How To Fail With Elizabeth Day - James Blunt - ‘The Iraq war lost me my GRAMMYS’

Episode Date: October 23, 2024

TW: miscarriage and pregnancy loss You’ll probably have heard of James Blunt. And if you haven’t, you’ve almost definitely heard his most famous song, You’re Beautiful. There was a time in the early 2000s that it was EVERYWHERE. And that’s because James Blunt was absolutely huge. His debut 2004 album, Back To Bedlam, was the biggest-selling album of the decade in the UK, shifting over 12 million copies. I know!! TWELVE MILLION. He has released another six albums since then, every one of them a top 10 hit, winning two Brit Awards and two Ivor Novellos along the way. But Blunt faced an astonishing cultural  backlash for his ubiquity - eventually choosing to fight back in his own words on Twitter, where he rapidly became known for his acerbic put-downs and self-deprecating humour. He joins me to talk about the ‘honour’ of being a ‘one-hit wonder’, his rejection by every single major record label and his failure to win any Grammys, despite being nominated for five in one night. We also talk about his friendship with the late Carrie Fisher, whether he bears a grudge against any of the musicians who slagged him off (looking at you, Damon Albarn and Noel Gallagher), the absurdity of fame and - in a moving exchange - the male experience of miscarriage. At points, his humour was so dry it took me a couple of seconds to realise he’d made a joke. Listening back, I can confirm I find him utterly hilarious. Back To Bedlam is about to be released as a remastered 20th anniversary edition. Have something to share of your own? I'd love to hear from you! Click here to get in touch: howtofailpod.com Production & Post Production Manager: Eric Ryan Studio and Mix Engineer: Matias Torres Sole and Josh Gibbs Producer: Hannah Talbot Executive Producer: Carly Maile Head of Marketing: Kieran Lancini How to Fail is an Elizabeth Day and Sony Music Entertainment Production. Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts To bring your brand to life in this podcast, email [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn. We're at a time where B2B selling, that's businesses selling to other businesses, is tougher than ever, which is why I want to tell you about LinkedIn Sales Navigator. This is a sales intelligence platform that helps professionals reach and engage high-value customers, drive higher revenue, and increase sales performance. Sales Navigator helps you target the right buyers, flags job changes or which accounts you should prioritize, so you can find those buyers that are most likely to convert. LinkedIn has one billion members and Sales Navigator taps into that

to give you the most up-to-date data, enabling you to unlock conversations with the people that matter. Right now, you can try LinkedIn Sales Navigator and get a 60-day free trial at LinkedIn.com forward slash advanced. That's LinkedIn.com forward slash advanced for a 60-day free trial. Let LinkedIn Sales Navigator help you sell like a superstar today. Just go to linkedin.com forward slash advanced and get started. Welcome to How to Fail, the podcast that flips the traditional interview format on its head and asks its guests about three times things went wrong. Before we get to our guest today,

I wanted to mention our subscriber podcast, Failing with Friends, where my guest and I answer your questions and we offer advice on some of your failures too. Here's a bit of Agony Uncle James Blount. So it's a failing of men to not be open and say, can we talk about that? It's not working for me because if we did, we'd smooth it out much earlier. I know I just absorb, absorb until I just reached a tipping point. And then the tipping point is much more dramatic than it probably ever needed to be. Do join in by following the link in the podcast notes and you can send me an email or look out for my call-outs once a month on Instagram for quickfire questions.

Thank you so much. My guest today has a ski lift in Verbier named after him, built his own nightclub in his back garden, counted Carrie Fisher amongst his best friends, once gave Ed Sheeran a scar with a ceremonial sword, and at university formed one half of a busking duo with adventurer Bear Grylls called Limp Willie and the Disappointments. Despite these myriad feats, James Blunt is best known as a musician. His debut 2004 album Back to Bedlam, which contained the worldwide number one, You're Beautiful, was the biggest selling album of the decade in the UK, shifting

over 12 million copies. He's released another six albums since then, every one of them a top ten hit, winning two Brit Awards and two Ivanoveloos along the way. A success then by any metric. But at the height of his fame, Blunt also faced an astonishing backlash. He decided to retaliate, becoming an unlikely sensation on Twitter for his acerbic put-downs and self-deprecating humour. This emotional resilience was partly formed by his background. Sent to boarding school at the age of seven, Blunt was sponsored by the Army through his studies at the University of Bristol. He served for six years, seeing active service in Kosovo, before leaving in 2002 and releasing back to Bedlam two years later. A remastered 20th anniversary edition of the album that changed his life is about to be released and Blunt will be back on the road from February

on a UK arena tour. By his own admission, he loves being on the road and is famed for being the neatest person on the tour bus, a legacy perhaps of his military service. Life is for living, Blunt says, and it's something I've been teaching my children. The saddest word in the world is no, and the most exciting word in the world is yes. James Blunt, thank you for saying yes to coming on to How to Fail. Elizabeth, thanks so much for inviting me.

