Graham Coxon has opened up about Blur‘s Coachella 2024 performance and addressed the lacklustre and “bored” crowd.
The Britpop icons took to the Californian festival’s mainstage back in April and delivered a career-spanning set, including fan favourites like ‘Song 2’ and ‘Popscene’. During their performance of ‘Girls & Boys’ the crowd appeared pretty tame which visibly irritated frontman Damon Albarn.
“You can do it better than that,” he told attendees at one point while trying to conduct a sing-a-long to the 1994 track, which was met by a quiet crowd. When he still didn’t get the desired response, the frontman said: “You’re never seeing us again, so you might as well fucking sing it. Know what I’m saying?”
Now, in a new interview with GQ, Coxon has opened up about that US performance. “I like making albums. I’m perfectly happy on stage, but sometimes, like at Coachella or something, it’s taken you 14 hours to get there, and then you’re playing to people who don’t give a shit. They’re looking at you like ‘who’s this old git?’,” he told the publication.
He continued: “I love an audience that are smiling their heads off and having a great time, because you’re doing it for them. And if I see audiences of people that are bored, like maybe Coachella, I just do it for myself.
“I just enjoy what I’m doing. I smile at the grumpy faces a couple of times just to see if I can change their expression, then I just get on with what I wanna do. Pull faces at Dave. Laugh at Damon when he’s getting things wrong or whatever, just have a laugh. What else can you do? You’ve gone all that way, there’s no point in having a miserable time.”
Albarn had previously spoken with KROQ about the Coachella audience, saying: “I don’t know, it’s a weird one Coachella when it comes to audience you know. It’s hard to know sometimes because they’re quite sort of on their own planet really.”
Elsewhere in the GQ interview, Coxon spoke about Blur’s massive Wembley stadium performances, describing it as and “out-of-body experience,” adding: “It was really incredibly exciting and exhilarating, and we played great – thank God.”
Currently, the future of Blur at this point remains somewhat uncertain, with Albarn recently announcing that the band’s show at weekend two of Coachella 2024 would “probably [be] our last gig”. Recently, the band attended the London premiere of their brand new documentary, Blur: To The End.
Directed by Transgressive Records founder Toby L, the film follows the reunion of Albarn, Coxon, Alex James and Dave Rowntree, the recording of their 2023 comeback album ‘The Ballad Of Darren’, and massive shows at London’s Wembley Stadium last summer.
It received its official London premiere on Tuesday (July 16) and will be released in cinemas tomorrow (Friday, July 19).
The project will also be followed by their concert film of the Wembley gigs: Blur: Live at Wembley Stadium. A live album will be released on July 26, before the film arrives in cinemas across the UK and Ireland on September 6.
Elsewhere, the director of To The End spoke to NME about the emotional process of making the film, and bassist Alex James revealed that ahead of their comeback last year, he had doubts about whether the members would ever join forces once again.
In other Graham Coxon news, The WAEVE – his project with Rose Elinor Dougall – have recently announced their new album ‘City Lights’.
The post Blur’s Graham Coxon on playing to “bored” Coachella crowd: “They’re looking at you like ‘who’s this old git?'” appeared first on NME.
