The super-producer who made an album from his hospital bed

0:00This is The Guardian.

0:08Today, the super producer who made an album on a cancer ward.

0:20A quick warning before we start, this episode does contain one or two swear words. He's been described as the music industry's secret weapon If you want a career-defining album made, call James Ford If you're trying to realise a stunning comeback, call James Ford I just want to be in a room with nice people trying to make something good, you know And it's as simple as that From Arctic Monkeys to Depeche Mode The Last Dinner Party to Fontaine's DC James has worked with huge artists, zeitgeisty ones, often the kind that end up on the critics' list when it comes to ranking Albums of the Year. Take Jesse Ware.

1:03He is not only incredibly talented, he plays like every instrument, so he can hop on anything. He also has this amazing library of knowledge. There's no ego with James Ford. Jeremy Pritchard from Everything Everything. I struggle to think of anybody else who's been as prolific and as successful and as in demand. I can't remember the last time he wasn't nominated for a Mercury Prize. Bill Ryder Jones. You get those jobs by being good at what you do, and you keep them by being very good at what you do. And Jarvis Cocker. He's a great producer, and I think it's down to the fact that he is a musician himself and knows how music works.

1:47By the end of 2024, James Ford was at the height of his career. And then came news that would change everything forever. Getting the diagnosis was very bleak and sort of surreal. It takes a while to process these things. I was sort of fighting for my life. At 46 years old, James's body was shutting down. That whole, is James going to die thing was predictably pretty intense. It was terrifying and overwhelming. From his hospital bed, James began making music. When he was diagnosed with his blood condition, he made a record whilst undergoing treatment. I don't think I've ever heard of anybody doing that.

2:36He used music to get himself through that experience.

2:46You don't often get someone at the top of the game, a very gifted person, go through something so horrendous and come away with something really well done. That's going to sound really psychotic, but it's absolutely the truth.

3:10From The Guardian, I'm Noshy Nickvall. Today in Focus, the life and near death of James Ellis Ford.

3:22James Ellis Ford, welcome to Today in Focus. Thanks. I think even if our listeners aren't familiar with your name, they'll almost certainly know your work. You played drums in the indie band Simeon. You've produced bands like Arctic Monkeys, Pulp,

3:40Blur, Florence and the Sheen and Geese. Can you talk to us a little bit about when you first started making music? I grew up in a little village in the Peak District and I had piano lessons just down the road. And I remember quite early on my piano teacher trying to get me to clap a rhythm and I could clap it back and she was like, oh, you're good at this. And that little thing lodged in my head. Oh, I'm good at this. And then I was playing bass and singing in a covers band above a pub at age 12 or 13. Oh, how precocious. You know, that's just what you did. It was either that or, you know, I don't know, well, underage drinking and that kind of went along with it.

4:22My dad was in a local band and so I had a cellar with a drum kit in and a little mini four track and actually a synthesizer that I still use, I bought from a friend who didn't really know what it was and this is probably 15 something like that and I was really into Herbie Hancock Headhunters at the time and I was trying to recreate it on a four track on my own and I was just like in heaven this is the best thing ever I want to do this for as long as I can and I suppose that was it yeah I've kind of known from that moment what I wanted to do with myself you know as we've said you've gone on to form this band Simeon, which then grows or shrinks rather into Simeon Mibar Disco.

5:12In the mid to late noughties, I think it's sort of inescapable to see your stamp across various dance floors and scenes and all the rest of it. And at what point did you start producing music for other people so in the band simeon which sort of formed in manchester um around we were all at college together there basically um we self-produced so i started i suppose maybe i was the most interested in where the microphones went and you know what buttons to push and then with that band we moved down to london and had a studio on hatney road and then as happens with lots of bands um we were on a major label trying to keep them happy and fell out with each other and that was the end of the band and everyone went to get sort of proper jobs and I decided at that moment to try and kind of give it a go for a few months to see if I could actually become a producer so I kept the studio on and just produced anyone and anything that would let me.

