Why Britpoppers Supergrass finally got the band back together
Supergrass frontman Gaz Coombes has revealed why the British band broke up and why they reformed, revealing he turned to YouTube to remember how to play one of his own guitar solos.
Entertainment
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When British band Supergrass reformed last year, after a decade apart, frontman Gaz Coombes found his memory served him surprisingly well.
Rehearsing for a London club show last September, Coombes’ muscle memory took care of most of the tunes, but some of his lyrics evaded him.
“I spent a few days stumbling over lyrics and the nuances of guitar solos,” Coombes admits.
After their breakthrough 1994 hit Caught By the Fuzz, Supergrass had a consistent run of success with Pumping On Your Stereo, Sun Hits the Sky (with a video filmed in Australia), Moving, Richard III and their signature anthem Alright.
Which meant that when Coombes had trouble recalling a few guitar tricks, he had the benefit of 15 years of Supergrass footage uploaded to YouTube.
“There were certain songs where I couldn’t remember the finger positions for a guitar part, so I found a fan video of a guy playing our stuff on guitar, so I watched it and went ‘Oh yeah, that’s how I did it’,” Coombes laughs.
“I thought about getting in touch with him, letting him know how he helped out, but I thought I’d leave the magic where it is.”
The magic ended swiftly for Supergrass. By 2009 they were knee-deep in an album called Release the Drones, inspired by experimental krautrock. A year later the band fell apart, with the album still unreleased.
“We split up because we weren’t enjoying the record we were making,” Coombes says.
“I’m happy to be honest and say that album isn’t good enough to release, we wouldn’t put out a substandard Supergrass record. I think it was brave to put the band to bed because it wasn’t sounding good enough.”
Coombes says stories about a bitter rift between the band members are not accurate, despite drummer Danny Goffey cryptically tweeting at the time “No Mick (Quinn, bassist) you’re the problem.”
“It wasn’t a personal thing,” Coombes says.
“We were all so tight. We were the sort of band who were a singular voice, there was no leader. We were in each other’s pockets for a long time. In a weird way it’s cool we made it so far. When it’s so intense and so close surely it’s got to break at some point. Sometimes you’ve just got to take a break and look at life from a different perspective.”
Coombes originally planned to “hang out with my kids and take some time off.” but admits that didn’t last too long as creativity called.
He launched a successful solo career, his first album dropping in 2012.
In his solo tours, he would only occasionally play a Supergrass song, and then only acoustically.
“If I’m going to play them with a band it’s going to be with the Supergrass boys, otherwise it’d kind of dilute it,” Coombes says.
“To try and deliver the magic of those songs in a solo set up, for me there was no point.”
Over the past decade Coombes had declined offers for the band to reunite for certain festivals – he’d been quoted saying he’d never reform Supergrass because doing so would be a “cash grab.”
However when Goffey called him last year with a vision for a 2020 reunion tour to mark 10 years since they split and 25 years since their debut album I Should Coco, his arm was twisted.
“I surprised myself a little bit,” Coombes says of agreeing to the reformation.
“Maybe it was a little bit a case of now or never. But as soon as the four of us got into a rehearsal room it was a really good feeling playing those old songs again, and they felt fresh. Nothing felt dated. Everyone links us to the Britpop thing, but it doesn’t feel like a nostalgia thing to us. These songs exist outside of that limited bubble.
“It feels right at that moment, it’s a limited thing, we’ll do it for a few months and at the end of the year we’ll probably carry on with our own stuff and who knows what the future will bring. I still love those guys.”
For Coombes, that potentially won’t include new material. He’s already scrounged through his attic for unreleased content for a new box set (The Strange Ones), including demos, live material and rarities (but nothing from Release the Drones).
Coombes unearthed minidiscs of writing sessions that would start loosely with “irreverent ideas” and often end with classic Supergrass songs.
“We’d write six or seven surreal comedy songs and on the eighth or ninth song Moving or Pumping on Your Stereo would appear. I liked that about Supergrass, it’s quite a pure process. There was no pressure to write the biggest hit ever straight away. We were free to do mad stuff no one would ever hear, although they are hearing it now on the box set.
“But there’s definitely some PTSD attached to that last album, still. I keep getting asked about us doing new material, never say never, but it was not the first thing in my mind. Why would you want to return to the environment that split the band up? That’d be a weird thing to do. For us the first thing was to get in a room and play then songs and then get on stage. There was no weird baggage attached to that. That was always a really beautiful thing. To return to the studio straight away would have been a mistake.”
They’ve already done a handful of UK and European shows, and will return to Australia in April and May for their first shows here in 12 years, playing headline gigs as well as the regional Groovin’ the Moo festival.
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Coombes is getting to witness the joy the reformation is sparking each night on stage.
“The London club show was the first time I remember looking out into the crowd and everyone had this ear to ear grin. It was really special. With all the baggage and being inside of it all, you forget what the songs mean to people.
“It was a tough ending, feeling we weren’t able to deliver that magic we always could, that was a tough thing to realise it wasn’t working. A lot of shit comes with that. So to get on stage and play the songs and get that reaction was a reminder of the impact Supergrass had. It was great for me to reignite it, reaffirm the magic of Supergrass and what we did as a band.”
The belated comeback also means his children are old enough to watch dad’s other band.
“I had kids a bit later than the other guys, when they hit five or six we’d split up. Since then they’ve dived into You Tube and watched all the videos, it’s amazing to watch their reaction, they were quite blown away by it. My youngest, her favourite songs are all my solo things, so I’m trying to push her onto Supergrass now ‘Look at this I did this, these are kind of cool too..’”
Also Groovin’ the Moo Wayville SA April 24, Canberra April 25, Bunbury April 26, Bendigo May 2, Townsville May 3 and Maitland May 9.