Alex James: The Great Escape

Published: 31 May 2006

If all goes well this morning, I'll get "The Entertainer" ticked by Mrs Swann, my piano teacher, meaning I'll have finished Piano Book One. It's taken about 18 months of lessons. Learning how to fly only took a year. Mrs Swann says the biggest challenge has been teaching me to play quietly. As she points out most weeks, piano means "soft". Once you hit 30, life becomes one long and sometimes difficult quest for soft, I suppose.

"The Entertainer" is a pretty sophisticated piece of music. I'm wondering whether to move on to book two, or to do book one again. Book one's really got everything you need for pop music. The pop bubble's a primary kind of a place. A good pop record is a just bunch of crafty gypsy tricks. The producer's assistant on the last record I made had a degree in music, but in 15 years of making records I can't think of anyone else I've worked with who has had any tertiary musical qualification. All a singer needs is a big mouth, and bass players get by on haircuts and grins. Guitarists mostly have some idea of what's going on, but not enough to hold you back. Keyboard players invariably know everything and are usually best avoided. Ben Hillier, who I'm writing the opera with, has some sort of drum doctorate, but, as he says, being a great drummer is not about being able to do anything fancy, it's about being able to do the simple stuff, really, really well, like Martina Navratilova at Wimbledon. This was confirmed by Madness' drummer, Woody, whom I met recently. I told him I was having drum lessons. He said, "You don't need drum lessons, no one needs drum lessons. Drums go bum, smack, bum, smack. That's it." He then got me to sing some Madness songs and accompanied me with bum smacks. He was right.

Article Length: 458 words (approx.)