Invented Britpop. Brought back the V-neck jumper. Taken part in one of the most ill advised showdowns on pop history. And then disappeared to go yankophile and craft "the most intelligent record we've ever made". Shout 'Yo to the New Blur...
The spring of 1994 and, for differing reasons, the faces of Damon Albarn and Kurt Cobain shine from magazine covers across station concourse and kerbside kiosk the nation over. The former has just seen his band release the 'Girls And Boys' single, a top-five trailer for their imminent 'Parklife' album. The latter, needless to say, has recently taken a shotgun to his own head.
As the Blur tour charabanc pulls toward Bristol, these events inevitably give the band pause for thought. the scent of victory drifting over from their biggest hit to date is undoubtedly pleasant, as it the undeniable feeling that they're a band whose time has truly come. Even so, Cobain's death can't help but put things in perspective. For today's tragic suicide is yesterday's point of disparaging reference. After all, as Blur had formed themselves into a heady amalgam of tea-stewed British imagery, they hadn't stinted their tirades against the American enemy. "We are to grunge what punk was to hippy," railed Damon at one point - and as the "slacker figure-heard", Nirvana were hardly exempt. Consequently, as the Blur tour party wends its way Avon-ward, even the band's finest hour is subtly underlit by the slightest of regret.
All that apart, a BBC Radio Bristol journalist soon appears, intent on playing Blur an interview she once undertook with Kurt. As curiosity leads them to listen in, a once innocuous question draws a response now heavy with immediacy. Asked if he's heard ant good songs recently. Cobain thinks momentarily before offering impromptu evidence of such a fine melodic ware. "There's no other way," he sings, passing those remarkable vocal cords over the lilting cadences of Blur's second ever single. "There no other way/All that you can do is watch them play."
"Hmmm, yes," reflects Alex James, two and a half years after he first heard this tape-mediated voice from the past. "Made us feel a bit deathly that, if I recall." He remembers that scene, before moving his tones towards his trademark realm of precisely-weighed insouciance. "He did have a lovely voice, didn't he? Good tunes, but , y'know, wrong drugs. Wrong bird."
This posthumous grunge-Britpop entente aside. back in 1994, it was difficult to imagine a band more unlikely than Blur to take on explicitly American flavours. Spitfires, greyhounds, foaming pints of ale. The Shipping Forecast, The Small Faces, The Beatles, XTC, the white cliffs of Dover, DMs, Fred Perrys, the District Line, Portobello Road, sugary tea, Quadrophenia, Club 18-30, bank holiday, a nobly streamlined steam locomotive rushing along the tracks of London and North Eastern Railways…As Blur navigated the 'Parklife' and 'Modern Life Is Rubbish' albums, they verged on becoming some rock Routemaster offering a guided tour of British nationhood.
They may have displayed their signposting through a lens of irony-tinged pop-art, yet it was difficult to overestimate the sincere transatlantic partnership in BlurWorld. On the one hand, there was the soothing, loving ly essayed Anglophilia of the gorgeous 'This A Low'; on the other, the cursory American-equals-shopping malls anti-Yank interlude of 'Magic America'.
Yet here are Blur 1997 lounging around an East London photo studio, with their sartorial choices alone suggesting that Americana has been dragged from the dustbin of history. Harringtons, houndstooth check and casual-esque tracksuit tops are conspicuous by their absence. Goofing jovially around the studio, Graham (now teetotal for six months and spending his spare time knocking out abstract expressionist sketches) sports a sweatshirt bearing the legend State of California, while a chunky chain loops out from his commodiously fashioned skate pants. Dave and Alex maintain a hint of Brit style with Fred Perry and Brideshead fringe respectively. But Damon (spiritually reborn through sundry sojourns in Iceland) is decked in a Nike T-shirt, bodywarmers and some bizarrely tailored leisure trews seemingly designed for hiking through Colorado. "Apparently we used to be Britpop," suggests Alex. "Well, the new album's more Iggy Pop..."
And the stylistic indicators are no smoke screen - utterly disenchanting with "meaningless" Britpop and a "disappointing" 1996, Blur reinvented themselves as "English Slacker".
They've recorded an album where clearly audible slivers of Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr, grunge and American hardcore are underpinned by the metronomic glow of Krautrock and the roughage-enhanced ways of lo-fi. Oompah-driven odes to cross-dressing civil servants going off the rails in the toiletries aisle at the Borehamwood branch of Ready Steady Buy have been abruptly dropped in favour of a new mood of transatlantic rapprochement.
