On the dot of midday, James Blunt bustles into Gymkhana in Mayfair. “I’m always asked about legacy and what will one’s legacy be,” he says, as he slides into our leather-seated booth. “And I really hope my legacy will be that I was the most punctual man in rock’n’roll.” I ask Blunt how he’s doing. “Great!” replies the singer-songwriter, who turns 50 this week. “Well, I’ve got an invitation to Gymkhana for lunch. Let’s not do anything about music. Let’s get beer, curry and see where the day takes us!”
Gymkhana is that rare dining spot: a place of impeccable service and food – it recently won a second Michelin star – that also manages to feel relaxed and discreet. It’s little surprise that it has been a hit with celebrities, and everyone else, since it opened in 2013. Blunt looks around the wood-panelled, clubby interior: you suspect he’s more often here in the late evenings rather than lunch. “Yeah, I’ve been photographed rolling out of here before, falling out of here,” he confirms.
What would Blunt recommend to eat? “To name drop, I’m normally here with Sheeran, who knows it so well. He’s the one doing the picking.”
Sheeran is, of course, Ed: the musician is a close friend and godfather to Blunt’s eldest son. (Sheeran also has a two-inch scar under his right eye sustained when he and Blunt, in the early hours, fought each other in armour with ceremonial swords while staying at Prince Andrew’s house in 2016.) Sheeran has been effusive about how influential Blunt’s music has been to him: he even played Blunt’s breakthrough 2004 album Back to Bedlam, which included the ubiquitous singles You’re Beautiful and Goodbye My Lover, while his wife was in labour with their first child in 2020. In last year’s documentary about Blunt, One Brit Wonder, Sheeran described him as “a national treasure”.
“Well, we obviously paid him quite a lot for that,” says Blunt. “It’s a quarter of a million for positive sentiment like that.”
Still, it makes a pleasant change for Blunt, who has not always been treated kindly by fellow musicians and the media. When he first came on the scene, his inescapably aristo background – Harrow; Sandhurst; officer in the Life Guards – made him an easy target. In the run-up to the 2006 Brits, where Blunt was nominated for five awards, two of which (best British pop act and British male solo artist) he would win, Paul Weller said that he would rather eat his own shit than work with Blunt. At the ceremony, Blunt was blanked by Mick Jagger when he tried to shake the Stone’s hand. In 2007, when they were both on Later … With Jools Holland, Blunt says Damon Albarn refused to appear in a group photo with him. The NME gave Back to Bedlam 2006’s worst album “award”, a statue he only received last year and which now sits alongside his Brits and Ivor Novellos.
The vitriol was extraordinary and, from a distance of nearly two decades, feels almost deranged. Does Blunt, now seven albums in, and still playing arena shows throughout Europe and America – this spring, he will perform across the UK, including two nights at the Royal Albert Hall – feel there has been a more measured appraisal of his music?
“Paul Simon is a genius,” says Blunt. “And I don’t think I am. But I can sing in tune – and I know that. You can find any number of people being rude about my singing, but pull out a tuner and the note’s on. Can I capture an emotion in a song in a particular way? Yes, I can. You’re Beautiful being one of them. Do I do it all the time? No.
“And Back to Bedlam, hell yeah,” Blunt continues, about the album that sold more copies than any other in the UK in the 2000s. “You put it on, I’ll even put Damon Albarn in the room and say: ‘You know what, it’s solid.’ And I’ve had important people to me – even those that have been in the Beatles – say that.”
That was Paul McCartney, by the way. Our food has started to arrive: Blunt chose the chicken butter masala, and asked the waiter to pick a couple of starters and some sides. The Cobra lager, served in what would have to be called goblets, is going down worryingly easily. Blunt’s natural inclination is towards self-deprecation: to make the joke about himself before anyone else can. This tone will be familiar to his 2.2 million followers on X, formerly Twitter, where his withering comebacks are legendary. (Sample: “Who the fuck invited James Blunt to the Invictus Games?” wrote one user in 2016. His response: “Prince Harry. By text. BOOM!”)
Blunt’s policy with X is to write a post, show it to either his wife or manager and, if they wince, he presses send. “When they invented Twitter, at least it gave me a voice to say, ‘I’m not the guy they’re portraying me to be’,” he says.
Still, every so often – as when he makes the Paul Simon comparison – Blunt is more earnest. The criticism when he broke through clearly stung, and it has left a mark. “I had an ambition and a dream, a very naive one, to be a successful touring musician,” he reflects, ripping into a basket of naans. “And that dream came true. Then a backlash kicked in and that was again a surprise in its ferociousness. And if I have regrets about it, I wish it had come maybe six months later, so I could have enjoyed the ride a little longer. Because it came very quickly.”
If you’re going to be a tall poppy, I say, you might at least enjoy a decent period in the sun. “The gardener was very efficient, yeah,” says Blunt. Did he have therapy? “No, I don’t need it. I’ve got you!”
After Back to Bedlam, Blunt moved to Ibiza and went to clubs. He even built his own, in his back garden. “It’s got a big sign saying ‘Blunty’s Nightclub: Where Everybody’s Beautiful’,” he says. “It’s just an awesome fucking place, and it’s within crawling distance of bed. A ton of DJs have turned up and then, when they’ve seen how childish it is, that it seems like a teenager’s disco, some of them have turned round. But Pete Tong has played there. [David] Guetta got five metres in and then walked out. P Diddy heard I had a nightclub and sent 400 bottles of Cîroc [vodka]. In the first year, my mate Billy and I drank 50 bottles.”
Blunt has, by any estimation, had an extraordinary first 50 years and the anecdotes tumble out of Blunt. At university in Bristol, he was in a busking duo with adventurer Bear Grylls called Limp Willy and the Disappointments. Blunt would later call on Grylls’s help when, having been invited by his then-girlfriend Lindsay Lohan, he ended up in the bathroom of Jamie Foxx’s hotel suite, staring at a blocked toilet. Grylls advised him by text to eat the “angry floater”; a story that I’m glad Blunt shared at the end of our meal rather than the start. “So Bear’s been a close confidant who has helped me out in lots of tough scenarios,” says Blunt.
This tale and the Sheeran story are in Blunt’s highly entertaining, “non-memoir” published at the end of last year, Loosely Based on a Made-Up Story. The preface contains the caveat that many of the tales were “embellished” and that “some of what follows is true, most is not. In fact, my lawyer is demanding that I go further and clarify none of this actually happened... It’s partially true rather than painfully true, and I have possibly been economical with the truth, Your Honour.” Today he says: “As I’m talking to you as a friend, it’s all true. Well, there’s just one glaring moment that’s not true. But then that one glaring moment opens the whole book up to whether it’s true.”
In 2014, Blunt married the lawyer Sofia Wellesley, and they have two children. Presumably life has slowed down a little? “I guess your question is: have I changed and grown up?” says Blunt. “Well, no, not really.”
We are finally defeated by the mountain of food and ask for the bill. Before he leaves, I suggest to Blunt that he is a magnet for absurd comic misadventures. He looks like the thought has never occurred to him. “No, I don’t think so,” he replies, and then guffaws with gusto. “I’m going to say, ‘I’ll try anyone once!’ I mean, anything once. Life is for living 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’. In the army, we said, ‘Yes, we can do this.’ Can you help me? ‘Yes, I can.’ Are you game for this? Even though it’s going to be really tricky? ‘Yeah, I am’.”
James Blunt tours the UK from 30 Mar-14 Apr