6:12I suppose the first one that turned into something that anyone would recognize was the Mystery Jet. I remember taking, I had a PC and I took that down to like a boat shed in Twickenham. Didn't have a clue what I was doing, but they let me produce the first record. And then there was a band called Test Icicles.

6:37Who's now Dev Hines, which is Blood Orange. Exactly. And that, I kind of got introduced to the Arctic Monkeys through that. And, you know, around a similar time was the klaxons.

6:53There was a few things all happened at once and then suddenly it got easier to get work, I suppose.

7:08The work was non-stop. James made six albums of his own as part of Simeon Mobile Disco. and two more as a member of The Last Shadow Puppets, the band he formed with Alex Turner and Miles Kane. Musicians were lining up to work with him. As a producer, his diary could be booked months, sometimes even years in advance. We asked Jesse Ware, Everything Everything, Bill Ryder-Jones and Jarvis Cocker why they enjoyed working with him. When you work with James, you not only feel like you are learning, he nurtures you, you also come away with a new thought or an idea about the way the world works. He is really generous whilst also having the greatest taste.

7:54He's able to kind of push your ideas and he also listens to me. I think the thing about James is he makes everything feel like it isn't particularly heavy lifting and it's still quite, you know, it's fun and it's breezy. He can make a 15-hour day feel perfectly manageable. He made everybody in the room feel heard and acknowledged. He's really there as a kind of marriage counsellor. And I think all bands need that anyway. James is a producer, is incredibly calming. You know, he's not like a hardcore guy, you know. He's a gentle captain. And it matters. It really matters having someone in the midst of that sort of storm, just keeping a lid on things.

8:42Music is a really central part of his personality. That helped with our record a lot. He also knew when to tell us that we got a song. You know, sometimes you keep going and you don't know whether you've got it, but generally after three or four times he would say, OK, I think you've got that one now, let's move on. And we trusted him on that. And then he also was great for me personally because he managed to kind of capture a vocal performance when I wasn't trying too hard, when I was just trying to sing the song as well as I could. And that is a musical thing, you know, capturing something without somebody thinking about it too much.

9:23And are there particular things that draw you into something musically? I mean, are there artists, I'm sure there are artists who've wanted to work with you that you probably didn't want to work with, maybe the other way around i'm very lucky at this point where i get to say yes and no you know be quite choosy about the things i get involved in and every single one is different but great in a different way like obviously i've had some amazing experiences with with the r2 monkeys you know in various studios around the world and it that's almost like going on a holiday with mates at this point in time but then you know I've like yeah I've made sort of weird albums up in the like in a strange kind of hobbit land outside Mexico City you know up in California and out in the desert in Joshua Tree we made a bunch of albums you know I'm very lucky that this job basically takes you into some of the weirdest experiences you're ever gonna be and they're very intense you know but I kind of like contract my life through the different projects that I've been through and I'm very grateful for that.

10:35James, 2024 was an extraordinary year for you, probably your busiest. You had produced six of the most acclaimed albums of the year, three of them ended up nominated for a Mercury Music Prize, but then you began to feel unwell. What happened? Yeah, I've been working pretty hard and I've always enjoyed working hard. And I'd done Black Country New Road. I was working on the new Gorillaz record and been to India with Damon on this kind of crazy fact finding recording mission. and then I was working with Pulp here in London and I started to feel sluggish and I was thinking in my head it was probably burnout, like I should slow down a little bit.

11:25I suppose things got serious on Christmas Eve. I was down in Folkestone with my in-laws and I remember literally Christmas Day just lying on the sofa not being able to move and having like 40 degree temperatures and went into the sort of A &E to get looked at there. And yeah, ended up spending a night on the floor in Ashford A &E and then kind of spiralled from there. And so how quick was it from getting into hospital to finding out what actually was going on? It was painfully slow, yeah. I was in a bad way. And I think because I'd been to India with Damon, there's a lot of red herrings of thinking I had some tropical disease or something.

