https://www.telegraph.co.uk/music/inter ... -any-more/
Bassist Alex James: ‘A band like Blur couldn’t exist any more’
The musician and award-winning cheesemaker on bonding over Cheddar, what he really thinks about Oasis and why queuing makes him furious
Rob Crossan
18 March 2025
The 56-year-old bass player in Blur, turned cheesemaker, founder of the Big Feastival, and now author, lives with his wife Claire and their five children on a Cotswolds farm. His book, Over the Rainbow: Tales from an Unexpected Year, is an engaging memoir about the band’s return to the spotlight in 2023. For years, James had been captivated by his idyllic rural life, barely talking to his former bandmates, then suddenly, he had to slim down so he could fit into his Britpop trousers and rediscover what life on the road was like.
Best childhood memory?
I grew up in Bournemouth and I used to love going down to the Jurassic Coast in Purbeck as a kid. There’s a spot called Kimmeridge where we used to adventure a lot. It’s a wilderness and on the first Sunday of every winter month there was a big group of families who used to meet on the beach. It’s quite eerie there with fossils falling off the cliffs and driftwood coming in from the winter storms.
We’d make a fire on the beach and that was where I first experimented with cooking; the joy of throwing a potato onto the fire and pulling out this blackened crust but with something edible inside it. I’m surprised we didn’t all get food poisoning actually as I’m sure the sausages we cooked weren’t properly done.
Best gig you’ve ever played?
Definitely the Sunday night at Wembley Stadium with Blur in 2023. It was the second night and the Saturday blew us all away. Then we woke up on Sunday and had to do it all again. But the crowd were so up for it and there was just something completely special about it. I’m not sure how we can ever top it. It was strange that the hotel my family and I were staying in, which was the Wembley Hilton (aka the greyest hotel in the world) was closer to the stage than our dressing room was.
I had a pretty big night after the Saturday gig but I was able to use the England team’s dressing room with all these showers and spas and ice baths the next day, which really did the job of getting rid of the fatigue. The band reconnected. It brought my family closer together and there were just so many wonderful things about that whole weekend.
Best cheese you’ve ever tasted?
It was actually a really basic, quite nasty, Cheddar which I’d brought one Christmas – a two-and-half kilo slab from a Cash & Carry where we always shop because we’re such a large family. I shared it with my dad and it was such a lovely moment where the two of us bonded over some beers, crusty bread: a virtuous circle of cheesing and drinking that we entered into. Cheese boards are great but when you find the cheese you love best it’s always a minor tragedy when you find it’s all gone.
Best thing about running your own festival?
It fits so squarely into my main preoccupations of family, cheese-making, drink, food and music. It never really feels like work in the same way that being in a band never really feels like work. It’s been a really good way to bond with my kids too and give them work and life experience. They’ve gone from assembling Lego to assembling a festival! They all get involved and I love being able to work alongside the whole family. When we had four kids we stopped getting invited to people’s houses for lunch and when we had five kids people stopped even wanting to come to our house for lunch! So a festival is one of those times when having a big family is a real asset. Also, you don’t have to say “please” to your family when you want them to do something!
Best Britpop song (not by Blur)?
Wonderwall by Oasis for sure. It’s a fantastic song and there really is some magic there. What a singer Liam is. I’m so pleased that the brothers have sorted out their s--t and are going to play together again next year. Marriages often end in divorce and bands almost always end up in acrimony. I’m glad Oasis have got it back together just like we did.
Best restaurant in the world?
It was a place in Essaouira in Morocco I visited when Blur were there recording the Think Tank album in 2002. I’d just fallen in love with Claire and we went to this place which had no glass in the windows and no electricity, which was overlooking the ocean. We just feasted on this minute-fresh fish that had just come out of the ocean. There was no menu, it was served under candlelight and it was glorious to eat as the sun went down over the Atlantic. I must also say that having a KFC in the car can be pretty fantastic! You can eat really well and you can eat really badly at all price points I think.
Worst day of your life so far?
When my wife Claire went into premature labour with our twins, Artemis and Galileo. It was Easter Sunday in the middle of the night and everything was as quiet as Christmas. It was an absolutely terrifying experience for both Claire and myself as she was rushed into emergency surgery. But they survived and are now 18 years old. Disaster and triumph do run side by side don’t they? So the worst day was also the best day, but it was pretty scary.
Worst cheese you’ve ever tasted?
It was a Norwegian cheese called “brunost”. It’s fabled over there but they cook the milk until is caramelised, so it’s basically condensed milk and the sugar comes out really strongly. My love of cheese was informed by Blur’s rider that basically just said “cheese” to be served in the dressing room. I’d heard about this Norwegian cheese and finally had it for breakfast after a show in Oslo. I was incredibly hungover and hungry and took a massive bite. It was the most revolting thing that I’ve ever tasted, the memory still spooks me.
Worst Britpop song (not by Blur)?
I’d also have to say Wonderwall! I know I picked that for my best song too but it’s all quite conflicted. It’s a great tune but it also reminds me of a time when Blur decided that we’d all had enough of this Britpop madness. Graham [Coxon] and Damon [Albarn]were quite antsy at that time so Wonderwall was around the moment when we decided not to put any more trumpets in our music. We went to Iceland, got back to basics, reinvented ourselves and got serious about kicking ass again.
Worst thing about the music industry today?
The sad thing is that record labels funded everything and now music is free, which I love. But it means that you have these enormous artists like Adele and Taylor Swift but no medium or small acts. You can’t really be in an indie band any more. You can have a boutique food business selling pickled onions out of your garage, but you can’t have a band out of your garage any more. All the small venues have gone as they were basically funded by the labels. It’s so hard to be in an interesting band now as it’s just too risky for labels – but that’s where all the new, exciting stuff comes from. I think that period between the Beatles and the internet will be seen in years to come like the Medici period in Florence is regarded now: this brief, glorious, unique explosion of creativity.
Worst hotel you’ve ever stayed in?
The Novotel hotel at Stansted airport. We were going to Bulgaria and it was a 5am Ryanair flight for a family holiday. We stayed in this awful hotel the night before and for me it was the last place I would ever want to stay. But the kids were really little and it was the first time they’d ever stayed in a hotel. They were just beyond excited by the mini-bar and couldn’t believe that there was free soap in the bathroom. The pre-trip plan we had wasn’t looking good on paper but my kids’ total and complete glee at our room made everything more bearable for sure.
Worst advice you’ve ever been given?
My parents did advise me that joining a band was an option that didn’t really add up and was ridiculous. But they were doing it from a place of love. Good advice is the most precious commodity as it saves so much money and time. The problem is that bad advice and good advice kind of sound the same when you’re getting it from people. The trick is, I’ve found, to just keep b-----ing on.
The absolute worst
Queuing for food really makes me cross. The psychology seems to be “it’s a queue so what’s at the end of it must be good”. But hospitality is supposed to make people feel comfortable! I was in Soho last night and I saw a huge queue for a noodle bar. They create this stupid buzz then you go back six months later and the same place is completely dead and empty. Queuing for food is what we were told the USSR was like the 1980s – why would we do that now?
Over the Rainbow: Tales from an Unexpected Year by Alex James (Penguin Books, £18.99 hardback)
Anybody ordered it yet? Looks like I ordered back in July and it had fallen completely off my radar.
