TO borrow from the title of a book he once wrote, 2023 has been “a bit of a Blur” for Alex James.
The bassist says the band’s whole reunion experience has been “f**ing magical”.
“Even my five teenagers, who all thought I was a twat, told me, ‘This is so cool!”
For the Britpop darlings, the year has involved a sublime album, The Ballad Of Darren, intimate warm-up gigs, two epic nights at Wembley Stadium and festival shindigs across Europe, Japan and South America.
When it came to SFTW’s new annual music awards, Blur deservedly scooped two — Band Of The Year and, for Wembley, Gig Of The Year.
So just before Christmas, I spoke to the vivacious Alex, who also “makes cheese, runs a festival and writes about food for The Sun”.
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“Thanks for the accolade! It means a lot,” he cries down the phone from Amsterdam, where he’s on business for The Big Feastival, his annual celebration of good music and good eating which takes place at his Cotswolds farm.
Right off the bat, he gives a huge amount of credit to Blur’s singer and chief songwriter Damon Albarn.
“Albarn is very canny — he’s f**ing astute. He has repositioned the band as a contemporary, relevant force.”
Crucial to the overwhelming success has been the injection of new songs via The Ballad Of Darren — unmistakably Blur but with more reflective lyrics in keeping with the older, possibly wiser, fifty something band members.
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“For me, the album changed the whole landscape,” says Alex.
“I’m a bit like, ‘Let’s get out there and play the hits’, but Damon is very good at pushing things further.”
Standouts such as Barbaric and The Narcissist remind us that more than 30 years have passed since the youthful exuberance of their early forays like She’s So High and There’s No Other Way.
‘We just clicked’
The bass player says his reunion with Damon, guitarist Graham Coxon and drummer Dave Rowntree, truly began in early December 2022, when “a slot became available at Wembley” the following July.
“So a meeting was called in London,” he continues. “Damon looked totally pale, as if he was going to throw up.
“But 14 minutes later, we were all best mates and we’re not just doing a show but we’re going to do an album as well.”
Alex likens Blur to “a good marriage because the four of us fitted together straight away”.
“From the very first rehearsal when we wrote She’s So High, which we played in the summer, the chemistry was there. We just clicked.”
“I think it annoys us all a little bit because we’ve all work so hard individually and then Blur get back together and it’s like, ‘F***ing hell!’”
“For me, it all seemed so effortless. Playing the bass is like riding a bike. It’s so lovely.”
It’s a full eight years since the last revival, which took in The Magic Whip album and various big shows including Hyde Park.
But the chief chart rivals to Oasis during the glorious Britpop Nineties have never been far from Alex’s thoughts.
“Before we got together again, I would keep a mental note of what time of day I would first think about Blur — usually after I brush my teeth but before I have a bath or a shower.
“When we were in South America recently, I thought about getting a Blur tattoo but it goes way deeper than skin deep.
“The band is such a huge part of my life. It is tattooed on my soul and it will go on my grave stone.”
With that heartfelt testament, Alex picks up his trawl through his momentous year.
The sessions for The Ballad Of Darren mostly took place at Damon’s Studio 13 in the shadow of London’s Westway, beginning in January with the album’s loudest rocker, St. Charles Square.
Bruised and beautiful
He recalls that “there was a moment of, ‘What if we can’t do it any more?’” but it soon evaporated.
“I started doing the bass lying down but, by the time we got to the chorus, I was jumping up and down and so was Damon — our eyes locked.
“It’s weird. As soon as we start playing together, the whole world falls away.
“It’s exactly the same as it was making She’s So High all those years ago. You need that intensity and I think Graham and Damon both have masses of it.
“I’m just happy to cool down the plutonium rod. Pouring the special lukewarm water.”
Surely there must be some moments of tension, I venture.
“Well, we do drive each other mad in the same way as my children drive me mad and my wife drives me mad,” replies Alex with one of his infectious cackles.
“There are always new terrifying divorce statistics, aren’t there? More marriages end in divorce than be ‘happy ever after’ these days.
“With bands, hardly any end up like us. As I was saying just the other day, it’s amazing that no one (in Blur) is being really annoying.”
That said, he adds: “Damon’s always slightly terrifying . . . he seems to be annoyingly always right!”
So does he have a favourite track on The Ballad Of Darren?
Alex chooses the one which is my favourite too, Barbaric, a bruised and beautiful meditation on loss and longing. “It touches me, that one,” he decides.
Next, we turn our attention to those two incredible nights in July when Blur turned the home of English football Wembley into an intimate home fixture with the entire singalong crowd on their side.