I'm so excited to have you in front of me. What do you like as a father? I'm very hands-on. I'm away a lot. So I could be described as an absent father in that time. This way, this year, I've been on tour the whole time. But when I'm there, I need to make up for lost time. And I'm really hands-on. You know, also I'm a shorter man. And so they're really the only humans who are about my height. And I really enjoy it. Do you tell them that you love them? Of course. Because I have had the great joy of meeting your parents through a scream

because I watched this great documentary that's on Amazon Prime about you called One Brit Wonder and your parents other than you are the breakout stars of the show. They really are. And it's clearly a loving relationship but the love isn't easily expressed. Do you think that's fair? Well as you saw from the documentary, the painful word feelings is not something that we express very well. And I love my father dearly. He is my hero and guide and even to this day he's my bookkeeper as well.

When I go on tour he pays the bills while I'm away and if my band invoice rather than a record label who take three months, my dad will pay my band in three days and they love him for that. But I've never had a conversation with him about how I am, what's going on inside other than the everyday workings of life. We've never had a kind of true conversation and we don't really need it either. I think my mother just got just emotionally stunted. But I've heard you say that the emotional repression is actually quite helpful because it comes out in your music. Exactly. I mean, I was, as you saw, I was sent away to boarding school when I was seven.

It's a bizarre experience to not be around parents from that very, very early age makes you very, very independent. And boarding schools are pretty harsh places in that way. I don't know if you went to a boarding school. You certainly sound like you did. You're amongst posh friends here, James. No backlash from me. There's no hiding it here. Part of the reason I imagine you were sent to boarding school so young is because your father was also in the military. I understand that the Blunts have military service dating back to 850 AD. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, my father wasn't, you know, he was in the army as a

colonel. He didn't really bring the army home. It's only my mother I had to call her, sir. He introduced me to the army as an option. Not that he forced it down, but then I had a bursary through school and through university. You can pay that money back, can't you? But if you don't, then you owe them the four years. I couldn't actually pay the army the money back because my parents, I think, had spent it on slot machines in Andover. So I was compelled to join for four years and I ended up doing six. But you moved around a lot as a child, didn't you? And I always find this very interesting. A lot of successful people that I have the honour of interviewing had some kind of itinerant

childhood. Very often it is military service, but sometimes it's just lack of funds. And I'm very interested in that because did you feel the pressure then to make new friends quickly and to perform almost? Well definitely to make new friends, yes. We would arrive on an army patch having moved every two years as they do in the army and my mother would kick us out of the door, me and my sister at the time, and she would say go and make friends and you walk around an army patch knocking on doors saying hi there do you have any children who are our age? And they would say no, and you get to the next door until you meet someone who goes, yeah, I have. And then those people would become our best friends for the two

years that we'd been there. So I remember specific, you know, I've had a few best friends in my life for two years, and then we'd move on and I never see them again, ever. Is there any sadness about that? Not really. It's just something we were used to. I remember those particular friends with great warmth and great memories. So when you see your children now, is there part of you that wants to give them a different experience of childhood? I'm not saying yours was unhappy because by any metric it was very happy and you knew you were loved and we love your parents, but is there part of you that wants to give them a different experience?

No, I think I probably made it worse. With the Army you move around every two years. Nowadays I'm, as a touring musician, moving even faster and so at the moment mine are in a school in Ibiza and a school in the UK and a school in Switzerland and we move them every single term. So you know my children they can't, as a result of that, they can't even read or write. But I have an amazing way of life. Well, that's fine. Yeah. Do they speak three different languages then? Yeah, vaguely. That's so impressive.

Which is amazing. If I'm in a shop, I can turn around to a, you know, to a six-year-old and say, what am I trying to say here? And that person can translate for me. What do you like about touring? I mean, so much of it. It's a young person's job in many ways because we're living on a bus with 16 bunks on there, 16 people sleeping together and we play in different cities. We have an after-party after every concert really and we fall asleep. Your bed is only three meters away from where you've been drinking on the bus where the upstairs or downstairs lounge is where you have your party, fall into a bed three metres away, wake up in a new city and get up and play.

So the fun we have as a band and a crew is unmatched, it's absolutely amazing. And the pleasure of doing your hobby as your job of musician is just amazing. I don't stand on a stage and love the screams or the cheering. It's the fact that I'm singing songs that mean something to me and that people should connect is an absolutely amazing experience because we are in a world where we're so divided by so many things. Every politician is trying to tell us why we're different from the next person. Social media is totally anti-social and bad for our health in every way. And music is one of those rare things that brings strangers together.

And I love that. And as I say, I'm singing songs that are about what's going on in my tiny little mind and other people seem to say they feel the same way and that's rather magical and I get to do it with a bunch of mates. While you're talking, I was thinking about that backlash that you experienced at the height of your fame and we're going to get more into it because it relates to some of your failures, but there's this quote on your official website which I thought summed it up very well where it said that it was one of those weird cultural moments where dislike of an artist becomes a kind of living shorthand for all that's wrong with music and indeed British society.

becomes a kind of living shorthand for all that's wrong with music and indeed British society. And there's something about the kind of binary nature of opinion that I wonder if your training in the army helped equip you to understand what was happening. Yeah, I think so. It is bizarre nowadays how we are separated into titles, aren't we, of left or right, leave or remain. And I think my time in the army at least taught me to understand both sides and understand also that the answer probably is in the middle. I don't want to be red or blue or left or right. The answer presumably is somewhere in the middle. Do you remember the moment when you thought, I'm just not having this anymore and I'm going to tweet this? Well no it was the invention of Twitter that

gave me that freedom because before I was doing interviews with journalists and my publisher said this is a great journalist it's a great publication and and you know and they'd arrive with a present and then and then stab you in the back and the thing but all my words have been completely turned around and then they invented Twitter. And suddenly I didn't have to go through a journalist or through a record label. James Blunt was taken, so my first title was Dirty Little Blunt and I could just write what I liked. And suddenly that was just incredibly freeing.

