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foxwrapped's review
3.0
For all the fascinating stories in this book (and there are many), it just doesn't come together to form a complete narrative of a life. It's like he flattened everything out, exagerating the entertaining little stories but toning down the real drama. But I don't think it's a problem of skill. I think he just didn't want to tell, either because it was painful or to protect others. Which is fine, really. But it doesn't do the reader (or him, really) any good in the end.
emsuerob's review
2.0
Bit of a boor.
However, it's kind of a pageturner until the Great Escape (although kind of impossible to get through a page after that).
However, it's kind of a pageturner until the Great Escape (although kind of impossible to get through a page after that).
jlmb's review
4.0
I reading a Rolling Stone article listing the 25 best rock memoirs and this book was on the list so I checked it out from the library. I'm not a Blur fan though I did really like that Boys & Girls song when it came out. I just felt it would be interesting to read about this time period in music. I've read a lot of rock memoirs but realized most of the British ones I've read are acts from the 60s & 70s. Alex James is my age so it seemed like a good idea to get this book.
Well, I must say it started out horribly. I had no idea what he was talking about - don't know about many towns in England and what their reps are, don't know about British tv, magazines, stores etc. He seemed to be randomly bringing up people that he rode the school bus with, neighbors, friends of friends etc with no rhyme or reason. Also, his writing style and tone were so twee & pretentious yet simple minded, like he'd been dropped on the head as a baby. It was like a parody of Hemingway. "I went to the store. The store was big. My neighbor Fred was there. Fred has a sister who walks with a limp" etc. I started to wonder about who wrote that Rolling Stone list.
However, I am very glad I persevered with the book. I think at the beginning Alex was attempting to write like he was a naive child/teen. Gradually the tone & style of the writing changed & he seemed less idiotic. Also, I think I got used to his voice. Similar to when I read Patti Smith's memoir - at the beginning of her book she seemed so arty-farty & pretentious but then I started to like her way of looking at things. Same with Alex.
The memoir is less about the band and more about Alex. If I was a big Blur fan, this memoir would have made me angry. He does not go into a great amount of detail about anything in regards to the band. The fact that the guitarist left the band acrimoniously was totally glossed over. Thank goodness for Google. I had to keep looking up things that Alex would barely mention in order to understand what the heck was going on. He wrote a bit about recording the albums & writing the songs but not much. As for the parts about the tour, it was all anecdotes about partying & sex with random women. He does explain this lack of detail about the machinations of how the band worked by saying he felt his job was to be a wild rock star & wild rock stars do not concern themselves with things like contracts and schedules.
He certainly was good at the wild rock star bit. He was a hopeless drunk for years and years. Also did cocaine. He talks less about coke than he does booze but it is apparent when you read between the lines how much coke he had to have been doing. Booze & coke go together like peanut butter & jelly. He would go on multiple day benders with no sleep. You can't do that on booze alone. I was quite impressed with this story of a 4 day bender in NYC. He flew there from London with nothing but his passport & wallet. No suitcase, no hotel reservation. He just floated from crazy situation to crazy situation, losing his shoes in the process. He has lots of stories like that.
His social circle was surprising to me. In most rock memoirs I have read, the rock star hangs out with roadies, security guys, strippers, porn stars, groupies, drug dealers etc. Of course, they also hang out with other famous people too - but usually other musicians. Alex James was more part of the posh jet set. The type of people who have their photo in Tatler. A lot of them I had to google since they were famous in the UK and Europe more than here. He drank at private clubs & 5 star hotels & mansions & castles. He palled about with artists & politicians & writers & scientists & aristocrats & supermodels & billionaire businessmen. Nary a porn star mentioned.
