The Book Tower

Unusual for a music autobiography, Alex James hasn’t used a ghost writer for his memoir Bit of a Blur. He has an easy, engaging writing style of his own that strolls through his time as bass player with Blur, living a booze-fuelled hedonistic lifestyle in the 1990s. He’s proud of the achievement of one of the most successful bands of that decade, but he’s also fond of recounting stories of drinking in the Groucho Club and his friendship with Damien Hirst and Keith Allen. James comes across as a pleasant enough chap, but he can’t help also revealing that he’s been incredibly lucky, sailing through his life and grasping all of the amazing opportunities offered to him.

Blur peaked in 1994 and 1995, following the incredibly successful (and also very good) album Parklife with their part in Britpop and the much talked about public battle with Oasis. James talks less about this that you might expect, and most interesting is the few years in the early 90s that Blur spent struggling; a run of very minor hit singles, a poor selling album and a lengthy US tour orchestrated to beat bankruptcy. Here is the seed for what could have been a very good book, although I suspect that James is very much aware that his fellow band members Damon Albarn and Graham Coxon were the talented ones. James was content to get drunk, look pretty and go along for the ride – he’s more at home writing about this than of any enduring artistic legacy.

Bit of a Blur gets the award for most reviewed paperback in British broadsheets this weekend. It’s also one of the best marketed books I’ve seen recently, although it could have been so much better, and I left it knowing little more than I already knew about a band I was so fond of in their heyday. The drinking and sexual exploits I could have done without. A bit of a bore really.