I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr Eleanor Janega. And in Gone Medieval, we get into the greatest mysteries. The gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research. From the greatest millennium in human history. We're talking Vikings. Normans. Kings and Popes.

Who were rarely the best of friends. Murder. Rebellions. And Crusades. Find out who we really were. By subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Matt Lewis, historian and host of Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hit. Join me and world-leading experts every week as we explore the incredible

real-life history that inspires the locations, characters and storylines of Assassin's Creed. Listen and follow Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. podcasts. Your first failure is that you were rejected by every record label in the UK. Yeah. So you have left the army, you've recorded Back to Bedlam. I hadn't, no. At this stage, my last job in the army was I was the Queen Ceremonial Bodyguard based

in London. And so I was the guy who rode beside her when she's in the carriage, you know, group of us on horseback riding, protecting the Queen on horseback. And I would at night go and do concerts. And I found my manager that way and he's still my manager to this day. And then I, through him, really had the confidence to say, okay, I'm doing it. Leave the army. Chucked up a salute to my commanding officer. I gave him a demo and said, I'm out of here, and I'd got myself a kind of songwriters deal with EMI Music Publishing, but I was searching for a record deal and I was being rejected left, right and centre. It was an amazing experience of going through all of them. I got really close with a company called Virgin, who

you will have heard of, led by a man called Philippe Ascoli, a Frenchman. And it was exciting. I'd really been rejected by everyone at this stage. It was kind of getting down to last-ditch moments and Philippe Ascoli called me and said that he would like to sign me. And so they'd all gathered together and I was in with my manager, but I was also in with the senior manager who was Elton John's day-to-day manager. And there they were, saying, you're going to be a star and we love your music and we love you. And then the marketing guy through this deal, and the paperwork was there. This was the only label in the UK that offered me a deal. The marketing guy said, we love you, but we have a problem with your speaking voice.

Do you think you could do a different accent?' And I said, yeah, sure, I can do Pakistani. And at that stage, my very Scottish manager stood up, Darren McKillough is his name. I said, right, let's get the fuck out of here. I said, you know, we're not signing on the basis of that. How ridiculous. And so that was that deal gone. That was the last UK deal that didn't happen. And I went to the South by Southwest music festival in Austin, Texas, flew out a keyboard player and another guitarist to come with me. We weren't playing in the main festival, we found ourselves playing in the fringes. I was talking to those guys who had come up with me and they said that I didn't really understand. I didn't really understand how this was the last throw of the dice. And there I was on the 20th floor, I think of the Ramada Hotel on the fringes of the South by Southwest Music Festival,

and playing to 20 people. And as I finished the last note of the song, a woman who had a tear tattooed under her eye and wild dark hair and a hat on stormed over to me and said, hey, if you sign with me today, I'll send you a check for tomorrow. But I have a record label called Custard Records and I want to sign you and I want you to make the album of your dreams. And we went and got drunk together. I signed on the dotted line. She turned out to be a woman called Linda Perry from Four Non Blondes, the band. And she was the one who gave me that big break. Amazing. I'm very interested in accents and I'll tell you why because I grew up in Northern Ireland but obviously I've never picked up the accent and as a result of having this accent I was mildly bullied at secondary school in Belfast. I ended up getting a scholarship to a boarding

school in England where immediately I fitted in because I sounded right. So I have an interesting relationship with my own voice and with how posh I might or might not sound because although I'm deeply privileged in so many ways, I don't actually think I am that posh, it's just that I have this voice. But at the same time, I have this voice and I chose not to change. I must have chosen at some point not to develop an accent, not to pick up the lilt. Yeah. I mean, to put on an accent is disingenuous in the first place, isn't it? And yeah, I mean, I could have gone on radio shows and interviews and tried to put it off, but I just don't think it would have been very convincing, you know. And so yeah, mine I just apologize for and say it's my parents fault and not mine.

I want to talk more about poshness. What does poshness mean to you? Um, yeah, it's tricky. Well, it's different from snobism or snobbery, because you know, someone could you can call them a snob and that's someone who thinks they're elevated from other people and looks down on other people. Posh is, yeah, on the, well, what does it mean? I don't know. It's someone with this silly accent. It covers a range of different people, doesn't it? But you can't necessarily place where a person is from. It's, I don't know. What do you, how would you call it? Well, I don't know. It's, it's a perception that is more about the person perceiving, I think, sometimes.

