Work Text:
2003:
“Without Coxon, the group has no ‘yin’ to counter Albarn’s ‘yang’, which means an unchecked is allowed free reign. ….While Albarn was the monkey, Coxon was the organ grinder - the true bandleader of the outfit.”
-‘Think Tank’ reviewed, nzoom.com, Cameron Officer
“If ‘Out of Time’ isn’t a love song to Graham, adolescent dreams going awry in the muddle of adulthood, frankly, we don’t want to know.”
-‘Out of Time’ reviewed, NME, 12th April 2003, Paul Moody
“We weren’t fighting. But Graham got to a position where he just wasn’t comfortable with me calling the shots, which is fair enough. For me it was no shock when we came to the parting of ways. I’d love to get back to the relationship we had when we were younger, because we were amazingly good mates. But it’s been a time since Graham and I were close. People decide to go off and do different things. It’s not a big deal. Most people just listen to the record and don’t even know who’s in the band. I think that’s the way it should be, really.”
- Damon Albarn on Graham’s departure, Long player, the Times magazine, 19th April 2003.
“I still only hear rumors. A lot of it was about these weird personal grudges between Damon and Noel. It wasn’s just bloody music. It wasn’t just bloody north and south. And it wasn’t just ITN. If it wasn’t just that, then they were just insanely ambitious people. ….I suppose when two very proud males really hate each other, it’s usually something to do with male pride…. They always treated me with respect, and were nice. This confused me even more.”
-Graham Coxon on Blur and Oasis
“We were friends at the start, but for survival purpose, we had to become the limited company. We were partners instead. There was no time for friendship. Friendship needs a lot of space and time, and really you have to put that aside if you’re in a situation like we were.”
-Graham Coxon on Blur’s members
-Britpop: the great rock’n’roll swindle, Mojo magazine, April 2003.
“Of course I’d like him to like it. I hope he likes the track he’s on, at least. Graham is as close to a brother as I’ve ever had in my life. He used to live round my house when he was younger, basically.”
-Damon Albarn in response to “Is it important to Blur that Coxon likes ‘Think Tank’?”
“I still don’t feel that, if he said, ‘let’s just make some music together and forget about all of that stuff’, I would hope that I wouldn’t say, ‘piss off.’ I would hope that I would say, ‘Yeah definitely.’ Like I say, if you consider someone family you never close the door on them, do you?”
-Damon Albarn in response to “Will Coxon ever come back?”
“No, we’ve lost our Graham Coxon.”
-Damon Albarn answering “Have Blur lost their Paul McCartney?”
-This Dysfunctional Family, guardian.co.uk, 25th April 2003.
“But without Coxon around, Blur are no longer defined by the rough and tumble, the frayed nerves or – to quote producer William Orbit on the 13 sessions – the sense of blood on the studio floor.”
-Um… bongo? ‘Think Tank’ reviewed , Q magazine, May 2003, Steve Lowe
“Alex got married last week. Graham came along as well. It was a nice thing.”
“The door is always open. Graham would hopefully return.”
“C’mon, so Graham could know we are thinking about him.”
-Damon Albarn cheering the fans to sing louder at Blur’s Astoria gig, 10th May 2003
“Graham and the band felt relief. It’s freed them all.”
-Chris Morrison (who has managed blur since 1992) on Graham’s departure
“I just wanted Blur to have the same blood coursing through its veins as I had from the word I’d been doing with other people. Suggestions like that when Graham was playing a big part in the band were always received, if not with suspicion, then with downright disdain.”
-Damon Albarn on ‘Think Tank’
-Special Relationships, Observer Music Monthly, September 2003.
“I am very glad not to be in Blur anymore.”
-Graham Coxon after hearing ‘Think Tank’, Teletext, 2003
2004:
“How’s Damon?” shouts the local village idiot before tonight’s first song has ever begun.
-Super Freakin’, NME, 20th March 2004. Review by Hardeep Phull on Graham’s gig at Sugarmill, Stoke, 9th March
“As time went on, the music became, I guess, more angled towards commercial success, and there were other issues that I was very much against, or didn’t feel very much connection to. Like Britpop or lad culture, or football, or politics. That’s when I began to get lost. And I began to wonder if the other people had been lying to me all along about what they wanted out of a group, and how they wanted to be seen.”
