Graham Coxon en Dave Rowntree vertellen bij KINK IN TOUCH alles over het nieuwe Blur album

SHOW IN NEDERLAND

Twintig jaar heeft Nederland op een nieuwe show van Blur moeten wachten. De laatste show was in 2003, in de inmiddels niet meer bestaande Pepsi Stage in Amsterdam, en zonder gitarist Graham Coxon, die de band toentertijd verliet tijdens de sessies voor het album Think Tank. Maar inmiddels, twintig jaar later, staan Damon Albarn, Alex James, Dave Rowntree en Graham Coxon eindelijk weer in de hoofdstad. Waarom het zo lang geduurd heeft? Dave Rowntree: 'We've never really been particularly big here. But I know things have clearly changed. I mean a lot has changed in Europe in the past twenty years. I think the less we do, the bigger we get. I mean, we weren't playing Wembley Stadium in the 90s, we thought Brixton Academy was a big venue. I remember playing Wembley Arena, which is a little over 10,000 people and thinking that's the biggest place imaginable, how on earth could you fit more people in a room than this?! We are bigger now than we've ever been, it's bizarre.

Voor Graham Coxon is het nog langer geleden, zijn laatste Blur-show in Nederland was eind jaren negentig. Graham: 'It's good to come back and rectify that.' In de jaren negentig speelde de band meer shows dan ooit, en dan kunnen tourdagen wel eens hetzelfde eruitzien. 'Well I don't remember everything, because it's a repetitious kind of cycle, but some cities I remember. Amsterdam is always, you think it's going to be memorable, because it's a lovely place to visit. And as I walked around yesterday I was like, oh yes, I've been here before. We went out for something nice to eat in the evening with my band The Waeve. But the thing is, you know, English people come here for certain reasons that I don't really come here for. I've played music here before, but with Blur in the late 90s, I was probably a little bit squiffy. Yeah. If you know what squiffy is? Slightly. Slightly drunk. Yeah.

COMEBACK

Rondom Blur zijn inmiddels meer bands en projecten gevormd dan rondom welke band dan ook. Gorillaz, The Waeve, een solo-album van Dave Rowntree. Hoe komt zo'n grote reunie van Blur dan tot stand? Coxon: 'There's a lot of interaction with managers and tour managers and stuff like that. But Blur is the sort of the crazy keeper of the castle. It's like the hub of what goes on. And then over there, there's this massive Gorillaz thing that sits there as well. Then there are all these little offshoot things. And we all have to talk to each other and all have to make sure that it's working well.

Tijdens de hele Blur-tour speelt Graham ook kleinere shows met zijn band The Waeve, en dat bevalt goed: 'Specifically right at the moment because of the way we're doing shows in between the big Blur shows. But it's been going quite good. I love it when we do a big Blur show because you're sort of, you don't have to do very much. Because when I'm on tour, I've always been on sort of sleep mode. You know, like your computer, until the show. Then it's like boom, and then back to sleep mode. And you can just do that. You can go out of the lobby of the hotel into a car, barely awake. You know that you're going to get to the dressing room, get coffee. Someone will go, go to the stage for soundcheck. And you go to the stage for soundcheck. And you sort of float around. And then you do the show and you go absolutely mental for an hour and a half. And then you go and sit back down and calm down again,' vertelt Graham.

Voelt het soms als Groundhog Day voor de band? Graham: 'Not really. Because every city has this different atmosphere. All the people that come, the audiences have a different atmosphere. Although some of the front row have been to every single show that I've played in the last few weeks. So God knows how they're doing that. But they're managing to be in the front row every show, The Waeve or Blur, whatever. So they are like Groundhog Day. But what is really lovely is that we can play a gig like this in Amsterdam.'

Graham Coxon: 'I use TikTok. But then I end up in a weird place going, what? What am I being told?'

TIKTOK

Je zou denken dat, omdat Blur in 1989 is begonnen, het publiek meegegroeid is met de band. Toch valt het op dat de band nog steeds een jong publiek aantrekt. Deels omdat de band te zien is op social media-apps zoals TikTok en Instagram. Dat merkt ook drummer Dave Rowntree op: 'Well, the gigs we have played so far have attracted a very young audience, you know. We played the Dublin show a couple of days ago, and the entire front part of the audience was young. Yeah, that's great'.

Volgens Graham Coxon is er ook een keerzijde aan de app: 'I use TikTok. But then I end up in a weird place going, what? What am I being told? I'm being brainwashed. I'm being brainwashed about ancient Egypt. I've been brainwashed about all kinds of weird stuff about drugs, about DMT, about spirituality. You know, it's like, wow, where am I? I've got to start saying, not interested, not interested, see where else it takes me. I can totally understand how people can have their opinions altered quite quickly in a matter of months.

Toch is het een belangrijk platform voor de band, zegt Graham: 'But yeah, Blur, we are hopefully altering people's opinions, you know, in a nice way. And I was really touched how "Narcissist" was received. I think that didn't do much harm, you know. I think it has a subtly kind of anthemic chorus and it's sort of emotional. And I think that really is very, what's the word for it? I don't like saying "on trend." I think that seems appropriate for the current times. But that's what Blur has always done. They've had to react to the world that they find themselves in. I think we've always done that. And I think we seem to have done it once more. I hope', aldus de gitarist van de band.