Even though he spent a dozen years being flaky & loaded, Alex manages to land on his feet. Suddenly he decides to stop drinking and get a personal trainer and get his shit together. Why? Who knows. Alex is not terribly introspective in the book & doesn't reveal many personal things. He breaks up with his long suffering girlfriend & immediately jumps into a new relationship with a woman he promptly marries & has babies with. Hooo-boy, I bet his ex-girlfriend had many drunken conversations with her girlfriends trying to figure that out. "I stick with him for years while he is constantly high & cheating on me. As soon as he gets sober he dumps me & marries this other woman & moves to an estate in the Cotswolds & has babies." Oh boy. I feel bad for her. He buys the aforementioned estate in the Cotswolds, becomes a country gentleman who makes artisan cheeses & has 5 kids. Happily ever after!
I'm not sure what audience this memoir is directed to. There aren't a lot of details about Blur. And most people aren't odd like me & read random musician's memoirs. Yet it is a good memoir. Maybe if you just go into it as reading a non famous person's memoir, you'll be pleasantly surprised.
Well, I must say it started out horribly. I had no idea what he was talking about - don't know about many towns in England and what their reps are, don't know about British tv, magazines, stores etc. He seemed to be randomly bringing up people that he rode the school bus with, neighbors, friends of friends etc with no rhyme or reason. Also, his writing style and tone were so twee & pretentious yet simple minded, like he'd been dropped on the head as a baby. It was like a parody of Hemingway. "I went to the store. The store was big. My neighbor Fred was there. Fred has a sister who walks with a limp" etc. I started to wonder about who wrote that Rolling Stone list.
However, I am very glad I persevered with the book. I think at the beginning Alex was attempting to write like he was a naive child/teen. Gradually the tone & style of the writing changed & he seemed less idiotic. Also, I think I got used to his voice. Similar to when I read Patti Smith's memoir - at the beginning of her book she seemed so arty-farty & pretentious but then I started to like her way of looking at things. Same with Alex.
The memoir is less about the band and more about Alex. If I was a big Blur fan, this memoir would have made me angry. He does not go into a great amount of detail about anything in regards to the band. The fact that the guitarist left the band acrimoniously was totally glossed over. Thank goodness for Google. I had to keep looking up things that Alex would barely mention in order to understand what the heck was going on. He wrote a bit about recording the albums & writing the songs but not much. As for the parts about the tour, it was all anecdotes about partying & sex with random women. He does explain this lack of detail about the machinations of how the band worked by saying he felt his job was to be a wild rock star & wild rock stars do not concern themselves with things like contracts and schedules.
He certainly was good at the wild rock star bit. He was a hopeless drunk for years and years. Also did cocaine. He talks less about coke than he does booze but it is apparent when you read between the lines how much coke he had to have been doing. Booze & coke go together like peanut butter & jelly. He would go on multiple day benders with no sleep. You can't do that on booze alone. I was quite impressed with this story of a 4 day bender in NYC. He flew there from London with nothing but his passport & wallet. No suitcase, no hotel reservation. He just floated from crazy situation to crazy situation, losing his shoes in the process. He has lots of stories like that.
His social circle was surprising to me. In most rock memoirs I have read, the rock star hangs out with roadies, security guys, strippers, porn stars, groupies, drug dealers etc. Of course, they also hang out with other famous people too - but usually other musicians. Alex James was more part of the posh jet set. The type of people who have their photo in Tatler. A lot of them I had to google since they were famous in the UK and Europe more than here. He drank at private clubs & 5 star hotels & mansions & castles. He palled about with artists & politicians & writers & scientists & aristocrats & supermodels & billionaire businessmen. Nary a porn star mentioned.
Even though he spent a dozen years being flaky & loaded, Alex manages to land on his feet. Suddenly he decides to stop drinking and get a personal trainer and get his shit together. Why? Who knows. Alex is not terribly introspective in the book & doesn't reveal many personal things. He breaks up with his long suffering girlfriend & immediately jumps into a new relationship with a woman he promptly marries & has babies with. Hooo-boy, I bet his ex-girlfriend had many drunken conversations with her girlfriends trying to figure that out. "I stick with him for years while he is constantly high & cheating on me. As soon as he gets sober he dumps me & marries this other woman & moves to an estate in the Cotswolds & has babies." Oh boy. I feel bad for her. He buys the aforementioned estate in the Cotswolds, becomes a country gentleman who makes artisan cheeses & has 5 kids. Happily ever after!