"Drink a Pepsi... Got an ad on KROQ," Damon sings during the fondly-observed tour reportage of the new album's 'Look Inside America'. Then he continues, with no shortage of wistfulness, "Look inside America, she's alright..."
"I now have a different view of America," says Damon, prostrate on the photo-studio couch, sipping on a herbal tea. "It's as simple as that. Of course, that's part of the reason why this album sounds the way it does..." And the new Blur album, the succinctly titled 'Blur', undoubtedly sounds like a challenging disc. Already saloon bar wags are suggesting Blur have swapped their infamous 'British image number one' press promotional shot for 'American image: number 22, and out of the chart next week'. Could it be true? Have Blur really opted for a strategy of noise-blasted commercial suicide?
"I'll make this picture bigger," yells Graham Coxon as he effects a last minute change to a proof of the new album cover. As with the record it will contain, the new sleeve is a noteable departure. Gone is the weight of stylised humour found on the sleeves of Blur's 'Britain trilogy' ('Modern Life' through to 'The Great Escape'). In its place, there's an oblique, blurred shot of a trolley being wheeled through a hospital corridor.
The back cover holds another indistinct shot, this time of the band wandering through the austere interior of the country in which they recorded the album - Iceland. Furthering the air of simplicity, for the first time ever, the album sleeve won't feature the lyrics.
And, just as Blur's artictic agenda has been rejigged, so have the majority of their personal lives. As Graham sits down he removes the "grown-up" glasses he now wears because he thinks the vintage frames he once favoured have become too vogueish. All this dispensing with the booze and revisiting his art-school past with his reborn fondness for a quick minimal etching.
Concentrate on the underground American currents that move through 'Blur', and it's easy to come to the conclusion that this is Graham's album. Not only is he the sole member with a well-documented love of Fugazi, but the new album sees him authoring his first song for a Blur LP: after co-writing debut single 'She's So High' and the B-side 'Red Necks', he now brings his acoustic guitar, plaintive voice and a distinctly Dinosaur Jr- flavoured solo to the charming 'You're So Great'. If music-industry chaff and rumour amount to anything, it was Graham who was most disenchanted by the events and marketing tactics that surrounded the 'Great Escape' campaign. And, perhaps more daftly symbolic of all, it was Graham who enlivened 'Parklife'-era shows by threading the boards in the renowned British couture that is the GI helmet.
"Is it my album?" he ponders in his surprisingly diffident tones. "There probably is something in that. I just had an awakening, realising that I was listening to for a long time was completely uninteresting to a guitarist. I dunno, I guess I was listening to things like… Talk Talk. Which was incredibly recorded and amazing as recordings go but maybe not that exciting."
How's morale in the Blur camp? Things were reportedly pretty fraught towards the end of the 'Great Escape' period.
Graham: We've just made a record and we're quite excited by that, so morale's pretty good. We're laughing a lot more than we were. Towards the end of the 'Great Escape' tours it had to get to a very strange state before we could laugh. It probably did look a little bit fraught.
Did it ever look like it was heading towards any kind of cataclysm?
Graham: Not really, but generally, communication levels were very low. We found it quite hard to communicate about how we were feeling, because we were all withdrawing quite heftily. I remember we were recording a song called 'St. Louis', which is a B-side of something… I can't remember what. That day was very fraught.
It was unspoken, because I'd had a terrifically hideous go at Damon the previous night and we weren't sure if we could go on. I was concerned about other people's opinions being thrust on me, about Damon representing us. Which, for a long time, was just the way it would be, because none of us could be bothered to say what was on our minds. But it really was generally about being at the end of our tethers.
I'm very ashamed of all that now - just stupid slanging matches. We got over that: Damon and I are now communicating better than ever.
Did you have to explicitly sit down and address the problem?
Graham: No, in a way it was easier than that, because we communicated by post [laughs]. You're braver when you're writing letters, I think, so he wrote to me talking about a few worries. I've always had that worry Damon and me, cos we've known each other for so long. It was like our friendship had turned into a hideous business partnership.
So, we communicated again. This was earlier this year, pretty much when we started recording the LP. When we started recording, we had none of the hideous pressures of 'The Great Escape', which was a follow-up to our agenda-setting album... this thing that captured a time which might have been the start of Britpop. 'The Great Escape' was made under the pressure of collecting awards for 'Parklife' in the evenings and making a new album during the day.
