Goosebumps on a trip away from Blunt's misery

Goosebumps on a trip away from Blunt's misery
Sydney Morning Herald - Sydney,New South Wales,Australia
IT'S DAY 502 of James Blunt's Back To Bedlam world domination tour - a relentless march to victory that began 4 million album sales ago in February 2004 with a ...
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'I'm singing things that are incredibly personal. Most people will be pretty insecure about that'.

IT'S DAY 502 of James Blunt's Back To Bedlam world domination tour - a relentless march to victory that began 4 million album sales ago in February 2004 with a slot supporting Katie Melua in Dublin. Now, many, many kilometres later, a radio station in Philadelphia is presenting James Blunt, in association with an agricultural products company.

From a battered case, Blunt gets out his favourite acoustic guitar, a 1966 Gibson. In torn and frayed Levi's, sensible jumper and knackered trainers, Blunt perches on a stool in this windowless bunker. He's short and slight but with a definite hint of bicep bulge. This rosy-cheeked former captain in the Life Guards looks like a scruffy mature student who needs a haircut, and perhaps something done about those flecks of grey. The only thing bling about the 28-year-old responsible for the biggest-selling album of 2005 is a gold signet ring on his left pinkie, bearing the family crest of the Hampshire Blounts - the original spelling of his name. (No, says Blunt, he didn't change his name to appear less posh. "Blunt" is simply how you pronounce "Blount".)

For the benefit of listeners, he runs through You're Beautiful, the never-ending ballad of '05, the single even Blunt got so sick of that he had his record company delete it.

I'm sitting beside him as he sings the forlorn Goodbye My Lover. I have, I confess, goosebumps. Played quietly and achingly, the song soars. The DJ is equally floored. How did Blunt conjure that emotion, he wonders? "I blame her, obviously," sniffs Blunt in his clipped tones.

What can we expect from his second album? "I've definitely got some happier things to write about - it won't be a second instalment of the misery." Does he keep up with any of his army buddies? Yep, a few "have dropped back in from Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, Iraq - it's weird for them to be at my shows". Nope, he's not averse to the idea of playing for the troops abroad. "I'd love to go back to Kosovo - take away the humans and it's a really special place."

The session over, Blunt heads upstairs to play to a sell-out crowd of 300. He tells them that No Bravery is a song from Kosovo in 1999 - as head of a squadron of NATO peacekeeping troops he witnessed atrocities he is understandably reluctant to discuss.

"This is the only happy song in the set, so enjoy it," he says by way of introduction to Wise Men, before explaining that the lyric "semi by the sea" refers to a house and not a "semi-erection - I'm not a pervert. And it's not a semi-automatic, either."

Sublime tunes and angsty heartache punctured by blokey banter delivered by a flirty, poetic action man with a pukka accent: the crowd goes mental.

Gig done, it's time to meet his public before a three-hour drive to New York. If Blunt is tired he isn't showing it; he can get by on three hours' sleep a night, he says. He is the picture of focused equanimity. Might officer training at Sandhurst have made him disciplined and task-oriented? Or just better at getting out of bed in the morning?

"Um, maybe. I was pretty confident that I was capable of doing music before I was in the army," he says. "I'd decided from an early age, I guess ..." He stops. He will concede that, having been sent to Harrow aged seven, he's perhaps better equipped than most to be away from home so much. But he knows what people think of his officer-class background. Of the army-funded private schooling and university degree, the stint at Sandhurst and the four years serving Queen and country in Kosovo and later on ceremonial royal duties in London. It's not very rock'n'roll, as Liam Gallagher would define the term.

Finally he says, "The answer is: I don't know. But I'm not inspecting their bunks on the tour bus." Pause. Smile. "Not too often."

TWO T-SHIRTS. One banner. Three breasts (pairs thereof). One declaration of gay love. Four offers of a good time. Camera phones aplenty. One hundred and twenty CDs. If you wanted to construct a crude statistical model of the popularity of James Blunt, you could do worse than hang about after one of his concerts and tot up the things thrust his way.

