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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.”
Whatever cosmic hoo-hah Coxon’s been engaging in seems to have paid off, because Love Travels At Illegal Speeds is a joy: he’s smoothed down the rougher edges of Happiness In Magazines and concentrated the scuzzy sounds of the earlier LPs into something Coxon describes as having an atmosphere of “dislocated city bi-polar rom-com darkness.”
“It’s pretty Londony I suppose,” he says, and it is. Distilling and amplifying the rag-tag sound of London’s scene it sounds like the kind of Saturday you wish you could have in the city: fizzy and renegade, with smart words and a swooning high point in the ballad ‘Flights To The Sea (Lovely Rain)’. “Oh yeah that. That’s sort of a dream isn’t it? A sort of follow-on from ‘Ribbons And Leaves’ (on Happiness In Magazines) , a supernatural presence or some such thing. I’m not really sure what it is.” Seeing how analysed his work has been over the years, it comes as a bit of a shock that he hasn’t got some snappy explanation to hand. Doesn’t he plan?
“I don’t really, I can’t be that organised. I can’t sit and decide I’m going to write a song about this or that,” he says, lighting a cigarette with an impressively fancy lighter. “What happens is I see them as floating around, or like apples on a tree, and whichever one falls into my lap is the one that I’m stuck with for that moment and I can’t really make any changes to it, it’s already there - I’ve just got to find it.” This sounds like so much airy-fairy bullcrap in print, but Coxon says it so matter of factly, without a hint of the self-consciousness that is still being directed towards the café wall.
“It’s not something I like to impose too much rule on,” he continues, now playing with a box of matches. “If I start fiddling with guitars and start to sing and then I use some words, the words will fit quite quickly and I find it difficult to change them. Usually the song is written around these phrases which sort of just come automatically, which in some ways I don’t like because sometimes the phrase can be pretty damning or depressing, or too rude or just…banal, something stupid. And I find it very difficult to change a lyric once it’s sort of become. When I find that I’ve struggled with a song for more than a certain amount of time then it probably isn’t worth it and I put it aside.” That sounds disgustingly simple, which is probably why Coxon has made a living from making songs, and you and I are sitting on our arses reading about it.
But making a good album is causing Coxon more worry than pleasure. The album may only just be appearing on the shelves, but he recorded the material a year ago and he’s getting restless. “I know I can’t carry on in the same sort of vein,” he explains. “I have to go somewhere else and re-evaluate what I am musically again and that’s quite hard.” More fiddling of fingers on the table. “See, it’s always like that, when an album’s just about to come out I start to dredge myself a little bit and that’s always quite a worrying time. What happens normally is I get into a week or two where I get quite determined and I write three songs and I get very pleased and everything’s ok, but at the moment I’m frantic with worry,” and he laughs.
So what happens when nothing comes out? “You go and do something else and you watch the telly and then you look at your guitar and you hate it!” he laughs. “I think it’s more to do with control issues or some sort of pressure you’re imposing on yourself.” Writer’s block? Coxon’s brow wrinkles. “I don’t believe in writers block particularly. I think you can feel you’re getting writer’s block and then you call it writer’s block and you’re in trouble.” He smiles at the table and taps his fingers. “So I refuse to call it writer’s block. I call it ‘time for tea’ instead.”
And with that, he heads off to the bar and orders another cup. Let the re-evaluation begin.