COLCHESTER

De band speelde de eerste shows sinds 2015 in vier kleine zalen in Engeland, waaronder in Colchester, de stad waar Graham Coxon en Damon Albarn hun schooltijd hebben doorgebracht. Voor KINK-DJ Jasper Leijdens was het een bijzonder moment, hij stond in de zaal bij de eerste van de vier shows, met vierhonderd enthousiaste Britse fans. "The Narcissist," de eerste single van The Ballad Of Darren, was net vierentwintig uur uitgebracht en het hele publiek zong alle teksten al mee. Graham: 'I know. Isn't that amazing? Because the next day too, when we open up with "St. Charles Square," they all know it. They've been watching it on the internet, YouTube clips and things. So yeah, that's a really lovely thing. One lovely thing about it. No one looks at you like, what's this rubbish? Yeah. They know it. People love it. Even a day after.'

THE BALLAD OF DARREN

Waar Blur prima op tour had kunnen gaan, is er inmiddels het nieuwe album 'The Ballad Of Darren'. Een nieuw album, genoemd naar de beveiliger, die al sinds het begin bij de band betrokken is. Darren 'Smoggy' Evens. Graham: 'I remember when I first met Smoggy and Stuart Lowbridge, who goes through the set, used to be the drum tech. Yeah. But now has got a bit more of a loftier job, tells us what we're going to play, and suggests changes to the set, etc. I remember sitting at a bar after a show with those two guys in 1991 or something, you know, very early on, and really thinking these two guys are great, you know, and then they started to work for us. And now we are more than twenty, almost, we are thirty years later. Over thirty years later.'

Het idee voor de track 'The Ballad', de titeltrack van het album, ontstond al twintig jaar geleden, zoals te horen is op de demotape Democrazy, als track 3, Half A Song. 'I've known about that song for four years. Okay. And I've fiddled around with it myself, you know, because sometimes I get the odd demo from Damon and I play around with them at home. But it needed something. It needed a chorus. Yeah. So he wrote a chorus to it, which is a lovely chorus. I was really relieved and happy that that song was finally finished. And I think Darren, or Smoggy, that was one of the songs that he would nag Damon about, "when are you going to finish that song?" Because it was called "Half A Song," because it didn't have, it was only half a song. So he was nagging Damon to finish it, and he finally finished it. So it made a lot of people who were close to us happy. All right, great. That song is finally finished. So that's "The Ballad",' vertelt Coxon.

Een tour zonder album kan Graham zich ook niet voorstellen. 'Going on tour without a new album, it's kind of boring and I think a little bit fraudulent. It's a little bit like, "well, why are we doing this?" It seems like it's for commerce. Yeah. And of course, we don't like to approach our careers in music in that way. I don't think it's really a part of how we, as creative people, create. I think we'd feel strange doing shows with nothing new to play ourselves and kind of be bored without anything new to give to an audience. Anything new to say. It would feel a little bit of a hollow experience,' vertelt Graham.

Dave Rowntree: 'Damon is such an extraordinary songwriter because he writes songs. He does do that six to eight hours a day. You know, he thinks his main job is a songwriter. When he's not doing anything else, he's writing songs. That's why he's so damn good at it, I think.'

MANIER VAN WERKEN

Op het nieuwe album 'The Ballad Of Darren' is te horen dat de band ouder geworden is. Een groot deel van het album werd bedacht door frontman Damon Albarn tijdens de afgelopen Amerikaanse tour met Gorillaz. Drummer Dave Rowntree: 'Damon is such an extraordinary songwriter because he writes songs. He does do that six to eight hours a day. You know, he thinks his main job is a songwriter. When he's not doing anything else, he's writing songs. That's why he's so damn good at it, I think.'

Hoe werkt dat? Een album bedenken als je op tour bent met een andere headliner band? Graham Coxon over de werkwijze van zanger en songwriter Damon Albarn: 'Yeah. It's sort of like an iPad idea, or he will take a small studio setup on tour and get things down. And maybe it's a sort of a chord sequence and a hint of a melody and things like that. Sometimes it can be quite short. And then really, that's our job to augment this thing into something. Give it a beginning, middle, and end, and really give each of the songs. I think there were seventeen or something. Give them sort of some identity. And that's my job a lot with backing vocals, guitars, going in and out of the keyboards and things like that. So it was a lot of work and it was intense. It didn't just happen very easily. You know, there's a lot of music in there, a lot of chords.

De comeback van Blur is voor zowel luisteraars als de band zelf een emotionele rit, vertelt Graham. 'And also, but I could get the hint that it was emotional, and Damon was being openly quite emotional. So bearing that in mind, I have to sort of plug myself into that even before I know really what the lyrics are. So he was writing the lyrics, I think, during the recording, but then afterwards too, and then recorded the vocals in one sort of go at the end in week six or something. I think it was pretty much finished in six or seven weeks.'

MELANCHOLIE

KINK IN TOUCH

Bij KINK IN TOUCH hoor je elke maandag tot en met donderdag de beste nieuwe muziek, live muziek en interviews met de artiesten die je vaker op KINK hoort. Beluister hieronder de volledige gesprekken met Graham Coxon en Dave Rowntree van Blur.