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What were the big surprises for you in the chart?
"I think it's kind of intriguing more than surprising. I suppose people who aren't in there more than people who are! They're very cagey about giving too much away. The two biggest bands in the world, what I think the two biggest bands in the world are, aren't in there. The Rolling Stones and U2 I don't think are in there, but I don't know if we're allowed to say that! It tends to be kind of like, the really rich people aren't the people who invent things, outside of the music they're the people who do brilliant design modifications to things that have already been invented. You don't get the money for inventing the thing. You get the money for improving the design and marketing it. So, there's no Nirvana in there, but there's a lot of people that were influenced by them. It's funny. Why are we so intrigued by charts? I suppose there's something about it. It's a good excuse to play lots of music that people are going to like, it's pretty obvious."
What do you think of the method the researchers chose to decide on the top album? Is it the be all and end all of research?
"Well, it's good to know what the big selling things are, and everybody's got a really keen sense of what music they like. No one can tell you...if some band you like hasn't sold as many as some band you don't like...it doesn't make you like that band any less. What am I trying to say? They often do critical assessments of the best records ever made, or the best singles ever made, but there's something about sales figures you can't argue with. I think it's intriguing."
It used to be the case that bands could manage a top twenty hit and their record company would be happy. Now you're expected to get top ten or be dropped!
"You can sell loads of records and get dropped - it happened to Toploader. Maybe no bad thing, but it's probably not a sustainable business model, the music industry. They're spending more and more money to sell less and less records. Maybe rock stars shouldn't drive Bentleys and live in carports, maybe we should be more ascetic, monk-like."
Rock stars have never been like that, though!
"No, absolutely, but there's something gone from pop. Smash Hits has folded and it's been replaced by celebrity culture. There's a lot less...you still need bands to take lots of drugs and get f**ked and make big mistakes and live out our fantasies - but celebrities do that now, it's been distilled a little bit. Don't you think that the bands used to fill that celebrity function? It's not as good. It's good when people actually do things! It's more fun being in a band."
What advice would you give to people who think they can't be in a band - maybe because they don't play the right instruments?
"You've just got to do it. That's the important thing about making music, is just do it. If you do it every day, suddenly you'll know how to do it."
You didn't have any training yourself, did you?
"No, but I am now, having loads of music lessons now, wish I'd done it years ago!"
You don't seem to have done too badly on it!
"That's the most wonderful thing about pop music, is that you don't have to know everything in the world, you just have to know one thing and three chords. It's simple, and it's an easy way to express yourself. It's a great thing about the great pop bands of yore, is that there was a 'could be you' aspect that there is with celebrity, but these people all had a brilliant idea, all really enjoying themselves dressing up as monsters or whatever. But bringing it back tenuously to the Nation's Favourite Albums, it's quite surprising that there are a lot of recent albums featured very high up in the Top 100.
"Record sales now are sort of bigger than ever before. A big record now, you'll sell ten times as many as the Beatles! Or even Phil Collins, although I guess it costs more to market and promote things, having spent more on touring and promoting tools that you need now to make...it's just a very expensive operation. It kind of takes all the fun out of it. When it's cheap, you get a lot of random, wild things happening. If we're not careful it'll end up like the film industry where everything's focus-grouped to death, no one's really willing to take a chance.
"That's the thing that suffers when a record company is feeling the pinch, they won't take a chance on anything, and it's the outsiders that always bring in the exciting music. I think Blur probably would have been dropped even before we did 'Parklife' in the current climate. But everyone's worried about their jobs, so they're looking at what kind of bands are selling records - this band, this song - record companies won't invest in longshots, but it's the longshots that pay off big. Where did Nirvana come from, where did the Beatles come from?"
Music's not going to just stop 'being', though!
"In America, it's all very genre-specific. That was the great thing about Top Of The Pops, and Smash Hits, and those kinds of institutions, was that they'd have this mix on, then they'd have Kylie and Jason on. There was something wonderfully universal about it. That's an important thing about pop music - a good rap record is just a good record and a good pop record is a good record and people just want to hear good records, not good rap records or pop records. That's the nice thing about an ultimate top ten is that everything in there really has profound merit. Talking about music is a bit like talking about inkblots. You're projecting what you think about yourself. Music is just like a complete abstract form and to say 'this is a s**t abstract form' is really criticising yourself a little bit. You project a lot of yourself into your comments about music. I think."
Do you think you've managed to remain un-jaded by the music industry to an extent?
"I absolutely love everything about it. I love making records, I love playing music, I'm even intrigued by this promulgation of music, that's why I do a bit of presenting, cos I like that side of it as well - it's good fun. I'm not young any more, I'm 38, and I'm not sure..."
Have you contemplated the big 40 yet?
"I have, and I think youth culture has been a tyranny and I don't know...I think they might have blown it with their lack of interest in music, and their vapid fascination with celebrity. Maybe it's time for a bit of rebellion from the slipper-wearing [brigade]."
Take That have just had a big resurgence. Maybe that's indicative of a change in the market?
Music, I always found in the past, seasons with time. I find now that I hear bands I didn't like when I was 15 or 16 and now I hear them on the radio and it reminds me of being 15 or 16 and I want to hear them again. It's strange, I hated A-Ha at the time, but I heard an A-Ha record the other day, and I thought 'this is much better than what's going on now'.
You have to embrace the cheese in your life!
