In Blur, he was the anti-Britpop fifth column, tortured and explosive. Yet a new memoir, and a new group with his life partner, find him closing in on self-respect. “I’ve been a slow developer,” concedes Graham Coxon.

Interview by DORIAN LYNSKEY

Portrait by KEVIN WESTENBERG

THERE’S NO ESCAPING THE PAST IN THE offices of Graham Coxon’s long-serving publicist. As the 53-year-old guitarist and songwriter takes a seat on Britain’s hottest day since records began, his younger self peers over his shoulder. Hanging on the wall behind him are four framed covers from the July 1999 issue of Dazed & Confused magazine, each one advertising an encounter with a different member of top pop group Blur: Damon Albarn, Alex James, Dave Rowntree and – looking wary and moody – Graham Coxon.

Formed in London in 1988, Blur were a classic combination of distinct and contrasting personalities. Coxon was the Sensitive One, who struggled most visibly with fame. His scowl in the garish video to 1995’s UK Number 1 single Country House was a silent indictment of what Blur, and 1990s culture, had become. He was also seen as the Noisy One, rubbing against the grain of Damon Albarn’s melodies with his bold, contrary guitar parts. Noel Gallagher called him “one of the most talented guitarists of his generation”. The minute he left Blur, during the tense sessions for 2003’s Think Tank, their days were numbered, although multiple reunions have since healed those wounds.

Coxon’s early solo albums cemented the impression that he was the band’s Syd Barrett: a little boy lost, albeit one with a distortion pedal and a skateboard. Post-Blur, he found his voice – or rather voices. He was punked-up on 2004’s Happiness In Magazines, a finger-picking folk disciple on 2009’s The Spinning Top, and a pop chameleon on his recent soundtracks to TV shows such as The End Of The F***ing World. He’s worked with Pete Doherty, Duran Duran, Bastille and, now, his partner Rose Elinor Dougall under the name The Waeve. “I see The Waeve as an open experimental space,” he says. “It’s a very liquid entity which could go in all manner of directions.”

Coxon’s new memoir, Verse, Chorus, Monster!, tells the whole story: his early years on army bases in Germany; his migrations to Derbyshire and Essex; his life-changing encounter with a 13-year-old Albarn at school in Colchester; the art-school years; the Technicolor tornado of life in Blur and what came next. In person and on the page, he is remarkably candid and curious. Written with music journalist Rob Young during an intense period of lockdown, divorce, new love and daily therapy, the book tries to unravel the tangle of mental health issues that made everything so difficult. It closes with an encouragement that Dougall blurted out when he was stuck on a guitar part one day: “Do something that Graham Coxon would fucking do!”

“She encapsulated everything,” he says. “It’s almost like the book needn’t exist, just her quote. It had a big effect on me. Yeah, that’s who I am. That’s who I’ve been trying to be for fucking ages.”

What was the first song that obsessed you?

Revolution, the B-side of Hey Jude. But when I heard it later on, I was quite disappointed because the record we had had been to too many parties and had probably had a two-pence coin on the needle to stop it jumping when people were dancing, so it had a Jesus And Mary Chain level of noise on top.

What are your memories of Germany?

Army kids are pretty rough. I remember first moving into the army estate at Kladow [Berlin] and this boy called Christian threw a brick at me from one floor up. It was mainly, “I don’t want you to play with that boy.” Well, can you pick one out that I can play with? I left when I was four or five and moved to my grandad’s in Spondon [Derbyshire]. When my dad was going to get out of the army we very nearly moved back to Spondon. That life would have been very different. I wouldn’t have met Damon. Perhaps I would have been in some band from Derby, or had nothing.