‘I don’t want to become a cynical old bastard,’ says Blur’s Graham Coxon ahead of ‘lost’ album Castle Park’s release
“I’M still the same person as the 15-year-old me,” decides Blur guitarist Graham Coxon.
“Still a romantic idiot, still reasonably innocent — and I think that’s a healthy way to be,” he continues.
“I don’t want to be a cynical old bastard, so I’m lucky I still have a magical outlook on life.”
I’m talking to Coxon, 57, about his “lost” solo album, Castle Park, which is finally set to come blinking into the sunlight.
The product of sessions which took place in the winter of 2011, it is named after his teenage stomping ground in the centre of Colchester — an affirmation of that younger “same person” self.
In a wider sense, it serves as a nod to his Essex hometown — a city since 2022 — where he attended Stanway School, met Damon Albarn and where, in 1988, they formed Blur with Dave Rowntree and Alex James.
It was there, too, that his band leader and clarinet-playing dad introduced him to music, namely, “the Bs — Beethoven and The Beatles”.
The album cover resembles a classic picture postcard, divided into quarters and depicting scenes from the park with its vast Norman castle and an ornate Victorian bandstand.
Coxon says: “There were a few occasions when me and a group of friends would stay in the park rather too long, get locked in and have to climb over the fence.
“I remember being slightly inebriated and dancing around the bandstand — and then, of course, there was the statue.”
He’s referring to the imposing bronze Angel Of Victory which stands atop the Colchester War Memorial at the southern entrance to Castle Park.
“I had some dangerous moments when I climbed up and gave that statue a kiss,” he admits. “I used to do it regularly — she was very beautiful.”
If that fearless act of youthful exuberance was an example of Coxon’s romantic nature, it’s clear that he carried it forward to the album that was shelved until now.
“It comes through,” he agrees, “even though there are songs about getting dumped.
“There’s a lot of processing my own romanticism on that album, but not in a heavy way.
“It’s reasonably light-hearted for the first half at least, even if it takes a tumble down to the most depressing song I’ve ever written [album closer All The Rage]. But that’s life, isn’t it?”
Looking back at ten tracks of “romance, break-ups, heartache and alienation”, he says: “When I was writing them, I was in a very problematic situation emotionally. Somehow, songs have a way of describing your situation more succinctly than whatever is going through your mind.”
In 2026, I’m happy to report that Coxon is in a much better place. It’s 10am when I’m connected via video call to the home he shares with partner and bandmate in The Waeve, Rose Elinor Dougall, and their daughter.
“You’ve got me before my brains kick in,” he warns me, but he soon warms to the task of talking about his music outside of Blur.
Aside from the imminent release of Castle Park, this year sees reissues of Coxon’s back catalogue, beginning with his debut album The Sky Is Too High (1998) and its follow-up, The Golden D (2000).
He’s also working on the third Waeve album with Rose, which he describes as “a lot less hard-edged” than 2024’s City Lights.
“It’s more floaty and summery,” he reveals, before reaffirming his romantic credentials.
“Lyrically, there’s a lot more affection. Rose and I go through life together and, sometimes, saying things in lyrics is the nicest way to show affection away from our normal hectic lives.”
But it is his “lost” Castle Park, with lyricism and songcraft as assured as anything in his solo repertoire, that we are focusing on. So, how come the album joined a legendary list that includes The Who’s Lifehouse and The Beach Boys’ Smile by lying dormant for years?
Coxon casts his mind back to 2011 when he headed to The Pool studios in Bermondsey with Ben Hillier, co-producer of Blur’s 2003 album Think Tank (made without Graham except for one track) and engineer on The Golden D.
He says: “It was really odd because I recorded 20 songs and ten of them became A&E [released in 2012], which was based around improvised bass lines.
“The other ten were weirdly different — more trad indie, jingle-jangly, with a bit of Sixties influence.”
Those songs, you may have guessed, were earmarked for Castle Park.
Speaking of parks, Coxon had form thanks to Parklife, Blur’s immortal hit with lyrics by Damon Albarn and music by the whole band, not to mention a vocal masterclass from Phil Daniels.
Despite a widely held belief, the song wasn’t inspired by Castle Park but, as Albarn once explained, by London’s Hyde Park where he used “to watch people and pigeons”.
It seems as if the Britpop icons’ 2012 reunion, which included a momentous Hyde Park show to mark the end of the Olympics, is the chief reason why Coxon’s next album didn’t appear.
That rapturously received performance led to Blur’s run of festival shows in 2013 and a new album in 2015, The Magic Whip.
Then Coxon moved on to mastermind soundtracks for Channel Four comedy drama The End Of The F***ing World as well as embarking on a sci-fi music/graphic novel project in 2021 called Superstate.
He founded The Waeve with partner Rose and, of course, reunited with Blur for their 2023 album The Ballad Of Darren and a tour including two barnstorming nights at Wembley Stadium.
In other words, while Castle Park gathered dust, Coxon kept himself busy.
He says: “I’m really not sure what happened. Maybe it was lack of confidence. Maybe I thought these songs weren’t fashionable and who would give a s**t?”
Over the years, however, his theory didn’t stand up as fans would repeatedly ask him to release Castle Park. “They even knew the name of the album.”
