Verse, Chorus, Monster!: Graham Coxon

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Han förstår och har haft alla relationer som beskrivs, han känner till alla band och referenser han refererar till. But he came up with the line that I repeated the most, perhaps feeling the tension that he’d genuinely meant in the chaos of it all - “please don’t kill our singer…”. Written with the journalist Rob Young – author of Electric Eden, a primer on British folk music’s transporting qualities – Coxon’s memoir does not reveal anything very new about a much-catalogued era. However, the book was always promoted as being about the addiction, music and artistic aspects of his life, never about juicy details of his personal life.

If he would be honest with himself and the reader, the book would come out something like 'Diary of an Oxygen Thief'. This book was a fascinating, often amusing, insight into Graham's life long battle with anxiety and addiction and his musical and artistic creative processes, particularly his solo work.I’d heard a few of his solo albums, and the idea in my head of him was of the punk / sci-fi obsessed / comic book aficionado version. Where it felt very much like Alex at least enjoyed his drinking years, Graham seems much more tortured by his and it is clear that drinking was very much about self medicating the monsters in his head away. I recently attended one of Graham's book events where he described the writing process of the book (hours of interviews recorded which Rob Young then edited down to form the book).

One of the most innovative guitarists of his generation, best known as being a founding member of Blur, Coxon has also released eight solo albums and frequently composes for film and TV. First Dave Rowntree releases a solo LP, then Alex James appears all over BBC documentary Sensationalists, and now we get the Graham Coxon autobiography - it seems the 'other' members of Blur are finally getting their solo moments in the spotlight. For some reason, when Blur burst onto the music scene in the early 90s, I really wanted to identify with the energy and confidence of Damon Albarn who would jump and leap around the stage like he was naturally the centre of the universe. There would be no need for him to jeopardise professional relationships as he is entitled to his opinion about his own experiences, there would be no reason for it to lead to mud-slinging. Ho trovato estremamente sincere e confidenziali le pagine dedicate alla sua vita, al suo amore e al suo studio smisurato per l’arte e la musica e la sua franchezza in merito alla sua lotta contro la dipendenza, estremamente delicati gli accenni che avrebbero potuto essere assai più polemici verso gli altri, come d’altronde mi pare ci si possa attendere dalla sua anima, poetica, timida, introversa, fortemente autocritica.

Firstly because I thought Coxon was an alright bloke but he really hasn’t held back in showing everyone his true self. Graham has covered the Blur break up in interviews in recent years and so there is no real need to provide any more detail. Especially if you don't drop the book at this point and read a little further, where there are several statements about how all the women in his life were mentally unstable. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others.

I tend to think of the whole "guitarist in a decent band who went on to work with other interesting people and maneuver himself to reasonable happiness" story as one of the few paths I look up to. There are occasional appearances of the very "monsters" that any self-respecting man struggles with.Verse, chorus, monster' is licked to the bone, so that his almost patented image does not fall apart. Take Coxon’s solo works as an example, his brief explanations and the influences of the time, from folk music to Sylvia Plath and his back-and-forth with alcoholism, are pasted throughout. I really loved how the book began with Coxon explaining musicality as not inherently about what is perceived as genius, but much more to do with obsession. For those of the era, it means taking a trip down memory lane through the songs of their youth, while those born before it can lap up books and articles from the famous faces of the time. Och eftersom jag tänker att ingen som följer mig här kommer läsa den själva kan jag summera det mest värdefulla här, så slipper ni all bullshit där emellan.