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From Total Guitar magazine, May 1999.
Articles by Henrik Tuxen and Helen Dalley.

Persistent rumours suggest that Blur's gradual move from ironic British pop towards Americanised alternative guitar rock is basically a result of Graham Coxon's growing influence on the band. Whether that's true or not, the alternative streak in Blur has never been more obvious than on the new album '13' - already being hailed by some as their best offering yet.

Just as you thought that every stone was turned, that every corner of pop music had been ripped off, recycled and flogged to death, Blur release a new album and the goalposts shift once again. It takes a while before '13' really soaks in, but it's one of those albums that just seems to just get better and better. The thing about '13' is that somehow these four ordinary blokes (and new producer William Orbit) are able to communicate a mixed variety of emotions, atmospheres, words and sounds like it's the easiest thing in the world. Blur's move from 'The Great Escape' to '13' is literally like a trip from one galaxy to another - the eponymous 'Blur' from 1997 being the link which indicated the band were about to leave behind the teenage sing-a-longs that they made their name with.

Admittedly, their last album still contained plenty of catchy pop songs in their unmistakable style, but it also showed a band experimenting with weird musical ideas and wild, distorted guitar sounds. It's been their biggest commercial success to date (having sold well in America) and an album which set the pace for the future. A point of no return, put crystal clear by Graham Coxon: "once you've left pop, you can never go back."

According to drummer Dave Rowntree, the band approached '13' as something of an evolutionary experience: "With the last album, we made small changes to things at the beginning, which translated into large differences to the finished sound of the music. This time, we used a lot of cut and paste and experimented more - especially by changing our producer."

Blur's previous five albums were all produced by Stephen Street, so choosing remixer and electronic genius William Orbit (whose latest claim to fame is remixing Madonna's 'Ray Of Light') was a drastic change for the band.

"Working with Stephen for such a long time meant that he really knew how he wanted us to record; pretty much all our stuff has been done with him, so we only knew how to work the way that Stephen does," explains Dave. "Working with Orbit was like starting all over again - it's been very interesting. He's never worked with a live band before," he adds. Graham continues, "I think his philosophy was just to set, or wind us up, pointing out the right direction then trying to filter out whatever happened, rather than attempting to mould it into something he had in mind. Stephen is rather the more proactive kind, who's trying to get you to play what he's heard in his head. William is more willing to go where things are heading and just take what we were after then shape it into songs."

No doubt a result of Orbit's influence, the album sounds a lot more fluid - more of a jam than Blur's previous records.

"Yeah, I suppose there is a bit of that," admits Graham, "and we'd hardly done any stuff like that in the past. There was some loose jamming on the last record, maybe two or three bits. They seemed to work, something happened and got better. This time, we seemed more willing to just jam while someone was mending the computer and getting the samples together. We were just sitting around playing, so we didn't really waste much time," the guitarist reflects.

'13' is a dramatic departure from the earlier part of Blur's career, although Coxon is quick to point out it wasn't a case of sitting down and agreeing on a route the album should take. "I don't think that we had a direction in mind at all, we were just trying to find our own direction. Because we knew we had to make a record that we really liked, we were just going wherever the songs went. I don't know if we'd plan the direction ahead even if we could," he adds.

So far, it sounds like '13' was a very democratic affair. Is the songwriting becoming more collective?

"Everybody's just relaxing, so it's very easy for us to fill our individual roles. We're not so territorial about what we do now, there's no need to be, and there never really was. Although we probably did so in the past to establish some identity, now I think we're all more confident about doing whatever we want," Graham believes.

The last six or seven songs on '13' sound like a whole musical composition hanging together, weird and strange, going up and down, almost reminiscent of old Pink Floyd albums. It's visual, spooky stuff.

"Yeah, I suppose it's quite psychedelic here and there," Coxon concedes.

There's always been a well-published tension between the band members in Blur. Four strikingly different personalities make up the group, and when they got to Number 1 for the first time with 'Country House' in 1995, their personalities were magnified.

Being under the spotlight, they had no choice. Bassist Alex James and Damon Albarn easily adapted to life in the fast lane (Graham remembers, "the first thing Damon ever said to me was, 'my shoes are more expensive than yours'") while Graham despised the superfluous pop star attention, and Dave remained somewhat more anonymous, content to spend time at home in his London flat with his wife.

