It took him time to master the art of preserve-making, perhaps because he defines his approach to the creative process as being romantic (emotional, instinctive), rather than classical (disciplined, structured). The results of a first attempt were too runny. Those of a second had set too firm. But David Gray is nothing if not tenacious. On the third go, armed with his gran’s best recipe, he got it right.
Now, it seems, there’s no stopping him. “Look at all that fruit,” he exclaims, early into our march between the wet and wind-lashed hedgerows that lead to his local beach. “I thought it’d be too late in the season, but no. Brilliant! I’ll be out here again tomorrow picking like crazy. Do you know how many blackberries you need [basin-fuls, apparently] to end up with just two little pots of jam?”
The 39-year-old singer-songwriter just can’t stop shooting himself in the foot. On our drive up from London to the north Norfolk coast, he had commented on the spell that certain unnamed other performers seem to cast on the media, being accorded a respect unrelated to their actual talents (and largely, he suspects, as a result of their cartoonishly rock’n’roll lifestyles). “They’re not that gifted but somehow are perceived as being artists and the real deal, whereas I? I realised long ago that I’m simply not cool nor ever will be.” And would he really like to be, I had inquired as we negotiated the Friday morning traffic on the M11? “Well, it’d be nice to be thought of as just a little bit cooler,” he had replied after a moment’s consideration. Yet just two short hours later, he’s swooning over soft fruit.
“The smell when it all starts to heat in the pan is so vivid that it’s like a colour,” he says, striding on towards a Norfolk Wildlife Trust visitor centre (his membership of which organisation, his familiarity with its staff representatives and his enthusiasm for birdwatching being the three final nails in the coffin of his hip quotient). “Never mind baking bread or brewing coffee. If you want to sell your house, make bramble jam when people come to view.” Which is advice we’re unlikely to get from Pete Doherty, you’ll agree. Not that Gray covets the lives or tabloid infamy of some of his younger peers. But it would probably bruise him a little to know that when I typed in his name at amazon.co.uk, up popped the suggestion that I might also be interested in releases by Dido and James Blunt.
It’s the extent of his popularity that has landed him in such rich but unfashionable company. No matter that his breakthrough album White Ladder was his fourth (self-financed and released initially on his own small label), or that it struggled to gain attention here, doing so only after becoming an unexpected hit in Ireland. What has shaped our lasting perceptions of Gray is that in time it became ubiquitous – played everywhere, an aural wallpaper. Yes, with good reason, for the musicality and conviction it displayed were in short supply on the charts of 2000 and 2001. But you can have too much even of a good thing, and as a result his currency became devalued. In the media, his name all but became shorthand for the earnest, urban thirtysomething demographic that is his principal fan base.
Odd, no doubt, (and highly irritating) to find yourself stereotyped in such cavalier fashion, but there are compensations. I first met Gray in 2001 when White Ladder had taken off but the full scale of its success had yet to be revealed. In demeanour and attitude, he was still very much shaped by earlier struggles, appearing diffident and already a little overwhelmed. His look was ordinary bloke-ish: trainers, jeans, a sheepskin coat. Today, though, he is urbane, relaxed and expensively dressed. He has family homes in Hampstead and on the Norfolk coast, and we are travelling from one to the other in his Lexus. Other earnest, urban thirtysomethings should be so lucky, for his is a lifestyle millions of them aspire to. “I’ve finally got my smile back,” he’d told me early in the journey.
Quite when it had been misplaced is hard to say. “I’ve long had the tendency to take things too seriously, myself included. Yes, it was completely lovely when, after years of angst and frustration and of putting out records to total indifference, my career took off so emphatically. The warmth of the crowds, their obvious affection for my work? It was all I’d dreamed of. But the minute I realised
I had made it [White Ladder’s success was global, the US included] and finally had the light turned on me, I realised I didn’t like it or any of the trappings of success. Inside this man I’m just a shy little boy, so at awards ceremonies I felt like I was on my first day at a new school. Instead of relishing the fact that I was finally being allowed into the winners’ circle, I felt alienated and alone.”
Fatigue and this strange sense of disenchantment were not all he had to deal with. It was during this same period that his father, Peter, died of cancer, aged 59. “All I can say is that at least he got to see things happen for me. He was absolutely delighted and anything but shy about telling other people. ‘Look!’ he’d say. ‘That’s my son at Number One! Beat that!’ It was like he’d won out among his peers.”
Then, in the summer of 2002, Gray and his lawyer wife Olivia had the first of their two daughters, Ivy (sister Florence is two and a half). “When you’re married your partner has every right to feel like they’re the top priority in your life, but for a while that just wasn’t the case,” he considers. “This new world I had been catapulted into was eating me up. I was being pulled from pillar to post.”
Adjusting to their new circumstances (the couple married 14 years ago) took time. “It’s been a bumpy ride. You feel guilty about having so much. But we’ve found our way through it to a point where we’re now a lot more relaxed. There’s more humour, more piss-taking and we’re feeling OK about it all.” Gray says he has never been good at putting time into friendships. “And suddenly you’re in a completely different position to your peers, which takes some adjusting to for everyone. The main thing is that you can’t talk about money any more. It’d just be insulting to people getting by on a fraction of what you now have. But what are you supposed to do? Get a new set of mates to go on holiday with? Only mix with those who can afford the same things as you can? I haven’t worked it out.”
