Serving in the frontline of fame
TEDDY JAMIESON
December 03 2004

James Blunt's album Back to Bedlam is out now. He plays the Glasgow SECC supporting Elton John on December 12.
Let's start with a pop quiz. It's a Thursday morning in London, pretty early and I'm getting to play Mike Read. James Blunt is in the hot seat. So James, name me a singer who's also seen active service. I'll give you a couple of easy ones to get you thinking. Elvis, obviously. Billy Bragg. Any more?
He thinks for a moment. He could give me Shaggy perhaps, or even Terence Trent D'Arby, or maybe even Geno Washington if he was looking for extra brownie points. Instead, he trumps all of these with a tentative "Hendrix?"
Good answer, though there's a more obvious one How about James Blunt himself?
You don't know the name? Oh don't worry, you will. Anyone who can call on Guy Chambers (Robbie Williams's former songwriting partner) to help nail down a tune, and who shares management with – and an upcoming support slot for – Elton John is, you would think, likely to make a name for himself.
Actually, the real key name in the former Horse Guard's story is probably Linda Perry – former lead singer with one-hit wonders Four Non-Blondes and now the first name that America's prima divas (Pink, Christina Aguilera and now Gwen Stefani) call when they want a new hit song. Blunt has been signed to her label Custard Records. "When I first met Linda, she put her arm round me, led me to the bar and said, 'I love your music. Let's have a tequila'. The 27-year-old Englishman is, I think it's fair to say, moving in heavyweight circles. Understandably, he is pretty buzzed about it all.
"Someone like Elton John, I don't have his phone number. I'm not calling him on a regular basis. But at the same time, he's only been incredibly supportive," he tells me. Indeed, ask Elton about the singer and our Reg delivers a ringing testimonial. "He's a huge talent and will be a force to be reckoned with."
So Elton likes him. The question now is will you?
Nine in the morning is not typical rock 'n' roll interview scheduling, not unless you've been up all night with a bevy of supermodels. Yet at 8.45am, Blunt is sat in a London hotel lobby waiting for me. Military conditioning I presume, but he says not. "I'm doing my best to live the rock'n'roll lifestyle, so I'm getting to bed at about five in the morning, maybe six. I've definitely lost that ability of getting up early."
Even so, first thing in the morning he is still eye candy: lean-faced, ruffled of hair, soft-spoken and wearing a great coat adorned with a "I Slept with Michael Jackson" badge. He has, for some reason, the air (and dress sense) of a 1970s bohemian, a touch Withnail and I, though probably far too good-looking to be one of Bruce Robinson's grotesques.
That should help, especially since Blunt is a singer-songwriter, a busy field to be in right now. He's already had the "new David Gray" comparisons. The "new Damien Rice" tag is presumably just days away. But he's sanguine about the prospect. "I don't feel it's too crowded in here. I'm sure there's room for a little one."
What marks Blunt out is his voice. The songs are passable, the voice special – an electric, narcotic croon. It's drawn comparisons to Gray, certainly, and bizarrely, Andy Gibb.
"It's because I can sing incredibly high, I suppose. When I'm grown up, my voice will break and that will be it." He's good at flippant comebacks like that. He's smart and knows when a good soundbite will deflect deeper enquiry. Given that he says the album – a collection of love songs for the most part – draws on his own life experiences, how often has his heart been broken? "I think every single day of my life."
And how many hearts have you broken? "I don't think I've achieved that yet," he says. I don't believe him.
He later claims he has the voice of a black girl, the best kind of voice there is. "I have my mother to thank for that," he says. That, and her Beach Boy records. But before either came into play, Blunt had to follow in his father's footsteps.
The Blunt family is, it's fair to say, a military family. There's been a Blunt in active service as far back as 995 AD. Blunt's father, Charles, a recently retired colonel, was a helicopter pilot in the army air corps. Given this weight of history, it's not surprising when Blunt junior says, "I definitely felt a certain pressure to go that way." At Bristol University (aerospace manufacturing engineering and sociology), he received some financial assistance from Her Majesty's forces. "Not much, £500 a term or something, and for that you owe them four years." He'd wanted to play music since 14, but leaving university, admits he wasn't ready.
"I hadn't got the songs together. I owed them four years and I hadn't any money to pay them back so
really, I was compelled that way. But you know, I have no regrets about doing it. I had a great time. I joined when I was 21. You do Sandhurst for a year, which is pretty miserable and then it's into the army proper."
Just in time to go to Kosovo. As an officer in the Horse Guards, he was in a tank on reconnaissance duties. A scimitar, actually. "It looks like a tank but it's a small armoured car effectively." He'd strap his guitar to the back.
The experience inspired the starkest song on his album, No Bravery. Pick a lyric at random and it's sure to be pretty bleak.
 
Old men kneel and accept their fate
Wives and daughters cut and raped
A generation drenched in hate
 
Blunt says the song is plain reportage. "It took me two minutes to write. There's no twist on it in any way. It's almost reporting accurately what I saw. You walk into burnt-out houses and fields with massed graves and feel a sense that someone or something incredibly evil has been here."
It sounds grim but he claims otherwise. "There were many things that would be revolting really to the civilised world but ... it was an enriching experience in the sense that it was something I had never come across before. I guess we live in a very protected world ... even in London with however many millions of us there are, you hardly ever come across a dead body. Going out there was a real extreme – seeing violence and death on an amazing level, and I found it ... it was kind of intriguing to see humans and society degrade so rapidly and start living in an animalistic way."
That sense of distance is curious. Is it the byproduct of a privileged, rather reserved ("emotionally stunted") upbringing? Or rock 'n' roll bravado? That's not how it sounds when he says it. Yet he does come out with some curious comments. Ask him where he'd like to be in five years' time and he says, "I'll be dead, so will you book me early?" Just another flip comment. Then again, ask him who he'd like to model his career on and he suggests Jeff Buckley (dead at 30, drowned) and Elliot Smith (dead at 34, a suicide, having stabbed himself in the chest. Twice).
But he sounds like he's having too much fun to be answering too seriously. "I was picked up today in a Mercedes to come and meet you. And as I passed 15 soldiers on horses riding in the rain, doing the old job I used to do, I thought to myself, I'm incredibly lucky."
Not half. A few days later he drops me a line about recording his album last year. He went to LA and even recorded a song in Carrie Fisher's bathroom where she keeps a grand piano. "A girlfriend of mine introduced us. Carrie fed me soup, showed me old movies and put a cardboard figure of her in Star Wars outside my room to protect me."
A combat vet with a pack of heavyweights at his back. You can't imagine he would need it.