c ookin’ with jazz He’s Britain’s most successful jazz artist ever, is married to Sophie Dahl and puts on electric stage shows complete with exploding pianos. Is there no stopping Jamie Cullum, asks Christopher Silvester

Photographs by Olaf Wipperfürth Styled by Gianluca Longo

2 2 ES MAGAZINE standard.co.uk/lifestyle Jamie wears suit jacket, £935, Prada (020 7647 5000). Shirt, £99.99, Hugo Boss (020 7554 5700). Jeans, £19.99, Uniqlo (020 7290 8090). Chiffre Rouge A05 watch, £2,500, Christian Dior (020 7172 0172)

standard.co.uk/lifestyle ES MAGAZINE 2 3 t is 6.30pm and Jamie Cullum is home and I was trying to learn it, and my mum brother and I would make drum kits out of eating his first meal of the day, said it was an Elton John song. I didn’t believe bins, saucepan lids, cardboard boxes and stuff. a chicken croque monsieur. Even her. That’s when she dug out Tumbleweed And we’d record them. I think when I got to the so, he urges me to take a couple Connection and those early Elton John records. piano, because I hadn’t had years of being told of mouthfuls. So this is the It opened up a whole new world.’ how to do it properly, when I started messing musician’s diet that keeps him so Jamie’s mother is Anglo-Burmese, although around with it, it just seemed like a natural svelte while on tour, away from there is some French blood on her side of the thing to do. I saw the strings and thought, the culinary ministrations of his family a couple of generations back, and the “Well, why doesn’t someone play them?” ’ He new wife, the writer, former supermodel and moment you know this you can see it in his learned to play the piano by ear and to this day I TV cook Sophie Dahl. We are sitting in a tiny dark brown eyes and smooth, exotic complex- can’t read a note of music. Parisian café a few doors from his hotel and ion. His ‘very dark-skinned’ Indian-Burmese By the time Jamie was in his final year study- just around the corner from L’Olympia, where grandfather, who served in the British army, ing film at Reading University he had recorded Jamie will be performing in a couple of hours. lived in a house with servants in Rangoon until his first album (‘which people were buying – No jazz artist has enjoyed the same degree Japan invaded Burma in 1942, when he brought admittedly out of the back of my car’) and so of crossover success that Jamie, 31, has in the his family to live in Wales. ‘I can do a Burmese he decided to move to London and try to be a seven years since his career took off; seven curry and my auntie makes incredible lime musician for a year. Sharing a basement flat years in which he has sold 4.5 million albums pickle,’ Jamie tells me, though he in Paddington, he was signed to worldwide. Yet there was a time, before he adds that his wife ‘doesn’t need one record company as a solo stumbled into the life of a professional any cooking tips from me’. ‘I’ve always performer while playing in a musician, when he was living in Paris, sitting What makes his provenance been shorter rock band that had a record in cafés all day, a wannabe Ernest Hemingway even more intriguing is that than most development deal. ‘I had piano trying to write a novel. ‘Prior to that I was Jamie’s paternal grandmother gigs, was earning my living, someone who played music,’ he explains. ‘I was a Jewish refugee from girls I’ve gone paying my rent, living at night- was in bands, played guitar and drums, and the Prussia, who sang in Berlin night- out with, so time, writing songs… it was a piano. From the age of about 13 I would go to clubs before the Second World obviously I’m really good time. I didn’t expect friends’ houses and jam – it was always a part War. His parents lived in Essex this stuff to take over.’ of my life. But never did I lie in my bed and and later in Wiltshire, where used to it’ This stuff took over principally think, “God, I want to be a rock star.” ’ Jamie attended a private day because of an appearance on Jamie is here for a two-night fixture school. His father worked ‘in finance’, while Michael Parkinson’s chat show in 2003, after performing songs from his latest album The his mother has been a school secretary ‘for a which Jamie was offered a £1 million, three- Pursuit, as well as a smattering of tunes from thousand years’. Both of them, Jamie insists, album recording deal with Universal. By the earlier albums and a couple of jazz standards have the souls of artists but neither had the end of that year, his status as Britain’s most – part of an intermittent tour of European opportunity to follow an artistic path until successful jazz performer ever was sealed. cities. I’d watched him perform a fortnight late in their lives. ‘My mum sings in a choir His biggest thrill, however, was getting to play earlier at the London Palladium, and had been and my dad plays a bit of guitar,’ he says. the clubs he’d been going to for years, where struck by the mixed profile of his audience, ‘They’re both musical and my dad paints.’ his heroes had played – the 606, Ronnie from children to seniors. Many fans dis- Because of the difficulties they had in Scott’s, the Pizza Express Jazz Club Soho, the covered him through the theme song for the establishing themselves, they Vortex – and realising that he couldn’t get Clint Eastwood film Gran Torino (co-written encouraged their sons towards tables for his friends. by Jamie, Clint and Clint’s son stable occupations. ‘My older Kyle), which has turned over brother Ben broke through that amie met Sophie when they per- more than £200 million gross – barrier and once he did that they formed together at a fundraiser the song, that is. New fans are were nothing but supportive. for the breast cancer charity The still discovering him through his Ben is a musician, a record Lavender Trust in 2007. He accom- eclectic weekly jazz show producer and a songwriter. panied her on the piano as she on BBC Radio 2. He’s written a lot of songs J sang Nina Simone’s ‘I Think It’s Going To On stage, Jamie is for my album with me. He Rain Today’. After dating him for a couple of an energetic, almost writes for other artists years, the delicious Miss Dahl became Mrs athletic performer, dash- throughout the world. Our Jamie Cullum in a register office ceremony a ing about, unwilling to parents could see that we were few weeks prior to a vicar’s blessing and sit still for long. ‘I never driven and they encouraged wedding celebration at Lime Wood, the use a piano stool,’ he us. They’re incredible people.’ Hampshire hotel, in January. Sophie arranged tells me. ‘I always use a In his London Palladium for an elaborate circus-style tent decorated drum stool. Because I show Jamie did a song in which with mirrors and stained glass to be flown in feel that when you’re he accompanied himself by from Europe and Jamie performed a medley of down there you’re play- standing up and strumming the songs he had written for her. ing in that way you’re exposed strings of his grand He says he doesn’t get too bothered about supposed to. I like to be piano and using the wood above the tabloid obsession with Sophie being much above it.’ With ballads he the keyboard as a makeshift taller than him, although the couple did issue sings sideways across percussion instrument. ‘I used a legal warning to the press after one news- the mic, gazing at the to drum on the table at school,’ paper website had apparently manipulated audience, which I suggest he says. ‘I think a handful of my photographs to exaggerate the difference. His he might have got from school reports say that they song ‘Photograph’, which has a line about a girl Elton John. ‘When I do that thought I might have some kind of sitting down in order to kiss him, preceded I always feel like Elton. I ADD because I was making sounds. I Sophie. ‘I’ve always been shorter than most didn’t know much about was far from being an ADD child. I was girls I’ve gone out with,’ he says, ‘so obviously him until I heard Ben Folds With Sophie Dahl at a actually quite quiet and well-behaved. I’m very used to it.’ While he was growing up, fundraiser, June 2009