When I remark that some others in their fortunate position would have scrambled up the social ladder with undue haste and no backward glance, he chuckles ruefully. “I’m hopeless. I’ve just completely ignored whatever approaches have come our way, to the extent that people must think I’m an inverted snob. For instance, just as life was being turned on its head, I got an invitation to Elton’s summer bash – a most treasured thing in entertainment circles, I’m reliably informed. Now, it’d be a laugh. It’d be fun. But back then I found the whole idea just too freaky. I was far too nervous and self-conscious so didn’t go and, of course, you don’t get a second chance. So Olivia will occasionally have a go at me, quite rightly: ‘Can’t we do something glamorous once in while, you miserable git?’”
Meanwhile, and following the release of two further well-received, high-selling albums (2002’s A New Day at Midnight and 2005’s Life in Slow Motion), the Grays have been debating an issue familiar to many other left-ish/liberal parents of young children – a state versus a private education. They’ve opted for the latter for Ivy, with all the usual reservations and self-questioning. But while most in their position will tell of how competitive it is to win a place for their child at any of their preferred schools, it seems the stakes are higher still when a prospective pupil has a famous father. “One head who auditioned us was stressing the importance of fundraising and asked if I’d help with items for auction. ‘Imagine what something signed by Madonna would fetch for us,’ she said. Needless to say, her establishment didn’t make the top of our list.” Rather than some hothouse for would-be young achievers, they have opted for a relaxed, creative environment in which their daughter can grow comfortably and at her own pace. The same approach holds for life out of school, with Gray hoping to give his girls a taste of the carefree, outdoors upbringing he so enjoyed when, at the age of nine, he moved with his parents and two younger sisters from Sale, Cheshire, to coastal Pembrokeshire. Hence Norfolk and the deserted beach we have now arrived at.
“We’ve spent a lot of time up here over the past couple of years and it’s been really good for all of us. I’m no city boy. I love nature. I love being out in the wild winds.” Of which there is no shortage today. But whereas those few other brave souls we encounter on our walk across the dunes to a lonely and magnificent expanse of sand are wrapped up snugly against the cold, Gray is braving the elements in a three-piece suit by the newly rebranded Daks, matched with impeccable Salvatore Ferragamo shoes. “We’re about to do a photo shoot,” he explains cheerfully to a bemused Norfolk Wildlife Trust staffer, one who has clearly never seen him nor anyone else so improbably dressed on a nature reserve. The sheepskin of old would have been the warmer choice, but it’s clear he is relishing cutting such a dash.
This smarter, sleeker look is directly linked to his new sense of wellbeing and ease within his own skin, it emerges. And if this and the recovery of his smile can be traced back to anyone and anything, it is Robbie Williams and his invitation to have a bit of a kick-about for charity last May. A Unicef UK ambassador, Williams conceived the idea of an all-star soccer tournament between an English team (captained by himself and including as players Paul Gascoigne, Tony Adams, Jamie Redknapp and Jamie Theakston) and the Rest of the World (captained by Gordon Ramsay and including David Ginola, Peter Schmeichel, Gianfranco Zola and Alastair Campbell) and invited Gray to be one of his 11 men. For a Manchester United fan, just the opportunity to play at Old Trafford was irresistible.
“That said, I was very apprehensive as there was a reality show element to the TV coverage [the event raised more than £2 million to help children in South Africa suffering with HIV and Aids]. But really it was my ultimate fantasy and I cannot thank Robbie enough for making it come true for me. He was a total gent throughout, while all the actual footballers were so fantastically, touchingly sweet to the rest of us. To spend time with Gazza, who’s such a compulsive giver, or Tony Adams, who’s my embodiment of an old-style footballer and a bit of hero to me, was amazing in itself. But more than that, the whole experience literally kicked me out of myself. It was a turning point, like hearing the words, ‘Come on in. The water’s lovely. Nobody bites. Really, everything’s OK?’”
And in the aftermath he has kept match-fit, hence his enjoyment of the new wardrobe that stylist Tom Stubbs steered him towards at the more fashionable end of Savile Row.
Photographic shoot over, white-knuckled with cold, Gray invites us all back to his just-off-the-beach house for tea. Compact, architect-designed, the perfect modernist retreat, its simple living space is lifted by a beautiful landscape in oils, a diptych within a single frame. He has great taste, I think, having been similarly struck by pictures hanging in the room in which I’d waited on arrival at his home in Hampstead, prior to our drive north-east.
The artist of all three would appear to be the same and is?? “Me,” he says, busily balling newspaper, crisscrossing sticks of firewood and reaching for logs. “They’re 20 years old now and from my degree show [under pressure from his mum and despite a rapidly growing passion for music, he knuckled down to graduate from Liverpool College of Art].”
He is critical of the work I admire, saying if ever he picks up his brushes again he must apply the same draughtsmanship and understatement that informs his songwriting. But for now family life (Olivia and the girls will be arriving at any time) and this other career are enough. An imminent Greatest Hits encompasses the latter’s achievements, but it is to the future that he’s looking, seemingly comfortable with himself and his situation at last.
Well-timed, this, given that he will be 40 next year. “I’m energised and enjoying my life,” he reminds me, “so the passing of another year is no big deal.” Any last message to his public, then? “Only to remind them of the success of my blackberry jam. At this rate, I might even be able to sell it on the merchandise stall when I go out on the road.”
A new David Gray single, You’re the World to Me, is released on November 5, followed by his Greatest Hits on November 12. His tour begins at the Newcastle Academy on November 6. The Times Sounds Podcast: David Gray speaks to The Times chief rock critic Pete Paphides about the virtues of Page 3, ponders the secret of the perfect hit single and confesses to his one pop star luxury: a personal football trainer (timesonline.co.uk/music)