And the reason I want to talk to you about this is because you had an experience of sounding posh in the 90s and early 2000s, and so did I. And I think it was a specific time in our culture where it was one of the worst things you could sound. Well, I think it's an affliction, isn't it? You could have a limp, you could have a lisp or you could be posh. They're terrible afflictions that we have to live with. Yeah, we're a minority that has prejudice that was still unrecognised. Yeah, I know you're joking, but I actually think there is something here, which is it's separate from privilege in the sense that-

Well, there's a real problem that you're a minority who are probably privileged too. You're deeply privileged, I'm deeply privileged. And you've always made it clear that you acknowledge that. You've always, whenever I've heard you interviewed, been very grateful for the opportunities that have come your way. But that's, it's sort of unfair in my eyes for you to have been discriminated against purely because of how you sounded and purely because of a perception of what your background might have been when your demo tape was landing in these record companies. And I think we're at a time now where maybe we can say that. Yeah, I would hope so. I employ a band and a crew from all corners of the country and they take the mickey out of me and my accent

from the get-go but in no stage do they judge me or think that I look at them in any ways. We're you know we're friends and equals and I respect them because they get me through so much. It's when you are judged in any way that it becomes yeah that I'm uncomfortable with. LW You've said before that the backlash that you experienced afterwards did remind you of school. That potentially reminded me of school because it just felt like bullying, which if we're honest, it was. It was a media-led backlash,

which they had even a selection of music journalists who got together and decided that I was the target that they were gonna go for. And my manager was told about that. And those people know who they are and and if you go through their press cuttings I've just put a book out actually and we put I put all the negative press in one thing and you can just see the same names again and again and it's and it's so petty and it's so puerile that it's just basically just

like school bullying. I find the music industry quite small-minded. My job is a touring musician. I think job is a touring musician. I think I'm a touring musician. I just also happen to be in the petty-minded music industry at the same time. You mentioned Elton John and one of the first major gigs you played was supporting him in Ipswich. And in the audience was a young Ed Sheeran. Yeah, amazing. Who was incredibly inspired by you.

Will you tell us the story of your friendship? Yeah, I bumped into him on the management corridors of Rocket Music Management, which Elton John had set up. Elton had set that company up because he was mismanaged. And that firm looked after Lily Allen and me and who else, I remember Steak Dido was on that books and Ed Sheeran. And so he and I bumped into each other as he was stepping out. And I didn't know at the time he'd been to the Ipswich gig

and he'd been to another show of mine where he'd actually stolen my empty Corona bottle from the front of the stage. And I guess in some ways, you know, we're both singer songwriters. So it made kind of sense that we should be managed in the same way. And his manager now today was my old day-to-day manager. And I think in many ways, they learnt a little bit about how to deal with any kind of backlash. They'd seen what had happened with me and with Ed. They kind of had the foresight to know where the traps lie ahead. And he played your beautiful when his wife was giving birth? No, that would have been miseryful. He was playing that album and another song that I

think he and I had written about our children. Okay. Yeah. So all of the... I think she's playing Your Beautiful while she's giving birth. We end up in a divorce now. Put her through any more agony. So I think you've played your beautiful wife, she's giving birth, and we end up in a divorce. Put her through any more agony. All of these rejections that you experienced in the UK, what do you think they have ended up teaching you? Well, I think all failures are for a healthy reason. They teach you something, they teach you that that path was the wrong one, but it wasn't

wrong to go down it. You kind of need to in life, go down as many paths as you can to see which is the right one. If you just found the right path immediately, you wouldn't know how great it was. You wouldn't know how lucky you've been or how much hard work has gone and you wouldn't have learned the resilience, built the team around you. And so yeah, I've always thought that every dead end, the journey down that dead end was incredibly useful. Do you think you get more creative inspiration from failure than from success? No, I get my creative inspiration from misery, primarily because misery sells. But pain is something I can translate into music more easily than happiness. Normally because if I'm happy, I'm having fun. If we're out and about having fun, I'm happy and

I'm not going to say, I've got to step off now, I'm going to write a song. You'd say, hang on, what are you doing? We're having a good time. Whereas if I'm on my own and you haven't invited me out on the fun night out that you're having, I'm going to be at home, going, oh, poor old me, I haven't been, Elizabeth hasn't taken me out. I promise always to invite you. Thank you. As long as I get to come to your nightclub and be there. Absolutely. Well, your lyrics are often very profound. And I wonder if I could speak about a specific song that you wrote. I don't know if you can find a profound lyric of mine. I'm about to quote one. You're beautiful, you're beautiful, you're beautiful

if it's true. But this one speaks to me personally because of my own experiences of mine. You're beautiful, you're beautiful, you're beautiful if it's true. But this one speaks to me personally because of my own experiences of this. And it's a song about miscarriage. The girl that never was. And there's a lyric in it, the first casualty of life is the plan. Somewhere she's probably dancing with her blonde hair just like we always saw. The first casualty of life is the plan I thought was so beautiful. Yeah, thank you. It is taken really from an expression in the army saying the first casualty of war is the plan. But it's true to life anyway, isn't it? Because you never know what life is going to throw at you. Can I talk to you a bit about the experience that you went through that informed that song? Because I think it's very rare that men talk about this and very often there's a grief

attached to miscarriage that a lot of men feel they can't claim because they're the ones who physically went through it. Yeah, everyone has a different experience, you know, of what stage, of what time, of the journey of trying to have children, the ambition of having children and how two people go about that and the struggles that they may have. And I try not to go into the detail of that too much publicly about that. But what I've learned from it a little bit is that young men and women's experience of what is so incredibly different. And yet to be there