Being the prime songwriter, vocalist, a great keyboard player and the pretty face, Damon was immediately the press darling of the band. But over the years, Graham's influence has steadily increased. Currently the band is trying to eliminate talk that '13' is in fact Graham's album, just like 'Blur'.

Damon also comes across strongly this time around - the album has a more personal lyrical emphasis than ever before, mostly stemming from the break-up of his eight-year old relationship with Elastica's Justine Frischmann. But apparently it isn't true that Damon's always been the pop fan and Graham the experimentalist, and that Coxon is leading the musical direction and future of Blur. As Graham explains.

"Originally, I think that Damon was very much into pop music and melodies and songs, and at one point, I was getting pretty tired of that and getting into music that was more interesting to me as a guitar player. On the last album, I suppose I tried to pull it a little bit more towards hideously grotesque American punk rock, or some kind of interesting alternative music. I think our interest in pop music just went, and Damon decided that the music I was listening to was quite interesting. I suppose we just all went running into the woods hoping we were gonna meet in the clearing. And I suppose this album was us finally meeting in the clearing," he concludes.

It sounds, then, like the band are getting along better these days.

"Oh yeah, greeeaaaatttt," snarls Dave, half joking, half serious. "Well, it's never been really bad. When it was, it wasn't really because of us as people... it was the circumstances, just the big, fat mutual frustrations which probably made us rattle each other; it wasn't like we had loads of massive rows." They did, however, manage to all give each other black eyes on the 'Leisure' tour... something they don't want to discuss nowadays.

The band have always coped with success in their own individual ways, from the days of 1991's top-tenner 'There's No Other Way', which quickly propelled them into the indie scene's consciousness. On the question of fame, though, Graham dispels any suggestion that it happened in a flash.

"We didn't have any instant success," he says flatly. "The charts don't really mean that much here in England anyway, it's very easy to get to Number 1. You don't have to sell that many records, and you're not necessarily worth anything abroad, as we discovered when we went to America. But there was this big bitchy thing after 'Parklife'. People's attitudes really changed towards us. We went from being regarded as an alternative, leftfield arty band to this amazing new pop sensation."

After 'Parklife', Blur soon realised that life wouldn't be the same, what with the bitchiness they experienced, as described by Graham, coupled with constantly being in the public gaze put a strain on the four's college friendship. "It kind of goes from mates having a laugh," begins Graham, "to being sworn enemies," interrupts Dave, laughing.

Coxon continues; "Well, we just became more serious about the music, and then for a little while we were feeling a bit like business associates," he pauses to reflect. "Probably the time around 'The Great Escape', it was kind of like that, but then we were all really selfish like, 'look this is my life, I don't want to play music that I don't like.' Basically, we all just wanted to play music that we wanted to listen to, and not make music that seemed to be, er..."

Graham leaves the statement hanging in the air, perhaps in an effort not to offend the rest of the band and their more straightforward appreciation of pop. Suddenly it's evident how important the music is to him, further illustrated by his immediate response to whether the band members' individual friendship is more important than the music.

"No," he barks straight away, then after a short choking silence, he and Dave both burst into fits of laughter. But there's still a sense that, despite Coxon's joking with Rowntree, he takes his role in the band more seriously than some would give him credit for.

'13' succeed in maintaining the old Blur tradition of delivering something different with every album... but was it a matter of the band's survival for them to do an album like this? Graham famously said after 'The Great Escape' that he'd quit if the band were to continue on the teen pop route. This time around, he chooses somewhat more diplomatic phrases.

"I think we all wanted to achieve something around the time of 'The Great Escape': we all had our own individual goals, and you have some vague attitude as to how you want to utilise these goals in music."

'13' is a great voyage in sounds and emotions, but it's not exactly shaped as a greatest hits album. How did the record company feel when one of their best-selling pop machines decided to turn totally leftfield? Dave is quick to disagree, snapping, "you'll be surprised at the hit single potential of this album."

Perhaps he's right. Blur's best-selling single so far, 'Song 2' was originally regarded as a weird piece of alternative fun-punk by most people. "It's the same problem people had with the last album as a whole," says Graham with a sigh. But the new album is quite a change from classic British pop albums such as 'The Great Escape' and 'Parklife' isn't it?

