which is lovely. On the album I used a little bit of ES-335, SGs and a Les Paul Junior too, but that was basically it." Other notable Coxon guitars are a black Hayman 30 30 (seen in the video for Blur's Song 2), his '62 Gibson SG (see Freakin' Out video), a sixties Fender Coronado XII 12-string, a black Squier Telecaster (see Girls And Boys video), his 1932 Martin 001 acoustic, a beautiful 1967 sunburst Fender Jaguar (see Bittersweet Bundle of Misery video) and his 1970s tobacco sunburst Gibson Les Paul Custom - grab a copy of Blur's Starshaped DVD (from 1992) to see that one centre-stage. Coxon's devotion to Marshalls is long-standing, though he says: "I've been through so many amps, I get so annoyed with them." His main backline is a 1959 SLP Marshall 100-watt Super Lead 'Plexi' head, and sixties reissue Marshall 50-watt Lead heads and matching 4 x 12-inch angled cabs. "Marshall amps are the only ones that can take the dynamic ranger I need: from dry, to one distortion pedal kicked in to two pedals kicked in, and still get the different intensities and volumes. I'm kinda lazy, I won't turn knobs. I just like pressing things, and my sound relies a lot on that!" It's not always Marshalls though. Hit single Standing On My Own Again is a Tele into a HiWatt: "That's an awesome sound," Coxon chirps. "There's a more mellow middle on HiWatts, I think, they don't seem to growl as much. What I like most about the Marshalls is the full bottom, the round sound, it works especially well with 335s." Coxon's custom-made pedalboard has the innards of numerous classic pedals stuffed inside: they include a BOSS NS-2, a DOD Punkifier, a BOSS CS-2 Compressor/Sustainer, DD-3 Digital Delay, DD-2 Delay, VB-2 Vibrato, a PN=2 Tremolo/Pan, a BF-2 Flanger plus main fuzz-distortion weapons - a 1960s Japanese Shin-ei Fuzz and two Proco Rat IIs; "The Shin-ei's a great pedal and I use that in conjunction with a Rat when soloing, but for my rhythm distortion sounds it's usually Rats." Song: This Is A Low Album: Blur, Parklife, 1994 "I was influenced by the Jeff Beck/Jimmy Page dual soloing on The Yardbirds' Stroll On; it's frantic, feeding back, vicious. I wanted This Is A Low to be like that solo... but on sedation." Song: Coffee & TV Album: Blur, 13, 1999 "I heard it on the radio the other day and I really enjoyed it. I can remember sitting with [producer] William Orbit and not really having an idea what to do for the solo. So I suggested stomping on pedals randomly. And you can hear that: one distortion pedal, two distortions, tremolo, vibrato... it was a random exercise, like an automatic solo. I wasn't looking at the fretboard at all, I was looking at the pedals. But I'm really proud of that one." Song: Freakin' Out Album: Graham Coxon, Happiness In Magazines, 2004 "I was playing the riff and Stephen [Street] said it sounded a bit like The Skids. It's an SG and Telecaster on nine o'clock and three o'clock that gives that great Skids sound. But I didn't do it on purpose, honest!" Song: Girl Done Gone Album: Graham Coxon, Happiness In Magazines, 2004 "I'm proud of that as a guitarist. I used different distortion pedals as I was playing live so you get a lot of different tones. It's very expressive to me, it's a bit of an homage to Jimi Hendrix." Song: You And I Album: Graham Coxon, Love Travels At Illegal Speeds, 2006 "This one's got a composed solo that copies the vocal melody, and it works well with a far-out flangy sound. When I wrote the first line - 'You and I yadda yadda' - I thought the melody line was Dylan-y, but it also had that Kinks and Who musicality. But the tune actually came about from singing to my daughter. I was about to go away on tour singing to her: 'it's gonna be a while/until I see you smile' and it turned into a song. I like the build bit after the solo - I'm very fond of maracas!" |