I'm not sure what audience this memoir is directed to. There aren't a lot of details about Blur. And most people aren't odd like me & read random musician's memoirs. Yet it is a good memoir. Maybe if you just go into it as reading a non famous person's memoir, you'll be pleasantly surprised.
bukukurasi's review
3.0
Growing up in the 90s, Britpop was as huge as K-Pop today, or bigger but they were better for sure. The difference is 90s kids did not have internet or google or social media. The news about our idola were as limited as the weekly tabloid or the music magazines, especially for me who lived far away from the epicentrum of the IT Culture.
.
Blur was the face of Britpop, the were the kings. I would dare to say that Blur were the alter-ego of my adolescent. But Alex was not my favorite, Damon was. Damon was the king of the king of Britpop, he was the icon. At that time, I thought Alex was only the wing man of Damon and Gra. I was dissapointed when Think Tank was released without Gra, it was not Blur. Thank Gld they reunited and I finally rich enough to buy their ticket concert. Watched them live was one of my biggest prayer, my ultimate bucket list.
.
My assesment on the book would have been different if I read it 20 something years ago. I would praise everything Alex had written no matter what. But I grew up, I have two different point of view on his autobiography. First, it’s a memoir of a grown up man who went through everything and had lived the dream of every rock star wannabees. Second, it’s like showing he’s being humble brag. As if, yeah I did this and that and they were all bad, that’s okay, I looked cool, girls still love me. He was narcissist. That’s pretty suck actually.
.
As soon as the band reached its success, the story got bored. But I enjoyed how Alex expressed his feelings toward Gra. I always thought Gra was the most depressed personnel. And I was right.
.
Anyway, the book was published in 2007. Probably the story is different now. Damon and Gra had got back together. Blur has their own movie, No Distance Left to Run that I have watched several times. I guess I love the lads as a group not the individual member.
.
Blur was the face of Britpop, the were the kings. I would dare to say that Blur were the alter-ego of my adolescent. But Alex was not my favorite, Damon was. Damon was the king of the king of Britpop, he was the icon. At that time, I thought Alex was only the wing man of Damon and Gra. I was dissapointed when Think Tank was released without Gra, it was not Blur. Thank Gld they reunited and I finally rich enough to buy their ticket concert. Watched them live was one of my biggest prayer, my ultimate bucket list.
.
My assesment on the book would have been different if I read it 20 something years ago. I would praise everything Alex had written no matter what. But I grew up, I have two different point of view on his autobiography. First, it’s a memoir of a grown up man who went through everything and had lived the dream of every rock star wannabees. Second, it’s like showing he’s being humble brag. As if, yeah I did this and that and they were all bad, that’s okay, I looked cool, girls still love me. He was narcissist. That’s pretty suck actually.
.
As soon as the band reached its success, the story got bored. But I enjoyed how Alex expressed his feelings toward Gra. I always thought Gra was the most depressed personnel. And I was right.
.
Anyway, the book was published in 2007. Probably the story is different now. Damon and Gra had got back together. Blur has their own movie, No Distance Left to Run that I have watched several times. I guess I love the lads as a group not the individual member.
pivic's review
4.0
So Graham and Damon and I met in the studio on the last day of the first term. Damon had the keys, as he was sort of an assistant there. There were a couple of things that Damon and Graham had been working on together that we bashed around for a while. I showed them some chords that I’d been strumming in my room. Graham started to play them on the guitar, there was a drum machine going boom whack and I started grooving along on the bass that was lying around. Damon started jumping up and down and saying, ‘Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant! You’re a natural!’ He got his lyrics book out and started singing, ‘She is so high, she is so high.’ It all happened there and then. It was instantaneous, shockingly so. Graham wrote the lyrics for the verse, over the same chords, and sang a backing vocal on the choruses. I’d never been in a band with backing vocals. The two of them sang really well together, they’d been doing it for years. We made a tape and I went home for Christmas thinking, ‘I’m in the best band in the world.’
