#graham's behavior

““The most important thing now is that there isn’t that same sort of dependency,” Albarn says. “Because with codependency of any form comes vulnerability. We’re not really here because we need to be here. We’re here because we choose to be here. And the door is always left firmly open.”

Launch: Have you ever tried praying?

“Note one: "Things have become distinctly more cordial. Graham Coxon has asked me to marry him. He is drunk. He asks everyone to marry him. Graham Coxon is great company at the start of the evening, funny and gentle and sharp.

“A little later, Graham and Damon’s relationship broke down: “There were a couple of times when I just shouted at Damon and hurt his feelings, and I hate hurting people’s feelings, so that made me feel really terrible, and he was feeling terrible, and we were finding it very difficult to talk. So I wrote him this long letter about what I really wanted and he wrote me one back. I wrote that I wanted to scare people and I wanted to make music that’s important, not just like a packet of sweets or something.”

“When Blur first made Top of the Pops in 1991, that was all Graham’s dreams fulfilled. When they played arenas, on the Parklife tour, that was all his nightmares: “Just kids screaming, not really listening. It’s the most scary noise I’ve ever encountered. And I didn’t think, “Oh great, Beatle-mania.” I thought, “This is hell.””

“But if Blur have realized a bold new sound, relations among the band members have suffered. They chide each other frequently backstage, and even childhood friends Albarn and Coxon admit that they’re not as tight as they once were. “Damon is a self-centered fucker sometimes,” says Coxon flatly. Albarn pins the blame for their strained relationship on the guitarist’s former drinking problem. “It totally wrecked our ability to get on with each other,” Albarn says. “When he was drunk, he’d be likely to tell a journalist to fuck off, or I’d hear reports of him being unconscious at 4 in the morning somewhere in London. That was upsetting because he’s my closest male friend.”