12:15And it took weeks of just being in hell, honestly. And then I remember quite unceremoniously on a Friday night, everyone had sort of gone home and I was just there on my own. And a head nurse came in and said, oh, there's been a test result back. You've got AML. and I was on my own in, it was pretty bleak. So AML, you know, for listeners who don't know, that's a form of leukemia that needs urgent treatment. And so you've given this cancer diagnosis, got moved to St Bart's Hospital in central London. How were you feeling when that diagnosis came through? It's a funny thing because it's such a rollercoaster of emotion.

12:59and you're thinking about obviously what would happen if you died and what would happen to the people you love and in that moment I really didn't want to kind of wallow you know in in a way that I obviously had lots of existential dread and didn't think about those things and you can't help that but I took active choices to move towards the positive things in my life you know and think about the future and think about my wife and my little boy but yeah so actually when I got to St. Bart's and started the treatment it almost got better because before that it was quite amorphous and scary you know I had a bit of a clearer path of you know this this is going to be you for the next however many months it was like just head down grit your teeth and get through it you know James as part of your treatment you had to be in complete isolation what was that like and how did you deal with it yeah the isolation obviously because I didn't have an immune system for a large part of it you're in like a white room and you can see the world going on outside but you You know, it's almost like an uncanny valley version of real life.

14:20There is a bed, I had a chair, there's a window, there's a stand with a machine that bleeps next to you, and it's the most horrific noise. You know, you learn to loathe that noise. Yeah, it's a very strange, isolating, lonely place to be.

14:50James, you said you've been making music since you were small, essentially, and that it's very much part of your daily life. How did it feel to suddenly stop while you were in hospital? I suppose in the first moments, I was just totally removed from reality. So I wasn't even thinking about music or being creative or whatever. I'm lucky that I get to make music every day and it's a huge part of the way that I regulate my mental health and part of my identity and how I sort of feel good about myself and it definitely when I was in the hospital sort of going through the first bits of the chemo and stuff I didn't have really any creative thoughts and that was terrifying because I was just like you're sort of in this kind of blank state of just being exhausted.

15:43And then, yeah, I suppose it was during the sort of second round of chemo and my energy started to return a little bit and then started to suddenly get this almost overwhelming urge to make something. I think, I suppose it was almost me trying to get back to myself, if you know what I mean.

16:10During his time in isolation, James wasn't allowed visitors, except for Serene, his wife. For those two weeks, he couldn't even see his son. To help him pass the time, Serene bought him an IKEA fold-up table and some of his equipment from home. So I got a little set-up with a laptop and a microphone and a few little things and just started noodling around.

16:40and, you know, melodies were popping into my head, and also lyrics. I think, you know, I'm not much of a singer, but I had a lot of things to think about and thoughts to process. I felt the strangest feeling I felt the youth were falling at my feet And for me, it was bliss, honestly, to have something that, you know, was sort of pure escapism from this little prison sentence that I had. and you get into this little zone and everything dissolves on the outside of it and just wanted to live in that world rather than the world I was actually in. Quite often the nurses would come in and I'd be sort of singing with my headphones on and they'd be trying to tiptoe in and take my blood pressure without making too much noise or whatever and they'd be asking me, oh, how are you getting on?

17:44Because I was telling them what I was doing and stuff. So you knew from the beginning I'm making an album now. Well, I was like, I'm making music. It's like, oh, what are you making? You know, and I don't know. It was just a nice conversation start. I think the whole thing in a way was sort of almost like a little thing to talk about that wasn't. About being honest. Yeah, you know, it was just a positive thing in a negative situation.