I think you feel a tension in that record, whereas on the new one we’re having a lot more fun and going along with our whims. [spontaneous feedback emits from the interview tape recorder] Yeah, we had a lot of that kind of thing on the LP. Nice things that just happened.
Do you like 'The Great Escape' in retrospect?
Graham: There are moments that I'd probably be very proud of on 'The Great Escape' but, to be honest, I can't remember what's on it. 'The Universal' was very good, wasn't it? Yeah, that came after 'Country House', didn't it?
How do you feel about the 'Great Escape' campaign?
Graham: I think it had it's hideous moments. I think the whole 'Country House' thing was hideous. Blur versus Oasis: I can't believe that happened. I had my regrets at the time, and there seems to be a general consensus that we made a mistake with that song and the video… and the release date. It got pretty scary, the gigs and everything - it seemed very mainstreamed.
What made you stop drinking?
Graham: I stopped drinking in June. It's been reported that I gave up drinking over the previous Christmas, but that's not the case. I'm not stupid enough to try and stop drinking over Christmas.
Yeah, I remember the decision to stop drinking. Before that, nothing was very vivid. It was all a bit negative. I don't think any kind of abuse helps your creativity. I wasn't like a hopeless alcoholic, but I was drinking a bit too much. It was just the usual things of not really experiencing things to the full, not really getting the most I could out of potentially meaty circumstances.
It was strange experiencing a whole week where you're conscious of every minute of the day. And it was difficult to get to sleep. This is when I kind of started to enjoy a lot of the extremes life could offer again, rather than being in this sensory middle ground where nothing affects you greatly. Prior to that, I was either drunk or hungover.
Since I've been sober, the extremes have been much more interesting. And there are banal things like housework, washing up, drawing. I'm drawing a lot more now.
What do you draw?
Graham: The last thing I drew was last night and it was black shapes and red shapes. I'm very much into expressions and minimalism at the moment. Instead of gratuitous pop music I like gratuitous expression now. Who do I find inspirational? Well, I'd always be into Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, but I'm finding that a little formal nowadays. I'm a huge fan of de Kooning and Franz Kline - the New York School.
On first hearing at least, the new album's quite anti-commercial. Do you think it could be seen as throwing in the towel in the big tune war?
Graham: I think people would be really stupid to call it a cop out. I think it's the most intelligent record we've made. I think there are quite a few hits on the album. 'Beetlebum' going to Number One? Yeah, we have been thinking about that.
It's silly to talk about giving up on the pop wars. The thing is, I don't think it's difficult to write universal pop songs. Damon always says it's very easy, so I'm just going on what he says, because I don't think I've ever written one. I just think this album is an affirmation of how different we are. I think anyone with half a brain would recognise we're a very unique band. Which doesn't mean to say this album is better, it's just different.
I think the Manics said something about this - that because we'd lost the war against Oasis we'd decided to make weird art. I think we've always liked the weird and grotesque, so there's always going to be a lot of that in it. We've just been a little unsettled in the past.
Did you pay much attention to Oasis playing Knebworth?
Graham: Obviously I watched it on 'London Tonight'. I quite enjoyed all that, actually, though it did feel good to be out of it. The best thing we could have done was let them get on with it.
Do you like their music?
Graham: Yeah, the odd song. I think 'Live Forever' is really nice and I think their big anthems like 'Don't Look Back In Anger' and 'Wonderwall' are pretty good and I like 'Supersonic'. Y'know, they're pretty good tunes, so I can understand why people like them. But I can't cope with being a guitar player in Oasis. Just standing there like Bonehead, strumming all night. It'd drive me mad.
Do you have a favourite guitarist?
Graham: Santana [laughs]... Well, Thurston [Moore of Sonic Youth], obviously, is best among guitarists. I think he's incredible. I think he's got an incredible ear, which is obvious from their records.
Pavement's Stephen Malkmus has recorded a duet with Justine Frischmann and he's been staying in London with Justine and Damon. Have you seen much of him yourself?
Graham: No, I haven't been hanging out with Pavement. But I do appreciate Pavement a lot. I really got into their 'Slanted and Enchanted' and when we were recording 'The Great Escape' I played a couple of tracks to everyone. They all laughed and said it was shit! [laughs] Yeah, all the band. That upset me, because I thought it was a beautiful record.