Even if you don't fancy Blur or even if you've never heard them, this is a good memoir. Even though James may seem to have his head up his own arse at times because of his wealth and the sheer amount of silly things he's been up to because of it - whether it be purchasing an aeroplane or wasting thousands of pounds per night getting drunk with models - his style of writing drew me in.
Short sentences telling stuff like it was, according to no-one but himself.
James saw himself as a rock star, and as such, he wanted to live up to the myth, combining alcohol and bad behaviour all over the globe.
I was really drunk by that point and I went down to the bar to have a fight. Bruce Dickinson was at the bar. I hate Iron Maiden. They’re devil-worshipping ponces. I said, ‘The devil can suck my cock and you can kiss his arse, you fucking poodle.’ He got me in a headlock and sucked the end of my nose really hard. I was laughing quite a lot, not really resisting. We left it at that.
Point to Dickinson, there.
I was still enjoying my lack of responsibilities. Being able to have whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted, had made me grotesque and self-centred, but there was a huge upside to being cash rich and morally bankrupt.
From an art school background to riches as Blur recorded their first album with Stephen Street producing it, alcohol and deviant behaviour led James to be unfaithful to his then-girlfriend. A lot.
The first time I was unfaithful to Justine was about halfway through the first year at Goldsmiths. I was in London. She was in Bournemouth. I was drunk. It wasn’t premeditated. It was a brief pornographic fantasy scenario with someone I’d never seen before, never saw again. I regretted it terribly and confessed. Justine was devastated, more hurt than angry. We both cried a lot and I knew I’d never do it again. Of course, there were pretty girls at college. I flirted with one or two of them, but I never had any intention of getting involved. I suppose, if I’m brutally honest, if I’d fallen in love with somebody else, I would have been a bit stupid to stay with Justine, but I didn’t. I wanted to be with her. The second time was a real disgrace. I snogged Raych. She wasn’t going out with Adam any more, but he still loved her, I think. He was long gone, but when I thought about it afterwards it seemed like a double whammy of treachery against him and against Justine. It was only a quick affectionate snog, but I definitely fancied Raych, which made it a worse crime. I didn’t tell Jus about that. Andrea, the singer from the Darling Buds, was a pin-up platinum blonde and that was the third time. The world had started to open up to us and it appeared there was no town that didn’t have beautiful women I could have married or interesting people I could have quite happily spent my life with.
...and:
Another one-night stand. It wasn’t like I pursued these women. It was suddenly as simple as not resisting. Still, I was more than willing and it was the same act of betrayal. There were so many reasons to say yes and only one reason to say no, and she was an ocean away.
There are no swan songs re. the bad times, which is very refreshing:
The album had stopped selling and Woolworths returned quite a lot of copies. Then a really big bill came from the VAT man and we couldn’t afford to pay it. It was serious. I had no idea what VAT was. I was good at playing the bass and showing off. That was my job. We trusted our manager to make sure that those kinds of unpleasantnesses were taken care of. It turned out that quite a lot of bills remained unpaid. We owed everybody money. We brought in new accountants, who told us we were staring bankruptcy in the face and facing prison if we couldn’t come up with the cash to pay the VAT. Whenever this happens it’s time to start looking for a new manager.
And there's always a breath of fresh air when James writes about unusual stuff very up front, e.g.:
There was a bottle of Tabasco on the bar, for Bloody Marys. He said, ‘Watch this!’ and necked the whole thing. Temporarily, he went into convulsions and was sick. Then the hiccups started. They were the biggest hiccups I’ve ever seen. There was an element of sneeze in each hiccup, and each one possessed his entire body. It wasn’t deadly serious, but we were supposed to be onstage in twenty minutes. We went on late. I smashed a guitar and a few drums. Having destroyed backstage, Damon tore into the front of house. Dave swan-dived into the crowd and was devoured, so I finished the drums off. We hadn’t done that for a while. It is very satisfying to make a lot of noise and break stuff.
