James Blunt Biography

James Blunt’s family have served in one kind of army or another since 995A.D. A long line of warriors. Savages really. Not a musical bone in any one of their bodies. The only music he heard growing up was “Happy Birthday” and “Silent Night”. His father considered all music, even classical, to be unnecessary noise. Although James was not one to rock the family boat, he didn’t really think he was going to join the army - it sort of crept up on him. Plus his family didn’t have a boat. Aged fourteen he just held the teenage conviction that he would have an interesting life - maybe that’s why he picked the guitar? Then again, maybe if he hadn’t, he would have tripped over it. He went to University and studied Aerospace Manufacturing Engineering and Sociology, spending most lectures asleep on the floor at the back. In much the same way, he ended up in the army. In essence, one day he was sleeping off a hangover at the back of a sociology lecture hall and the next thing he knew he was in Kosovo with a gun and a guitar strapped to the side of a tank, wondering who he could possibly sleep with to get out of this war. To break up the super attenuated monotony, James would sometimes stroll through Serb villages wearing an East German cap singing, “All we are saying is give peace a chance”. “We were peace-keepers at that point,” he explained, shrugging helplessly.So how did the music get into him, you might ask? Well if you were sent to boarding school aged seven, studied Engineering by mistake (”I thought we were going to fly planes, but we just pulled metals apart - the brochure was very misleading.”), joined the army by default, guarded The Queen, buried The Queen Mother and pranced around London like a tit for Japanese tourists to photograph, what you’re going to want to do very much after that, besides getting stoned and laid, is put your gun down, pick up a guitar and make an album in America with Linda Perry. So James came to Los Angeles in September 2003 to record with Tom Rothrock et al. At night he’d go to bars, bringing with him his valuable British accent (in the U.K., too posh for some people - in LA, the best thing she’d heard all night) and the fact that like 50 Cent he’d been shot at numerous times, but unlike the Cent, had dodged the bullets. One song, “Goodbye My Lover”, was recorded in his landladies’ bathroom (”She was a frequenter of mental hospitals and in general, a freak - but pleasant”) where, naturally, she kept a piano.

From birth in a military hospital in Tidworth, to Harrow School, to Aerospace Manufacturing Engineering, to the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, to The Household Cavalry, to Kosovo, to Buckingham Palace, to a recording studio in Los Angeles. How did James get from there to here? Only James Blunt’s hairdresser knows for certain, and either he isn’t talking or James cuts his own hair, and it’s up to you to join the dots - there are ten of them on the album.

Background information

Birth name

Born

Origin

Genre(s)

Occupation(s)

Instrument(s)

Years active

Label(s)

Website

James Hillier Blount

February 22, (1974-02- 22) (age 34)

Tidworth, Wiltshire, England

Folk rock Pop rock Soul rock

Singer-songwriter, musician

Vocals, multi- instrumentalist

2004–present

Warner/Atlantic/Custard

www.JamesBlunt.com

• Laughter is the music of the soul

• There was a tortoise called Joe

• 
  Whose progress was painfully slow.

• 
  He'd stop for a week,

• 
  Look around, take a peek,

• 
  Then unlike a shot, off he’d go. Michael Palin

• Dear Lord of hosts

• Dear Lord Divine

• Who turneth the water into wine

• Please bless this band of lesser men

• Who can only turn it back again.

• A laugh is just like sunshine,

• 
  It freshens all the day,

• 
  It tips the peak of life with light,

• 
  And drives the clouds away.

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  The soul grows glad that hears it

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  And feels its courage strong.

• 
  A laugh is just like sunshine

• 
  For cheering folks along.

• 
  A laugh is just like music.

• 
  It lingers in the heart,

• 
  And where its melody is heard

• 
  The ills of life depart;

• 
  And happy thoughts come crowding

• 
  Its joyful notes to greet:

• 
  A laugh is just like music

• 
  For making living sweet.

• Laughing is good exercise. It's like jogging on the inside.

• THE SENILITY PRAYER Grant me the senility to forget the people I never liked anyway,

• 
  the good fortune to run into the ones I do, and the eyesight to tell the difference.

• If you started out with nothing then you still have most of it.

• You can't turn back the clock - but you can wind it up again.

• Whenever I feel like exercising - I lie down till the feeling passes.

• How can you possibly find your glasses without your glasses?

• One evening in October, when I was one-third sober,

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  An' taking home a ‘load' with manly pride;

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  My poor feet began to stutter, so I lay down in the gutter,

• 
  And a pig came up an' lay down by my side;

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  Then we sang ‘It's all fair weather when good fellows get together,'

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  Till a lady passing by was heard to say:

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  ‘You can tell a man who "boozes" by the company he chooses'

• 
  And the pig got up and slowly walked away.

• I went to a bookshop and asked for 'The Self Help Section'. The assistant said

• 'If I tell you it will defeat the purpose'.

• Admonishing a young boy, the school teacher said, "Rodney, when I was your

• age, I was told that, if I pulled ugly faces, the wind might change and I would stay

• like that for ever." To which the youngster replied, "Well, miss, you can't say you

• weren't warned!"

• "Do you believe in life after death? the boss asked one of his employees.

• 
  "Yes" replied the employee. "That's OK then" said the boss "Because while

• you were at your grandmother's funeral yesterday, she popped in to see you".

• If all is not lost, where is it?

• Kids in the back seats cause accidents and accidents in the back seats cause kids

• Choose your rut carefully because you are in it a very long time. The only

• difference between a rut and the grave is the depth.

• An Irish queer is a man who prefers women to drink.

• Incontinence Hotline? - can you hold, please!

• "He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire." Winston Churchill