Rolling Stone France: Blur A Long Absence by Elliot Sullivan Photos by Charlie Gray

Rolling Stone France: Blur A Long Absence by Elliot Sullivan Photos by Charlie Gray

Despite tours, concerts, we were not necessarily expecting a new studio album from Blur. It didn’t reckon with the genius of Graham Coxon, principal architect of the sonic shock that is The Magic Whip, pure masterpiece of British rock, and probably much more than that. In Paris, the duo of Albarn and Coxon have granted a long interview with Rolling Stone.

The reunion is a sign of our times... almost a revolutionary and futuristic manifesto. Nothing thrills as much and seems to tickle the imagination at this point than the "return" dream... Led Zeppelin! Pink Floyd! The Jam! ABBA! Dire Straits! Oasis! According to the Daily Mirror, Sir Richard Branson, would even be willing to transform his company planes into "Starships" to reunite Led Zep in concert. That will not happen. "The only reason why legendary bands are reforming is the money! And all this is ridiculous, " said Paul Weller recently.

For the anti-reformist Modfather, there is an exception: Blur. "A group which, in my opinion, never really separated, and should perhaps take it on." The father of the Britpop scene was not wrong: Damon Albarn and Graham Coxon have multiplied their projects independently of each other since 1997 (ed: 1999 I think you'll find), when they last made an album as a quartet, 13... sixteen years later, after again being together in 2009, they even recorded two songs, "Fools Day" and "Under The Westway" (ed: and The Puritan) they eventually say "yes" in Hong Kong, in a tiny recording studio below sea level, where they played day and night for nearly a week.

The Magic Whip, the result of these sessions is a punk, soul, pop, African arrhythmias and pentatonic scales of Asia. A disc of rare beauty "that should never have come into being", says Damon Albarn, also leader of Gorillaz, The Good The Bad and The Queen, author of operas and creator of the Africa Express project. Blur will celebrate the release of The Magic Whip with a big concert in Hyde Park on June 20, which will be followed by other dates. Lead singer and the genius guitarist, met us in Paris, with winning charisma. The look of Albarn is sweet, pensive, sad. The purple glasses of Coxon are beautiful, as captivating as his sense of humor is typically English, brandished like a shield.

You are all musically fulfilled rather rich and apparently a little nostalgic for the past... what led you to get together to make the most experimental of your discs?

DA: I would define this experience as a punctuation mark. I do not know if this is the end point of a new chapter of Blur, or the conclusion of a book that four friends started writing almost thirty years ago. What is certain is that this record would never have existed. It is the result of an accident triggered by the cancellation of the festival we had to play in Japan in May 2013 (ed: and Taiwan). We were on tour and we found ourselves stranded in Hong Kong. So what to do for five days? We wanted to play and relax, and we rented a studio without having any idea what could be happening.

The idea came from you?

DA: No, Graham, Dave and Alex. But I immediately accepted because there was no pressure, no agent exhorting us to reform Blur, which had been asked for some time.

We plunged into a spontaneous playing atmosphere and meditation... all four of us occupied by the big questions we expressed musically through fifteen totally unstructured jam sessions each thirty or forty minutes long. It was the start of something, and in my case, I could see myself out on a journey in space that could last for years without anything really taking shape. I did not imagine for a moment that these sessions would have led to an album, to structured pieces. And if this is done, it is because of Graham Coxon. It's his fault.

GC: I do not really call it a coincidence, since we played together regularly since 2009, but... Damon will never stop making music, whether with Paul Simonon, the Malian artists Chinese, or alone in his room... and none of us four has a need for Blur to exist. Instead, this group was more like a waking nightmare for us. Something unresolved: a melody without fulfillment that resonates in your head obsessively. A lava of disordered sounds that return you to your own misty image... to relationships that were passionate and conflicting. To many unspoken resentments, a kind of guilt. Blur was in my imagination, a volcano that could awaken from one moment to the next. We tried to cover it with ash, mud, all kinds of imaginary covers for years, and then we dived in and made this record, I think it was good for all of us. The desire was there a long time, basically.

Since when?

GC: Since our reunion on stage in 2009. Damon and I are bound by something strong beyond us, a kind of telepathy that I have never had with anyone else. When I double his voice with my guitar in heterophony or in counterpoint, I feel I finally release a part of me that can not be expressed otherwise. In this studio in Hong Kong, we were the four English boys there for thirty years, and yet disillusioned adults. During these decades, we have seen the music industry transform and the world changed around us radically. This album reflects this, but also our musical and personal development....