He remembers arriving on Friday for the soundcheck: “You walk up the ramp to this big old shed and you are cacking it a bit.
“But Mike, the keyboard player was on stage playing Ossie’s Dream (Spurs Are On Their Way To Wembley) and I was like, ‘I’m coming home!’
“We got used to the feel of it by playing through the whole set on that Friday afternoon. Brent Council, I’ve got to say, ‘Hats off to them’. They were fantastic. It was f**ing loud in there.”
Unlike some high-tech, all singing and dancing Wembley extravaganzas, Blur brought a welcome simplicity to proceedings.
“We stripped it back to basics,” says Alex. “Just the four of us, no trumpets, nobody plucking gourds, no backing singers. ‘Keeping it raw’
“We weren’t relying on smoke and mirrors, just keeping it raw and fing real — that’s what people connect with.”
When the band performed the anthem Tender with a huge mirror ball casting flecks of light around the stadium, Alex nearly lost the plot.
“When the huge gospel choir came in on the last chorus, I was crying my eyes out.
“We don’t get to play these songs very often and they have huge amounts of emotional attachment for us. It’s going to take me two years to recover!”
Alex reports that of the two nights, the Sunday show shaded the first one.
“You do it Saturday night and you wake up going, ‘Oh my God, that was amazing and then we got to do it all again.”
He laughs when he recalls the reaction at home to the idea of Blur doing Wembley.
“When I told my wife Claire that the first show had sold out in 90 seconds and we were adding another night, she said, ‘Harry Styles is doing four nights.’ That’s what I’m up against!”
“But it was lovely blowing the cobwebs off the catalogue. Doing the new songs was important, too, because you’ve got to keep Albarn interested. Otherwise he’d be off writing another opera.
“And we never do the same setlist twice. It was particularly great playing a lot of stuff from Modern Life Is Rubbish.”
Blur’s 1993 second album is a stone cold classic Nineties period piece and among the songs performed were Advert, Oily Water, For Tomorrow and Villa Rosie.
When the dust had settled on the Monday after the Wembley weekend, Alex got a nice surprise.
“Damon sent me one of the sweetest emails I’ve ever had from him saying, ‘Thanks, best show I’ve ever done.’
“I never thought we’d top Glastonbury, 2009 — that was very special — but Wembley was so joyous. I loved it that so many kids were there.”
Key to Blur’s triumphant 2023 has been not overplaying their hand.
‘Needed that impetus’
“We didn’t do loads of shows. Including the warm-ups, I think it was less than 20. It became like a weekend job.”
But even for those events, Alex needed to get in good physical shape.
He muses: “The perceived wisdom about rock ’n’ roll is that success f**s you up, gives you more problems than failure.
“For all of us, Blur is a massively restorative, healing thing. I’d put on a s**t ton of weight — I make cheese, I organise a food festival!
“Cheese and wine makers tend to be one shape so I needed that impetus.”
So, in this serendipitous year, were there any mishaps?
Alex’s answers are just what you’d imagine from any self-respecting rock star.
He says that after The Big Feastival at the end of August, he was due in Portugal for a Blur date the next Wednesday.
“All the chefs are nut jobs,” he says.
“They’re much worse than musicians. They’re still drinking on Tuesday night and haven’t gone to bed yet.
“So I got to Portugal absolutely ragged. I looked in my suitcase and I’d only packed three belts and a pair of Claire’s trousers.
“Then I got to the show and did a Covid test — it was positive. But it was actually a brilliant, brilliant show.”
His other anecdote also involves much drink taken. “They got me a security guy and I was like, ‘For f’s sake, I don’t need one, probably costing a fortune!
“Then we played in Amsterdam and I had a big night out and woke up in Belgium with no idea how I got there.
“I thought, OK, maybe I did need security to put me the right way up.”
We move onto the last chapter of Blur’s year, their November dates in South America and Mexico which provided a fitting finale.
“It was amazing pitching up in Bogota (the capital of Colombia) and playing The Narcissist to thousands of kids who sang every word. It was crazy.”
It’s clear that the Blur fire still burns brightly within Alex, and he hopes there will be more to come down the road.
“It would be lovely to do more because there’s literally no downside,” he says. “I feel really blessed and so do the others.”
Of immediate concern is a book about his “magical” year with Blur.
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“I’ll deliver it by March in time for next Christmas,” he promises. “I just need to sit very still and be very calm. James Bond author Ian Fleming used to write a book every January.
“Firstly, I need to process it all. It’s been a hell of a caper.”
