aeolianblues

Alex: I speak to the drummer every week. We have a regular catch up on Tuesday, basically moan about Graham and Damon. "How do we make this ever happen again?"

Damon: Nothing's gonna proceed unless firstly Graham is into it.

Graham: I remember listening to the demos and getting a pad and trying to jot down the chords and thinking bloody hell there's a lot of chords here. But good chords. Chords you can really get into. There's such a lot of opportunity for melodic stuff and more emotional things when chords are that much more deeper.

[...]

Graham: Damon has really allowed me on this record, and probably over the years, to play some of my favourite guitar stuff. That's because of his ebony ivories. It's what I was saying earlier on, what is given to you via those chords to explore, and the notes you come up with in the parts you put down eventually after many run-throughs and getting it right.

Damon: When I stopped playing the piano at the beginning of Blur, it was because my chords sound too rich. It's like we are like an indie band, it's not helpful. So I learned to play the guitar, obviously not very well and I still really haven't... I've got a little bit better but not much. But now I'm not worried about playing the piano.

Graham: I think that's a lot of what sets us apart from a lot of the other people that we may have been lumped in within the 90s. The songs are written on a piano, that's a completely different thing.

int: did you always recognize the potential in each other, i always think that is kind of one of the key parts of a friendship, when you can recognize different strengths in each other that you admire? damon: he was basically one of the only people who would like, fuck with me, - to use a... i'd have not really used that sort of word - yeah, i was just a real oddball of a sort. bullied a lot, for doing things slightly differently and graham was much more sort of conventional, in the context that his parents lived just behind the school, he actually lived there, he'd gone to primary school there, which makes a big difference when you go to secondary school, when you just come out of nowhere into that, and all of these sort of relationships were kind of formed already. and the first summer i got to essex for some reason, i did that one year at primary school there, and i did this thing the 1st or 2nd day that i was there, i kind of ate a ladybird at break and then it was like, 'oi! new boy, eat another ladybird!'. that was the beginning of it, things might have been very different if i hadn't eaten that ladybird, i imagine. i've never eaten a ladybird since... i was just showing off, i had a problem, i used to show off a lot, it jarred with people, understandably. because i came from leytonstone, i was an urban kid i wasn't a country kid. ...and i had a violin, my dad drove a lada. int: right. but graham saw these as strengths, i think, and thought 'this is my kind of guy...'

damon: we just got on brilliantly, you know, best friends. for the whole time we were in school. and there was this portakabin outside the music and art block, and we were allowed to go in there and play, it had a piano and keyboard, and graham had a saxophone and drums, we used to play music.

damon talking to the tape notes podcast.

Dom Howard

1996

he was 19

i

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