‘To The End’: Why Graham Coxon thought Blur would never split up
Blur were a band constantly on the verge of collapse from the very beginning.
Despite being legends of 1990s rock and the pop kids’ choice for ultimate Britpop band, the very last thing that you could call the good ship Blur was steady. Even at their very first gigs as Seymour at the Goldsmiths University Polytechnic, they were the kind of band to get apocalyptically wasted before every gig, hit the stage and hope for the best. No matter how many bleeding mouths, broken bones, and venue bans it led to.
However, in a sign of the self-destructive cycle to come, it was precisely that reputation as a breathlessly exciting, anything-could-happen live band that gave them their first brush with fame. Especially after they’d changed their name from the hopeless Seymour to the actually pretty cool Blur. What separated them from The Replacements’ style brushes with greatness before multiple frustrating crashes to the art was that while both bands were remarkable pop groups, only Blur actually wanted it.
Blur’s chaotic lifestyle that saw them continuously flirt with disaster was tempered by one thing: an ever-present, burning ambition to be the absolute best. Would you expect anything less from a band fronted by Damon Albarn? A man whose sheer drive to pursue his goals is matched only by great white sharks after they smell blood in the water. The man would do disgraceful things to secure a number-one single. How else do you explain ‘Country House‘?
If Albarn was the only captain of this particular ship, then I’m sure it wouldn’t be a pleasant experience, but it would at least be fronted by a remarkable writer of pop songs. However, Blur wasn’t a glorified Damon solo project. There was someone else there who shared nearly every aspect of Albarn’s attitude towards their career in music. He was a man also driven to share his creative vision in the world, who also shared his singer’s self-destructive tendencies but with one crucial difference: Pop success meant precisely fuck-all to him.
How did Graham Coxon feel about the longevity of Blur?
Mercurial Blur guitarist Graham Coxon was the unabashed artiste of the band. Constantly clashing with Albarn about the musical direction of the band, who seemingly loathed the pop star lifestyle. I say seemingly because on the one hand, he did. There’s a good reason that he looks like he’s going to kill himself and then everyone in his band (in that order) in the ‘Country House’ video. Behind the scenes, though, Coxon was just as mad for it as anyone else.
His drinking was legendary enough to make their record label deeply worried. This was a record label comfortable with Albarn being a literal heroin addict and yet Coxon was the one whose habits were becoming a problem. Yet the Blur bandwagon still kept rolling on, arguably going from strength to strength. Especially when they did what even their arch-rivals Oasis never did and actually had a hit in America with ‘Song 2’; no matter how much they flirted with disaster, they still came away smelling of roses.
Coxon is a smart guy, so surely he would have been able to see the writing on the wall? Not so much. In 1998, he finally managed to finagle his way into a solo record deal where he could create music his way, without Albarn breathing down his neck. When asked by the NME whether this could spell an end point for Blur, Coxon answered with surprising hubris, noting, “When I think about Blur, it doesn’t seem like it’s ever going to end”.
He continued, saying, “If you look at The Jam, we’ve already gone beyond what they did. We’ve been together nearly ten years, that’s extraordinary, and sometimes I think it’s ridiculous, but I don’t know what to do.” Perhaps hubris is the wrong word, since he comes across like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day. More specifically, he comes across like Murray after his cynical weatherman Phil Connors has accepted that he’ll be living out the same Groundhog Day in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, forever, and there’s quite simply nothing he can do about it.
One wonders how Coxon could have missed that within four years he’d have left the band, and the year after that they’ll have split proper. Perhaps he was too busy being in the eye of the storm, where everything looks surprisingly calm despite the chaos happening mere moments away.