"It's easy to look back and say that they were classic British albums, but at the time they came out, people thought we were mad. When 'Parklife' came out, that was the first time the term commercial suicide was ever applied to us. People from the record company came down to the studio and they thought we were insane and were debating whether they should drop us or not."

"'Parklife' especially, was called complete bollocks, not so much 'The Great Escape', but that was a lot less commercially successful," Dave remembers. Contradicting Graham's earlier statement slightly, Dave claims that Blur never had any real trouble with their labels, Food and EMI.

"As far as the record company goes, we never really had a quarrel with them, we always had a good relationship with them. From day one we made friends straight away - we just feel respected by them, so we never really have any tension."

"Things that could become problems get discussed, and nothing is hidden," adds Graham. He continues, "when you start out, the record company becomes your teachers and guardians. Then after a while if you survive, you kind of become their teachers and you start telling them what is probably best, and they respect you. It takes a while before that happens but when it does it's kind of a luxury, but also difficult to believe that it's actually happening."

Perhaps, 10 years in the business and six albums under you belt, it's a natural process? Coxon doesn't see it quite that way. "It's more like when you leave home and go back for a visit. The attitude is a little bit better than when you lived there," he adds with a smile.

According to Damon Albarn and Alex James, Graham is the most gifted guitar player of his generation. Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood is also a big fan of Graham's playing, TG tells him, and Jonny surely won't be disappointed with '13', the playing being as varied, gentle and explosive as ever.

"You say that Jonny Greenwood has hailed me as one of the great guitar players, and you want to hear who my heroes are. Well, Jonny and I met a couple of times and we just stood there looking and smiling at each other," says Graham with a shrug.

Graham Leslie Coxon was born into a musical family at a military hospital near Hanover, Germany, 30 years ago in March 1969. The son of an army bandsman who taught jazz to the soldiers, Coxon lived on the German military base for his first five years then moved to England to live with his Grandfather. Young Graham immersed himself in music from an early age. He taught himself to play saxophone and guitar at the age of 12, and went on to play drums for local bands around Colchester. At 14, he met the 15-year-old Damon Albarn, who some years later asked him to join his new band. One of Graham's old mates from the band Hazel Dean was on drums; his name was Dave Rowntree (who'd also received jazz lessons from Graham's dad). Later on, one of Graham's friends, Alex James, joined on bass. And the rest is, as they say, history.

Nowadays, Graham uses Gibson Les Pauls a lot live, but he's mostly known for his unique Telecaster sound. His classic natural wood Telecaster model is also the only guitar present today, as the band jam out some songs from the new album with their small set-up in the living room of a house in Hackney. Having spent more or less all your life playing guitar, does Graham think he can keep learning, or is it more a matter of refining his technique and style?

"You can most definitely keep on learning and improving," Graham states, with not a trace of arrogance, despite his competence. "But in order to do so, what you have to do is reverse the process. You try to unlearn, to fight your habits, and get rid of your bad practices and set a new way of playing," he explains. Coxon has broken much new ground with his guitar playing over the last years - and not only with Blur: he recently released a first solo album in typically low key manner on his own label, Transcopic. An old dream or a spontaneous idea?

"Neither. It was more like a necessary chore. I enjoyed doing it and I'm happy the way it turned out. It was very quick, it took five days altogether. It was like a spring cleaning job, because I needed to put these songs out of my mind to be ready to work with Blur. I had every brain cell absolutely running in and around, and I didn't want anything else in there that hadn't been taken to its conclusion. I didn't want these nagging weird little tunes and songs anywhere near my brain, I wanted to get them out. I wasn't planning to release the album, I was just advised to, and I'm kind of glad I did now."

Now the label is up and running, Graham is distancing himself from it a little.

"I produced one album, but it's not something that I'll jump into again. It's tough work, and I'm not very patient." Graham's musical abilities and commercial success has gradually increased, not least due to the success of Blur in America, and his personal life has been similarly up and down. Graham is basically a friendly and obliging guy, but he's been fighting with alcohol problems for years. During the US 'Leisure' tour, he was ill with a bleeding ulcer, and was also spectacularly hit by a cab last year. Cool as ever, he managed to escape relatively unscathed, even managing to hold onto his fag despite being nearly run over.