The girls come first, young and flirty. Then the boyfriends (there aren't many unattached lads here). Then the more mature women, twenty- and thirtysomethings. Then the weirdos. Finally, after an hour's stoic lingering, the hardcore fans step up. Two nurses sport homemade T-shirts saying "Blunt" and, ta-daaa, "Sharp"; across another fan's back it says, "No, YOU'RE beautiful".
Blunt knows all about marketing and music. At Bristol University, he switched from aerospace engineering to sociology. An attempt to rebel against his military-oriented career path? "I wish I could say yes," he smiles, "but it was just easier, and my mates were doing it. Only six hours of lectures a week."

He found sociology interesting because "you could direct it the way you wanted". So, as he'd wanted to be a musician from the age of 14, he pointed the subject of his thesis towards his ambition. Its title: The Commodification of Image - Production of a Pop Idol. Was it research for your music career? "Exactly. It was [before the TV show] when Pop Idol meant a different thing."

He found sociology useful for songwriting, too. "There are some aspects that are relevant to the songs I'm writing. About the way humans interact, the way we are as social beings..."

But he waves away the suggestion that in some way writing his thesis helped him get where he is. "It was talking about how the music industry controls image and develops something. But when it comes down to it, I haven't felt like I've changed or controlled anything." The Blunt phenomenon? It's all about his songs, he insists.

His first gig was in 2000, at the tiny Water Rats pub in London's King's Cross, while he was still in the army. He played the London pub circuit for two years before being picked up by his management, Twenty First Artists, which also looks after Elton John. More than one record company backed off, fearing he was too posh to push onto the record-buying public. It was at a gig at an industry showcase festival in Austin, Texas, that Linda Perry - hit songwriter to Pink, Christina Aguilera and Gwen Stefani -decided Blunt was an artist of sufficient calibre to sign to her Custard label. Even then, his debut album Back to Bedlam was on release for almost nine months before the single You're Beautiful began its climb up the charts.

Blunt's a wary bloke. When he wants to be, he can be pithy and funny. But while an unfailingly polite host, there's a reserve, a stiffness about him. There are other understandable reasons for his standoffishness. He's been slagged off by the music industry, media and musical peers alike, as the epitome of MOR tedium. "I'm standing on stage, singing things that are incredibly personal. Before you know it, someone's written a newspaper article saying how meaningless it is - most people will be pretty insecure about that!"

The tabloids have slithered over his past, tracking down army buddies, door-stopping his parents and digging up the ex-girlfriend about whom he reportedly wrote You're Beautiful - Dixie Chassay, a casting director and now paramour of actor Tom Hollander (he refuses to confirm if she's The One). One of the co-writers on Back To Bedlam has been trying to squeeze more money out of him. A tragedy from his younger days was dragged out and the facts twisted to cause him maximum damage.

Yet, it never occurred to him to write a song about his experiences. He prefers to use his songs to talk about his feelings.

"I'm not a particularly, overtly, outwardly emotional person," he said. "Like most blokes, you don't like talking about your feelings. That's most girlfriends' complaints about their boyfriends, isn't it? And I definitely fall into that bracket - but I can get it down in a song."

The Independent

James Blunt will perform two sold-out shows at the Hordern Pavilion on Thursday and Friday.

ABOUT JAMES BLUNT
* 1978: Born James Hillier Blount in Tidworth, Wiltshire, into an upper middle-class family.
* 1985: Sent to prestige boys school Harrow, at the age of 7.
* 1992: Picks up guitar for the first time and plays along to a Nirvana song.
* 1999: Joins British Army, before shipping out to Kosovo.
* 2000: First professional gig in London.
* 2002: Part of honour guard for the funeral of the Queen Mother. Leaves army soon after.
* 2004: Releases debut album, Back To Bedlam, in Britain.* 2005: Third single, You're Beautiful, goes to No.1 around the world; album sells more than 350,000 copies in Australia.