"I am a one-hit wonder. I know this, because when I walk down the street, strangers call out, 'Hey James! You're Beautiful!' I try to act all blasé, and say, 'Ha! I see what you did there...' but really, I'm thinking, 'Cunts'."
With these words singer/songwriter James Blunt - you might know him for his 2005 UK/US number one single You're Beautiful, or perhaps for the fact that its parent album, Back to Bedlam, is the biggest-selling debut album ever in the UK by a British artist - introduces his riotous and outrageous 'non-memoir' Loosely Based On A Made-Up Story. "This book is inspired by true events but is not a biography", Blunt has pointed out, which may become increasingly clear as readers are treated to surreal anecdotes about the singer dating "40 or 60 per cent" of The Pussycat Dolls, living with the late Carrie 'Princess Leia' Fisher, and er, eating his own poo from American actor Jamie Foxx's hotel toilet, allegedly on the advice of survivalist Bear Grylls.
A number of rock stars also pop up in the text, in encounters which range from the mundane to the profane.
- “I called Gene Simmons. He said: ‘How the hell did you get this number?!’ That was when I got the idea that we weren’t going to be best buddies”: Dee Snider’s wild tales of Robert Plant, Frank Zappa, Freddy Krueger and Kiss
- ‘John Belushi always used to try to get off with my ex-wife. I’d say: ‘John, I can hear you, you fat git’”: Ronnie Wood’s wild tales of Jimi Hendrix, Keith Richards, Bob Dylan and Axl Rose
In one tale, Blunt writes about meeting Kiss vocalist/bassist Gene Simmons at an Atlanta radio station, while in the company of lead Pussycat Doll Nicole Scherzinger.
"He looked at me and looked at Nicole, and said on air, 'Hey James, maybe if you played some more balls-out songs, you'd get some more dudes at your shows'," Blunt 'recalls'.
"A little confused, I replied, 'Gene, perhaps if you wore a little less make-up, you'd have some more girls at yours.' And with that, we shook hands and he left."
"I never got to ask him why I should want more dudes at my show, but it has been a recurring theme. For some reason, men have often mocked me for having more girls in my audience than boys, and it did does make me wonder if I got into this whole thing for the wrong reason."
At another point in the book, Blunt writes about partying with "comedy rock" band The Darkness during the Back To Bedlam tour.
"They were promoting their second album [2005's One Way Ticket To Hell... And Back], which in industry speak, was bombing... Sure the spandex was still there, but with pot-bellies and an air of catastrophe. Backstage after the show, someone would have prepared lines of cocaine the full length of the table. 'Cocaine buffet?' they would say. 'Just help yourself.'"
As for Dave Grohl, Blunt doesn't write about actually meeting the Foo Fighters frontman, though he 'remembers' Grohl being in an adjoining toilet cubicle at an after-show party in Sydney, Australia while a "nineteen year-old, smoking hot blonde Aussie girl" was introducing him to a practise known as "shelving", the details of which are far too rude for a website such as this, but involve a lubricated finger.
Are there the tiniest hints of truth to any of these stories? Only James Blunt knows, and his lawyers are apparently forbidding him to say anything more.