Aside from the American underground, there's a substantial Krautrock element on the new album...
Graham: Yeah, it certainly doesn't sound very English, in an XTC, Cockney Rebel sort of way. It's really what Blur should always have been like if we hadn't got this bee in our bonnet about America being evil. We could have missed out maybe 'Parklife', definitely 'Modern Life Is Rubbish'. I don't regret that record, but we could possibly have gone another way.
Do you ever consider what a young Blur fan might make of the new album. Say one who discovered you through 'The Great Escape'...
Graham: Yeah, I do consider that. The people who 'Parklife' made want to read London Fields, people who take pop music seriously…those people will really enjoy the record. I don't think people who want instant gratification will like it immediately. I don't think anyone will like it immediately, actually. I think if I heard it once it would quite excite me, because I'd imagine there's a lot more there to discover.
Might things like 'Essex Dogs' even slightly unsettle sectors of the Blur audience?
Graham: I hope so. I don't think there's anything wrong with being scared when you're a kid. I'd listen to the freaked-out Beatles stuff when I was very young. The scariest bit on our new album? Probably on 'Essex Dogs' when the guitar goes into this high-pitched chainsaw sound and just stays there. I remember listening to that and getting a bit of sweat going.
I don't know what would happen if we played 'Essex Dogs' live. One night it'd work and the next night it'd be a disaster. I'd love to play it in The Roundhouse with the lights off... and not wearing shades. No lights, but no shades either.
"It's sort of a bit like this," says Damon, illustrating his point with a quick swivel and a foot thrust smoothly towards the body. "And a little like this," he adds, stopping a fist inches before Selects's face. As he moves towards the interview couch, a car and driver wait to speed Damon to Swindon to take a tae kwan do exam for his 'green tag'.
All of Blur except Alex take regular instruction in this martial art and, when you combine these ninja-ish dimensions with the "Red Indian ritual" Damon has reportedly performed in Iceland, it's easy to paint a picture of a new model Blur, bolstered by a new serenity and coloured with a hint of the mystic. Damon has spoken of Iceland being riven with "elves and magical things" - and certainly, this starkly beautiful country has had a material effect on him. For one, he's bought a flat there, as well as shares in a Reykjavik coffee bar, Kaffe Barinn - "the happening place in town," according to Einar, former Sugarcubes frontman and current solo musician.
Besides the real estate, the country has seemingly had a more spiritual effect. Damon's arrival in Iceland to record the album coincided with the lifting of the "prolonged, subtle depression" that had stalked him through the recording of 'The Great Escape'.
"Hmmm, they must have sprayed this with something. This normally taste nice." As if to underline the soul-settling, nature-friendly dimensions of the Icelandic experience, Damon chews on a pine needle selected from the photo studio's tastefully woody bouquet. If Iceland has left him with a taste of conifers, it also appears to have left him determined to maintain his new inner repose.
As a consequence, perhaps, he now seems intent on distancing himself from pop frippery. Of all the Blur camp, he's easily the most reluctant to discuss Oasis-related issues and most protective over which parts of his life are ushered into the public domain. The man who would once grab an interviewer's tape recorder, blaring "Hang on, I've got a quote for you" now seems guarded to the point of mild inscrutability.
Even so, he vociferously argues that several Blur B-sides have given fair warning of some of the new album's stylistics departures. And he has a point - 1992's 'Popscene' single had rhythms modelled on Can's 'Mother Sky', while 1993's 'Chemical World' B-side 'Es Schmecht' saw Alex James emulating the style of that band's bassist Holger Czukay. Such culturally exotic past episodes fit well with the 1997 Damon - a man who just finished playing a drug-dealer alongside Trainspotting's Robert Carlyle in the film Face. Someone who now largely restricts his drinking to the time he spends in Iceland - when he cuts loose with the Brenevin, the local "black death" liquor distilled from potatoes.
"There's one interesting thing with the new album," he says. "When a lot of people have heard it with no introduction they have no idea it's a Blur record. But it's silly to suggest that we planned the record to sound like this. You can't conceptualise a record that comes from the heart."
Iceland clearly had a great impact on you...
Damon: Yeah, the country with the highest number of chess grandmasters and Miss Worlds per capita of any nation. That's a good way of summing it up.
