‘Revolver’: The Beatles album Blur’s Graham Coxon has listened to most
Long before Britpop, there was Beatlemania. Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr spent the 1960s paving the way for music as we know it today, pioneering pop, innovating recording techniques and providing the basis for future subcultures to thrive. The enduring influence of The Beatles spans genres and generations, including Blur co-founder Graham Coxon.
Acting as guitarist for the Britpop pioneers since the band’s inception in 1988, Coxon has contributed to some of the most beloved and seminal works in the genre. From the iconic ‘Parklife’ to the recent release of The Ballad of Darren, Coxon has been a staple throughout the band’s existence.
Particularly early on, the band were heavily influenced by their British guitar band predecessors, including the Kinks and the Beatles. The latter were particularly instrumental in Coxon’s youth, he once recalled the experience of hearing ‘Revolution’ for the first time as life-changing in an interview with NME.
“I first heard ‘Revolution’ when I was four years old, I guess I was just lucky enough to be able to work the record player and recognise it from the apple in the middle,” he recalled, “I liked to play with the knobs on the front of the record player, turn the bass right up… I probably even only got the right-hand speaker. I just wanted it to be as big as possible. I’ve still got that record. I keep it in a box with loads of 45s I bought as teenager. As a kid it gave me that feeling.”
Though the iconic ‘Revolution’ may have been the first song to prompt Coxon’s personal Beatlemania, his most-played record since then is the Beatles’ seventh studio record, Revolver. In fact, while speaking with NME, Coxon named the album as not only his most frequented Beatles album, but the record he has played the most full stop.
Released in 1966, the record represented the Beatles at their most experimental. Featuring the sprawling ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ and the iconic ‘Yellow Submarine’, the record is hugely acclaimed. Though the record has been praised by critics and favoured by Coxon, one of Blur’s other early influences was unimpressed with the record.
Ray Davies, equally revered by Blur and even considered to be the godfather of Britpop, once gave Revolver a scathing review. The Kinks frontman called the record “very commercial,” and was particularly critical of ‘Eleanor Rigby’, which he suggested “sounds like they’re out to please music teachers in primary schools.”
Whether it pleased primary school music teachers or not, it certainly pleased Coxon enough to take the title for his most replayed record of all time. Revisit Revolver below.
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