'Blur' contains Coxon's brilliant autobiographical song 'You're So Great' with the opening line 'Sad, drunk for poorly'. On '13' he sings about "Coffee and TV" on the song of the same name, but after a pretty sober year, Graham is reportedly back on the bottle, a subject he's reluctant to discuss today. It was two years ago he wrote 'Sad, drunk for poorly', how does he portray himself today?

"Happy, sober and out. I don't know," he answers. "Those lines were written from a sober point of view. The idea of sad, drunk for poorly somehow describes... it's like a job, because the next line is about the drug caffeine. So how far do you go, vegetable oil, decaffeinated coffee, and mineral water?"

At the height of the Britpop war, Alex James was fond of wearing his 'Quoasis' T-shirt down to Groucho's or any of the other trendy bars he frequented. Graham, on the other hand, would immediately terminate an interview if the term was even mentioned. Four years on and it's still something of a sore subject for the guitarist.

"It could be almost humourous if it was in the past, if the question wasn't still being asked, 'you led the Britpop movement aren't you brave?', or 'how can you let it down?'," he says. "By the time that term was invented we'd already left it," he states.

"It's just a fundamental misunderstanding of the rock background we come from," asserts Rowntree. "To be remembered for being the drummer in a band that led a movement I had nothing to do with, I find frustrating, because I feel we've contributed so much more," finishes Dave.

To call '13' Britpop is so clearly ridiculous that the band must now have lost this dreaded tag forever. Although '13' is considered unlucky, Blur have achieved enough commercial success and a reputation as musical innovators for them not to be overly superstitious. Do they see any more challenges ahead? "Well, making a record like this is sweeping away over all the Cockney routines you've built up over the years, and starting all over again. And after 10 years, it's still difficult, that's a challenge in itself," comments Rowntree.

"The idea of creating something which can be there forever is pretty awesome and exciting," adds Graham, proving that 10 years down the line, his musical enthusiasm, too, is still wholly intact.

The perspective of the band, then, seems musically limitless. Dave agrees: "I think we opened up a whole bunch of new ideas really. You don't feel like you have to reinvent yourself - 'reinvent' is the new journalist speak, and I've no idea what it means. If it means our music changes from album to album, from song to song; that's alright. And the fact that each track on each album does sound so different means that we do change from day to day musically. We have to, we couldn't possibly keep a mutual thought in our head for three months. We just follow our noses."

Just one more question: why '13' - it's your sixth album? Graham offers up a few reasons.

"There's 13 songs on the record, then there's a little tiny studio in an old bus station in West London, and we got room 13. It's a small studio which seems to be very good at translating our mutual thoughts into sounds, so that's where we start any kind of recording process," he adds.

Dave answers more simplistically. "It's the best we could come up with. Sorry." Graham has one last go at expanding the '13' idea. "There's the spiritual look to the album cover, a good contradiction of spiritual imagery and bad luck numbers. Kind of like a joke I suppose," he says. And why not? After all, if anyone can, Blur can afford to laugh.

Not best known for holding forth on all things technical, Coxon is something of an anti-guitar hero, just like contemporaries Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood, Dinosaur Jr's J Mascis or Kevin Shields (My Bloody Valentine). Asked about his style, he says "it lies somewhere between Pete Townshend, Robert Fripp and J Mascis." His fave guitar is his 1952 Tele reissue, but he's also a fan of Les Pauls. "They're good live because they're reliable, powerful and strong and heavy enough to work really well and survive." More recent purchases include a Harmony Sovereign, an American acoustic from the 60's, the choice of many old blues and roots guitarists which Graham used on his solo album. He's also the owner of a Fender Musicmaster, which possesses a sound not dissimilar to a Jaguar. As we mentioned in issue 39 of Total Guitar, which featured Blur on the cover, Graham isn't a fan of Oasis's mainman. "Watching Noel Gallagher play, he has far too much f***ing respect for the instrument. To get the best out of a guitar, you've got to f***ing hate it as well."

Since 'Parklife', Coxon's used twin RAT distortion pedals, and a Boss flanger. Vibrato and tremolos are employed here and there to spice up proceedings like on 'Girls And Boys', through Marshall amps. On their biggest-selling single to date, 'Song 2', he uses just the one RAT pedal and an old Japanese distortion unit, to give that stinging sound. After 'Parklife' was released, Graham commented, "In the past, I'd never push my point across, I'd allow my parts to be tamed down. Now, I figure I've got to be selfish. I've finally found myself and I've almost got it together as a guitarist - that's strange after four albums."