as a sort of just a witness to someone else's physical trauma is what I was really writing about. I don't go through the physical trauma, but I'm a real witness to someone else's. And of course I have my own experience and pain of that, but it doesn't match my voice or any woman who goes through that. So just to try and, you know, again, yeah, and there are some terrible words in that song as well about the guilt that comes with it and the blame that women, I suppose, can put themselves through at some time. And yeah, and just as the person in the relationship who watches that, as I say, witness to that, I suppose is what I mean, is that a struggle to vocalise. Yeah, I guess what are my more words? You

know, I'm in it, but I'm in it with you, but not quite in the same way. Well, I'm sure your wife hugely appreciated that beautiful song. And I know that it's spoken to many other people in the same situation I know it did for me. And I'm so sorry for what you went through. Yeah, thank you. And to you too. And I suppose what's most interesting about it is it's an experience that many, many women go through and not, and we don't get the opportunity to talk about it so much. You know, almost anyone I've now spoken to who's had that ambition to start a family hasn't gone in the smooth way that we all

think it is and it's something that often we don't talk about until it happens. And really we need to talk about it earlier so that young couples, you know, starting off on that journey know that it's very real prospect. I think the other thing that's difficult about it is that you're grieving an unlived life, but the moment you discover you're pregnant, you assume that it's going to have a happy ending. This story of pregnancy is going to end with a person. And so that grief is tricky to navigate as well because you're grieving in absence and a presence. Yeah, exactly. Um, yeah, I mean, I think that's, I think that's what my song is

about really is about the idea in your head of that, that little person is sort of exists. And that's the struggle that that they exist in a way. Hello, it's Grace Dent here from the Guardians Comfort Eating podcast. I've been cooking up fresh episodes and they are now ready to be devoured. Join me as I talk to the likes of Stanley Tucci, Vanessa Feltz, Richard E. Grant and Ragam Bolman and many others about life, love and the grub that has seen them through. New episodes every Tuesday. Listen to every bit of your podcasts. Hi, I'm Jesse Tyler Ferguson, host of the podcast Dinners on Me. I take some of my favorite people out to dinner,

including, yes, my Modern Family co-stars, like Ed O'Neill. I had friends in Organized Cry. Sofia Vergara. Why do you wanna be comfortable? Julie Bowen. I used to be the crier. And Aubrey Anderson-Emmons. I was so down bad for the middle of Miranda

when I was like 18. You can listen to Dinners on Me wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to Dinners on Me wherever you get your podcasts. We're going to move on to your second failure, which is that you were nominated for five Grammys, but you didn't win any. So this was February 2007. Were you nominated for them all in the same year? I was, yeah. So we're back in the noughties, the greatest decade for music that mankind just hasn't known. I mean, greatest decade in so many ways, apart from like toxic patriarchy and all of that. Brushing over that. But specifically for music. Yeah, 2007 I've been

nominated for five Grammys. And you know what? Statistically, that means you're gonna win. I mean, at least two. You're in. And I don't know if there's been any other artist who've gone through the same experience of sitting there and all five starting to fall apart. It was just a mind blowing moment. It was, I find it quite funny really. So the story went like this. The year before, the Dixie Chicks had been nominated and they had gone out vocally against the Iraq war and

against George Bush and the nation had vilified them, had crucified the Dixies for being so unpatriotic for saying things that were absolutely couldn't be said and they shouldn't be saying these things. So the next year, the Dixie Chakes put out an album and and everyone at that stage the Iraq War had turned against And George Bush was no longer a popular human being and so this time that you know, the story is really that they they won All my they won all they won all your Carrie Underwood won one as well of your Grammys really? Yeah, she goes in the same pile Yeah, she got best new artists. No, I blame the Iraq war. I'd stuffed her a carrie under it.

The Iraq war lost me my Grammys. So, Saddam Hussein lost me my Grammys. And just another thing to hate him for. Didn't you actually perform at that Grammys as well? I did. Oh my gosh, what a horrible evening. And I tell you what was amazing about it because one of them where I'd learned that I hadn't got on the journey there, and then I was hearing that, you know, I haven't got that as their

awards are being read out in the cameras in your face and you're smiling for the person who's gone up on the stage. And then as we're getting to they've all gone, I haven't won any of them, but at least I've got the performance. And for the performance, rather than being on the stage at the end of the arena, I was put in the middle, in the round. And so there I am in front of the 20,000 people, however many there might be, and I'm live to the nation. Well, at least I've got the performance. And the radio microphones started having interruption from all the other cell phones in the building. And so the performance just kept cutting out.

And it's a live show. Oh my gosh, how agonizing. So we didn't get the Grammys and the performance sounded terrible. I want to talk to you a bit about award ceremonies because they haven't been happy places for you a lot of times, even when you win. I feel like this is a real therapy session. I know and I know you haven't had therapy so that's my challenge, accept it. Yeah.

I want it to feel like this, James. Thanks for this. Yeah. Because you've had people really slack you off at them. challenge accepted. I want it to feel like this, James. Thanks for this. Yeah. Because you've had people really slack you off at them. Yeah. I mean, exactly. My mother, she's been having terrible things. Paul Weller. I did. I did go through a session, didn't I, then, of Paul Weller was mean. I don't know where.