sing ‘Tiny Dancer’. I came But I used to drum on things. My he recalls, his musical talent was ‘pretty much don features

2 4 ES MAGAZINE standard.co.uk/lifestyle Jamie wears shirt, £95, Diesel Black Gold (020 7833 2255). Jeans, £19.99, Uniqlo (020 7290 8090). Belt, Jamie’s own. Chiffre Rouge A05 watch, £2,500, Christian Dior (020 7172 0172). Shoes, £350, Church’s at Matches (020 7221 0255)

standard.co.uk/lifestyle ES MAGAZINE 2 5 Jamie wears hooded cardigan, £130, Diesel Black Gold (020 7833 2255). T-shirt, and necklace, Jamie’s own. Grooming by Giovanni Di Stefano at Ora salon. Stylist’s assistant: Sophie Paxton. Shot on location at Hotel Le Péra, 17 rue Caumartin, Paris (00 33 1 53 43 54 00; hotellepera.com)

the only card I had. I looked about 12 years megaphone. ‘Night to night it differs,’ he There’s no science involved in why a kid wants old when I was 17, but it was an added bit of explains. ‘The week before we didn’t play in to play a guitar when he sees Kurt Cobain intrigue. It definitely added to the minuscule the Royal Box, we played in the audience, but leaping around with it. There’s a sexiness to it. appeal I had when I was a teenager. Me being it all got a bit too nuts. I got pulled around and The irony is that doing that early stuff on the a music geek, which is what I am, kind of took it was a little bit scary. On stage I have much piano is essential and very important, and over rather quickly. I’ve always been the guy better ideas in the moment and I just have the treating a piano with respect is important, but in the record store freaking out over some balls to go through with them and know that what I’m doing with it is more symbolic – the Fela Kuti seven-inch I’ve found that I’ve been they will probably go wrong, but hopefully the jumping off it, hitting rhythms off it, the treat- looking for for ten years.’ audience will get to watch something being ing it roughly. I’m not actually doing damage developed in front of their eyes. That’s the to it. The blowing up of it was obviously crude is life with Sophie is serene and basis of a lot of what I do live.’ symbolism. But it looks cool.’ domesticated. In addition to The silent video footage that precedes the Brimming with ideas, Jamie is determined his flat in Kensal Green (next touring show has a piano exploding in slow that nothing will paint him into a corner. ‘I to his brother’s place), they now motion and one press report claimed that four want to make more albums, better albums, do have a country house in the pianos had been dynamited for the picture better gigs, sing better, play better piano,’ he H Buckinghamshire village of Great Missenden, on the cover of The Pursuit. says. ‘With the radio show, where Sophie’s grandfather, the children’s Surely this is no way to treat Performing I get the opportunity to writer Roald Dahl, used to live and where a piano? ‘Had they been at the London experiment widely. I would Palladium there is a museum dedicated to the writer, real, yes,’ he says. ‘I worship in May love to do more film music, containing some of Sophie’s own books. Since pianos like they are prize I’d like to be more involved her upbringing encompassed ten schools and diamonds and I never wil- with film. I’d like to get 17 homes in Britain, America and India, Sophie fully do damage to them. behind the camera one day. has said she has ‘always aspired to have a But I grew up playing gui- I would hate to act – no one-place sort of life’. She attended both of tars and you treat a guitar interest in that. I’m working Jamie’s London Palladium performances as like a best friend or a little on a musical with a play- well as one of the Paris shows, and they see as brother or a lover you have wright friend. The world is much of each other as their busy schedules a tempestuous relationship my lobster, hopefully.’ allow. ‘I’m home a lot more than you would with. When I was at school Jamie plays the Proms with imagine,’ Jamie tells me. ‘There’s always a bit I wanted to play a piano and the Heritage Orchestra at of home time between tours.’ they said, “No, that’s for the the Albert Hall on Thursday As his first encore song at the London classical students.” There’s and is a guest judge on Must Palladium on the night I attended, Jamie always been this air around Be The Music on Sky 1 every reappeared in the Royal Box, with the band pianos, which can very Sunday. Clint Eastwood carrying their instruments, and sang ‘Cry often discourage a young features on Jamie’s Radio 2

getty imagesMe A River’, using his cupped hands as a person from having a go. show on 7 and 14 September

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