Blur’s Alex James recalls a “car crash” meeting with bandmates before the reunion tour

Alex James has reflected on a “car crash” meeting with his Blur bandmates ahead of their 2023 reunion tour.

The 56-year-old bass guitarist, who joined the band aged 19, reflects on an unexpected meeting with bandmates Damon Albarn, Graham Coxon and Dave Rowntree that eventually led to their reunion tour.

However, before that meeting, James said he was “haunted” by their previous band meeting, which went terribly wrong.

The musician told The times that the meeting was so disastrous that he had blocked it from his memory.

“I kind of blocked it out. But we…couldn’t. “We didn’t really communicate at all,” he said.

The Britpop band, best known for their hits “Parklife”, “Girls & Boys” and “Song 2”, split up in 2003 before reuniting for a series of shows in 2009. They released a comeback album, The magic whipin 2015 before taking a break until last year The Ballad of Darren.

In an excerpt shared by The times from James’ upcoming book Over the Rainbow: Stories from an Unexpected Yearhe wrote about the reunion tour meeting: “The first in years. The last meeting was a car accident that has haunted me daily ever since, and there was very little communication between us or management. Until the live rep called.”

James said that Rowntree, the band’s drummer, looked “really sad” when he arrived at the reunion meeting and had doubts about whether the tour would go ahead.

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“Dave was really pale. Looked really sad. He said, ‘I don’t think that’s going to happen,'” James recalls.

When Albarn and Coxon arrived, James said there was “a bit of unrest” and they spent some time discussing how everything would work. However, when they started playing together again – starting with their 1990 song “She’s So High” – it was as if time had never passed.

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“It was just instantaneous,” James remembers. “The moment we start playing together, the world disappears and we’re all 19 years old again, just like in this room, and it’s blissful and joyful.”

Afterwards everyone said yes to the performance at Wembley Stadium as tickets sold out within minutes.

Reflecting on performing with his bandmates at the stadium on their reunion tour last year, James said: “You know when you’re in the car and ‘Uptown Funk’ comes on and you’re singing at the top of your lungs and it feels great? It just feels that way. It feels exactly like that.”

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As part of last year’s tour, frontman Albarn was unfazed by the crowd at California’s Coachella festival, bluntly telling audience members that they would “never see us again.”

The frontman attempted to sing along during the bridge of “Girls & Boys,” but was met with silence on several attempts.

He told the audience, “You’ll never see us again, so you might as well sing it.” Do you know what I’m saying?”

“Song 2” had a huge response from the audience and Albarn said: “We liked this song so much.” But I was shown a TikTok of a vacuum cleaner doing it, which is, you know… . It’s humbling and inspiring at the same time.”