Because I feel disrespect for anyone who enjoys my music.
You know, people think it's a romantic song but it's about a guy who's high as a kite on drugs stalking
someone else's girlfriend in a public place. I don't think that's romantic, I think it's creepy.
Long before music, he was a soldier who fought in the army and he is exceptionally honest in interviews
So, is it true that you have a nightclub in your house called Blunty's Nightclub Where Everyone Is Beautiful
Yeah. Blunty's Nightclub is the title. Yeah and then I have a big neon sign my band gave me
saying 'Blunty's Nightclub Where Everybody's Beautiful' and if you drink enough, they are.
I have a mannequin on the door as well with a clipboard with my friend's names
so she lets people in or doesn't depending on who they are. Her name's Svetlana.
Come along any time
I'm going to absolutely take you up on that offer.
So the first three albums you made, correct me if I'm wrong
you recorded, you were living at Carrie Fisher's house weren't you?
And I recorded 'Goodbye, My Lover' in her bathroom.
Why in her bathroom?
Because she had a piano there and it sounded good.
Okay, who has a piano in their bathroom?
I think, you know, the question is who doesn't in Hollywood
Right, evidently. So for people that only know her as a character and as this larger than life Hollywood creature
What has the world lost? What was she actually like?
I mean, an incredibly creative beautifully mad human being who was very funny
but very caring at the same time. She had her own demons which she dealt with with humour
but also with great honestly. Carrie never took herself very seriously and she had a great wicked
sense of humour and I think that's why we got on.
Hi, I'm Lieutenant James Blunt and this is the first instalment of my video diary
Today, we deploy to the Balkans.
What's the thing most people get wrong about warzones?
I suppose maybe a misunderstanding about soldiers is that they're all aggressive thugs keen for a fight
and in many ways, politicians are aggressive thugs keen for a fight and want to flex their muscles with armies
but soldiers are on the ground and they know the consequences.
A mass grave has been exhumed. A lot of people died and have been buried in shallow graves here.
I think soldiers are probably the quickest people to try and avoid a fight. If you can overpower people with
strength of will instead of strength of your muscle, then everyone hopefully gets to go home.
There was a moment when you were overseas when you were working underneath the general who in your words,
effectively stopped World War 3. Can you talk me through what exactly transpired there?
Yeah, it was the most amazing day of my life. I was a reconnaissance officer, led 30,000 people
from the Macedonia-Kosovo border up to the capital Pristina, through mine fields and quite a lot of pressure
if you're leading 30,000 people you really want to make sure you're getting the right direction
cuz it's hard to tell 30,000 people you've gone the wrong way.
And when we got to the airport, the Russians were there. They'd been allowed through by the Serbs.
They had taken control of the airport. There were 200 of them, lined up like a Mexican stand-off
not allowing us on and I was told by General Wesley Clark, and the supreme commander,
to overrun and overpower them, which would have been easy. I was in a tank and I had a lot of soldiers with me.
We could have done that, but it seemed like the consequences to that would have been quite serious.
Somewhat
So I contested the instruction for a time and to his aggravation and eventually, a great general
came up on the line and said he wasn't going to have his soldiers be responsible for starting World War 3
so we should pull back and surround the airport instead. And the Russians after two days asked, they said we
have no food no water can we have some, and we said if you share the airport, we share our food and water
That career as a reconnaissance officer I imagine comes with a great deal of spatial awareness and
paying attention to around you and I'm wondering, does that have a lasting impact?
That intense period of being hyper aware of the world around you.
Yeah. You're totally right. I think, as a reconnaissance officer, my job was to be the eyes and ears
of my supreme, of my commanders whatever level actually and pass the information back
for them to act on. I mean, I had to be incredibly attentive to details around me, of intentions around me
and sensitive to my surroundings and as a songwriter, maybe I'm doing the same.
Maybe I'm sensitive to my surroundings and suck things in and compile them into songs to pass back to
my listeners instead of my superiors and relay what it is that I've seen and heard.
And it's definitely quite an addictive sensation of revealing my most painful secrets
in front of a few thousand people.
What motivates somebody to do that? Is it an impulse, a desperate need to give out the deepest darkest secrets?
No, it's money
Best answer ever! That's awesome. No really, is it really money? No, because it couldn't have started with money
Maybe it didn't start with money but it finishes with money.
Fair enough.
You once said, I think back in 2014, that you read all of your reviews. Do you still?
Yeah I think it's important to. Saddam Hussein didn't read any of his reviews and he thought he was winning
So what do you get out of that? Beyond awareness of what people think and what people say and having
a good sense of humour about it, what does it give you back?
Fundamentally I think, I really do believe strongly that professional
reviewers probably don't know what the fuck they're talking about.
No, they do not. I've been one for a decade. I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about.
Because at the same time as being a professional reviewer, only ego is in the mix.
So if something's hip and cool, you're probably going to say it's hip and cool because you're expected to
and you want your readers and reviewers to think that you're a person who's in the know.
A review from someone who's just a punter on the street,
if someone says I don't know anything about music, that's the best reviewer you're ever going to get.
It's funny, a couple years ago, Chris Martin gave an interview before he released an album
and he was worried that Coldplay had stopped being cool, he was desperate that they release something that
would make them cool again. And I was thinking, can you reverse engineer cool, is it something you can pre-empt.
Yeah, I'm not sure if I should be swearing here on camera so much
Yeah, no you can swear on the show.
Yeah, what the fuck you talking about with cool. What the fuck are you even on about. What is that word.
What does it matter? And the reason I don't care about it, was again because I was in the army
where we dealt with life and death. Not with what's cool and what's not cool. Life and death
and if I write songs about what it is to be alive, or dead, to be addicted, or to be clean, or to be in love.
None of those are cool. It's about reality and most of the people in the world aren't cool. You know,
they deal with real life things. I don't want to be cool, I want to sing about what it is that makes you tick.
That's a great answer