DAD ROCK

Fatherhood has apparently done wonders for Graham Coxon. His tearaway days behind him, the Blur survivor is still rocking, still writing and still standing. He tells Tony Clayton-Lea about the wonders of clean(ish) living - and how he might go folkie on his next album

PROVING that stubbornness eventually pays off is something that Graham Coxon has been recently thinking about. He's into a solo career of half a dozen albums, and it's only with the release of 2004's Happiness in Magazines and the new Love Travels at Illegal Speeds that his singular, idiosyncratic music - as far removed from former band Blur's heyday as you can imagine - is being heralded as something to write home (or articles) about.

If Coxon's first four records (The Kiss of Morning, Crow Sit on Blood Tree, The Golden D and The Sky Is Too High) teetered on the brink of collapse, then perhaps that's because so too was Coxon; if his two most recent records showed a person who was able to stand up, then perhaps that's because Coxon had steadied himself. It's a simple enough equation: the state of mind equals the state of art.

So how are you today, Graham? Well, today Graham is fine, and has been for more than several years now, thank you very much. This is reflected in his marked increase in quality control (Happiness in Magazines is very good; Love Travels at Illegal Speeds is even better), and the basic fact of Coxon being a father.

"Life is good, indeed it is," says Coxon. "I'm just getting through some interviews, and being a dad, and tinkering on guitars. The art work for the record is completed, so that's a relief. And life is simpler. I want extreme simplicity, although it's very difficult in this day and age to get that."

Coxon's yearning for a less complicated lifestyle package is also reflected on the new album. There are still several snorting punk rock tunes (indeed, there are very few people out there who can best his mixture of Buzzcocks melody and Ruts aggression), but there are also several calmer tracks. Before we get all muso on you, there's the "former Blur guitarist" tag that Coxon would like to clear up.

"Paul McCartney still gets the 'former Beatle', doesn't he? So it's something I've got to get used to. It doesn't really bother me, and there's no point in getting upset about it. If I did get upset, the inference is that perhaps I'm concerned with something I once did with Blur, and I'm not - there's nothing wrong at all with the work I did with Blur.

"The first couple of solo records was me trying to find an identity outside of Blur; smaller-scale acoustic music, or extremely flashy, loose, loud music, even the idea of American-style country music. Not the sort of things that Blur would have messed around with or entertained at all."

Love Travels at Illegal Speeds, Coxon says, is still brash and whiny, with white-knuckle punk songs that focus on frustration and the like. But it's also flecked throughout with the demeanour of a parent who has learned to tiptoe around the bedroom of a sleeping child.

"Hmm. There is a more reflective quality there. My interests have always lain in that chuggy, post-punk sort of thing - I've always liked it - and the '60s, so I guess I'm merging '60s, psychedelic, punk and folk. These are the areas I like the best. I still want to push it even further with those, because I don't think I have - it's still a pop record in many ways. And I think I'll have to resort to not making pop records. Indeed, what I'm writing at the moment, probably for the next album, is music based on folk-style guitar picking, which I've become quite good at."

Ah, the innocence and the influence of the 1960s folk singer/guitarist. From Bert Jansch to Damien Rice, and all manner of earnest types in between, the projection of clear-eyed probity is at once a noble and deceitful thing. Surely, no one is so pure of heart and mind that they can believe all they write, let alone espouse, is true?

Coxon disagrees. For a start, he counters, he thinks that area of music is more difficult to play. As for the innocence thing (or perhaps it's better to call it the "whiny adolescence thing"), well, that's still with him.

"I don't know why. Jesus, maybe I should have got married and got happy in my late twenties, but it never happened. So I'm still stuck in a perpetual question-asking muddle. A lot of this album is about that; indeed, a lot of my solo work has been about asking, what the hell is going on?"

Has Coxon's "muddle" been dissolved to a degree by being a father? Almost. "I think I know enough to answer some simple questions from a six-year-old child. But I don't want to answer any questions in a colourless way, because I like words and I want my daughter to like words. We talk about all sorts of things, and I think it's quite important to her and, perhaps, to myself not to dwell too much in reality.

"Which, come to think of it, I'm encouraged to do as part of my job. A lot of life is living in fantasy and trying to make sense out of dreams and feelings. Perhaps what I need to take is a more intuitive approach."

As a dad, Coxon says he has become surprisingly practical. Indeed, he has no problem in saying that he's a very good father. He had to be, he relates, because he couldn't have lived with himself otherwise.

Blur watchers over the years might remember that, for a period of time, Coxon couldn't stand up without falling down. Inevitably, an excess of alcohol and other harmful consumable items were involved. When his daughter came along, priorities had to change. The way Coxon (glumly, it must be said) tells it is simple: his relationship with himself had to get better.

Is it much of a struggle juggling parenthood with the perceived looseness of the rock'n'roll lifestyle?

"It should be, shouldn't it? But I'm both lucky and unlucky in that I'm not with my little girl's mum. We share her a week each, so I have a solid seven days of being a 100 per cent father, and then she'll go to her mother and I've got a week of being whatever I am, pottering around, writing, and concentrating on that. When I go on tour, I try not to be away for more than a few weeks at a time. I hope I've found a reasonably good balance.

"It's weird, but when I was young I wanted to be a father. I wanted to be a pop star as well, and I was one for a time, but now I'm able to do both. The pop star thing was put to bed for a while, but then I started writing these songs, and because there wasn't a huge weight around my shoulders - I got dry and clean and in good health - all these good songs, the ones in Happiness in Magazines and the new one, came along.

"To be honest, I no longer felt useless."