He said he'd rather eat shit than work with you. Yes. Yeah. Just to remind you of that. Yes. But the weird thing about that was I genuinely hadn't asked to work with him So why has he suddenly come up with this statement? It just must be that he really really just was seizing the opportunity to eat his own shit I don't know why he was effectively volunteering to do that because I hadn't asked him I mean Damon Albarn blanked you all of this was up. I don't understand Why do you think they were so triggered? So the Damon Albarn was a pretty amazing moment actually. I was in a

rehearsal studio, I was just trying to audition a new bass player because my other bass player had gone and married someone in Australia and we got the call. We'd just finished and we were having a drink and I got the call that Pete Doherty wasn't being allowed on the Jules Holland show because he had been done for drugs and he'd been thrown off the show. And so we turned up a little drunk, and Damon Albarn was on the show and we performed with me and my band. And at the end of every show they get all the musicians together and they take a photo of all the musicians and that photo is printed out in frame and put on the walls of the Jewel Holland show.

And Damon apparently refused to be in the same picture as me. So I was going through this really weird experience suddenly where they kept me back in my dressing room and they kept to say you can't come out and they were being really shady with me while they gathered all the musicians and then they took the photo and then they said okay now you can come out as Damon was walked off and got in his car and walked off and then they took a second photo with with all the musicians except Damon and and I don't know which is on the wall, but I can take a guess. And so it was just really weird behavior of his. And there were a couple of other musicians who were just saying

things. And I guess those musicians probably found themselves falling into a trap that either the music and music journalists set up for them. Which band don't you like? They're going to be asking interviews and they're trying to ingratiate themselves to the journalist and say this band and it becomes easy to say blunt that they'll follow suit. But it's a trap that we find ourselves in the business that we probably should again talk about and say we don't need to, we're probably bigger than that. Yeah, it's a form of group think, isn't it? And it's not as if your talent is in question. You're incredibly talented, I think, by any metric. So it must have been a very strange

thing to experience. Has anyone ever apologised? No, I don't think so. I bumped into Noel Gallagher the other day. He'd said he was leaving Ibiza and selling up his house because he couldn't handle me writing my shit songs down the road from him. House prices subsequently went up after his left. Whenever I see him, he's really sweet to my face. I think it's, yeah, I think everyone's sweet to each other's faces. It's just with the courage of a microphone and a journalist and trying to show off a little, they'll do something different. Well I want to apologize on behalf of the culture at large, I'm sorry that you went through that. Thank you. And good for you for getting through it. It's good that you

feel that you can speak for a nation. I mean my name's Elizabeth, I'm coming in a noble tradition. You know but there are, I mean and I guess looking back on it, there are other things I feel about it, which is that, I mean, I was very naive in the business and I don't, and I do come from a very privileged background and so kicking, you know, you're, we all do a kicking once in our life and if I didn't have it from the very beginning of my life, it's, I got it then and that was probably a very healthy thing and my feet are really firmly on the ground now. Yes.

And, and that's probably as a result of that. You know, I was living the most insane life. I was having the best life you could possibly imagine. As I say, out in LA, living with Carrie Fisher, recording and going out every night where I was being swept up and living the most insane life. Very quickly I was cut down to size and that was probably a good thing. You mentioned Carrie Fisher there, who I spoke about in the introduction as being one of your closest friends and you lived with her when you were recording Back to Bedlam and isn't that why you called the album that name?

Yeah, her house was a bit of a mad house and so we recorded Back to Bedlam. Her mind was, lots of people thought she was kind of crazy in many ways. She was bipolar. But really she was just brighter than everyone else. She could, you know, in her thought process, why explain if you're going from A to F, why explain that you've had to go through B, C, D and E already. You know it already. You might as well just skip to F straight away. And for some people that was quite challenging keeping up with her. And so that was why there was the bedlam of recording in her house, the madness. And yeah, and she was really an integral part in that whole process, just for the excitement of being there.

How did it come about that you met her? I met her in a restaurant in Notting Hill, 192 was the restaurant. She was family friends of someone I was seeing. And so one Sunday lunch, I think was the restaurant. She was family friends of someone I was seeing. And so one Sunday lunch, I think in the restaurant, I was sitting beside her. She asked me what I did and I said, I've just left the army. I've just got a record deal, you know,

and I'm moving to Los Angeles to record my first album. And she said, where are you gonna live? I said, I haven't sorted a place out. And her third statement was, you're gonna live with me. And I did, in a kind of our house cabin one and cabin two, her little cabins, a guy called Charlie Wessler lived in cabin number one. He just produced the movies like Dumb and Dumber and there's something about Mary. Carrie's mother Debbie Reynolds was living on the property. Debbie Reynolds was in things like Singing in the Rain. She'd shout up at me every morning when Charlie

wasn't there. She'd be like, hey Charlie you want a drink? And I'd come out and say no no you know I'm James. You sure you're not Charlie? I'm sure I'm not Charlie. You want a drink anyway? And it was just a bizarre place to live. To describe her house, she would have chandeliers in the trees in her garden. She would have a piano that played itself in her bathroom which I recorded Goodbye My Lover And she had a Christmas tree set up 365 days a year. And these are just three things of thousands of things of her house that were just the kind of, you know, a madness that kind of showed what her brain was like as well. Above my bedroom was a vacancy, no vacancy sign, which she'd turn on and off depending on whether I was there.

And it was an absolutely magical safe haven before going out into the madness of Hollywood and LA where I'd be living and recording. Is it true she written you an acceptance speech for one of those Grammys you were going to win? Yeah, I wrote with her. We sat, you know, I'd sit on her bed to two or three o'clock at night every night with her scribbling away. She's such a prolific writer.