-Graham Coxon on Blur’s music
(Graham checked into The Priory before Blur had gone into studio. After he left the clinic, he joined the band for a week before Damon left to go on tour with Gorillaz. At a loose end, Graham started recording his solo album, the last of his lo-fi efforts. After his next, two-day visit to the studio, however, Graham’s manager received calls from the other members saying they no longer required his presence.) “I went into the bathroom just after he’d told me and I thought, ‘Bloody hell, that stuff that happens with groups, that we never thought would happen…. It’s happening to me now.’ I didn’t know what to do.”
(Eventually, he went to his lawyer.) ”He said, ‘Well, this is kind of crappy. Do you want to leave?’ So I said, ‘All right.’ And that was a risk, but I knew I had to get away from that situation. They opened the door for me to walk out. And I did. I came out and realized what my priorities should be and Blur really wasn’t…. there.”
“It makes me feel that of all the people who misunderstood me in the world, they probably were the ones who had done so the most.”
-Graham answering “Did you feel betrayed at all?”, The Great Escape, The Guardian, 1st May 2004, John Robinson
“I didn’t see it so I wouldn’t know. What’s the point in getting pleasure out of something like that? I don’t really wish anybody ill. Does the indignity appeal to me? Well, the thing is that Damon doesn’t have to fall off a stage to look undignified – none of us have to do anything so slapstick. I think I displayed more undignified behavior than anybody else had or ever will do in Blur and it’s really not a big deal. Falling off stage is actually good if you get back on with some trophies like a cut eye. I don’t know if that happened to Damon, but that’s kind of cool isn’t it?”
-Graham Coxon answering “Did you get just the smallest bit of pleasure seeing Damon fall off the stage at last year’s Reading Festival?”, question from Rhys Griffiths, Wendover
“I don’t think he’s a guitarist. He uses the guitar to get over some sort of point. Like a lot of instruments that can be available to people who are musical, a lot of the time you don’t quite know how to go about playing them and that’s a good thing usually. He plays it like it’s an exotic instrument, in a primitive sort of way, and there’s nothing wrong with that. I’d be very, very surprised if he ever did something like Eric Clapton on the guitar.”
-Graham Coxon answering “How do you rate Damon as a guitarist?”, question from David Wonpu, Las Vegas, USA
“I don’t think there’s a final straw with me and Damon in particular. I think the final straw has a lot more to do with them, how they saw my behaviour really, or misunderstood it. ….So I think the last straw was an invisible straw. ….”
-Graham Coxon answering “What was the final straw with Damon?”, question from Jonathan Bramall, Huddersfield
“…. I don’t feel bitchy towards Blur. I’ve gone onto a different life. Better? Yes.”
-Graham Coxon answering “Do you get fed up being asked about leaving Blur?”, question from James Vaughan, London
-Cash For Questions, Q, June 2004. Editor Ben Mitchell
“Not really. I don’t know if we ever really were friends. You sort of become business associates, everything revolving around money. It’s pretty messed up, how bands become.”
-Graham Coxon answering “Are you still pals with your former bandmates?”, A man apart, This is Brighton, 1-14 June 2004.
“I’ve never fallen off a stage. I have to climb over pedals and monitors to get off the stage. To fall off the stage you have to be showing off like an arse first.”
-Graham Coxon in response to “You could fall off the stage, like Damon last year.”, What’s on Graham Coxon’s stereo?, NME, 28th August 2004. Pre-carling weekend interview.
“I’d make sure he came nowhere near me. It would ruin my concentration, nothing bad, but it would just be like, I couldn’t be dealing with it.”
-Graham Coxon answering “What would happen if Albarn walked into the room right now?”, The Great Escape, Time Out London Student Guide, 2004/2005 edition.
“It’s not true at all.”
-Graham Coxon in response to the rumor of rejoining Blur, the Mirror
“I have met up with them. Of course I have. It wasn’t like a secret meeting; it was just that we didn’t tell anybody. It’s nobody’s business, but it doesn’t mean there are any secrets. It was quite nice meeting up because we went through a lot together and we haven’t really seen each other to communicate one to one for quite long time. There was quite a lot to say to each other. It’s good to see each other every now and then and I think we’ll see each other now and then in the future, but I think that’s really important to mend stuff emotionally more than anything else. The professional and creative side of it is no different.”
