OPENING THE DOORS TO HIS COTSWOLDS FARM ALEX JAMES TELLS OF LIFE WITH HIS FAMILY BAND, BLUR, BRITPOP – AND WHY HE’S INVITING 20,000 REVELLERS TO HIS VERY BIG HOUSE IN THE COUNTRY
Blur bassist Alex James may live in a very big house in the country, but he’s doing a good job of filling it.
In addition to five lively children he has with his film development producer wife Claire, the 45-year-old Britpop star-turned-farmer and purveyor of award-winning artisan cheeses is in the process of moving his in-laws in when HELLO! Visits the family at the 200-acre Cotswolds farm.
As if that weren’t cosy enough, Alex reveals that his parents are due to follow suit.
“This place seemed so huge when we bought it, but we’ve run out of spare rooms now, so no one can come and stay. Not that anyone would want to,” he adds with a chuckle, surveying the scene with mock despair as his eldest, Geronimo, ten, and eight-year-old twins Artemas and Galileo tear around the garden on their skateboard, while four-year-old Beatrix and her big sister Sable, six, do battle over a pink scooter.
“When you have three kids, no one invites you round anymore, four and no one wants to stay, five and you have to get Fatboy Slim to perform for people to visit,” he jokes.
The latter is reference to this year’s Big Feastival, the three-day music, food and family-oriented event held in the grounds of the couple’s home, Churchill Heath Farm. Alex co-hosted the festival with his friend, chef Jamie Oliver, for the past three years.
The brainchild of Jamie ─ himself a dedicated family man with four children with his wife Jools ─ it’s become the highlight of the year for the James clan, attracting more than 20,000 “revelers” (“gentle, well-behaved revelling,” says Alex) and a wealth of top talent from the worlds of music, food and children’s entertainment.
Jamie Cullum, Kelis and Laura Mvula are just few of the stars who’ll be gracing the main stage this year. Fatboy Slim, aka Norman Cook, will be headlining on the Saturday night, which Claire, 44, is particularly excited about.
FESTIVAL SPIRIT
“I’ll be rocking my socks off. Norman DJed at our wedding, so it will bring back a few memories,” smiles Claire, who married Alex in 2003. “I can’t wait for that weekend to come now because we all absolutely love it, the kids included. We all muck in.”
Alex and Jamie first crossed paths in 2001, when they performed together on a cover of Billy Joel’s Uptown Girl for Comic Relief. They team up each year at the festival ─ Jamie on drums, Alex on bass, whoever is game on vocals ─ to play something “suitably upbeat”.
“We don’t tend to over-rehearse,” chuckles Alex. “But Jamie loves playing the drums and I don’t need much encouragement to get up there.”
“The festival combines everything Jamie and I are about, which is music, food and family. So while a hell of a lot of hard work and organization goes into putting it on, it’s always worth it.”
Alex met Claire in a nightclub in 2002 and fell completely “head over heels in love”. When they married nine months later, their friends and families thought they were crazy ─ even more so when they swapped the bright lights of London for the derelict farm that has become their bustling family home, a property they bought during their honeymoon.
“No one gave us a chance. I could hear the whispering, ‘He can’t buy a farm, he doesn’t know anything about farming. He can’t be a husband, he’s an a***hole,’” smiles Alex. “But when you fall in love, you do go mad. It’s temporary insanity.
“Any marriage is a leap of faith. You never know for sure whether you’re getting a Linda or a Heather ─I’m sure Paul McCartney will have felt the same when he embarked on both marriages.”
“But it’s fair to say we wouldn’t have bought the farm if we hadn’t been wrapped up in that madness, because it was falling apart and it’s true that I was completely clueless. I remember my mother saying to me, ‘Are you sure you can handle this?’ And there I was, this starry-eyed idiot, wandering around on the first day, marveling at the beauty of the docks and thistles, not realizing they were a bad thing.”
“It was a hell of a learning curve for a guy who’d come from having a balcony in Convent Garden and it took ten years to get it right. But we knew it was somewhere we could fill with our dreams and now it’s this wonderful fountain of joy that everyone ─ Claire, me, the kids, the grandparents ─ all find something truly magical about.”
The little world that he and Claire have created with their gorgeous quintet of kids is certainly a lifetime away from the one of he inhabited during the dizzy heights of Blur, the five-times Brit-Award-winning band comprising frontman Damon Albarn, lead guitarist Graham Coxon and drummer Dave Rowntree, which Alex joined while he was still at collage.
“It’ll never forget meeting the guys int the van after I’d just got my final exam results. I’d done so badly that the examiner had actually written on the paper, ‘Is the candidate lucid?’.
“We drove to pub in Dudley in West Midlands and the owner was so happy to see us he gave us a crate of beer. Our first single [She’s So High] was just getting airplay and soon they were having to turn people away.”