Blur have just delivered their sixth album, '13', and they're everywhere: single 'Tender' has monopolised the airwaves since the new year, and the band just missed out on reaching Number 1 by teen pop artist Britney Spears.

Blur are now one of the biggest names in British pop... but it didn't always look like they'd make it. When they initially formed on the back of the 'baggy' Manchester scene, right up until 1994's 'Parklife', the band were virtual nobodies, known only to most by their 1991 top 10 hit, 'There's No Other Way'.

The band comprises four strikingly different personalities: there's Damon the singer, the doe-eyed teenage pin-up, guitarist Graham, champion of the lo-fi cause and always pissed, Alex the bassist, the one with that fringe, the Groucho member socialite who's appeared in every magazine from Elle to Vegetarian Good Food and also member of Fat Les... then drummer Dave, a teetotal, the only married one who's partial to flying. Blur, the band who - much as they hate it - put the 'Brit' in Britpop.

Meeting at Goldsmith's art college, Coxon and Albarn already knew each other (they had attended the same school, although they weren't close: Graham thought Damon was "a vain w***er"). It was 1989 and The Happy Mondays and The Stone Roses were everywhere. All fans of different music - Coxon was crazy about the Pixies at the time, and Dave had not long shed his mohican - Damon, Alex, Graham and Dave formed a band, Seymour, and soon landed gigs around Camden in clubs like The Falcon and Blow Up. It wasn't long before Andy Ross of Food Records spotted them, suggested they change their name and signed them for the modest sum of £3,000.

Adopting the fashionable baggy look of the time in their music and image, the band's first single in 1990 was 'She's So High' which just missed out on a Top 40 placing. Only a few months later, they witnessed their first taste of success with 'There's No Other Way'. Then, just as the punky 'Popscene' was released in 1992, the band were invited on the Rollercoaster tour with My Bloody Valentine, Dinosaur Jr and the Jesus And Mary Chain.

Graham says, "That was the most rock'n'roll tour in the world. Lots of vodka and smoking and lots of noise and late nights. It was ace. Those bands were my heroes - part of the reason I wanted to be in an indie group in the first place was because of those people." Damon remembers, "seeing Graham on the carpet in the hotel bar being hoovered around in the morning," while Alex confirms the tour was nothing short of brilliant. "We thought we were on holiday. It was indie dream heaven! 'Tonight, you'll be going bowling with J Mascis and JAMC, and you can have as much booze as you like.'"

In the same year, they played Glastonbury. Many still associated the band with the baggy scene, but Blur were determined to shake that tag off once and for all, swapping their bowl haircuts and leisure wear for sharp mod suits and harder sound, the latter no doubt inspired by the Rollercoaster tour. Damon, drunk, climbed to the top of the rafters, fell into the speakers and broke his foot on stage. Such behaviour summed up the band's current mood and attitude: always famed for their drinking, it was now getting out of control. Food warned them they'd have to come up with the goods on their second album, or they might not have a record deal.

After Glastonbury, the band completed a gruelling 44-date US tour. "We'd have to 'meet and greet', eat shit in a fast food store and then go to a radio station where they'd think we were from Manchester," says Damon. "Playing onstage was the only release we got, and we became completely exhausted."

They found solace - again - in alcohol and played like they didn't give a toss. America, at the time madly in love with grunge and Nirvana were wholly indifferent to Blur, and their spoilt middle class air didn't help matters. Blur's 1992 rockumentary, 'Starshaped' captures them in this very frame of mind.

The band soon had to fight not only against grunge, but the stylish, Bowie-esque Suede, who appeared just as they had reached their lowest ebb. Brett Anderson was arguably just as good a frontman as the energetic, pogo-crazy Damon, and Bernard Butler's competence on guitar at this time outclassed Graham's. Hostility between the two bands soon broke out, but it was perhaps the kick up the backside Blur needed. Damon agrees, saying, "it certainly f***ing motivated us."

With America not an option and their future in jeopardy, Blur created 'Modern Life Is Rubbish', paying homage to all the great English bands that had gone before them. The Kinks, The Small Faces, The Who and The Jam. It was Paul Weller's album of 1993.