I'm wary about talking about the place now - I don't want to use it as a marketing tool for the new album. I started talking about Iceland out of genuine enthusiasm, but now I feel more guarded. Just mentioning it, it becomes a soundbite, plus I do get the sense it's becoming a hip topic in magazines. And I think I'm partly responsible. Iceland is a place where you don't have to worry about pavements and telephone calls. I suppose I found a spirit there that's been lacking in my life.
Were there any crisis points towards the end of the 'Great Escape' campaign?
Damon: Lots. Every week there was a crisis. There was no one huge disaster, because we never split up. But I'd be a liar to say I hadn't carefully considered the possibility that we were going to implode. The strange thing is, at that time, I was writing songs that would sound great if a band played them, as opposed to perfect pop songs that it doesn't matter who plays them. So, on one hand, I'm thinking things are looking very precarious and on the other, I was writing very strong Blur music.
What do you now think of 'The Great Escape'?
Damon: Well, looking back on 'The Great Escape', I realise it's more like a musical. It would have made a great West End thing. In that context, songs like 'Country House' and 'The Universal' would have been completely convincing. In fact, I had a revelation recently that it should have been a musical. Which isn't that surprising, because that is a strong side of my personality. Done at it's best it's a very pure from of entertainment.
The circumstances under which 'The Great Escape' was made were difficult. We had journalists coming down during recording, the Brits happened straight in the middle of it and I just was worn down by this depression, blah blah blah. To make a record on top of that is a nightmare.
Did your depression lift as soon as you arrived in Iceland?
Damon: Yeah, that's what happened. I wrote a lot these songs, when I started to feel a lot better, cos when you're in the middle of that you can't possibly be creative. It's hopeless.
Was it medically diagnosed?
Damon: Well, it could have been if I'd chosen to go through the right channels.
You didn't take anything to alleviate it?
Damon: No, but I think 'Country House' was written right in the epicentre of that period.
That's where the Prozac reference comes from?
Damon: Yeah, but at that time my way of talking about anything personal was to put it in a cartoon context with a character. That's what the difference is now. I think as a performer I needed to be able to sing from the heart.
Did you read Nicky Wire talking about you continually writing the character of "Mr Wobbly of Piccadilly"? He was suggesting you should write about your own feelings more...
Damon: He's got a point. This album is different in the sense that I've always written about scenarios in the past. This album isn't, it's about me. That's what we had to do if we were to make another record. We'd come to the end of one cycle of our brief existence.
Is the new record Graham's album?
Damon: Oh sure, I think there's definitely far more... No, actually, I think it's all our album, as always. You need a whole band understanding, otherwise it's not going to happen. Not naturally, anyway.
There's a substantial Krautrock flavour on the new album...
Damon: Definitely in the sense that a lot of the rhythms are more angular. Ever since we started we've been aware of it [Krautrock]. It's a pervading interest on this record, but it's one of many.
You did have a substantial beef with America at one point...
Damon: We had a really bad introduction to the country. When we first went we were with a bad record company, we worked with really crass people. Our whole experience was overshadowed by that.
We didn't meet any Americans who could possibly have the same perspective as us. Now I know loads of Americans. And I think our kind of stance, which veers to the art-school side of things is far more prevalent in America and not tainted by this ludicrous class-validation thing. I mean, it's OK to read books in America without being seen as this fey middle-class person. Which is the worst thing that's come out of lad culture - the return of football and beer. And, whatever it might say, Loaded is about football and beer.
But you did undergo a well-documented discovery of football yourself. And you had a pint of beer on one of your record sleeves...
Damon: Well, I think I suffered a lot from talking about things that were exciting me as they happened, and then the whole thing getting out of hand. When I started getting into football about five years ago, I just thought, 'This is great, it's football, I've discovered football.'
We recorded our first three albums next to Chelsea at Stamford Bridge and I just ended up going regularly. It was quite a natural thing, but it became a cultural badge - you have to be careful or your interests turn into monsters. And yes, I did get fascinated by the idea that you could have a band with a set of ideas that would intoxicate the whole country. But, having experienced that, I realise it's a pretty empty ambition.
Was it enjoyable playing host to Pavement's Stephen Malkmus?
Damon: Well, he stayed at our house for a while. I've always had a suspicion we would get on. Intuitively and through listening to his lyrics. He was someone I could relate to immediately, a similar sense of humour and a similar sort of exasperation - muted exasperation.
How do you now feel about the fabled Blur vs Oasis episode?
