Graham Coxon: Hello.

GC: Fatherhood is fine, very nice actually.

GC: Er, no, no, erm, not really. I think I'll play everything I can get my hands on. But... it all takes a lot of time, doesn't it.

GC: Yeah, I'm trying... I'm gonna start teaching her sign language soon, 'cos they can use sign language before they can talk.

GC: Yeah they do, they do. There's a certain method that I've been looking at, that you can actually do it.

GC: There could be one!

GC: That could be, like, the sign for heavier music, if you do an air guitar thing. There could be another sign for, sort of, a lighter music. Then you could ask them what kind of music they want on.

GC: Yeah, yeah. Erm, I suppose. Well, I wanted it to be like... I wanted it to be kind of, you know, really really fast and frightening. 'Cos I've been going about on my skateboard a bit and I've been watching people going down handrails and skateboarding to very fast heavy music, a kind of white knuckle kind of thing. So I had... On the last record I was all introvert and weird at home, watching telly a lot, drinking tea. But with this one I was out and about quite a lot, and had a lot of energy, you know, I was, like, skateboarding and sort of 80% of the time scared to death so I kind of wanted that feeling on the record really.

GC: Yeah, I reckon music's always a good soundtrack. I remember, like, years ago, listening to Scott Walker, going up Oxford Street in the pouring rain, you know, and that was perfect. But I suppose this summer I just want people to be bungee-jumping and skating, just going berserk and maybe they could listen to this record as well while they're doing that.

GC: I was having my Walkman on, yeah. I don't listen to music at home very much, actually. I prefer silence or computers or telly, really. Which is very boring, but I do like listening to my headphones while I'm out on my rounds. So I was kind of exploring a lot of stuff from the "Gummo" soundtrack, that film "Gummo" by Harmony Korine, and loads of, sort of, stuff from a band called "Sleep" which is a great big heavy muddy riffs that for a long time I've been, sort of, into that... kick-ass, denim-wearing rock'n'roll. It makes me react in the way that I used to listen to "Revolution" by "The Beatles" when I was a little kid on my spacehopper, you know, bouncing up and down. There's no room to, sort of, take it to pieces and think too hard about it, you just, sort of, you're in amongst it, yeah, I like that.

GC: I got introduced to "Mission Of Burma" by a friend of mine, probably in the mid-90's. I wrote to Ace Of Hearts Records, wanting to get the lyrics so I could get it right, and, so I've been in contact with Clint Conley and Roger Miller from that group, from the early 80's, so that, you know, it's... I can't believe, really, if I think about them being eighteen years old, those songs, or something like that, so, erm, but they were really really supportive, and I just thought those two songs were very important to me, they seemed to really describe a lot of how I was feeling.

GC: Yeah, kind of. I dunno. I was doing this interview, and someone said "Did you record that because you're suicidal?" and I'd never thought of it like that: "That's when I reach for my revolver/That's when it all gets blown away". I never thought about that means shooting yourself in the head. I kind of thought of it as more of a symbolic... just getting rid of everybody else, leaving yourself there kind of thing. Well, yeah, that's how I took it. So I was really surprised by this. I dunno, I just love the way it kind of... the way that the emotion builds in that song, just from being really simple, talking about your mum and your dad, and what they give you, and then your friend's a bit messed up, he wants to, kind of, do this and then the last verse is, kind of, really ominous, it's a big realisation, a sort of huge loss of innocence kind of song, I think.

GC: I suppose. But, I dunno, I'm feeling really different now, from when I recorded it. I'm quite sort of happy, now I've exorcised all that stuff. And at the time, I dunno, I must have been quite frustrated and I remember that it was very very crucial that I recorded the record because I was going to be a dad and I might not ever get the chance to do any recording again of my own for, kind of, fun or anything else. So I was kind of really desperate so I still did it really fast and I still did it just careering around the studio like a nutter trying to play everything at the same time. It's kind of like it picks up where "Who The F***?" from the last record sort of finishes or something like that. But there's still kind of "Keep Hope Alive", which is still a little bit maudlin and miserable like the first record really, but I really didn't think I was gonna make another record after the first one, let alone... I didn't think I was capable of writing songs like this really, but I kind of just got my own way of sort of trying to do it, and it seemed to work out, came out a lot better than I thought it would be anyway.

GC: Oh, err... Yeah. They didn't comment at all on the first one, apart from Damon said he had that "R U Lonely" song in his head one morning. But they've all said they like it. The first one I played to them on headphones, just after I'd got... I suppose it was just after I cut it. I played it to Alex and he was laughing his head off, and playing air bass.

GC: A bit, yeah. And, erm... yeah, they've all said they like it, which is really nice. I think we've all kind of relaxed about that sort of thing these days, 'cos we've all got all these... these wild little projects going and it's best to just like what everyone's doing really rather than get, you know, het up about territory and stuff like that.

GC: Well mostly people are so busy we don't see much of each other but we are... we sort of had a meeting the other day, we saw each other, erm, it was sort of a Blur meeting about, you know, general stuff, and... I see Alex occasionally for a coffee, bump into him in town and stuff like that. He always sends me those kind of weird picture text messages on my phone, you know, he sent me a couple of really rude ones yesterday, so he's always there, yeah.

GC: Cheers.