Some Blunt truths with David Gray

Mar 22 2008 by Gavin Allen, South Wales Echo

“I DON’T think James Blunt gives a damn,” said David Gray, having considered the bitter backlash against Blunt’s vast commercial success.

Blunt’s massive record sales have made him an artistic outcast and he is roundly derided with vitriol when he is guilty of little but being over-exposed.

“It’s exactly what happened to me and you just have to learn to not take it all to heart,” sighed fellow million-seller Gray.

The current saturation of singer/songwriters like Blunt in the charts is due in part Gray’s astonishing success with his fourth album, White Ladder, in 1998.

“It’s not rocket science,” he says.

“When something is successful the record companies just get in there and flood the charts with as many similar things as they can.

“Whatever it is that comes along, whether it be ska or hip-hop, the record companies milk it until people get bored of it and then they move on.

“Most of what they put out there is flimsy but the things that have real value will stand up on their own.”

Gray’s career stood up because he was the real thing, because before fame struck he had already made three albums.

However, White Ladder made Gray an overnight sensation in the public mind and singles such as This Year’s Love and Babylon shifted units in their thousands.

However, such was his success that those same songs soon became unavoidable – radio wallpaper – and the Blunt-like backlash began.

“There was a reaction to me, and some of it was very vindictive, hurtful,” says Gray, who was born in Manchester but raised in Solva, West Wales.

“People suddenly seemed to see me as some kind of corporate creation rather than someone who had been doing it himself for years.

“But the thing is that opportunity doesn’t last forever so you’d best get in there and do it all while you can.”

Gray did just that and toured White Ladder into the ground before returning in 2002 with A New Day at Midnight which, although critically maligned, gave him another No.1 album.

But in maximising his ascent from nowhere to No.1 he exhausted himself with intense touring and in 2003 he halted his whole schedule for a two-year hiatus.

“It was a tumultuous time and there was just so much going on,” said Gray, who turns 40 in June.

“For five years I was constantly on the road and it does take its toll.

“What you realise is that you just can’t keep going at that pace.

“I needed to have a bit of my a life back, play a bit of football, meet the family again.”

A reinvigorated Gray’s returned in 2005 with his seventh album Life in Slow Motion, hailed critically as a return to form, and last November released the greatest hits album Shine.

The tour for that album brings him to Cardiff tonight and Gray will use the St David’s Hall date to spend a few days with his with his wife and two young children at their holiday home in Pembrokeshire.

He has a new record on the way but isn’t in a rush to release it because these days he knows how to sit comfortably on the see-saw of fame.

“For a while it was just so overwhelming, there was too much hype,” he says in conclusion. But I have relaxed now, I’ve found some balance.”

David Gray performs at St David’s Hall tonight. Tickets cost £29.50 from 029 2087 8444.