-Graham Coxon answering “So you haven’t met up with the other guys recently?”, Designer Magazine, 2004.
“I feel pretty much as if has always been, just minus Graham these days.
“What threw us was the fact that we started and the first day Alex, Dave and Damon turned up but Graham didn’t. We were given no warning of that and later that day we were informed that Graham wouldn’t be around for a couple of months.
“IT WAS a difficult decision. It was, do we just go home now or do we do something in the studio?....When Graham actually returned it just didn’t work as a four-piece any more and it was as simple as that. No one was sacked. There was nothing like that. It was just that it didn’t work any more. And the spirit of Blur was more important than the individuals. It could have happened to any one of us.”
-Damon Albarn tells Chris Brown about the loss of guitarist Graham Coxon, Blurred Vision, Daily Post, 21st November 2004.
2005:
“I’m waiting for Graham to talk to me again. I’d love to see if we could make another record, I miss playing live in something that I grew up in. I do feel it’s a shame that we didn’t stick to it. Hopefulliy, we’ll play together soon. As musicians, we need to spread peace and love.”
-Damon Albarn telling Billboard he’s keen to work with his former guitarist and friend again, nme.com, 16th May 2005
“Graham ‘s just in some strange, lonely place. He’s been friends with Damon since they were at fucking school. He went out with Damon’s sister. It’s fucking Damon’s parents who taught him how to paint. Graham and Damon’s lives are so incredibly intertwined that it’s not good for them to be [apart], they must not be sleeping easy at night. It’s just not good for either of them. It’s not right. I think Damon’s tried to do what he can. I mean to be honest with you I don’t mind. If Graham’s fucking there, great. If he’s not there, fuck him. I just really don’t mind. Another Blur record, sure. Great. Okay. Fine. Brilliant. Let’s do it.”
-Alex James in response to Damon Albarn saying that he won’t record another Blur record without Graham Coxon
“Graham sounds like Blur without me, and Damon’s Gorillaz sounds like Blur without me and Graham.”
-Alex James on Graham’s solo and Gorillaz
-Britpop: A Decade On, Under The Radar, Summer 2005.
“It’s a struggle playing with a band where one key member has left.”
“Well, whatever. I think many harvests will be sown and reaped before Graham comes back. There’s no point in waiting for somebody who….”
-Damon Albarn answering “Will Coxon ever rejoin the fold?”, Damon Albarn interviewed, Daily Telegraph, 1st September 2005.
“Watching Damon, it was a bit like seeing your brother nicking things from a shop. I didn’t really want to admit that it was going on. But at the same time, I wanted to say, What the fuck are you doing? In a way, it was quite exciting, because we could really see who was the greatest. But that’s so pathetic, isn’t it? It was such a big deal – that we had to find out who was the best.”
-Graham Coxon on Blur vs. Oasis, Battle of Britain, Q, October 2005.
2006:
“That* was the most rock’n’roll tour we’ve ever been on; Damon dropped his trousers onstage one night.”
-Graham Coxon talking about the best gig he ever saw, What rock’n’roll has taught me: Graham Coxon, NME, 25th February 2006.
*the Rollercoaster Tour in 1992 on which Blur was playing along with Dinosaur Jr., The Jesus and Mary Chain and My Bloody Valentine
“I don’t feel guilty, but…. I do feel a sense of responsibility to that, but I also feel that Graham has just so sort of stridently removed himself from that responsibility…. I’m not saying that the other two, I’m not really criticizing anyone. I understand. I mean I can appreciate where Graham’s coming from, I just think it’s a real shame that we’ve put so much of our lives into it and no one’s able to…. It would be really nice to do a gig and just have nothing to prove and enjoy playing the old songs and have fun just reliving stuff….
“To sort of put a full stop on that, it’s like, I’ll never abandon the idea of Blur because that’s what gave me the opportunity to do all the other things.”
-Damon Albarn: The great escape, independent.co.uk, 12th April 2006.
“I’d been in a group with Damon Albarn for a long time and that was a lot to live up to. We worked so hectically in Blur on structure and the overall sound.”
-Graham Coxon showing his appreciation of Albarn as a frontman, Solo vision not blurred, icwales.co.uk, 19th October 2006.
