Bit of a Blur

Although Alex James claim to fame is that he was the bass player for one of the nineties biggest selling bands, Blur feature little in this very disappointing autobiography.

Instead, Mr James prefers to write more about the hedonistic results of being part of a highly successful band. So what could have been an enlightening insight into the Britpop scene turns out to be a succession of superficial stories about women, drugs and booze. Unforunately even these stories are not that interesting as he chooses not to reveal anything that is too shocking, which renders the anecdotes both pointless and boring.

If this is the Rock & Roll lifestyle I think I'll pass on that audition for X Factor.

Give it some more cred! (0/0 people found this helpful)

I have never written one of these amazon reviews before but I had to make an exception here as I really think this book is deserving of a bit more credit. I read this a few months ago and laughed out loud so many times at the stories it is full of anecdotes and bits of information and provides insight without too many lurid details.

While I agree his drug use is skirted somewhat it is acknowledged-but why does he have to detail about these things? We've heard about this kind of stuff many times before. Alex has a genuine flair for the written word and I hope this is not his only book. For any music fan of the Britpop era this will be a really good read. Alex was the dandy and playboy of Blur and his talk of how he made it from living in a small town to making it with Blur is charming, witty and laugh out loud funny. I think it is also about wisdom and growing up to the realisation that champagne and coke only remains interesting for so long.

Woefully light (1/5 people found this helpful)

I am not a die-hard blur fan. In fact I was probably more pro-Oasis when all the madness of the mid 90's was happening. All that said, I think that in the fullness of time, their work will be seen as immensely more seminal and innovative than Oasis who seem to be veering towards Status Quo-like predictability.

Anyway, I was really let down by this and having read some of the snippets and serialisations in the press, thought I was in for a pretty deep and detailed account of what that period was actually like from an insider. Sadly I was wrong.

There is no doubt that the man can write ( and the lack of ghost writer or "accompanying" author here should be applauded ) which in many ways makes it all the more annoying, that he seems to skip over key events and turning points in his and the band's life (Graham Coxon leaving & his own drug intake, for example) as though they were either incidental footnotes or as though they didnt happen at all.

He admits in the book that by nature he is light-hearted, which definately comes accross here but reading this it's almost as though there are things he won't dwell on for fear of embarrassing or hurting people, and that he almost doesn't want to admit to darker times along the way (of which there surely must have been many). For the above reasons, I don't think it is a true autobiography.

A bit of a disappointment (1/7 people found this helpful)

By his own admission, Alex James has spent £1M on champagne and coke. Yet despite all that plus his membership of one of the best bands of the 90s, this book contains only one mildly amusing anecdote. There are no real insights into the band's creative processes (and what his contribution really was), the Coxon-Albarn bust up, or even any graphic details of his supposed endless conquests. Instead it's a long list of dull celebrity name checks (went to the Groucho, met Damien, got drunk), until he becomes another country house casualty.

He comes across as an incredibly superficial bore. No wonder the other band members avoided spending time with him.

I feel sorry for his long-suffering girlfriend who he eventually dumped for his now wife.

A disappointing read for Blur fans, and everyone else should certainly avoid it. He'll only waste the royalties shooting crows.

Synopsis (7/9 people found this helpful)

'I was the Fool-king of Soho and the number-one slag of the Groucho Club, the second drunkest member of the world's drunkest band. This was no disaster, though. It was a dream coming true. I lived in the best house in Convent Garden. I had everyone's number, a rocket going to Mars, two aeroplanes and a Damien Hirst taxi. Ten years later, everything has changed. I don't drink, don't take drugs and I'm married. I live on a farm in the Cotswolds. I've sold the aeroplanes because I've landed. This is the voyage-and-return autobiography. It's the story of a rock-and-roll poster boy's journey from dreams of having everything to getting everything and wanting more. It's a stroll through the lush scenery of the high life and the low life of the nineties. It's about growing up bigger than I imagined. It starts where I was born and finishes here, when my twins arrived.'

Alex James

Reader Reviews:

Very blurred (0/0 people found this helpful)

Give it some more cred! (0/0 people found this helpful)

Woefully light (1/5 people found this helpful)

A bit of a disappointment (1/7 people found this helpful)

Synopsis (7/9 people found this helpful)

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