Damon: That had been welling up for six months. It just felt like this inevitable event, really. How do I feel about it now? I fell very detached from it. It was one of the many cartoon moments of my life.
How did it fell when it came to be the lead item on the evening news?
Damon: I was away the week it came out, but afterwards, there was an overwhelming sense in our camp that life wasn't as simple as we'd thought it was beforehand. The whole thing changed so quickly from being an ironic victory to being a traumatic mess-up. It was like feeling very hot and then suddenly feeling very cold.
During the following months, everything started to get heavy in the band. And I think that was the spark that started it. Sometimes things get out of control and it's OK, because there's an understanding that at some point you'll pull everything back, but this time the chaos was more disturbing. It felt like things were falling to pieces.
As someone involved in something of a celebrity relationship, do you ever have any empathy for Liam and Patsy?
Damon: I've got no comment about that.
"What's the most beautiful aeroplane in the world? That's like who's the best band in the world, The Beatles. It's the Spitfire, isn't it?"
American elements may be finding favour with the Blur band, but Dave Rowntree, drummer and pilot, isn't about to forsake British aviation heritage for fancy American aeronautics. He pays enthusiastic tribute to the beauteous elliptical wings that defied Adolf and starred on the sleeve of Blur's 'For Tomorrow' single.
Of course, undemonstrative Dave is known for his flying and drumming and little else. Quitely sonorous of voice and of manifest intelligence, he nonetheless seems keen on maintaining his repute as Blur's least vociferous member.
He spent the last year giving up drinking, piloting his Grumman-American AA-5 over to France and going to the occasional concert. "Gig of the year?" he considers. "The Prodigy at Brixton. They're a punk band, that's why I love them."
Was there anything specific that made you stop drinking?
Dave: Yeah, I got arrested once too often. I don't want to harp on it, but yes, literally. Some people are born to cope with alcohol and I'm near the bottom of the Coping With Alcohol League. As soon as you become a musician, alcohol is always there and it's mostly free. All the natural limiting things just aren't there - running out of money, the pub closing, your friends telling you to go home.
How do you rate 'The Great Escape' now?
Dave: I like it, but the choice of singles was wrong. The singles didn't show how far we were moving away from 'Parklife'.
Is the new album Graham's record?
Dave: In a way I think that's right. Perhaps in there's definitely four people's influences on all four albums and, on this one, it's four people pulling in the same direction.
What do you think of the Blur vs Oasis era?
Dave: We were on the nine o'clock news every night for a week, which is just a sad indictment of TV culture. It just cheapened the whole thing for me. With our first Number One, I'd have rather it had been a different song and different circumstances. All it is, is we had this Number One because Oasis didn't. That's bollocks. I find it almost impossible to listen to 'Country House' now because of all the baggage that's associated with it.
Do you like Oasis' music?
Dave: Yes, I'm not a huge fan, but there are definite points where I think they are superb. My favourite song? 'Cigarettes & Alcohol'. And I think 'Wonderwall' is a really good song.
Do you greet Blur's new Krautrock tip?
Dave: Well, Can is something I've been into since I was 15 or 16. I came to it from slightly different angle - from Gong and strange hippie music doing the rounds in Colchester. I was always interested in the trance-like qualities of the music... endlessly repetitive but really interesting.
How's the plane?
Dave: Fine. I flew down to the south of France last summer. Across to Ireland for our show there - I'm not out to set any distance records. Airfix models? I didn't have the patience really. I used to make them but not paint them. Or half make them and then stick a banger in them...
"Ah, yes Monday evening," exhales Alex James. "Very nice. Brings out a more wreckless class of drinker."
While the rest of Blur have reined in the booze, Alex remains an advocate of traditional pastimes. Here he is, six o'clock in Soho's well-appointed Groucho Club, tucking into the second Budvar of the night and enjoying a desultory frame of snooker.
"Tae kwon do?!" he splutters as he eyes the white. "Not me, really. If you ask me, Damon should be taking softie lessons instead of learning to beat people up."
Topically, he points out a spherical dent in the wall. It represents a portion of the time Liam Gallagher spent between exiting The Q Awards and being arrested on suspicion of possessing drugs: time spent, in this case, hurling snooker balls violently against the Groucho's interiors. "Yes, look," says Alex, "these lesser dents are where people have tried to copy him."
Still resident in Covent Garden, Alex has spent recent months socialising, reading the odd book (Louis de Bernière's Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Will Self's The Sweet Smell Of Psychosis) and playing bass on the forthcoming Duffy album. Oh, and recording the new Blur LP.