“I hated playing old Blur songs without Graham on the Think Tank tour. Am I saying no more Blur records unless Graham comes back? No. But it’s got to be something really brash and stupid. There are real problems to be overcome before I fell right about it.”
-Damon Albarn answering “What else have you been up to?”, Interview with Damon Albarn, Q, November 2006.
“When I recorded my first record, The Sky Is Too High, I got Damon to come to the studio. He could pick any songs he thought would be kind of cool to try over with Blur but he didn’t really want any.”
-Graham Coxon, Pop music happens, popmatters.com, 8th November 2006.
2007:
“Everyone else has got an instrument and I was always stuck out the front with nothing to do…. I’ve got nothing else to do. If I’d had a guitar it would have been a different thing from the beginning, but I was never as good a guitarist as Graham so there was no point. He didn’t need me at all – I just got in the way.”
-Damon Albarn talking about his ego
This afternoon, on the Tabernacle balcony, Damon picks up a copy of this week’s NME lying on the bench, and spots a headline “I’ll work with Graham….” “Who said that?” he asks, and then realizes the answer, apparently, is that he did. He reads the article. “It’s the same old bloody story every week,” he sighs. “They know more about it than I do – that’s my position.”
-28th February 2007, The Tabernacle, Ladbroke Grove, London
“It’s not really in my head, to be honest with you. You know, maybe if Graham and I were to reconcile, really, man to man.”
-Damon Albarn answering “Where does Blur exist in your head these days?”, 31st March 2007, Hammersmith Palais, London
“Oh yeah. [laughs]’My guitarist’? I don’t think I ever had ownership of him.”
-Damon Albarn in response to “his guitarist” Graham Coxon accusing him of having a bit of messiah complex in 2004
“Graham really got me into rock music, because I wasn’t interested in it, really. I got interested in it because it was a way of hanging out with Graham, really.”
-Damon Albarn talking about Graham Coxon introducing him to Syd Barrett’s records, 10th May 2007, the Syd Barrett tribute concert, Barbican Hall, London
“The cynic in me would say there was always going to come a point where they would be willing – they being Graham – when lifestyle started to be slightly affected by diminishing returns.”
“And it’d be nice…. You know, no one’s around so long that they can afford to, you know, behave like we have, really, to each other.”
-Damon Albarn answering “Could you see you and Graham’s friendship return?”
“Uh…. [laughs] ….I’d prefer to say 50-50. [laughs] But that’s at a push. It’s just not as simple as the way he’s laid it out. He’s omitted so many contributing factors why everything happened. And some of them are really big. Like Country House – I remembered when we finished that I looked Graham in the eye and said, I don’t think we should be doing this, and he said, No, it’s great.
“….And subsequently, it all came on me. Now those sort of things really can hurt a man for a lifetime, because of what happened afterwards. He disowned himself from it, and it’s like, you can’t do that because we all actually agreed to do it, it’s a collective responsibility. And he became more and more and more like that. So I had to take on more and more and more of the responsibility and he kind of painted it like I was becoming more of an egoist, which was not actually what was happening. What was happening is that I was having to do more.”
-Damon Albran answering “Do you think much of it is your fault?”
“The last time I saw Graham was when Dave insisted we go to a rabbi to help mediate between us all.”
“….We had this terrific guy, lovely, kind of like a professional middleman. Mediator. So there was Graham on one side of the table and the three of us on the other and the rabbi in the middle, and he was mediating between us. It didn’t work.”
“It must have been about three, four years.”
Post Think Tank?
“Yeah.”
So what happened?
“Well…. [sighs] ….I’m not going to go into what happened. I’m not really particularly happy about what happened, but it’s about money, so I’m not going to talk about it. We agreed to disagree….”
Was the idea that this would bring you together?
“It was just trying to sort of…. To try and reconcile. But Graham at that point had absolutely no interest in being in the same room with myself and Dave, in particular. He was OK with being in the room with Alex. He obviously had an awful lot of stuff that he wanted to sort out in his head. And that’s fine.”
-15th May 2007, Monkey rehearsals, Paris
“It didn’t make a great impression on me. But Graham didn’t seem to want to change at all, he just seems content making that kind of music. There’s always an element of that fantastic thing Graham has when he picks up a guitar, but I don’t think he’s stretched himself anyway near enough. And that kind of really bothers me about us working together again – someone has so much ability, to have done so little with it, in my opinion.”
