Telling It Like It Is: Graham Coxon

You know those potentially life-altering moments that you rehearse in your head before they happen? Well, Gigwise meeting Graham Coxon in a Camden coffee den would count as one of those. How we agonised over what to say: there was the “Hey, Parklife changed my life” approach. The, “Look, my vision’s shot to shit too” bonding. The old favourite, “Attempt coolness and shut the hell up” method was settled on, so naturally sod’s law demands that the first encounter Gigwise and Coxon have is jostling over who gets to use the café’s toilet key.

He’s hard to miss these days. For someone who claims that going out at night make him “tense” and that he hasn’t got a very large fanbase, he’s been everywhere you look: a fact that seems to bewilder him slightly. Whether podcasting for The Times, or playing on T4’s Popworld, the sonic fuzz of his new album 'Love Travels At Illegal Speeds' has been soundtracking the hell out of the UK, so why is he hiding away in a coffee shop, on the tiniest table, simultaneously trying to conceal Gigwise’s dictaphone and hunch his tall frame as close to the table as possible?

“I get self-conscious,” he says (and this from a man wearing tweed and spectacles that can only be described as owlish). It’s as though it’s not being ‘him’ that makes him self-conscious, rather the fact that having a dictaphone on the table might make someone think he’s important - he fiddles, a lot. The actual ‘job’ is a different matter entirely. “I suppose I’m just quite open about creative things,” he explains. “I had to develop my guitar-playing in public and my song-writing and now I show quite a lot of paintings that I did even though some of them I was 17.” He grimaces slightly. “They don’t particularly deserve to be exhibited.”

The exhibitions (one closed at the end of January) were the first chance for Coxon fans to see the artwork he’s done since college other than on album sleeves. “I wouldn’t say I was a painter,” he says thoughtfully. “I suppose I’m a songwriter. I’m quite strange about calling myself anything because one day you could easily fail at it and then what would you call yourself then? I could call myself a songwriter, and then I’d have to call myself a failed songwriter and I can’t write anymore.” A quick glance at Coxon’s discography is enough to suggest a quite comfortable lack of failure. “It’s always a worry, especially when I’ve written songs that I’m quite proud of like ‘Don’t Believe in Anything I Say’ and ‘Just A State of Mind’,” he explains. “When I wrote those I was like, ’Wow, I’ve really got something there.’ And now the album’s coming out, and it looks like people are going to dig it and then what happens? I know I can’t carry on in the same sort of vein and I have to go somewhere else and re-evaluate what I am musically again and that’s quite hard.”

Not that he’s got much time to re-evaluate at the moment. As well as an upcoming headline tour, he’s supporting Hard-Fi at some festivals. “It’s because we’ve got the same agent,” he says bluntly. “Seriously, we’ve got the same agent. It’s not a support really, it’s a kind of a festival. Why am I doing support acts? I don’t know, I didn’t realise there was anything bad about it.” Well, you’re Graham Coxon. You’re quite popular. “No I’m not though, I don’t think so,” he frowns, and plays with his cup. “I think that I’m quite popular among a very small percentage of the general public. That’s probably what it is. I don’t get stopped by 15-year-old women in the street. I get stopped on the street quite rarely, and they’re usually young indie kids.” Then, weirdly: “They’re not like – people know more about Eastenders than they know about me in this country.”

Is that a wish then? To follow up 2004’s Happiness In Magazines’ four top 40 singles with some car ads? “No,” he says flatly. “I think a lot of what people think of Blur comes from the singles and it’s very misleading. They make people think this sort of…thing. Of course singles are chosen for a particular reason because they’re sort of catchy and upbeat mainly, usually, and people can get the impression that that’s what you are.” Which you’re not? “I liked ‘Best Days’,” he says - from Blur’s hidden treasure, The Great Escape. “I always liked that sort of area. It was a very strange record.”

Well then, would he mind if people stopped him on the street? “No, I wouldn’t mind really. I quite like it ‘cause usually I wouldn’t have much human contact during the day apart from with my daughter, so it’s alright to have a little chat with somebody.” What does he do during the day that keeps him away from people? “I come here and have some coffee and read or scribble, and then I sort of go home. I don’t go out at night. I find it so boring and sort of tense. Boring and tense. A bit of a strange thing to feel at the same time. I suppose the going between tense and boredom, tension and boredom, tense and boredom, is too much for me, I can’t bloody handle it,” and he laughs.

”I think mostly that’s how I am. I go between being bored and being stressed quite a lot and I suppose that’s something to do with having nervous energy - or something like that - and I guess a lot of the songs and how I write songs come immediately from that. If a song causes stress then I stop, or if I get bored then I stop. I have to be – it’s a very strange feeling, creating something, because you get into some sort of zone.” What sort of zone? An image of Coxon chanting leaps terrifyingly into Gigwise’s head. “I even saw it with the girl who cut my hair. We were talking about what are we going to do, and she was umming and ahing and then suddenly for about ten minutes she was in another world. I knew that she’d got into the zone. When you’re painting or writing a song, it’s a kind of a really amazing area, place to go, it’s not so much a space as a sort of weird cosmic battle and that’s quite addictive.”