‘We didn't slag off other bands': Gaz Coombes on Supergrass' success

Sydney Morning Herald

23-04-2025

There's a pair of boxing gloves hanging from a hook in Gaz Coombes' music studio, which is built inside the double garage of his house in the village of Wheatley, near Oxford.
'They were a gift from some friends,' says Coombes. 'They got me a punching bag too. It's good for when the lyrics aren't coming easily. I can take it out on something.'
Does he float like a butterfly and sting like a bee? 'No!' he says, laughing. 'I float like a heavyweight and have no sting whatsoever. But it's fun.'
Although he's now 49, with a greying beard, and wearing thick-framed spectacles and a Brooklyn baseball cap, there's something of the impish kid about Coombes. Whenever he talks about his time as a pop star in the '90s, there's still a sense of wonder, as if he's pinching himself. And his memories of childhood and adolescence are things he cherishes. He even lives in the same house where he grew up.
'I moved to Brighton in 1997 and lived there for almost 10 years. Then I had my first child and my mum got sick with cancer, so I came home to be around her. After she died, I just didn't leave. And then my dad wanted to sell the family house, but I couldn't let anyone else have it. So I bought it, and here I am.'
It was, he says, a 'very sentimental purchase'. 'I have nothing but good memories of growing up here. I had a very lucky childhood and this house was full of people all the time. It was like a party house where aunts and uncles and friends and relatives would come. It's pretty special.'
One of those uncles changed the young Coombes' life when he went away to work in the Bahamas, leaving his record collection in the Coombes family basement.
'I was told not to go near Uncle Pete's records. I was told: 'We need to look after them. They're precious.' So, of course, I would sneak off at any moment just to get down there and play them. And that's where I uncovered most of the greats in music at quite a young age. I was listening to After the Gold Rush by Neil Young and Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's The Sex Pistols and Patti Smith's Horses when I was 10 or 11. I loved chart stuff from that time in the mid-'80s, like Madonna, but this was like discovering a new language.'
At school, he was teased 'for being girly'. Danny Goffey, a boy two years his senior, stepped in to protect him from bullies, and when he told Coombes he played drums, they decided to form a band, which they called The Jennifers. When they were offered a two-single deal with Nude Records, home to Suede, Coombes had to get his mother to sign the contract for him, as he was only 15.
'I remember doing my schoolwork in the back of a Transit van on the way to play a gig in Manchester, to support some punk band called Compulsion,' he says. 'I was playing in a band, but I really had to finish this English assignment.'
TAKE 7: THE ANSWERS ACCORDING TO GAZ COOMBES
Worst habit? Biscuits. Growing up I watched a lot of Sesame Street, so I blame Cookie Monster. He normalised it.
Greatest fear? That there will be no more biscuits. What else? Massive crocodiles. Or being bitten by a poisonous spider in the Australian Outback when I'm miles from anywhere.
The line that stayed with you? There was this '60s English band called Fire who had a song called Father's Name Is Dad, and it had the lyric: 'My father's name was dad, my mother's name was mum, how can I take the blame for anything I've done?' I thought that was so irreverent and punky.
Biggest regret? I regret never seeing Elliott Smith or Nirvana play live.
Favourite book? I love history books. My favourite at the moment is The Faber Book Of Reportage. It's people writing first-hand accounts of history, like a Viking funeral in 922AD, or a private audience with Elizabeth I in 1597.
The artwork/song you wish was yours? A version of Tangled Up In Blue by Bob Dylan, but not the one on Blood On The Tracks, which I don't really like because it's too upbeat. It's an alternate acoustic version from 1974 that I've only been able to find on YouTube.
If you could time travel, where would you choose to go? London in 1966. Hendrix played his first concert in the UK, The Beatles released Revolver and England won the World Cup.
The Jennifers split in 1992 and Coombes needed money. He got a job at his local Harvesters restaurant, which was where he met Mickey Quinn, a bass player and musical kindred spirit. Coombes often speaks of the unique chemistry between himself, Goffey and Quinn, who went on to form Supergrass in 1993. They quickly gelled and co-wrote songs that were fast, clever, catchy and quirky.
Their debut album, 1995's I Should Coco, sold a million copies and became the biggest-selling debut album on the Parlophone label since The Beatles' Please Please Me.
First single Caught By The Fuzz was about Coombes being busted for hash possession when he was 15. And Alright, which was so bouncy it sounded like they recorded it while jumping on trampolines, was aided by a madcap video filmed at Portmeirion in Wales, the setting for 1960s cult TV show The Prisoner.
It was the video that attracted Steven Spielberg. Or rather, his kids. The story goes that they turned him on to Supergrass, and after watching the clip he had an idea – to make a Monkees -style TV show in which they would star.
'We always joke that his kids were kind of like: 'Daddy! We want that band! You need to get that band for us!'' says Coombes. 'So we were invited over to the Amblin offices in Universal Studios just to have a meeting with him. I was sitting there next to Steven Spielberg at this table, and I was a big fan of the Twilight Zone movie he produced, so I remember talking to him a bit about that.'
The TV show didn't eventuate. Can he imagine an alternate reality where it did? 'I think it might actually have f---ed us up if we'd done it. None of us wanted a shortcut to fame. We just wanted to make great records.'
Although Supergrass are always herded under the '90s Britpop umbrella, 'we didn't live in London, and we didn't slag off any other bands and get into the news that way, or s--- like that. We were just really enjoying the adventure together.'
That adventure included touring America in Dolly Parton's former tour bus, and sharing stages with Pearl Jam, Radiohead and Foo Fighters. In fact, Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins, who died in 2022, was a huge fan, friend and booster.
'God bless him,' says Coombes. 'He was such a diamond of a guy. A really, really special human being. We miss him. He was also a real nerd about music. I had so many lengthy chats with him about things like Pacific Ocean Blue by Dennis Wilson.'
Supergrass went on to make six albums that all entered the UK top 20, but in 2010, when they played rough mixes of their proposed seventh album, Release The Drones, to the record company, they could tell by the looks on their faces that it was over, 'and to tell you the truth, we were tired, we knew the chemistry wasn't there and things weren't firing any more'.
Coombes went out on his own and has made four solo albums. The most recent, 2023's Turn The Car Around, received the best reviews and highest chart placing of his solo career.
When Goffey suggested getting back together to tour behind the 30th anniversary of I Should Coco, Coombes had to think about it. 'I'm not really into nostalgia,' he says. 'I've very much got into a rhythm where I keep moving forward creatively. But then I thought about it, and this is a really special band and this album is a very special thing that we did. This tour is celebrating that.'
As he approaches 50, does he feel like a different person to the teenager who wrote those songs with his two mates in the mid-'90s? 'Not really. I think we all still feel the essence of these mad little songs about our lives. When I play those songs now, I think about us writing them together in the next village, just near where I am right now,' he says.
'So, no, it doesn't feel like a different person. It's still me.'