December 10, 2008 10:00

Read an exclusive free extract from BLUR's ONLY comeback interview

Get this week's NME for Damon and Graham's chat in full

Photo Gallery: Blur

When Blur announced plans to make their 2009 comeback yesterday (December 9) they gave just one interview - to NME.

Speaking jointly for the first time in almost a decade, frontman Damon Albarn and guitarist Graham Coxon invited NME along to discuss
Blur's gig next summer on July 3 in London's Hyde Park, their original split, their reconciliation and their future plans.

You can read the interview in full in this week's issue of NME which is on newsstands across the UK now (December 10).

In the meantime, here is a free extract from NME's cover story interview with Blur:

NME: Have you rehearsed yet?
Damon Albarn: "Nope, we haven't rehearsed at all. We've [pointing at Graham] played together a bit, but not all of us yet."
Graham Coxon: "It's odd, I suppose, but it's quite a nice feeling that that is around the corner."

NME: How did your jam together go?
[both look at each other and giggle]
Damon: "Er, it went ok [laughs], it has its moments! We were just mucking around, we just went through many different thoughts playing together."
Graham: "It wasn't exactly pop music, it was sort of meditation music."

NME: When do all four of Blur get together?
Damon: "We better do it pretty soon!"
Graham: "That's going to be funny, that's just going to make me laugh. It will be funny to see our four faces again in such close proximity in such a positive way because the last time there were four of us together it was really weird."
Damon: "Plus we don't even know what we're going to sound like yet!" [laughs]
Graham: "It should sound better, I can play the guitar better [laughs] but that might be a bad thing! When we started I could hardly play the fucking guitar."
Damon: "Well I certainly couldn't sing. We couldn't do anything hardly when we started."
Graham: "We know we can do our jobs now, but don't want to [be] automatons. In order to give anyone else something out of what we do we have to get something out of it too, you know we have to be nourished. As long as we feel that is going to happen, yeah!"

For the full interview get this week's NME, on newsstands nationwide from Wednesday (December 10).

Head to NME.COM/PHOTOS for a special photo tribute to Blur.