Blur’s Alex James recalls ‘car crash’ meeting with bandmates before reunion tour

‘I’ve sort of blocked it out,’ said guitarist

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

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

However, before that meeting, James said he had been left “haunted” by their previous band get-together, which went horribly wrong.

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

“I’ve sort of blocked it out. But we… couldn’t. Weren’t really communicating at all,” he said.

The Britpop band, best known for hits “Parklife”, “Girls & Boys” and “Song 2”, broke up in 2003, before reuniting again in 2009 for a series of shows. They released a comeback album, The Magic Whip, in 2015 before going on hiatus until last year’s The Ballad of Darren.

In an excerpt shared by The Times from James’ forthcoming book Over the Rainbow: Tales from an Unexpected Year, he wrote of the reunion tour meeting: “First one in years. The previous meeting was a car crash that had haunted me daily ever since, and there had been very little communication between us or with management. Until the live rep had called.”

James said that when he arrived at the reunion meeting, Rowntree, the band’s drummer, looked “really sad”, and seemed doubtful about whether the tour was going ahead.

Alex James, Damon Albarn, Graham Coxon, and Dave Rowntree pictured in 2024 (PA)

“Dave was really pale. Looked really sad. Said, ‘I don’t think it’s going to happen,’” James recalled.

When Albarn and Coxon arrived, James said there was a “little bit of awks” and they spent some time discussing how it was all going to work. However, when they started playing together again – beginning with their 1990 song “She’s So High” – it was like time had never passed.

“It was just absolutely instant,” recalled James. “The minute we start playing together, the world falls away and we’re all 19 years old again, the same as we were in that room, and it’s blissful and joyous.”

After that, they all said yes to performing at Wembley, with tickets selling out in 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’ is on and you’re singing your head off and it feels brilliant? It just feels like that. It feels exactly like that.”

James performing with Blur at Wembley Stadium (PA)

As part of last year’s tour, frontman Albarn was not impressed by the crowd at the California festival Coachella and bluntly told onlookers that they were “never seeing us again”.

The frontman tried to lead a singalong during the bridge of “Girls & Boys” but was met with silence on multiple attempts.

He told the audience: “You’re never seeing us again so you might as well f***ing sing it. Know what I’m saying?”

“Song 2” was met with a huge reaction from the crowd, and Albarn said: “This song has been so good to us. But I did get shown a TikTok of it being kind of performed by a vacuum cleaner which is you know…. It is humbling and inspiring at the same time.”