Coxon's in studio

A pile of new tracks ready for new album

02 Feb 2008 - Ex-Blur guitarist Graham Coxon has told 6 Music that whatever happens, he has got a new solo album on the way.

This week has seen the rumoured Blur reunion hit the headlines almost everyday.

Early in the week we reported that bassist Alex James had been talking about it, saying that the band had met before Christmas for dinner and were on speaking terms:

"We are all talking... you know it's great, we have all gone on to do other things, it would be a disaster to think there would never be another Blur record."

We caught up with Graham at the launch of the Crisis Consequences charity single on the South Bank midweek, and he said much the same thing:

"Steps have been made to talk though. I phoned everyone and all four of us met up last year and it was nice. It was small talk really, like you do with friends. Very odd."

He continued: "We haven’t discussed anything like recording but it might happen when everyone’s ready."

However, frontman Damon Albarn was reported yesterday to have said that the band split because the rest of the band 'hate' him and don't want to work with him. He seemed to put all the rumours to rest:

"I had dinner with the guys recently and it was laugh but there’s no way they want to work with me again – they all hate me... A reunion is not going to happen."

"I am just gonna sit and wait for the sun to come out" - Graham Coxon

All this Blur news aside, Graham has always been an active solo artist since releasing The Sky Is Too High in 1998 whilst still with the band.

Happiness in Magazines is his highest charting album to date, reaching number 19 in the UK in 2004.

Graham told us his sixth album is well underway:

"I'm going to record in a couple of weeks and then release it really and that’s it. I am just gonna sit and wait for the sun to come out."

Graham went on to say that it's a concept album which he hopes to release in the summer, he explained the rather interesting story line:

"It's about a man who is born in um, possibly the fifties. Grows up, meets a girl, gets married, then has to go to war and gets really knackered up and then has a divorce and then goes mad and then er dies and goes to heaven."

He claims to have written a load of songs already:

"I've written an awful lot and they've gone into two piles. I am concentrating on one element of what I do more than the other. I think I got to a point on the last record where I covered that really and I want to concentrate on some other preoccupations, it's about those."
 

Ruth Barnes