-Damon Albarn on Graham Coxon’s new single with Paul Weller
“Look, it can never be defused, and never resolved, until Graham and I, face to face, sort our difference out. And that would be really nice, obviously. But whether it will actually happen or not, I don’t know. Sometimes, if you are really close to someone, then sometimes you just hurt each other too much for it ever to be possible…. but I suppose you just always hope you can. I realise now: that was a relationship in my life, like my relationship with Justine. Relationships which aren’t really there any more, but which were very important at that time.”
-30th July 2007, West London
-Quiet: Genius At Work, Q, November 2007, Chris Heath
2008:
“I had dinner with the guys (Alex, Dave, Graham) recently and it was a laugh but there’s no way they want to work with me again – they all hate me. A reunion is not going to happen.”
“The only reason why people would do it is for the money – but I don’t need the money.”
-Damon Albarn, The Sun, 1st February 2008
“Damon didn’t consult anybody else before he took it into his own hands to make this comment, therefore I think it is nonsense. It isn’t for him to decide.”
“I think Damon needs to rest and evaluate. I love Damon. I want him safe.”
“Damon probably ain’t interested in a Blur that’s not the full head count so I think it comes down to me trying again to contact him and talk to him. I tried before, as I said, and left messages.
“I want to do this anyway for the sake of all the years we were so close. But it takes guts. I psyched myself for days to call him last time and got the answering machine. It’s a drag to get that after the psyching, the pondering over the mobile phone and the number and the pressing of the call button.
“I may have to psyche all over again. Be patient. No one knows the future, not even Damon.”
-Graham Coxon in response to Damon Albarn saying “Blur is over” with an Argentinean newspaper, Blur’s messageboard, October 2008. Graham Coxon under his username “tweedo”
“The truth be known Graham and I have been hanging out together a bit. We had lunch another day. He’s great, it’s fantastic to get my old friend back. So it’s good, but I can’t really say any more than that.”
-Damon Albarn, BBC newsbeat, November 2008
“He’s very clever, I was always rather in awe of Damon’s talents from a young age, really it’s his staunchness about his music and his energy.”
-Graham Coxon having a meeting with Damon Albarn at Monkey: Journey To The West premiere, Blur ‘reunite’ at Monkey premiere, BBC.co.uk, 13th November 2008.
Albarn said he had been “emotionally distanced” from Coxon for 10 or 12 years, but then his old friend “turned up just before I did the African Express Koko gig [in Camden Town, part of the BBC Electric Proms season] and we just went for a walk and bought a bun – I think it was an eccles cake – and we sat in a doorway.” Albarn recalled. “We just looked at each other said, you know what, it’s all over, isn’t it? That strange feeling that had come between us had gone. So, shall we play together again?”
“It was like, we’ve got to do this at some point because we never actually split up, we just stopped talking to each other. It wasn’t money, or anything like that, it was just two people who really loved each other but who found it impossible to communicate any more.”
He continued: “For me it’s all about the fact that I’ve got my old mate back. We used to play in a band together and we’re going to play in that band again…. That day, sitting on a doorstep…. we both accepted that we were never going to escape the fact that we were in Blur and that it was better to accept and go forward with optimism and not carrying that bloody heavy burden.”
-How an Eccles cake and a chat brought Blur duo together for comeback shows, The Guardian, 21st December 2008, David Smith
2009:
“I must say that I have a lot of respect for Damon…. It wasn’t like ‘No! I won’t talk to him!’. It was not like that. He wasn’t like that. He was so busy and I was so busy…. Years just flowed by.”
“No. Eccles cake.”
-Graham Coxon answering “Did you really make up with Damon over high tea?”, Music Weekly with Rosie Swash, guardian.co.uk/music, 24th April 2009
"A lot of that crazy madness has gone from late Nineties. I'm a lot better as well. We just didn't communicate well. When talk of these concerts came up, there was a lot of pressure on me and Damon and we had to talk. It was nerve-wracking meeting him."
-Graham Coxon on Blur’s reunion, “I’m a modern man”, thesun.co.uk, 8th May 2009.
"I couldn't handle being part of that crowd so I tried to jump out of a sixth-storey window. It was Damon who talked me out of it."