“We blew the roof that night, completely smashed it. There were probably only about 300 people there, but there was a definite feeling of, ‘Wow, something’s changed.’ And thank God it did because I have no idea what I would have done with my life.”
This year marks two decades since Blur’s acclaimed album Parklife was realized and the Britpop phenomenon took hold, which Alex still finds hard to get his head around.
“I was invited to the BBC to do an interview and on the way in someone stopped me and asked me what I was up to. I said, ‘I’m here to talk about ten years of Britpop.’ It was only when I got inside that I realised it was 20 years,” he marvels.
He’s been open about his decade of sex, drugs and rock’n’roll during those heady days with Blur.
“Being in a band gives you everything you dream of when you’re young; travelling, boozing, sex, attention, and for ten years it was brilliant, I loved every minute and I’ve got no regrets.
“But it actually becomes strangely unfulfilling, having everything you want,” ponder Alex. “Meeting Claire and settling down saved me, without a doubt, because you can’t sustain that lifestyle. I needed my a*** kicking to get myself sorted. Claire was my dues ex machina.”
Blur took a hiatus between 2003 and 2009, when the band returned to the stage to headline Glastonbury. In 2012 they performed at the Hyde Part closing ceremony of the London Olympics, which prompted last year’s tour of various music festivals around the world. But pushed about future plans to collaborate, Alex says: “To tell you anything other than ‘I don’t know’ would be completely misleading.”
MOVING ON
Continues Alex: “Getting back with the guys has been emotional each time because fundamentally we all really get on and there were never any major problems between us. I love them all like brothers. But our lives have moved on. We’re all busy. That’s the great thing, we all found new things to do. So to do it as and when works for us.”
Is there anything he misses about his old life? “Oh God, everything, but I also miss being seven years old and believing in Santa Claus. We came to a natural hiatus; I didn’t choose for it to happen, but spiritually it was important that it did and I certainly don’t spend my days moping around wishing I could have that time back.
“That was right then, this is right now,” smiles Alex, gesturing to just outside the tranquility of the greenhouse, where we’ve pulled up a couple of rickety old chairs to chat, to where his offspring are now racing around excitedly in their swimming gear, having been promised a water fight with Dad.
“Besides, being in a rock band then meant you had a license to misbehave. Now you only have to park badly and it’s been tweeted and re-tweeted. Everything’s so scrutinized, there’s a very little scope for bad behavior,” he grins.
Later this month, on 19 August, one of his award-winning Alex James Presents cheeses, a creamy blur called Blue Monday (named after the New Order song ─ a favourite of his), hits the shelves of Sainsbury’s, which Alex says for him is “just as exciting as winning a Brit Award”.
“Making cheese is every bit as satisfying as making music,” says Alex. “Monks used to make music in the morning and cheese in the afternoon, you know. So I figure it gets you closer to God, doing either of them,” he adds with a smile.
At which point Claire, who has been supervising the children’s lunch, wanders in to see if her husband is ready for the promised water fight in the hope it will tire their brood out.
She and Alex have a date that night. They’re heading into London, just the two of them, for an event hosted by the chef and restauranteur Mark Hix, who’s one of the foodie supremos at this year’s Big Feastival.
“We never planned to have such a large family and with five kids, it’s full on. There’s always one having a paddy, or one nicking your phone. But it’s impossible to imagine anything else now.” Muses Alex. “Because it is bloody brilliant.”
Any plans for another one? “If I was going, ‘Come on, come on,’ Claire would …” He pauses for a second in contemplation. “But no, we couldn’t have another one. It would be crazy. No, no more,” he says emphatically, although one gets the feeling it’s himself he’s trying to convince.
We take a detour back via the vegetable garden. “Here, try that,” says Alex, picking a spear of fresh asparagus. “Man, that’s amazing,” he enthuses, taking a bite of one himself. It is indeed.
A freshly grown plum and a handful of the sweetest, juiciest baby tomatoes later and we reach a barn that’s being newly painted in readiness for the latest additions to the farm’s livestock ─ the 72 prized guinea pigs that Alex’s in-laws Dave and Kath will shortly be moving in, as they arrive themselves.
“They show them,” explains Alex, lifting a sheet to reveal a stack of cages. “They go all over the country. There’s one called Elvis, who I’m sure gets preferential treatment. I’m really hoping he’s got a quaff when he turns up,” he laughs. “As if this place wasn’t mad enough.”
“But I can’t think of anything better for the kids than growing up with all the people who love them around them.”
Right one cue, cries of “Dad! Daaad!” fill the air. The hosepipe is primed. They’ve been patient long enough. “Right,” shouts Alex, racing into battle. “I’m coming.” And it’s clear there’s nowhere else he’d rather be.
amandla
yousharknotpass
turnnoffyourmind
vaporwave
blakekathryn
gamechangershow
discoholicmusic
jimmyeatworldofficial
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
ellievsbear