DA: Yes, some words are very intimate. "My Terracotta Heart," for example is a very sad song. Everyone thought it was a love song, but in reality it is about our friendship. Graham plays a very moving guitar solo. And I sing "We were more like brothers / but that was years ago." And then I ask, "is something broken inside me / Because at the moment I'm lost and feeling that I do not know / If I'm losing you again?". It is a beautiful song that comes from the Blur past... we found ourselves through these sessions. Each of us has his own journey, and this song is a new meeting, the outcome of our paths and our differences. A kind harmony full of dissonances.

Damon, Graham said he persuaded you to record an album sixteen years after the last disc of Blur?

DA: Something like! "regardless of whether we continue or not after, but it is essential to take this step" and also that for him, it was like the Beatles Abbey Road! (laughs). And what I heard was more than a naive and spontaneous noise. The songs were there, hidden among a multitude of sounds! I knew it! I thought they could not remain buried, we were once again with something unfinished. That’s what exasperated me. So I called Stephen Street (the producer of the first hour).

What do you feel?

GC: I vacillated, it all seemed both brilliant and bizarre, which was normal, really. The relationship between Damon and I had to evolve, and this album was a way to fix what we've broken over the years: today, the respect we have for each other is unwavering. I would not have said the same two years ago. Our friendship is the story of a lifetime... the story of a group, too. We've often dropped one another. This disc is somehow a way of saying sorry. Pardon me for being troublemaker, a balls-breaker during the last thirty years.

Damon, what was your experience of the studio reunion?

DA: I remember coming out of the smoke-filled studio in Hong Kong, saying: "voila, it's done. It was great, it had to be done, and that's it. It was very hot and this place reminded me a little of a small claustrophobic London studio where we recorded the B-sides of our first albums. There was the same torpor, the air was heavy, wet, music flowed, I was singing, improvising, telling what was going through my head about our days, our emotions, the feeling of being in this city among millions of people.... we did not have all our musical arsenal, Graham had a new Stratocaster made for him and looks a bit like the guitar of David Gilmour. He also had a saxophone he has played since the age of 12. I arrived with several instruments I always bring with me. Some from Russia... then Chinese bells... the microphones were not working very well, which brought something interesting to the sound of the disc.

You played every day?

DE: Yes, all the time. It was quite addictive. Sometimes we continued to play while eating rice... we were against each other, in freedom and experimentation as we had never been. Alex, who filmed moments of this recording, later told me that he had watched while home alone and drinking a whole bottle of Jack Daniels and saying, like "hey! we recorded a new album” I do not even know where it came out, because at that time there was no album! You know, it really has a bit of the magic by which this happened. Hence the album cover with these Chinese characters which say The Magic Whip. When Graham made me listen to the extraordinary work he had done from these tapes, I realized he was right. There was the sound of Blur, a sound that had been multidirectional. And a side of a collage of Parklife. What I heard was both experimental and very soulful and abrasive, with a percussion and punk beats. But there were no words... to dive back into the same atmosphere, I went alone to Hong Kong for 48 hours.

For 48 hours?

DE: Yes, I was in Australia and, instead of going home, I made a visit to redo the same route we had taken for five days to go to the studio. Then I returned to London and I wrote all the lyrics. They speak both of our relationship and what we perceive of the contemporary world, this delusion in which we live. When I recorded the voice, I was very nervous... I experienced the same lack of confidence in the Think Tank era in which I sing: "what am I to do / someone here is not really happy "

Graham Coxon has very little presence on the Think Tank album... what was going on with you then?

DA: We were overwhelmed, we didn’t manage to communicate for years. The cover of the Blur record speaks for itself, with the blurred image of a hospital stretcher to the emergency room... we were delirious, "Blur versus Oasis" and held hostage by a rivalry that had got out of hand. This history of social classes among us - the group of the middle class - and them - the proles - was totally ridiculous and fictitious. We were going to the same places, had the same questions and the same shit in life. Yes, we often repeat that Noel said at the time something like he hoped I catch AIDS and I die.. (laughs). Frankly, we were idiots and misfit kids. Noel is an amazing musician and a very interesting man. All that is long gone and we have very good relations and mutual respect - which does not sound very rock'n'roll, I guess. In any case, we shared those crazy years of Britpop and none of us is unharmed. Graham was like a brother to me, we grew up together, and when he left the group and I found myself on stage without him, it was horrible and painful.

GC: I must say that I was not dong very well. I was doing very badly when I left Blur..

You left group, or you have were evicted?

