After a decade away, the return of Supergrass for a 25th anniversary tour and boxset celebrates a band who were always pop masters – while never quite fitting in. John Earls hears from four men determined to keep their identity
Supergrass’ cartoon logo was one of the classic images of the 90s, immediately marking out the trio’s distinctive looks and personalities: spiky-haired pixieish frontman Gaz Coombes, long-haired wildman drummer Danny Goffey and elder statesman bassist Mick Quinn. Gaz’s older brother, laidback hippy keyboardist Rob, was seamlessly incorporated into the imagery when he joined officially for fourth album Life On Other Planets in 2002.
That they thrived together for six albums is testament to honing each other’s skills and individualism while keeping a heads-down work ethic. Supergrass are too open and approachable to be called “insular” but, well, there’s a reason their new boxset and accompanying Best Of are called The Strange Ones. It’s an otherness that Gaz feels is the band’s most potent quality. “I’m really proud of what we achieved and, more than anything, how we achieved it,” he says, explaining the reasons why they’re back, 10 years after their final show in 2010. “We kept our own identity. That’s hard to do. It’s hard not to fall into the trap of becoming generic. When pop gets big, it unfortunately usually means it sounds like something else, because there’s a template and a formula. When something brand new comes along, it usually gets watered down, but I’m proud that we approached our albums always as a reaction to the music we’d just made.”
Mick agrees, citing Supergrass’ return as a corrective to the current scene. “Listening back to our gigs for the boxset, there’s an element of danger,” says Mick, who joined shoegaze heroes Swervedriver in 2015. “Our shows were quite spontaneous, and I think bands over-worry about making mistakes. They work at every second of a gig, which makes things very safe and quite bland. Hopefully, what we’ll bring on our return is that bit of danger. I always liked the feeling our music could fall over at some point… and it sometimes did. That’s what’s missing at the moment, the sense of the unknown.”
A SPARK REIGNITED
Although there wasn’t much personal animosity between the four when Supergrass split, the disappointment that they’d stopped being able to communicate musically left its mark. Gaz quickly emba
