Exploring Carrie Fisher’s influence on James Blunt’s music
What is the most unlikely celebrity duo you can think of? Cristiano Ronaldo and Natalie Cassidy? Dani Harmer and Elon Musk? How about James Blunt and Carrie Fisher? Well, as much as we’d love to say the first two are genuine, it is only the third relationship that actually played out in real life, with the divisive singer sharing a close friendship with the late Star Wars actor Carrie Fisher throughout his early career.
Leaving the British Army in 2002 with his sights on a career in music, Blunt, whose real name is James Blount, changed his name for ease of spelling and signed to EMI music publishers and to Twenty-First Artists management. But he would meet Fisher before even hitting such heights, eventually lodging with the actor whilst creating his first album, Back to Bedlam, even recording the song ‘Goodbye My Lover’ in the actor’s bathroom.
Speaking to the Sunday Times about their unlikely friendship, Blunt stated: “Fisher was my American mother, and a real inspiration…My first album was called Back to Bedlam because I lived in a madhouse with her”.
Continuing, the musician added: “She put a cardboard cutout of herself as Leia outside my room, with her date of birth and date of death on her forehead. I’m trying to remember what the date was, because it was around now — and I remember thinking it was too soon”.
For Fisher, Star Wars was undoubtedly the high point of her career, despite the fact that she would later work with Woody Allen and John Landis, appearing in Hannah and Her Sisters and The Blues Brothers, respectively. Even still, however, the true extent of Fisher’s influence on the film industry cannot be truly appreciated until you peer behind the curtain of her acting career and focus on her work as an unlikely script doctor and ghostwriter.
Whilst she would not take her role as a script doctor seriously until the 1990s, this didn’t stop the actor from tinkering with each and every piece of dialogue she was handed, even in her early career. Despite the Star Wars movies being among her first-ever roles, Fisher would tweak the notoriously dodgy dialogue work of The Empire Strike Back’s writers George Lucas, Lawrence Kasdan and Leigh Brackett.
The late actor is Godmother to Blunt’s eldest son, with her death in 2016 expectedly hitting the musician pretty hard, as he stated at the time, “She went out with a bang, as she was back in movies. Maybe it was a great time to go”.
Finalising his thoughts on his good friend and international icon, Blunt added, “The saddest thing is that my son will never get to know someone I thought was the most special person”.
Take a listen to ‘Goodbye My Lover’ below, and keep in mind that it was all recorded in Carrie Fisher’s bathroom. Incredible.