And and you always sat down and wrote my acceptance speech for the Grammy that I ended up not getting and reading the Grammy speech back I'm quite relieved. I probably didn't have to read it out. What did she say to you when you didn't win a Grammy? I mean, I don't think we really spoke about it in any depth. At the end of the day, I mean, of course it's important to at the time, but it's not the be all and end all. And the life I was living was a massive celebration beyond that. And we were having great fun without those awards.

How much do you miss her now? I mean, terribly, really. I speak about her often. She was godmother to my child. I asked her to be godmother just in the hope that she would look after herself. And I said, I'm asking you to be godmother because I want him to know you when you're older. And to do that, you're going to have to look after yourself. And she didn't. But yeah, I mean, I was with her the day before she got on that plane and died. And I miss her terribly. I've written a song recently about her called Dark Thought. And it took me many years to write,

but the moment I'm describing the song was a really amazing moment of being in Los Angeles, being homeless in Los Angeles, because I no longer living with her. So living in a hotel which my band used to live in, and years later, there's still stains on the floor in this hotel that I remember making from after parties years before. And so feeling kind of out of place in this city. And I thought,

you know what, I hadn't seen her since I hadn't seen her and I wasn't at the funeral because they actually commercialized the funeral, which I found really uncomfortable. And so I thought, I need to go back to the house and say goodbye in some way. And I thought, God, that's mad of you. What are you talking about? Let's just go to the studio and ignore it. No, stuff it. I'm going to the house, got in my hire car, drove up to Coldwater Canyon, turned into her drive, parked the car. And even her gate's mad with all these kind of signs of beware of crabs and prescription drugs are for sale and things like that. All these signs. and I put my hand on the gate and and I just had a moment where you know God Carrie I miss you

so much and for the first time you know shed a tear on her gate and as I did two star map vans full of tourists pulled up and over the microphone the tour guide said, and on your left you'll see the late great Carrie Fisher's house. And as you can see, some fans are still deeply moved by her passing. And that fan was me. I was looking at the van saying, fuck off. Oh my, what a, what a, I mean, she would have appreciated that moment. The absurdity of it. Yeah, the irony of the moment she would have loved. Thank you, James. Your final failure is that you failed to have another UK number one after You're Beautiful. How did that song come about?

Because you've said something very funny about it in the past, because most people think of it as sort of beautiful, romantic, first dance at a wedding kind of song. It's actually about... Exactly. Well, yeah, people always say, as sort of beautiful romantic first dance at a wedding kind of song. It's actually like... It's like... Well, yeah, people always say, God, it's romantic. And it was for a time the most played song at weddings. I kept on being asked, how does it feel to have the most song played song at weddings? And I found myself saying like, who has a clipboard taking down these numbers? And I also had the most played song at funerals too. Who's taking down these numbers with Goodbye My Lover? But anyway, you're beautiful.

It started by I was on High Street Kensington and went into High Street Kensington tube station, and I passed my ex-girlfriend who walked past me with her new boyfriend, who I didn't know existed at the time. And as they walked past me, she and I looked at each other, caught each other's eye. As she walked on by, we looked straight at each other but we didn't do anything because of him I suppose. And we lived a lifetime in that moment really. And yeah, we just walked past each other and I walked home to the army barracks at Hyde Park barracks and I wrote down the lyrics in about one and a half minutes, I suppose, two minutes, the whole thing. And we, yeah, we didn't see each other again.

Have you ever seen her since? No, I haven't. I know a bit about what's going on in life and I feel very grateful for the song. Yes. I wonder how she feels about the song. Yeah, I don't know. Be fascinating.

She's coming in next week, so I'll ask her. Great, thank you. Brilliant. I'm often asked in interviews, you know, are you bored of the song. Yeah, I don't know. Fascinating. She's coming in next week, so I'll ask her. Great. Thank you. Brilliant. I'm often asked in interviews, you know, are you bored of the song? And I'm not. I'm bored of the question because I really love the song. It got me to where I am. You and I might not be speaking without that. And it brought me to my house in Ibiza. What became frustrating, I suppose, at the beginning was people would say, oh, it's so romantic and you're such a romantic. And as you're inferring the beginning, I've had to say it's not a romantic song. It's about this guy who's high as a kite stalking someone else's girl in the underground.

Were you high when you saw her? A little. What was your, what were you high on? Her life. Tell me about the video, because the video is, I mean a lot of your videos are really dark. Yeah, the video was just a great, very simple idea. I'd initially thought, and we'd put it to a song called, Hi. I'd imagine being on a cliff and jumping off the cliff at the end,

but then a director came with the same idea, much better formed, and it was about your beautiful that I would be there on this cliff, sing the song, take my clothes off and jump off the cliff. And it's snowing and you're leaving your possessions in a line. Exactly, I'm a bit OCD and you know, so I wanted everything in place and it was, we were in Mallorca but in winter it was freezing cold, it was, it's rain, fake rain rather than snow, it was bloody cold you can tell by my nipples. And then he'd also said to me, you know, when we, you know, there I am just out of the army