The clamour heightened when Coxon broke out some of the songs during live shows.
These include opening track Billy Says, a spiky three-minute slice of mod-pop, which finds him channelling his heroes, The Kinks and The Jam.
He says: “Ray Davies is the best songwriter we ever had, followed closely by Paul McCartney, and The Jam was a huge band for me. I thought that being a Jam fan elevated me as a person.”
Other tracks to receive a live airing were Alright, with its pithy putdowns of a love rival, a playful duet with Lucy Parnell called There’s A Little House, and gorgeous acoustic guitar-led Easy.
Of all the Castle Park songs, there’s one which Coxon is most proud of, the poised, richly atmospheric Isn’t It Funny.
“It came to me in the dream,” he says. “I had the chords and half of the chorus, I heard some words — and then I woke up. I thought, ‘My gosh, I need to make a quick note of this.’”
Isn’t It Funny contains the lines: “The sun made black her hair and the river her eyes. She needs no man, no sea, nor heather. She’ll change your mind and slip away.”
By way of explanation, Coxon says: “I realise that there’s always been this elusive feminine spirit or a goddess of nature in my work.
“I don’t write songs about this entity for my own excitement. They just come out.”
Then there’s the sublime Mélodie Pour Christine, a lyric-free classical piece for harp and strings with Lucy Parnell’s vocals serving as another instrument.
“That piece was important to me,” he says. “I devoted it to a French friend of mine — a wonderful person who I loved very much and is no longer with us.”
Another song that hits the mark is bleak All The Rage, which, he says, “communicates one’s despondency around the creative life — and that has got even worse 15 years later!”
If most of Castle Park is filled with distinctly English sensibilities, American influences arrive with a cover of When You Find Out by short-lived Seventies punk-pop trio The Nerves.
“It’s a great song, even Blondie would go, ‘Hey, this is a good one’. I just made it slightly less than perfect,” laughs Coxon.
Then there’s “an attempt at soul” with Forget Today which finds him employing his considerable saxophone skills and Ben Hillier providing Hammond organ. (Worth noting that Coxon played sax on Parklife.)
Dripping Soul ventures into territory occupied by Ennio Morricone’s spaghetti western soundtracks, “so it’s not exclusively weird south-east of England s**t”.
“I love westerns, particularly Sergio Leone films. A Fistful Of Dollars and all that,” says Coxon.
In the song, he is peering “beyond the veil” at the “souls of those cowboys who came from a place where life is cheap and death is taken for granted”.
With its galloping guitars, Coxon realised he couldn’t turn Dripping Soul into “a hanging out in Camden sort of thing”.
But he does believe that the house he shares with Rose in London is populated by the souls of dead people.
“I don’t even believe in ghosts, but I’ve seen them,” he reports. “So that’s a bit of a quandary.”
Coxon says he still likes to talk to dear departed loved ones: His mum, Christine, drummer Graham Fox, the Irish journalist who first wrote about Blur, Leo Finlay, and the head of Food Records, Andy Ross.
“I don’t really see them as gone,” he says. “I can still talk to them — they may have disappeared but they’re still fully alive in my mind.”
With that said, we return to 1998 when all those people were still with us — to the making of Coxon’s debut solo album The Sky Is Too High.
It was an unvarnished, largely acoustic affair featuring his own artwork and, as he explains: “It was recorded through really good gear but approach was quite raw.”
Sandwiched between Blur’s self-titled fifth album and its follow-up, 13, “It was done in a bit of a hurry — I wasn’t f***ing about.”
The project had begun when a neighbour asked Coxon to write a couple of songs for a film about Victorian bare-knuckle fighter Tom Sayers — setting wheels in motion that are still spinning.
He says: “That request turned into an addiction to writing songs and releasing them.”
So, how did his solo endeavours affect his relationship with his Blur bandmates. “They didn’t talk about it,” replies Coxon, “Though I did once catch Damon singing R U Lonely? He said, ‘That’s quite a catchy little tune’.
“Attempting to develop as a songwriter when Damon Albarn is your best mate is hard work. I mean, he’d already written some bloody good songs by then.”
Released in 2000, Coxon’s second effort, The Golden D, is very different — heavier, more abrasive and driven by searing electric guitars.
The mood changes with the funky Oochy Woochy, which tapped into Coxon’s fascination with Nineties’ fusion of hip-hop and jazz — a style developed by American rapper Guru called Jazzmatazz.
He says: “I’ve always liked that skinny beat stuff with James Brown loops or similar. Stuff like Public Enemy and 3rd Bass. Oochy Woochy is not a mickey take but a go at that.”
With physical releases of Coxon’s other albums still to come this year, there’s plenty more scope to revisit his solo journey.
Then, in November, he’s hitting the road for a UK tour, bringing the songs back to life still further.
Looking back on his output, Coxon says: “I think it has had a lot to do with my development as a person.
“You know, that anxiety-ridden creative weirdo who puts all this stuff out there.
“I guess that’s why I like Castle Park coming out — because now there are no secrets. You’ve got it all.”
GRAHAM COXON
Castle Park
4.5 STARS
- Also released: The Sky Is Too High and The Golden D