A Conversation with James Blunt – HuffPost 10.8.13

Mike Ragogna: So James, I think a moon landing is probably one of the greatest triumphs of mankind.

James Blunt: Well, thank you. It only took me a year to do.

MR: [laughs] And as far as your fourth album, coincidentally titled Moon Landing, do you consider this one of your own major triumphs?

JB: Yeah, I do. I’m British, so I try not to brag or have any kind of swagger, but I think on a personal level, it’s a collection of songs which I feel are the strongest songs that I’ve ever written. I’ve recorded them as beautifully as I’ve ever hoped to do. It’s taken a year in the studio to make and it’s been a really amazing personal journey. For me, it started out almost ten years ago when I started as an independent artist on an indie label called Custard Records with an indie producer called Tom Rothrock who recorded and produced other indie artists like Beck, Elliott Smith, Badly Drawn Boy and me. We recorded, together, this indie album called Back To Bedlam that on it had a song called “You’re Beautiful,” that stripped it of its indie roots and took it to a dirty place called “mainstream.”

MR: [laughs] Yeah, I think I heard that recording once or twice.

JB: It sent me on this incredible journey of three albums and three world tours. The second album was recorded with my touring band with all the beautiful musicianship that they brought to that album, and a third album, which I wrote, really, with the audience in mind and the venues in my mind because I was playing in large arenas across the world. I wrote songs to fill those spaces, a frontman of a band playing the electric guitar writing songs that I anticipated you wanting to hear, in a way, writing the words that I imagined you needed me to say. It made for an amazing experience, an incredible third tour, but I felt like it was with the audience in mind and I needed to write songs and words that meant something to me and that moved me, and wasn’t what you wanted to hear but what I needed to say. I wrote some very, very personal songs, and I also needed to find a way to record them in a very honest and genuine way, not hiding behind musicians as I perhaps had done on my second album, but to play the instruments myself, not hide behind production, but instead let a song shine on its own. So that’s where I went back to Tom, the man who started this journey with me and we recorded an indie sounding album.

MR: What was the reunion with Tom like and how did it feel to going back to that earlier approach?

JB: It was such a release to meet that person again and record in that way again. The reason I got into music in the first place and the reason I thought of working in music in the first place is that he is a man of incredible patience who really was drawing from me what I was trying to sound like. A Tom Rothrock album doesn’t sound like Tom Rothrock, it sounds like the artist he’s recording. That’s a very special quality. An example would be, in the studio when I’ve got a microphone there and I’d say, “Tom, you know, I’m struggling a bit, I’m struggling to connect here with my audience because I can’t see them.” In a live show, it’s easy. You’re there and I can look you in the eye and I can sing directly at you. But in the studio, no one’s there. I’m guessing, I’m imagining it as if they’re in the next room or beyond that and I’m really struggling. He would say, “You can’t second guess your audience or imagine them, if you want that connection, sing to me.” So through the glass, I would sing to Tom, to my producer and friend for ten years, and that intensity of singing to him was where I found that honest moment and that glass became like a mirror. I could see my own reflection. In many ways, when you see yourself, you can’t lie to yourself. You’re confronted by yourself. What you’re really hearing on this album is a very direct conversation between me and my producer as I’m singing to that person, a direct conversation, or you’re hearing the madness of someone talking to himself.

MR: [laughs] What about the madness of a conversation between two good friends like you and Ryan Tedder?

JB: Yeah, that’s a great song, I went on his tour bus to go and write “Bonfire Heart.” I traveled around Europe and wrote the song in Amsterdam and Luxembourg and, in many ways, I was like a groupie to the OneRepublic band. But we traveled around and that’s where I wrote the song. It was a great experience.

MR: By the way, you also worked with another producer for the album, right?

JB: Three of the songs I recorded with a producer called Martin Terefe who recorded with Jason Mraz and KT Tunstall amongst others. He was important to me because I went to him to begin with and recorded these songs, for instance, “Blue On Blue,” that I recorded in his studio. He records kind of live in an open space and his sound desk is even in the studio, too, his sound desk is not even behind the glass. That live recording gave me the confidence not to hide behind production and that gave me the confidence to go back to Tom actually, so I have to mention him.

MR: It’s like a puzzle, fitting it all together.

JB: Correct.

MR: Do you think your focus is a benefit from having been a soldier?

