GRAHAM Coxon has warm if fuzzy memories of playing T in the Park. He was there with Blur in the festival's inaugural year in 1994, playing on a bill that included Oasis and Pulp. If my (warm, fuzzy) memory serves, pelting rain sent everyone scurrying into a tent to see Oasis, then a few weeks' shy of the release of debut album Definitely Maybe, gifting the new band a captive and enthusiastic audience.
At the mention of Blur's old Britpop rivals, Coxon crinkles his brow beneath his indie-kid moptop. He's 40 now but, despite having undergone treatment for alcoholism and depression, is still possessed of a fidgety, wide-eyed and boyish demeanour.
"We would have been absolutely blasted to bits in the mid-Nineties," he notes wryly, acknowledging he and his bandmates' well-documented love of the booze, before professing to having no memories of whether Blur ran into Oasis at Strathclyde Park, the event's initial (and much smaller) site.
"But I think I remember the '99 one," he adds of Blur's headline show at Balado. "I remember watching Ash – I think they'd just got Charlotte (Hatherley] in on guitar. Me and one of our roadcrew had smoked something daft and we were enjoying the big fat sounds of Goldfinger by Ash at the side of the stage. This big heavy riff, smiling at each other and going, 'wow, look at Charlotte, wiggling, my God she's great…'" Coxon gives a smile that can only be described as wistful. "I remember the occasion feeling pretty amazing and nice."
This year, for the first time in almost a decade, things seem amazing and nice within Blur too. The band have reformed to headline T in the Park and Glastonbury, and are performing their own shows and releasing a "reminder" album Best Of titled Midlife: A Beginner's Guide To Blur. When we meet in a café near his home in Camden, north London, for an early morning coffee – teetotal now and recently off the fags, it's the strongest stimulant he's allowed – Coxon says that falling back into step in rehearsals has been straightforward.
"It wasn't that hard. A few bumps here and there. But it just sounds the same."
Coxon left Blur in 2002. His departure, during the making of seventh album Think Tank, was abrupt but, at the same time, not. It was the culmination of high times – a run of hit albums, from Modern Life Is Rubbish to Parklife to The Great Escape and classic singles, including Girls And Boys, Song 2, For Tomorrow, Beetlebum and Chemical World – and low times: the increased pressure to write those hit singles, the brain-frying tours of America, that tabloid spat with Oasis, and the increased indulgence that sent guitarist Coxon, singer Damon Albarn, bass player Alex James and drummer Dave Rowntree spinning. The rumour at the time was that the final straw for the avowedly lo-fi Coxon – witness the scratchy indie-rock of most of his seven solo albums – was the hiring of Fatboy Slim to produce Think Tank. This, says Coxon, was not the case.
At the time of those final recording sessions Coxon was fresh out of rehab. He felt better being off the booze, but he admits that the inter-band issues that had built up during Blur's giddy Nineties lingered.
"And that stuff takes years to process and say goodbye to. For all I know now I might still be pretty mad. But because you feel great and you're not drunk or hungover or feeling trapped by alcohol it doesn't mean that you're still not affected in some way mentally and emotionally by it. So it takes a while."
After Coxon left, Blur were put on ice (they never officially split up). The guitarist formed his own label and fired out a string of albums. Albarn had huge commercial success with illustrator Jamie Hewlett and their 'cartoon band' Gorillaz, and the frontman also explored his darker, most ambitious side with "conceptual band" The Good, The Bad And The Queen (which featured ex-Clash bass player Paul Simonon). Over the past couple of years he's been caught up with his well-received Monkey opera, based on a Chinese legend. There was, it seemed, little time for Blur to get back together, even if the inclination was there. A situation not helped by the fact that Coxon and Albarn, old school friends from Colchester who'd formed Blur in 1989 while studying at London's Goldsmith's College, weren't speaking.
"I've heard rumours Graham wants to play again," Albarn told me, mutteringly, in late 2006. "I don't know anything about it. But I gave my word to the other two that if Graham agreed we'd do some gigs definitely. But I wouldn't take it any further than that."
Alex James, as well as these days being a cheese-maker, was the peacemaker. He, Coxon and Rowntree (now studying to be a barrister) buried their differences, which emboldened the guitarist – always the shyest member of Blur – to pop along to Camden venue Koko last autumn, where Albarn was hosting one of his Afrika Express multi-cultural jamborees. Given their differences and the fact that they hadn't spoken for six years, was that a difficult meeting?
"It wasn't really, no. All of that just faded away like it wasn't even there when we met up again. It was like, 'what's all this?' Really it was like a load of web had slowly built up with the press, stuff about storming out of studios and arguments and fallings out…"
The idea of some reunion shows quickly took hold. Rehearsals, reports Coxon, have been a joy. Although their initial idea – to play every song from every album in order – quickly proved a non-starter.
"We got through about three or four and then we were just like, "this is just demoralising…" We were trying to play some songs that we'd never attempted to play in the first place "cause they were too mad or too contrary and no one really would wanna hear them. So why are we doing them now? Some of the more mad instrumentals… What we should have been doing was having a little more fun with the stuff we could easily play."
In the end each member has picked a fist of songs from each album. That selection is now being ordered into a manageable set list. Having already done a singles tour – at their shows in December 1999 they played all 22 a-sides in chronological order – a simple Greatest Hits set would never have sufficed.
"Well, we've gotta do them as well," counters Coxon. "We've got to just think carefully about it. 'Cause it's also a festival thing. Mixing that with pleasing some of the fans who are sort of perverts and know every little bit and b-side. There's also some people who are gonna be along for a laugh."
Coxon is one of them. Musically, all the evidence points to a man in top form. Last month's album, The Spinning Top, a simple, English folk-influenced record, is his best solo effort yet. His songwriting and guitar-playing contributions to Pete Doherty's solo album Grace/Wasteland helped make that an unexpected – and tuneful – joy. His chilled demeanour, it seems, coincides with that of a more relaxed Albarn. In the new, improved Blur, the members are acting like what they are: mature, mellowed, successful grown-ups.
"There was so much pressure on us in those days," sighs Coxon. "Business pressure. Pressure to maintain our success. To make videos that MTV were gonna play. It was like, f***ing hell… Now there's one of that. That doesn't matter. We don't have to prove anything to anybody. We can do it as it was in the beginning."
• Blur headline T in the Park, 12 July. Midlife: A Beginner's Guide To Blur is released 15 June,
www.tinthepark.comThe ones to watch: T in the Park
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LADY GAGAIt ain't clever or indeed original but La Gaga, right, does what it says on the tin. Expect big beats, big outfits, big heels, and a crowd full of raving Pussycat Dolls.
TOMMY REILLYFrom the bedroom to Balado, Tommy Reilly's star has been ascending ever since he won the Orange Unsigned Act comp, judged by the likes of Alex James and Jo Whiley. Thought of as the Glaswegian love child of Elvis Costello and The Proclaimers, Bernard Butler is producing his debut. Catch him while you can.
2 MANY DJSSometimes, after you've thrown your hair around to Kings of Leon and jumped higher and higher to The Specials, you just want some old-fashioned jubilant boogie time to 2 Many DJs. Festival favourites, this is bastard pop featuring anything and everything that makes you dance.
ELBOWThe Mercury Prize winners are perfect for those sun-going-down magical festival moments. At Glastonbury '08, Elbow was an undisputed highlight thanks to the sheer power of Guy Garvey's voice, the band's magnetism and all those epic, soaring songs.
