Alex James spent more than a decade living the high life as Blur's bassist. Now, he prefers to drive tractors and make cheese he tells Larry Flynn.
Alex James is extolling the joys of farm life. "I can take all day making dinner," says the bold bassist from English rock band Blur, who now doubles as a writer and country gent. "You know you're growing it all day, watering it, picking it, preparing it, cooking it . . . " He trails off, content. Clearly, the rock'n'roll animal of lore has morphed into a family man living in the country.
Since Blur released the acclaimed Think Tankin 2003, Alex James has become a decidedly tamer beast. In his later rock'n'roll excess years, he had started to look bloated, despite his tall frame, but now he seems rather healthy. At the height of Blur's fame, he was a much-derided, drunken figure; today he is affable and engaging. The bold boy has grown up.
His recently published autobiography, Bit Of A Blur, is a colourful account of how he survived the journey.
"The trout farm phase of the rock'n'roll trajectory is as inevitable as the kind of boozy, aeroplane-flying bit," he says. He likens the wild years as being "a mad steeplechase on a mad horse". He enjoyed the ride and was primed to document it. "I think the bass player's role is kind of a passenger's one," he says. "It's a good narrator's role."
He certainly lived up to the cliched rock'n'roll celebrity lifestyle, spending the best part of a decade drunk, grinning and high. He estimates that he has spent about a million pounds on champagne and cocaine.
The brief history of Blur is well documented, and it is one that pushes all the right buttons. "We're the indie Spinal Tap; we've done it all," drummer Dave Rowntree once said.
Originally named Seymour after the JD Salinger character, the band formed in 1989 in and around Goldsmiths College in south London, where James and guitarist Graham Coxon were studying and had become close friends. Damon Albarn, Coxon's school friend and the driving force of the band, made up the quartet with Rowntree.
They were very loud, messy and often drunk in the early days. Soon they had a record deal. A little more melody and an enforced name change - to Blur - were added to the mix. Two moderately successful albums followed, complete with the requisite appearances on Top of the Pops, dodgy managers and bad accounting, encounters with crazed fans in Japan and soul-sapping tours across the US.
James recalls a moment from those early days: "It was a rainy Friday in Birmingham. Our first single had just come out. A nice smiley man kept bringing us crates of beer, which we drank, and the atmosphere was building. When we went on stage the place was packed and we blew the f*****g doors off. Absolutely brought the house down. That was the first time we'd ever done that. The crowd was on the stage. It just went off. The first time you do that, that's the greatest. Then you know you can do it."
By their second album, Modern Life is Rubbish, the band had started to realise the sound they wanted to make, kick-starting the nascent Britpop scene. With their third record, Parklife, the sound exploded and massive sales, stardom and awards ensued. Celebrated, hyped and maligned in equal measure, Britpop and Cool Britannia were soon in full swing.
In the summer of 1995 it hit its zenith (or nadir, depending on your perspective) with the Blur versus Oasis chart battle. Blur reached number one but Oasis ended the year as the bigger band. It was something of a fiasco, and they retreated somewhat, making three markedly different albums from their predecessors, culminating in their last record four years ago.
In 2002 James met film producer Claire Neate. They were married within a year and the pair moved to a farm in the Cotswolds. They now have three children - three-year-old Geronimo and twins Artemis and Galileo (he's still a rock star after all), born in 2006. "My wife arriving when she did was a great sort of deus ex machina literary device," he explains. "But it did feel like I got to the end of a journey. It's a leap of faith getting married. You never know if you've married Heather Mills or Cinderella. Fortunately it has all worked out."
His memoir has an overriding sense of optimism about it. He manages to tread a fine line between tales of success and hedonism without sounding overly boastful, while also recognising the downside to addiction and excess, without being excessively "woe is me" about it.
"It's an ode to joy really. I guess it's kind of an antidote to the misery memoir," he says. "And I hope this will resonate beyond people who've got every Blur record and know Damon's birthday. Because people are intrigued by the machinations of success."
Alex James came from a middle-class family in Bournemouth. "It's a nice place - a seaside town," he says. "You don't come out of there with huge anger. Bass players don't tend to be tortured the way singers or even guitarists are. It's a good chance to enjoy yourself."
It was a simple trajectory from middle-class Bournemouth, to grotty student life in London and on to the city's rock scene. Next it was tour buses and world tours and glamorous parties. When not travelling the world with the band with the usual mélange of groupies, models and hangers-on, James was holding court in London with his drinking buddies, artist Damien Hirst and actor/comedian Keith Allen.
It was with this pair that he came up with Fat Les, a side project that made rather thuggish football songs, starting with Vindaloofor England's 1998 World Cup campaign. Fat Les can hardly be described as an artistic endeavour, but James remains unapologetic: "Making football records is great because it's very rare that you get so many people singing together. Where else would you get 10,000 people singing like that?"
As the band careened along, with several relationships frayed along the way, James led a life of rock star excess; he learned to fly and bought a plane, encountered Courtney Love and wrote songs for 1960s icon Marianne Faithfull. While working with Faithfull, he even attempted to seduce her. "You dog! Do you want some coffee?" she replied, calmly deflecting his attentions.
Less typical was his long-held interest in astronomy - he is a member of the British Astronomical Association. This culminated in his involvement with the ill-fated British-led Beagle 2 exploration of Mars in 2001. He and Blur composed a piece of music that was supposed to be transmitted back to earth, signalling that the probe had safely landed on Mars.
James now writes a column on country life for the London Independent, a column on food for the Observer, and occasionally does interviews for Q Magazine. Writing is something he seems to have acquired a taste and talent for. "I get from writing the same sense of satisfaction, the sense of importance that I got from writing music," he says. He hopes to write a second book about escaping to the country. "Then I might try a bodice ripper!" he adds.
He hasn't completely abandoned music. "It's a brilliant thing to be a musician when you're 23; a hedonistic, irresponsible, drunk, grinning popstar," says James. "But it's a hard thing to let go of. It's why there are so many ageing rock bands that seem so grotesque." Yet he suggests that Blur are almost ready to step back into the studio for the first time since 2002.
"In every way it's been brilliant that there has been a break from Blur," says James. "We've all kind of found ourselves."
Indeed Damon Albarn has found massive success with his Gorillaz band and has just scored an opera called Monkey, premiering at the Manchester International Festival. Dave Rowntree owns an animation company and also ran - unsuccessfully - as a Labour candidate in the recent local elections in Britain. Graham Coxon, who left the band acrimoniously before recording the last album, has made a number of solo albums, but is also seemingly ready to step back into the fold.
"God knows what it will sound like," James says of a possible new record. "There's nothing set in stone, nothing will happen before next year. But we're all coming around to it. The time is about right," he says.
He is certain that the hedonistic days are behind them all, even if they do go on tour with any new work. "I wondered if there would be life after rock'n'roll. There is. Cheese," he declares. Now James is more content pottering away on his farm. "I'm trying to invent cheese. Pickled cheese. It will be revolutionary."
He has even sold his aircraft. "I've got a tractor now," he says. "A plane isn't very right-on any more. Tractors are just as satisfying. Digging big holes is a good feeling."
Bit of a Blur: The Autobiography, by Alex James, published by Little, Brown, €14.99