JB: No, I don’t think so. There is a song of mine called “Blue On Blue,” which is a military reference, like friendly fire, when two soldiers in the same fire shoot at each other by mistake. I related that to a relationship, sometimes we hurt the ones we love the most, so I had references to my military times in my lyrics. But no, this recording process was not the soldier, this was the artist finding his way.

MR: One of my favorite tracks on this project is “Satellites” because, to me, you’re using it as a multiple reference. What is your creative process as far as lyrics? How are things hitting you these days?

JB: It’s really hard to describe. I don’t write well on tour because I like to confine myself in a studio or a quiet place where I haven’t got friends around, and I hang out with musicians who might write with me or I write on my own. I wouldn’t go as far as saying it’s meditation, but it’s definitely a moment of trying to really feel something strongly and relay it genuinely. Emotions are so difficult to describe in words, so it is trying to find things that really inspire me emotionally and then find a way of conveying that in music and words and put it in terms as simple as I can. “Bonfire Heart” is the idea that people [??? 9:51] whatever your sex or sexuality or color or creed that all humans actually have a need for connection. The human condition is to need connection. So the lyrics are simple, “People like us, we don’t need that much/ Just someone that starts, starts the spark in our bonfire hearts.” And then another great moment for us for that song was when we went to make a video. We recorded it in Wyoming and Idaho, we were in two states coming hundreds of miles on motorbikes, I love motorbikes. And I didn’t want to use just actors. The greatest bit was at the very end when in the bar of the carpark was a wedding taking place, the wedding party spilled out into the carpark and asked, “Hey, what are you doing?” and I pulled out my acoustic guitar and I introduced myself by playing, “You’re Beautiful” and they said, “Christ! You’re that guy who plays that song!” And then I played “Bonfire Heart” with the cameras rolling in a circle of friends and family and all the people we met on the way and the bride and groom had their first dance of their wedding in the carpark and that’s what we filmed and that is my video.

MR: Beautiful So this is not just your personal story, this is an album where you really tried to get to the root of how people feel, theirs and your emotions.

JB: Yeah, exactly that, and all the things that inspired me along the way.

MR: In one of your songs, “Miss America,” you sing about Whitney Houston. How did her death affect you and what inspired you to write a song about it?

JB: As a singer, I can relate a little bit to the intensity of people watching and people thinking that they know you and the pressures that apply to anyone. I wrote that about Whitney Houston as someone for whom that intensity has become so extreme that it had taken over her life and the great sadness associated with that. Her story is the same as Amy Whinehouse and, in many ways, the same as Michael Jackson’s or even Princess Diana’s to a degree. These stories repeat themselves. Marilyn Monroe… The common factor in all of these stories is you and me. We are the ones who spectate and we are the ones who perhaps enjoy spectating a bit too much.

MR: With you song “Face The Sun,” for me…you know how a plant needs to be nurtured and face the sun to get its life source? That’s sort of how I took the song. Was that a little far off?

JB: It’s exactly that. You hit the nail on the head. It’s as simple as that. Whatever goes on in life, there are very simple things that we need. I originally wrote that song for the third album, but we never quite captured its life and its fragility in the recordings, but I hid it up my sleeve and then recorded this fourth one. It starts off with that motorbike going past, which, to me, is cool. The album starts to take you on a journey as well. I was inspired by the KLF album Chill Out, which has those samples from across Midwest America heading down to Mexico, so I went out with my friends and recorded wherever I was in the States, recorded these natural sounds. I’ve got them throughout the album to take you on this journey.

MR: So this album quite literally was also about your personal journey.

JB: Yes. And that countdown into “Satellites”? It’s actually a pedestrian crossing just off the Santa Monica Pier.

MR: James, I ask you every time, so let’s do it again. What advice do you have for new artists?

JB: Get the right manager. The music business is a business where you need someone to look out for you while you concentrate on your bit, which is being a musician.

MR: Looking back, do you think “You’re Beautiful” could’ve fit on this album also?

JB: Yeah, I suppose, sonically, in many ways, yes. The sounds on both albums are stripped back and are organic, so yes I think so.

MR: What about the concept?

JB: Well, I’m almost ten years older. I don’t know if I would behave the same way in the encounter on the underground or if I would’ve changed the course of history then.

MR: Thank you James, I really appreciated this interview.

JB: I hope I get to talk to you again.

MR: You got it, and all the best.

JB: Take care.

MR: All the best.

Transcribed by Galen Hawthorne