Graham Coxon reflects on Blur's Coachella performance: "They're looking at you like 'who's this old git?'"

Graham Coxon has addressed Blur's recent performance at Coachella 2024, shedding light on the band's experience with an apparently disengaged audience.

The Britpop icons delivered a career-spanning set on the festival's main stage in April, featuring fan favourites such as 'Song 2' and 'Popscene'. However, the crowd's subdued response during 'Girls & Boys' visibly frustrated frontman Damon Albarn.

In a recent interview with GQ, Coxon opened up about the 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 said.

Coxon 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 commented on the Coachella audience in an interview with KROQ, stating, "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."

In contrast, Coxon described Blur's recent Wembley stadium performances as an "out-of-body experience," adding, "It was really incredibly exciting and exhilarating, and we played great – thank God."

The future of Blur remains uncertain, with Albarn recently suggesting that the band's second weekend performance at Coachella 2024 would "probably [be] our last gig".

The band are on the way to releasing a live album from their Wembley Stadium shows last year. You can check out a preview here: