‘I thought – if I die, I’ve had a good innings’: producer James Ford on life, death and making an album from his hospital bed

The Arctic Monkeys, Pet Shop Boys and Pulp collaborator was at the height of his powers as Britain’s most in-demand music producer when leukaemia struck. ‘I realised life is exceptionally fragile,’ he says There was a moment outside the door of a recording studio in rural France, staring at a half-eaten apple that he believed possessed psychedelic properties, when James Ford knew things had really got out of hand.

He was stood with Klaxons; all of the band members were hypnotised by this rotting fruit which throbbed on the floor with kaleidoscopic intensity.

They were convinced that its blooming mould was in fact their spiritual guru.

The band had been riding the wave of their huge, scene-defining debut album, 2007’s Myths of the Near Future – which was produced by Ford – and were now trying to record the interminably difficult follow-up, aided by daily doses of a concoction they’d taken to calling “the five-star general”.

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