'Modern Life Is Rubbish' sold relatively well, and it had certainly saved their career, but it wasn't until 'Parklife' was released that the band began to reach star-like proportions. The single 'Girls And Boys', with its more dance-orientated, modern feel was played not just in student bars, but clubs and discos up and down the country, and it became the Summer anthem of 1994, for lads and indie kids alike. It was with this song that Blur finally entered the Top 40 in the US.

The mod-esque single 'Parklife', featuring star of 'Quadrophenia' Phil Daniels, fared equally well and Blur were rewarded at the 1995 Brit Awards, where they became the first band to scoop four: best band, best song, video and album for 'Parklife'. The album sold four million in the UK, but Blur still hadn't managed to crack America, where it sold less than 100,000. But they had other things on their mind anyway; as the summer of 1995 reached blazing temperatures, the Blur/Oasis row heated up, coming to a head at the end of August when the two groups released singles in the same week. Blur got to Number 1 with 'Country House', Oasis made Number 2 with 'Roll With It', but Oasis' second album would not only sell in monstrous amounts but also make the band in America, so Blur's Number 1 victory was something of a short lived affair.

Back in 1988 at the age of 20, Damon had done his first solo gig at the Colchester Arts Centre playing to an audience of 15. Seven years later, his band was commanding a whopping 35,000 at the now-infamous Mile End gig; just as 'Girls And Boys' had united lager-swilling lads and students, so did these two concerts. 1995 had been Blur's year, and 'Parklife' has put them at the top.

'The Great Escape', Damon explained, "is the dark flip side of 'Parklife'." The press, still caught up in Blur mania gave it passionate reviews, but on reflection it's probably Blur's worst album, 'The Universal', 'Stereotypes' and 'Charmless Man' being the only songs which live up to the band's reputation. Graham said of 'The Great Escape', "It's not a concept album, but our last two albums have had a common thread. This one seems to be about corruption and Prozac." At the time, Damon was suffering from depression and Prozac, at the time hailed as "the new wonder drug", was helping him get through it. But he made no apologies for his perceived arrogance at the time, saying "I can't stand the idea of being a sad, lonely, bedsit poet. I'd much rather be perceived as loud and arrogant, because all our sensitivity is in our records."

But it was time to move on. Damon, no doubt aware of Graham's despair over the Oasis conflict, award ceremonies and salacious videos turned to his main conspirator in Blur and found inspiration in American lo-fi, a genre Coxon had been championing since he'd got into The Pixies all those years ago at Goldsmith's. The results can be heard on 'Blur'.

For many, 'Blur' was a return to the fold, and the band certainly seemed happier with it than they had been with 'The Great Escape'. In early 1996, preparing material for the fifth album, Damon met Steve Malkmus, the Pavement frontman who told him Blur had a good reputation on the American alternative scene, being viewed as "odd, instinctive, isolationist and eccentric."

A few months later, their fifth album finished, 'Beetlebum' gave Blur their second Number 1 in the UK. The raucous 'Song 2', their second single from 'Blur' was something America finally understood, and the US Hockey Team even adopted it as their song.

Meanwhile, Alex James along with Groucho friends Damien Hirst and Keith Allen formed Fat Les. The trio recorded the 1998 football sing-a-long 'Vindaloo' which stormed into the charts at Number 2. The official and much tamer '(How Does It Feel To Be) On Top Of The World' didn't do so well.

Still basking in the success of 'Blur', and their triumphant headline show at Glastonbury '98, Graham had the chance to record his solo record, the lo-fi 'The Sky Is Too High'. Like Beck's 'Mutations', it was a nod to all the different genres of music that influenced him, and something far beyond the realms of Blur.

In stark contrast to Graham's serious solo project, Alex, meanwhile was preparing the Fat Les Christmas song, 'Naughty Christmas (Goblin In The Office)' and again enjoyed chart success. Just before the single was released, the three - along with The Clash's Joe Strummer - posed as The Village People for the cover of NME and admitted to "being shit". Alex said in the interview, "Football and Christmas records are the worst kind of records," adding, "obviously this is a shit record."

But with their sixth album to prepare, James had to leave such flippancy behind and tune up his bass. It's early days yet, but it looks like they might have made it... again.