GC: We do not care a bit, right?

Rather, yes...

GC: In short, I had a serious problem with alcohol. We were immersed in the phenomenon of Britpop talked about so much just now, which annoys me deeply. Britpop was a grotesque invention created to bring luster to England and make us a superhero battling with Oasis, as they had wanted to re-stage the competition between the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. We now know how the comparison between these two groups was ridiculous. Moreover, it seems that the Stones will reunite... drop that it’s low English humor. As I was saying... thinking back to the 90s with hindsight, I think we were idiots. All this should have been a celebration of music - which itself actually existed - but it resembled a playground rivalry story. There was not a real affinity between the groups, as they say. Everything revolved around a look and girlfriends that tried to fly between musicians... girls who had to deal with idiots.

DA: No denying it, I'm not someone who lives in the past. This disc has nothing to do with a celebration of Britpop it is not the return of that Blur, although I admit that it is the most "blurry" album we have made. "Lonesome Street", the first song has this chaotic sound that seems to go in all directions, which clearly describes our past and our present. In 2000, I went to Africa, I played with a lot of traditional Malian musicians and on my return I had forty hours of recordings. We hear references to this music in the band The Good The Bad and The Queen with Paul Simonon and Tony Allen, or Gorillaz. And on this song. This is both the former Blur and a reminder of us in the middle of a street in Hong Kong where, without moving, we had the impression of being still so everything was moving around us... and during recording Graham also managed to slip in a bridge where we seem to hear Syd Barrett. Which refers to our passion for Pink Floyd.

GC: I am sad at the idea that Pink Floyd will not reform again... as a fan, I say, but what a bunch of old self-centered ladies! (laughs) I did not want us to be like that.

What are you like?

GC: Decadent romanticism mixed with avant-garde impertinence that characterizes our country... it's certainly what we tried to do in a song like "New World Towers", one of my favourites on the record. I wanted this piece to be something of the English traditional songs of the 16th century such as "Greensleeves." And this nostalgic melody is carried with a science fiction dimension. The arrangements have a very "Old England" flavour but with a psychedelic side with this spacey 70s and futuristic sound effects. I had in mind a precise picture while I was playing... I saw this cylinder-shaped planet that appears at the end of the film Interstellar, by Christopher Nolan.

DA: This song is inspired by these huge towers that we see in Hong Kong and that seem carved in the sky. This city has the highest population density in the world. It is impressive. I remember times when I looked out the window, saying "There are too many of us", the title of a song on the record and the words I was singing in a loop in the studio... we are very numerous on this planet and I am very distressed by how we fail to communicate effectively, to accept our differences. This song starts with a military march rhythm and progresses inexorably upward... the lyrics and music are also inspired by the terrible hostage siege in Sydney, in 2014, in which three people were killed. The image of the hostages under an Islamic flag is worse than a nightmare. What is happening in the world today is very worrying. I have no solution, unfortunately. But words in mind, that resonate: peace, clarity, help, look, comprehension, analysis, freedom of expression.

GC: I like it when the song becomes more and more intense. Sound like layers produced by synths rather than distortions and pedals of my guitar. What I like about this record is that it finds so many different influences that make up our identity: stories of what we have listened to, like dilapidated Beach Boys harmonies on "Ong Ong" simple effective guitar riffs and reverb, which could evoke the Arctic Monkeys. Bass sounds that recall the imzad string instrument used in traditional Tuareg music. And Damon's voice that seems to come from another planet, like the astronaut Major Tom from "Space Oddity"... this epic song, brushing the highest notes, and yet ingrown. Hong Kong has truly been an inspiration to him. On this record, I feel, at times, I hear sounds, voices, noises of the city, subway, passing fragments of sentences we perceive as foreign melodies and fascinating.

DA: I always imagined an album as a snapshot. I made records in many distant and different places, trying to pick the minds of the culture I met. Think Tank is the result of doing sessions in Marrakesh (although I also had Clash Combat Rock in my head); Demon Days, which I recorded with Gorillaz, is inspired by a trip I made during the process, starting from Beijing and traveling to Mongolia, a fascinating country with its vast spaces and its last great nomadic tribes... the Good the Bad and The Queen was recorded in Nigeria with several local musicians in a studio used by Fela Kuti. And The Magic Whip exudes urban sounds of Hong Kong and London. The desire was to do something in the spirit of the trilogy of David Bowie during his stay in Berlin.

GC: I have always been fascinated by the relationship between David Bowie and Iggy Pop at the time. They were not just inspiring each other; one seemed to blend into each other.