18:14Even with, you know, I was sending little clips that I was doing to like my dad and Al Turner, Bill Ryder Jones I was amazed at how he was, how strong he was And I don't remember giving feedback per se It's not the kind of thing that you go, oh it's a bit, that one's a bit slow Or like second verse is a bit depressing It's raw, you know, it's beautiful for that very reason

18:46I mean it's worth mentioning that it wasn't I won't say just the leukemia but you were dealing with that but then you also suffered three rounds of sepsis there were other illnesses along the way I mean it's been a real year right yeah yeah you know I've been been to the ICU and I've had kidney failure you know whatever you know like but yeah I nearly died on several occasions um and it's pretty humbling, you know, to see how fragile the whole thing is. There was one, maybe it was a nursing staff who accidentally sort of said like, oh, like, you know, some of the other nursing staff were surprised to see you were still here, you know, not often people don't get out of that situation that you were in.

19:30One might imagine, given the circumstances, that you would have made an album that was quite sombre and quite serious, yet it's absolutely quite joyful, life-affirming. It's dance music.

19:52Were you surprised by the direction that the music making took? Yeah, at the time I wasn't really thinking about it, but in retrospect, yeah, it's quite it's quite chirpy for someone in that situation but you know the way I think about it is that I was trying to cheer myself up you know when I listen back to it it's pretty unguarded and you know the lyrics were pretty much first thought best thought but I think you're so vulnerable in that situation anyway. People are just coming in and you have no physical boundaries really. People are taking your blood and looking at your body. I suppose it's trying to sum up this strange isolation and loneliness and otherworldly parallel dimension feeling.

20:51You feel like you've taken the wrong turn in the multiverse and ended up in a weird version of your life where all the colour has been drained out and everybody's sad, you know? You know, and throughout this whole experience, honestly, it's kind of some of the darkest, but also some of the brightest moments of my whole life. Music in that moment was something to hold on to. And I just sort of powered through it, really. I did the whole album in two weeks, production and lyrics and everything, you know, and it just sort of fell out on me, really.

21:45I love that he's done this record. I love our brazen and how it is a very extreme thing to do, and it's exactly why art exists. You make it because you have to make it. I can totally see him fucking plugged into the machine with his little laptop and making these songs and having to do it, because what else? You will go mad. And he fucking didn't go mad.

22:15Coming up, what does the future look like now for James Ellis Ford?

22:42How's your health now? It's fine. I feel good. I've got good energy. I've been on holiday. I've kind of got a permanent cold. My immune system is weaker than it should be. And I am at a higher risk of it recurring. so I'm being closely monitored sort of every month. So there is a faint sort of Damocles hanging over that it isn't fully over, but I'm in a lot better spot than I was last year. James, what is it like to listen back to the album now? Is it a difficult thing to do? Yeah, it's not the most comfortable listen. I don't like listening to anything I've ever done, to be honest, especially in the period just after it's been finished because like anyone, I can still think of a myriad ways that I could have changed it and done it better.

23:28but with this one it's different it very much takes me back to sitting in the chair in that room where I made it it's a place that I don't want to remember you know and it's such a double-edged thing for me because I'm you know I'm proud of it and I'm glad I made it but I did make it very much in that moment and I'm probably going to play it live a little bit and it's an odd moment to live in. As these things are, it's not fully over necessarily for me. It could rear its ugly head again. But I am actively trying to step out of that world and this is kind of holding me in there to a certain extent.

24:06How would you say this whole experience has changed you? I don't think this experience cannot change you, really. I've never had an experience like it. When you get out the other side, there's this whole mixed bag of feelings. And it's changed me in ways that I probably don't even know yet, you know. And I think further down the line, I'll probably look back on it and be broadly grateful. Because it's given me this huge sense of gratitude, I suppose, and clarity of what's important. And how I want to be spending my time and who I want to be spending it with. We could all do with those lessons and reminders.

24:48Yeah, and it's stuff that you see fairly regularly, you know, scrolling on the internet. But it's different when you actually feel it in your own life. It's tough to take those lessons on board. Everybody coasts and kind of just makes themselves busy or, you know, just gets through life. But when you're forced to actually stare into the void, it is immensely kind of liberating in a way, you know, because you can suddenly see what's important. It's a lesson for us all. James, thank you again so much for your time. Wishing you the best. Thank you very much.