thinking with all the bravado of, he said, you know, we'll get you to jump off a cliff. Yeah. And you'll do that. And I said, yeah, absolutely. No problem. And he said, how high can we get the cliff to be? And I said, no, however high you can find it, you know, I'll do it, whatever. And when I turned up to Majorca, this cliff was just fucking ridiculous. And more than that, they'd built a platform on it to make it even higher. And they'd sent a sonar down to see there's nothing below that I, you know, it was, it was, there was no rocks that were going to kill me. But all the locals from Majorca came out to watch, because they thought, you know, this is going to be great that there's some pop stars turned up who signed up to jump off it. All the crew had ropes and tethers to make sure they weren't in any danger, but I

was just wandering around without and they said, you know, action! And I sing into camera and then have to think, shit, here we go. Turn around, throw myself off a cliff, down into the water, split my lip, you know, that's the bit of skin there between your two front teeth, got out of the water and they climbed me back up the top of the cliff and the director said, great, you know what, you were probably about two centimetres too far to the left. We'll do that again. So off I went. It's a take two that we use. Wow, so there wasn't even like a big balloon which you normally see in sort of action movies and stuff. You were literally jumping off the cliff into the sea.

They had got me the day before, they got me to a sort of 10-metre swimming pool in South London somewhere where you know you jump off and they blow bubbles to take their surface tension off the water. And then the cliff was double the height of that, it was sort of 55 feet and no bubbles coming from under, just a diver to pull me out in case I knocked myself out. Gosh, the commitment to your artistry. Yeah. So anyway, this failure is about the fact that that was a monster, monster hit, still

is, but you haven't had a number one in the UK since. Not in the UK. I'm big in China. Are you? Yeah. That must feel good to be big in an autocratic communist regime. Brilliant. And I'm going there at the end of the year. Eight shows there. That's an amazing experience going to China where they kind of give you quite a few instructions as to rules,

as to what you are allowed to do and what you're not allowed to do. So one of two of my songs this time are banned. One of them was banned last time. They just say it's forbidden to sing a song. Last time a song called Postcards was forbidden for me to sing. And it's about me writing, I love you on a postcard to my wife and sending it off and not minding who reads it on its journey tower, which is kind of romantic. That's a very sweet little message. That's forbidden. You say why and they just say it's forbidden. There's no explanation to it. This time round, I've got two songs that mention God. I'm not a particularly religious person but you know, but it seemed to rhyme. So I stuck the word God in,

but it's forbidden because that's a bit of an issue out there for some reason. So one of those songs for instance says if she had wings she would fly away and another day God will give her some. You know, pretty... but anyway it's forbidden So I've actually just recently sent them new versions of the song asking for approval saying if she had wings, she would fly away and another day John will give her one. And I'm seeing if that will get approval. Okay, well let us know. Yeah. But going back to the question to Number ones in the UK. Number ones? No. So, you know, I haven't had number one. So, so no, I'm a

glorious one hit wonder. What have I done? I've managed to get Bonfire Heart was number four and 1973 was number four as well. I've had a couple number fours and a number nine Oh, you know, we get we get within close but not the number one. Does it bother you? No, it really doesn't. Really? Yeah, it does.

I know it shouldn't bother us but it would be nice. No, it really doesn't. It really doesn't. You know what, Your Beautiful is my biggest commercial success. I will never ever match it. You know, after this, I'm going to go home. I'm going to say it's time to write another hit. I'll put myself down in front of the piano and for 15 minutes I'll try. And then I'll realize I just can't. But it's my biggest commercial success, but it's not my most, it's not my best song.

It's, it's not the song that touches people the most. It just worked really, really well on radio. And it's a great simple idea. Does it bother you being called a one hit wonder? Not at all. It's a badge I wear with great, great honour. I'm told I'm a one hit wonder by people who are no hit wonders. Yes, that's a good point. And it's on my profile on all my social media. One hit, I'm proof that one hit is all you

need. I'm very, very lucky to have had such a mega hit on my first album. It's sent me on the world on eight world tours. Why did you move partly to Ibiza? What does Ibiza give you? I like nightclubs. Do you? Yeah. Do you like drugs? What am I supposed to say?

Well, do you like drugs? I mean, I don't know. It depends which ones. The good ones, yes, the bad ones, no. Yeah, I've written about them a lot in my book. You know, I haven't held back. My parents were just appalled. You know, life is for living and you make your choices and you inform yourself and you do whatever good or bad things you want to do.

And Ibiza is a great, great fun place where you don't necessarily get judged on who you are or what you do. People are there and celebrate our differences and I love it for that and it's got great nightclubs too. I think that's such a good place to end it on because I think that's been a recurring theme of our conversation and I really value the way that you embody those qualities. The life you have lived shows that resilience and truth telling can get you here, where actually more people are connected with the music that you create than are set apart by it.

And I think that's a beautiful thing. So- Sweet, well, thanks so much. Thank you for coming on How to Fail. It's lovely to be here. Thank you for the therapy. that's a beautiful thing. Sweet, hey well thanks so much. Thank you for coming on How to Fail. It's lovely to be here. Thank you for the therapy. It's a pleasure. Now you're staying not for an extended therapy session

but we're going to therapy as the listeners. Great. So the tables are now going to turn. If you think I'm qualified to do that. Well we'll find out. Yeah, great. We heartily recommend you follow us to get new episodes as they land on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. Please tell all your friends. This is an Elizabeth Day and Sony Music Entertainment original podcast.

Thank you so much for listening.