After the release of Blur’s most recent album, ‘The Ballad of Darren,’ on July 21, Graham Coxon joined an interview with Mojo, addressing the band’s history with Britpop. Talking about the idea behind the creation of ‘Blur’ and its departure from the pop sound, he said:
“After ‘The Great Escape [1995],’ I decided to write a letter to Damon [Albarn] because I wasn’t confident enough to broach conversations about my needs. It was something like: ‘I’d like to start scaring people again because, at the start, we were into unease, songs like ‘Oily Water’ and ‘Resigned.’ Let’s make a bloody row and have fun.'”
The guitarist recalled Albarn’s response as follows:
“I didn’t get much of a reaction, but Damon did give me the steering wheel a little more. I think he was sympathetic and keen for everyone to express themselves and for me to have moments to mess around with noise. I wanted to see what the guitar could do without much intervention from me. But Damon knows that when it comes to enveloping his voice in something beautiful, I can do that, too. But ‘Blur’ does get called a ‘Graham album’ a lot because of things like ‘Essex Dogs.'”
Delving into the band members’ wish to get away from the genre, he went on:
“We felt forced into this strange Britpop thing, which we had nothing to do with, but I suppose we tried to kill any stink of Britpop from our clothes and move away from our beloved Kinks – though there was still [David] Bowie, because of Damon and [producer] Stephen Street. I think we found our own heavy psychedelia rather than staying with Toad-of-Toad-Hall psychedelia. But we also had a digital recording set-up that we could finally trust, making loops and stuff: hence ‘Essex Dogs.'”
Before leaving its effects behind, Blur’s rise to fame during the Britpop era brought along a rivalry between them and Oasis. While Damon Albarn once said he got ‘caught up’ in the hype in those years, Coxon expressed his distaste for that period a few times in his interviews.
During a past chat with The Guardian, the guitarist even called Britpop ‘dull’ and explained:
“No one was doing anything interesting with a guitar. Of course, Jonny Greenwood was Radiohead, but for the majority of it, it was just drongos who were there to back up a female vocalist. They’re all jolly nice and totally good on their instruments, but it became a thing, and it was very, very boring.”
Check out Graham Coxon’s full interview here.
