Graham: The 90s Were No Fun

Tom Hodgkinson talks to the Blur guitarist about the stresses of fame

The message of Graham Coxon’s excellent new memoir is: getting what you want is not all it’s cracked up to be. Titled Verse, Chorus, Monster!, in an allusion to his love of drawing and painting monsters, Graham assembled this chatty and funny autobiography with the music journalist Roby Young, author of Electric Eden, a man who clearly has a great feel for music and who appreciates Graham as an artist and not just a public figure.

Rob’s also an excellent writer and the book is a real page-turner: I devoured it in two sessions. We’re taken from Graham’s army base childhood to his friendship with Damon Albarn as a teenager in Colchester to Goldsmiths. Blur’s massive success took him unawares and he trapped himself in a cycle of anxiety dampened by booze followed by worse anxiety, and so on. The nineties, he says, was a true odyssey, full of snares and pitfalls for the unwary.

Graham now lives soberly in North London with musical collaborator Rose Elinor Dougall and their young child. In 2022 they launched their new band, The Waeve.

Tom Hodgkinson The tone of the book is very warm and self effacing.

Graham Coxon Yeah there’s self deprecation and there’s wit. I’ve always had that voice saying, “Come on Graham, don’t be a pompous twat.” Which is a good thing and a bad thing because it means that sometimes you don’t say things you should, and sometimes it means you endure stuff you shouldn’t.

TH You say the nineties weren’t fun for you.

GC I get annoyed with myself because it could’ve been fun if I’d allowed myself to have fun. The thing is, you don’t really know what you’re signing up to. When we signed our record deal we had no idea what was round the corner. There’s so much you think you want, and then when you get it, it’s like, “Crikey, this is hard work.” I just didn’t allow myself to have fun. Maybe I felt like I didn’t deserve it. Maybe I was tired and emotional or maybe I just clashed with the politics. It was confusing.

TH Alex James seemed to make the most of it. He was going out to the Groucho Club and hanging out with celebs and drinking champagne.

GC He probably did it right. He probably thought, “I’m twenty-odd, this might last three years, I’m gonna have as good a time as I can.” And why not? Everybody else in the history of pop music did the same. I don’t think people like Rod Stewart and Ronnie Wood and all them lot were acting like I did.

TH What about playing on stage? Did you enjoy that part of it?

GC Yes but only once the edges of the hangover had been knocked off. For the most part, gigs were anxiety-inducing experiences, especially at the age where one didn’t know one’s limits. You spend ages travelling to a place, you lie on a sofa after sound check, you sleep for 20 minutes then you’re up. You sweat out the alcohol from the previous day and you have a couple and you feel as cool as a cucumber. And that’s when I would vent. Damon would too. On stage we would let loose the energy that had been stored up and was driving us crazy through the days of boredom.

This is an extract from our interview with Graham in the November/December edition of the Idler, out now.

Our November/December issue is available in bookshops as well as Waitrose, WHSmiths, Booth’s and Easons.