How going solo is Alright for Gaz Coombes

Gaz Coombes tells Andy Welch there is life after Supergrass as he prepares to go it alone with a new collection of very different songs.

As the frontman of Supergrass, Gaz Coombes always cut an iconic figure.

With his outlandish sideburns, distinctive vocals, laid-back guitar-playing style and wondrous way with a chorus, he stood out from the crowd. And the vision of Coombes and former bandmates Mick Quinn and Danny Goffey prancing around in the video for signature hit Alright is an enduring image for all Supergrass fans.

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Sitting in the offices of his record label in west London to talk about his forthcoming solo tour, he barely looks any older than when Supergrass released that first batch of singles back in 1994 and 1995.

But Coombes, 36, is a different person now: calmer and more measured, and very much enjoying stepping out on his own after so many years of being in a band.

“I’ve never really had a proper job,” he says. “Well, I worked at a garden centre once, but got fired for smoking in the rose bushes.

“I’ve got two kids now, so other things are happening. When you’re young in a band, you’re free and easy to do as you please. The drive to make great music doesn’t change – but there will be compromises where once upon a time there weren’t.

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“I just want to get this record out to as many people as I can because I believe in it,” he adds, referring to Gaz Coombes Presents... Here Come The Bombs, which was released earlier this year.The 2010 decision to disband Supergrass, whose first album I Should Coco was the fastest-selling debut on the Parlophone label since The Beatles’ Please Please Me in 1963, wasn’t one any of the four-piece (Gaz’s brother Rob joined officially in 2002) took lightly.

“I was very unhappy at the end of Supergrass,” he says. “I think we all were, in different ways. I wasn’t happy with the quality of the music we were making, I didn’t think it was strong enough.”

The band were in the middle of recording their seventh album Release The Drones when they opted to tour one last time and call it a day. After the break-up Coombes sat at home playing with his two children, not really sure what he was going to do next.

“I could’ve easily had a divorce-like period where I disappeared up my own a... and wrote a load of rubbish,” he says. “I think this is some of the best stuff I’ve ever written, and [producer] Sam Williams came over to listen and reassured me that I had to finish the songs and release them.”

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His first solo album certainly doesn’t pick up where Supergrass left off. He’s aware that some fans would have wanted exactly that, while others might have preferred an acoustic album. But pleasing himself was his only criteria.

“It was a really liberating experience to be on my own, to find out what I can do and what my particular voice would be,” he says. “Other people’s expectations weren’t in my mind. I knew this album was a blank canvas for me, and I felt that I could do anything I wanted to do regardless of what I’d done before.

“It was important for me to leave Supergrass alone as well, I didn’t want to carry that on, but I don’t want to tread on it either.”

The resulting album is bold if not radical. Guitars are used sparingly, and in come electronic sounds and exciting new textures.

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“That was what I was really into this time,” says Coombes. “I really liked the idea of not having a chorus in the traditional sense, but just cutting into a new section of the song. Playing with the sonics and getting that right was really interesting to me, and while I wasn’t too drawn to electric guitars, I did want those moments.

“There’s the end of Hot Fruit, the very ending particularly, which is really in your face. I think it startles people. I wanted that part to be loud, but you can’t be loud if you’re loud all the time.”

Coombes has few regrets about the passing of Supergrass. “There’s no part of me that wishes the band hadn’t split up,” he says. “It was the right time, and now is the right time for what I’m doing now.

“It feels a little bit like washing clean. I might not have the youthful exuberance I once did, but I couldn’t be happier.”

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Gaz Coombes plays the Brudenell Social Club, Leeds on October 20.

Musical journey – The Jennifers to Supergrass to solo

Gareth Michael Coombes was born in Oxford on March 8, 1976.

Prior to forming Supergrass, Coombes was in The Jennifers with Danny Goffey and Mick Quinn.

He has three brothers: Rob, who joined Supergrass in 2002, Charly, who plays in Gaz’s current live band and was once in the 22-20s, and Eddie, another musician, who lives in Paris.

Supergrass released six albums, selling more than five million copies around the world.

Gaz and his partner Jools have two daughters, Raya May and Tiger.

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