"What do I think of Krautrock?" he considers carefully. "It's a bit tedious, isn't it? A lot of it doesn't sound like music. It sounds like maths..."
He shunts home a difficult red.
You all seem very serene at the moment...
Alex: I think that's because we won the battle and lost the war with Oasis. It led to a horrible retentive need for symmetry in the media, which meant everything had to be seen going great for Oasis while we were about to split up. I spoke to my mum the other day and she was saying, 'Everyone thinks you've split up.' We're actually fine, and people are a bit surprised at that.
How do you think the new album will do?
Alex: It's not an easy record, but there are big hit singles. 'Beetlebum' is one of the prettiest tunes we've ever done. There are three hits on this album - 'On Your Own', 'Beetlebum', 'Country Sad Ballad Man'... I don’t know, you can never tell. I mean, 'Country House' was a B-side, wasn't it?"
Was there any conscious decision to distance yourself from Britpop?
Alex: The thing is, the Britpop palette is completely saturated, artistically. We were doing international press last week and every magazine had a Union Jack on the cover -'Achtung, London!'; 'London c'est cool!' We had to do something new.
Have you re-evaluated your own opinion of America?
Alex: Well, we first went to America with what was practically a baggy record when 'Nevermind' came out. Suddenly America just totally found its voice. It was just very frustrating.
It's just an enormous storm of spunk, the American media. I've always liked New York and San Francisco - the edges, really. Have I changed my mind about the place? Well, I still think they're fat and stupid. Sonic Youth? I fucking hate Sonic Youth. Putting guitars in a dustbin.
Did the new America angle surprise you?
Alex: I think all the stuff we've done since 'Modern Life Is Rubbish' has deliberately excluded anti-American cultural references, because we thought British culture needed to find it's identity again. Ironically, now it has, we've made our most American-sounding record. But, that's not a complete surprise. Graham's been listening to Yankcore ever since I've known him. The first time I ever met him he was playing a Pixies record.
What do you now think of 'The Great Escape'?
Alex: I don't think we could have made any other record. I think it's the best record we've ever released. Apart from the new one-you've got to say the new one's the best, haven't you?
What about the Blur vs Oasis thing?
Alex: It was great pantomime, wasn't it?
And the vitriol?
Alex: I don't think Damon and Noel will ever get on - they're too similar. I mean, all the times Damon been saying how great Liam is recently, that's just to annoy Noel, isn't it?
What about Noel wishing AIDS on you?
Alex: It's real playground stuff, isn't it? You say those things and it's like saying 'Piss off' at a heightened pitch, The only hangover from the Blur/Oasis thing is there probably hasn't been an interview since where their name hasn't been mentioned. But y'know, the football season was over, so they turned us into a football match.
How do you feel about your 'supergroup' single with Me Me Me?
Alex: [Laughs] That was a tango with shame, daring myself into embarrassment. I haven't any Freudian reasons to make art as far as I can tell. I wrote it for Damien [Hirst] because he'd written this film and wanted some music for it, and I'd been mucking about with Duffy... We knocked it out on a Sunday morning and it seemed like a good idea to release it. And why not, other than I might look like an arse. I think Damon was worried about me looking silly, but, you know, bollocks! It's not a Blur song, just a spaz thing.
Are you happy with your reputation?
Alex: The roistering lounge lizard? Yeah, I can't think of anything else to do. What will I do after Blur? Climb a mountain, jump in a river. I've absolutely no idea.
"Yeah, I went to see Shellac the other night. Steve Albini's an amazing guitarist..." Back at Blur Central, Graham enthuses over the US underground's Mr Infamy. American clothes, American guitars, American friends. There can be no doubting the fervour with which Blur are now peering beyond Blighty's shores. But fear not, concerned members of the Village Green Preservation Society - it seems one small corner of Blur will be forever Albion. Even now, as Graham gets ready to dash out and buy the latest Slint import, this other more Yankosceptic soul sits in the Groucho, awaiting the arrival of his chum Damien Hirst. Alex James, raffishly out of step with the New Blur, peers over a photo session commissioned for a Vanity Fair feature on today's 'Swinging London'. The beautifully coloured photographs depict Jamesy, Hirsty and their good friend Keith Allen. To a man they are wearing sweaters emblazoned with a massive Union Jack...
