GRAHAM COXON: FROM THE ARCHIVE

Music history without Blur is like a tramp without a cardboard box. It just wouldn’t happen. The thought is just unthinkable. Blur without the black spectacled Graham Coxon is like a cardboard box without cardboard. Simply ‘a box’. Boring.

Mention Blur to a pop lover, and the first image in their head will be Damon Albarn. Now, we can’t underestimate his talent – after all, he did manage to get a number one with a bunch of cartoon characters, but the answer to the question for a true music lover lies in the ex-guitarist, a certain Mr Graham Coxon.

The Blur eruption began in 1989 when Damon Albarn, Graham Coxon, Dave Rowntree and Alex James planted their seeds as four-piece band Seymour. The name didn’t last long, because let’s be honest, the name is pants, so the boys became known as Blur. Breaking into the music scene behind true legends such as The Stone Roses, Blur took their influences from more traditional outlets including The Kinks, The Who, The Madness and The Smiths.

“Blur are for me the pinnacle of the 90s - all the better for having been slightly forgotten by the mainstream hype machines,” says Max Good Books. “Their sense of irony

seems as cutting now as it was 14 years ago, and musically they still stand alongside Radiohead as the finest of their times. Coxon managed to play the guitar with his hands and his head rather than his ego - adding what was needed for each song and never overstepping the mark.”

Britpop was born following the crazy Madchester movement, allowing people finally to have a break from dodgy indie meets dance music, and giving those south of Manc-land something to be inspired by.

The Britpop battle of the decade created an uproar when Blur went head-to-head against Oasis for the number one spot. Blur won, with a 58,000 record advantage. Newspapers saw it as a “defeat of working class sincerity by arty-farty middle class pretension,” while Noel Gallagher’s disgust stooped as low as to wish Albarn would “die from AIDs.”

Blur’s Greatest Hits set was released in 2000, while Coxon dabbled in becoming a solo artist, and Albarn set up Gorillaz with cartoonist Jamie Hewlett. Tensions became apparent, and in August 2002, NME reported that Coxon had left Blur. A management representative told a tabloid newspaper: "There has been no bust-up. Graham isn't in the studio with Blur. He is putting the finishing touches to his own album which is out in October." This was obviously a bit fat lie, because Coxon left halfway through recording Think Tank, appearing only on the last track.

Coxon’s solo career had set off while in Blur. The release of three albums led to the launch of Coxon’s own Transcopic Record label. The Sky is Too High, released in 1998 was described by critics as “a ramshackle mixture of English folk music and 1960’s-style garage rock, under the influence of Billy Childish.” This was followed by The Golden D in 1999 and Crow Sit on Blood Tree in 2001.

After leaving Blur, Coxon vowed to spend more time with his child and partner, but began working straight away on a solo album. The autobiographical Kiss of the Morning dealt with issues surrounding a man battling alcoholism. The mournful lyrics, blatently spiteful in parts was a complete change from the Blur records, while the use of a tinkling piano moved the album towards a jazz and blues stance taking it off the Britpop Richter scale.

Ex-Blur producer Stephen Street was drafted in to twiddle the knobs on Coxon’s fifth solo album. Happiness in Magazines was a punk rock masterpiece, touched with witty optimism. The shit-hot guitar riffs and Sex-Pistol-esque anthems, met ex-Blur-esque nursery rhyme numbers to create a mish-mash album spawning hits such as Bittersweet Bundle of Misery, Spectacular and Freakin’ Out.