-Graham Coxon reveals he considered suicide at the height of the band's popularity in 1995, Daily Mail, 8th May 2009.
"Damon's still a maniac, making us laugh.”
-Graham Coxon talking about Blur’s reunion, theguardian.com, 8th May 2009.
"There's a lot of clowning around still. I really am enjoying looking over and watching Damon ape about and be daft in between singing. It's a lot like old rehearsals always were, except it's a happier thing because it's not drudgery."
-Graham Coxon talking about the rehearsal room, Major Chords, The Scotsman, 9th May 2009.
“I’ve been quietly chipping away at Damon and Graham for the past two to three years to get off their high horses and talk to each other. Every now and then, I'd be with Damon and say: ‘Have you spoken to Graham recently?’ and the same with Graham. I would put a little thought in their mind: ‘Wouldn't it be nice if you spoke?’ Initially, neither of them was interested, but I knew that once they got the chance to be in a room together and talk they would find it impossible not to work together again.”
-Stephen Street [Blur’s record producer]
“The most important and the trickiest relationship in the group is between Damon and Graham. Damon is bossy and communicative; Graham is sensitive and can find it hard to find the right words. He once told me that he expressed his sorrow at Damon's upset over Justine through his guitar playing, rather than by talking to him.”
-Miranda Sawyer [journalist]
-It was all a bit of a Blur…., theguardian.com, 31st May 2009.
“Damon is the same, as good as ever.”
-Blur: 'There's no pressure on us now', independent.co.uk, 26th June 2009. Words by Graham Coxon
"I'd misinterpreted what Damon was doing. It wasn't really to do with megalomania or egoism, or anything like that. Damon's quite willing to put his insanity aside and see quite clearly that he's got to do some graft, basically. And I've never found it easy to be that way. I can't put it [the insanity] aside. I took it everywhere, and it was obvious, and it was overflowing. When we were touring, we'd spend quite a lot of time alone, and that's when he probably allowed himself to be like, 'fucking hell!' and shake a bit. But he was just keeping himself strong, because someone had to."
-Graham Coxon
"I didn't tell Graham to leave. It's just that the day we started recording, he didn't turn up. It was like, 'Well, I know you've gone into rehab, but you didn't even fucking tell me.' But it wasn't that dramatic. It was really ... you know ... me being somewhat petulant, and him just being really inconsiderate, coz he was so caught up in his own problems."
-Damon Albarn
-‘It's been strong medicine the last few weeks', guardian.co.uk, 13th June 2009.
Albarn puts his arm around guitarist Graham Coxon as they join together for the final chorus of End Of A Century.
-Blur's first comeback gig reviewed, bbc.co.uk, 14th June 2009, Ian Youngs
2010:
Graham Coxon admitted hiding from Damon Albarn when he spotted him at London Zoo, so traumatic was their relationship at one point.
-The premiere of No Distance Left to Run, 15th January 2010.
“Later that week I went to see Damon's opera, walked into the after-show party and on the other side of the room, with everyone staring at them and whispering, were Damon [Albarn] and Graham [Coxon] arm in arm like they'd never stopped being best friends. They are very different from each other, so much so they complete each other. And it was all back on. ‘Are we going to do some shows then?’ Damon asked. ‘Or what?’ ”
-Alex James on reuniting with Blur, timesonline.co.uk, 16th January 2010
“I went to Goldsmiths because I thought I had to get to London, really, if I was gonna do anything musically more with Damon. We did make a promise to each other that we’d include each other if anything was happening musically. That’s something we said to each other, so I suppose even if it was just me playing the tambourine, I had the job.”
-Graham Coxon
“Graham talked about him a lot, you know. He’s always been somebody that people talk about, Damon. I just assumed they’d be really similar, but you couldn’t meet two more different people.”
-Alex James
“I think we wanted to revisit, with going back, you know, the train shed, and that viaduct that Damon and I used to muck around on, you know. And I think we wanted to almost emotionally praise our journey, do a few things that would just feel good and sort of, historic, remind ourselves of our roots in some way.”
-Graham Coxon on Blur’s new tour
“Most of our gigs ended up with the equipment going over, Damon being sick behind my amplifier or whatever. He would start to get Alex onto his shoulders. They would sort of fall on me and everything would become unplugged.”
-Graham Coxon on touring around in old days
-No Distance Left to Run, 2010