"I agree! It's such a powerful thing, pop music. It's such a potent elixir. I just wonder...it's not rock 'n' roll at the moment, it's gone back to where it started, it's kind of cabaret with polished performers singing songs they haven't written, that have been written for them. It's sort of very professional."
You've worked with Keith Allen - what do you think of his daughter Lily Allen's music and her constant pronouncements on everyone else's business?
"She's a good pop star, pop stars should do that! I wouldn't trust anyone who someone like David Cameron or any political person is namedropping to appear cool. They all say they like the Arctic Monkeys, but I think that's kind of disempowering for the band. I think the best way to connect with youth if you're not a youth is to be a grownup and just not be an arsehole. I just don't think aping youth or claiming to be interested in the things that youth is obsessed with makes you any hipper. It makes you look faintly ridiculous. It's important for grownups to be grownups. I've been thinking it over myself because I don't know what kind of record to make next myself - do I make another pop record with Betty Boo or do I make a pipe and slippers album about living in the countryside and picking apples and having children? You're selling a culture, really, when you're in a band, that's what you're selling. It's not just about melodies or drums, it's about who you are. That's what you're selling. It's like celebrity with a soundtrack."
Who are your favourite artists around at the moment?
"I've been going back rather than forward with my musical tastes, going back and listening to the people who influenced the people who influenced me, if you know what I mean. So, maybe I would have listened to the Beatles, now I listen to Roy Orbison. Going backwards in time. It's cyclical, it's just like a big junkshop, when you're writing songs it's sort of...recipes are all the bits that people didn't want, it's just trying to find the right combination of leftover bits."
I've been told you run an organic cheese farm. What kind of cheeses do you do? Is it a profitable cheese farm? What cheeses do you prefer to eat?
"I moved out to Oxfordshire when our first child was born and we bought a farmhouse that's got loads of empty barns. I found a local cheesemaker and he's starting to make cheese. It's great. There's one smelly one and one soft spreadable one! I think agriculture needs its first superstar! I was picking apples the other day in the orchard the other day - it's a biblical image, it's like Eden, but you think of farming and you think of disease and plastic bags, it's got an image problem, agriculture. With the current obsession with food it's natural that people are wanting to know how stuff is produced more, now. I like that."
Does this organic thread run through your food habits as a whole? Are you a healthy eater?
"I do grow my own vegetables - but it's cheaper to get Harrods to deliver them! It's much nicer though...once you've pulled a potato out of the ground...It's sort of like the first time you go in a helicopter - you never want to go in a car ever again after that. I suppose it's like that - you don't want to go back to the supermarket once you've pulled a few potatoes out of the ground. It's very, very satisfying."
You've moved to the countryside - what's the best and worst thing about living there as opposed to in a town or city?
"It's really good, just looking back, it's great for the kids. I live in the Cotswolds, which is still a part of Notting Hill, really, except everyone's richer!"
You were talking in your Independent column about looking out and seeing Sam Mendes' house across from you...
"It's stupid - there's one guy in the village available to mow the lawns, and everybody else is a company director."
Does everyone keep themselves to themselves then?
"Actually, well, [you should] never tell anyone anything that you don't want anyone to know - in the countryside, it's different to London. There's still the sort of...it's kind of multilayered, you have the glamorous people in their big houses...it's just like London with no houses in between, really!"
You're really into your astronomy - didn't you name your children after astronomers?
"They're not all named after astronomers! One's named after an Indian warrior, and another named after one of Lynard Skynyrd!"
A lot of celebrities do give their kids weird names - not that you have!
"It's f**king irresponsible. We started off with an unusual name - once you've done one, you can't really call the next one John. We had a boy, then we had twin boys. The first one had quite an unusual name, we never thought we'd have to think of two more boys' names! Get the really big names book out. They all shorten well - Primo, Gali and Arty. They'll probably all be called Big Ears, anyway!"
What about Chris Martin and Gwyneth Paltrow calling their kid Apple? What do you think of that?
"I'd just be inclined to knock anything they did, I think, so probably not the best one to comment!"
Is the album still coming along, or have you devoted all your energies to the twins?
"Pretty much, yeah, and I've been writing a book as well, so that's taken ages. I really enjoy writing the column in the Independent, and I was offered a deal for my autobiography, so I did that, and that's taken most of the year. I like working with Alison, it's good to dabble in a bit of pop, but I probably need to make a pipe and slippers album. I'm 38 and I just go out in my trainers and jeans. I need to accept middle age with grace! Not try and be a teenager. It's funny, there are more music magazines for people over 30 than there are for people under 30. I was terrified of being old, but maybe."
What about Blur - will we be seeing a reunion in the near future?
"i think there's going to be another Blur record. I've got a feeling Blur's going to have a happy ending. It would be a shame to leave it at that. No one's shagged anyone's girlfriend or that - there's nothing that can't be fixed. It's a long time to do the same thing with the same people -any job, it was twelve or thirteen years or something with the same people. I think it's been really good for all of us to branch out - we can come back to it invigorated."
Is that a thing for a few years time?
Possibly next year, I'm hoping.
If you could give us one musical recommendation, what would it be?
Oh, god. At the moment, I'm listening to Joni Mitchell's Hejira record. It's such a grownup record, though, musically it's just gorgeous and her voice is just so full of yearning, but really sweet songs. I love that record. It's a good bubblebath record, and it's bubblebath season - so that's my top tip. Joni Mitchell. Marianne Faithfull introduced me to it, it's proper posh. But if you want to rock, AC/DC every time! I'm not too old for AC/DC!
Thanks for chatting, Alex!