How would you describe your relationship?

DA: I feel like I have known Graham forever. I was 12 when we met at school in Colchester. While other students were crazy about football, Graham and I shared a passion for clothes and music. We listened to the Beatles, The Jam, Madness... we became friends immediately.

What was he like?

DA: Graham has always been pessimistic, terribly nostalgic, but ultimately, I think he has a great enthusiasm. The proof is with this record. We created this well before Blur and our other groups, he saw me play in theatre when I wanted to be an actor... I laughed seeing some of his first paintings when he wanted to become a painter. Today, I laugh less: he is very talented. I've always had great admiration for him, for his knowledge of fine arts, his old school side.. Graham is a workhorse, it goes even further with his instrument, you discover sounds, harmonies,he will decrypt a solo by Miles Davis for days...

You've found that you have got past all your conflicts?

DA: Graham did and will always be part of my life. We were beasts, probably in competition. But whatever happens, Graham will come out with this terribly annoying sardonic humor that hides someone deeply human. He's a friend, a real... he often served as a shield... I do not know how to explain a relationship of thirty-five years that goes well beyond Blur. At the same time, I am so proud to do this record with him, Dave and Alex. We have been friends since adolescence and our personal stories do not really need to be told. We found more in the music and lyrics of our songs, and when we are on stage, than in the story.

GC: The first image I have of Damon on stage is a during school show: he sang "Gee Officer Krupke" from West Side Story and I was impressed by his presence. He was very extrovert, unlike me, who is very shy.

The second?

GC: It is that of a puny chancer who said to me, "your shoes aren’t as good as mine" showing his, the style worn by mods and my finances did not allow me to buy them. At that time, I played saxophone and drums, and Damon violin and piano. We wrote songs... we were aware of being aliens to our friends.. Damon has always been like an older brother to me, even though he said he was using me as a shield. He was very protective.. which was quite tedious in that he never liked my girlfriends (laughs) I've never known anyone like Damon, as bright and unsure of himself. Yet in Blur, it was me that felt like the ugly duckling... I had moments of rage, no contact.. there was the trio Damon, Dave and Alex. And I felt isolated. But this is the past.

What do admire most about him?

GC: This insatiable curiosity, the ability to blend in cultures that have nothing to do with his. I love Gorillaz and all the groups he assembled. Especially his collaborations with Malian musicians such as the prodigious Afel Bocoum and his Africa Express project. He was in Mali during the Islamic occupation and he did a series of concerts there and throughout England. Only Damon could bring a hundred African musicians - Tony Allen, Salif Keita, Rokia Traoré... - and have them play with English ones such as Paul McCartney, Carl Barat and Elvis Costello. They toured the country in a train called Africa Express train and I saw that. Noel Gallagher was there, too!

As was Parklife, The Magic Whip is a socially engaged concept album. Do you think a song can still convey strong political messages?

DA: Less and less, since we are more in the realm of the commercial song. We have allowed pop to become stupid, deaf and dumb. This is a real shame, because a piece of pop just three minutes can be a very powerful way to express discontent. It is often necessary to go to the margins of music to find interesting things, because in the panorama of music it appears first there, it looks like the Beatles and Dylan never existed.

GC: I think there is still today a place for pop music that is both captivating and informed. And as with Noel Gallagher, I am against this self-pity of many songwriters who only complain. We must act, take more risks and break the mould, because it is the only way to get a good song.

Can we count on Blur and future recording?

GC: Another? There all at once? Why not... but personally, before I commit myself, I await the reformation of the Rolling Stones (laughs). I do not know... I feel less alone now, and even if it was the last album of Blur, this feeling will continue. I believe deeply in what we did. And yes, I want to continue. Even if it's to get booed: it is the price paid by the fool who says the truth. And it will end in hell.

You believe in heaven and hell?

GCO: no, thank you.

DE: The comeback are trendy right now, but they are not all inspired. But you know, we always talk about the artists. But the artists do not exist without an audience. I especially hope to see a public comeback - and I'm not talking about The Magic Whip, but more generally. Sometimes I look around me and I see robots in the street... People with the blank stare, as if petrified. I do not see myself recording another album with Blur. But you should not believe me. The reality is that I lie. Tell our story so that ignorance ends. Ignorance is the basis of injustice. And only actions count. So to Blur, we'll see if we still have something more to tell.

GC: I would add that pop music has no age. We are no longer in the 50s in the era of teenagers. We can continue, we must continue. Always asking myself the same question: what would the Beatles do?

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