Blur’s Alex James ‘I spent £1m on champagne - now I’m a farmer with 5 kids’
Britpop band Blur , crafting the soundtrack to a decade with the likes of Parklife and Girls & Boys.
Register for FREE to read this article in full. Just pop your email address below for free access to our exclusive magazine content as an OK! VIP.Blur 's floppy-haired bassist Alex James proudly shows us around his sprawling 200-acre Oxfordshire farm, it swiftly becomes very apparent that the 54-year-old is fully embracing this “second act” of his rockstar life.
He has shared the rural idyll – the love of his life, as he refers to it – for almost two decades with his wife, a former music video producer.
And, he’s keen to tell us, the release of his new Britpop sparkling wine – a five-year labour of love that has just arrived from Dorset in time for The Big Feastival – the three-day family-friendly music and food festival held at the farm, launched by the couple in 2011. “Young people want to drink and s**g and you just do that to a greater extent when you’re in a band. But it’s a hard thing to contain. I definitely met my match with Claire. She was the making of me.”
He’s referring to the “money well spent” £300 outdoor jacuzzi tub that’s regularly occupied by Claire’s mum, who lives with them, and at least one of the children. “As of last month, I’ve now got five teenagers,” he grins. “So the Blur tour couldn’t have come at a better time because they’re all really enjoying the gigs. You know, it’s very hard for a father to impress a teenager.
It was the first time the whole family were there to witness him on stage. His twins slept through the band’s Hyde Park gig in the 2000s, he tells us. It takes him and Claire virtually the full 12 months to organise, and he’s very proud of what the family pulls together every year – with the help of their kids. Beatrix is “great at running the merch”, apparently, and with Geronimo back for the summer from Brighton where he’s “living his best life” studying electronic music production, it’s all hands on deck.
“Music is a huge part of my life,” he says. “But when the kids were younger I didn’t want to spend all my time on tour, so I sort of moved the mountain to Mohammed, and get the bands to come here.”
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