On fame:
I’d done a fair bit of hobnobbing with famous people by this time. They didn’t seem to have anything in common, particularly. Famous people generally seemed like everybody else, only a bit more famous. Rich people aren’t particularly different from anyone else either. They’ve just got more money. Fame is just another kind of money. It can do things that money can’t, but it’s just a currency. No one ever loved anyone because they were rich. No one ever really loved anyone because they were famous, but it’s an attractive quality.
On what really matters in the end:
On Boxing Day I went back to London to get Tabitha and took her to a hotel where I’d always wanted to stay, in Corfe Castle in rural Dorset. Suddenly we were alone and it was very still and quiet. Immaculate. We walked to Kimmeridge, my favourite place, and I built a big bonfire. There’s absolutely nothing to do there, just fossils and shells and rock pools. It’s where you realise if you love someone or not. I felt a bit bored. It was surprising. She was possibly the most beautiful woman in the world. I thought success would be the answer to everything. I’d climbed a hill and seen a mountain in the distance. I climbed the mountain and I saw the moon. I somehow got to the moon and realised I’d left what I loved behind in another world. I missed Justine. I’d come all this way to realise I really was happiest with what I already had. It was a journey that had to be made. I wanted it all. I’d never felt I wanted to escape from Justine. I’d just lost her. I just wanted to sit and be quiet with her, listen to her thoughts and make her laugh.
There are some reminisces on alcohol and adventures:
When I woke up I was in her bedroom. I was emptying my bladder all over her dressing table. People had told me about this kind of thing. It had never happened to me before, though. She woke up and asked what I was doing. I said it looked like I’d made a big mistake. We cleaned it up. We’d only known each other a couple of hours and I don’t think anyone could have been any more drunk than I was. Usually being that drunk would make you unconscious, but with absinthe you go on expeditions. I did see her again. Some people you try and make a good impression on and nothing works, others you piss all over their make-up and they’ve decided they like you and it doesn’t seem to matter. Anyway, that was the only time I ever went to Richmond.
On being a tourist:
We live in a climate of fear, but the world is a safe place as long as you know how to behave like everybody else does. If you stand around holding a map waving a video camera with your shirt tucked into your waist-high trousers, you’re in trouble wherever you go. Millions of people live in Rio, after all, and they eat salad and have ice in their drinks and they don’t get murdered very often.
Wealth and no morale:
I’d spent about a million pounds on champagne and cocaine. It sounds ridiculous but, looking back, I don’t regret it. It was definitely the right thing to do. It was completely decadent, but I was a rock star, after all, a proper one, with a public duty to perform.
Claire was worried about me starting my new drinking campaign in January. She’d only known me sober. I assured her that I was very good at it. It was February and a nice man called Bill was saying, ‘And tell me what you remember about the party.’ ‘Well, I remember swapping shirts with the principal dancer of the Royal Ballet Company.’ ‘OK. Good. What next?’ ‘I think I snogged the dog.’ ‘Right. OK. Then what happened?’ ‘Well, I had a row with Claire and went home. I locked her out, and when she was banging on the door, I pissed on her head from the fourth-storey window.’ ‘Why did you do that?’ ‘Well, that’s what she wants to know.’ ‘Anything else happen?’ ‘No, not that night, anyway.’ Bill was kind and he listened and he helped me and I stopped drinking altogether after that and tried yoga.
And somehow, the feel of the book is stashed in a single sentence:
I sometimes found it excruciatingly funny and begged them to stop, and sometimes I just begged them to stop.
All in all: a really interesting tale of the love for music, but mainly on friendship, the loss of ethics and love due to alcohol and drugs, and little thoughts on life and what matters and not.
muninnherself's review
3.0
I'm fairly ambivalent about Blur, but it's interesting to read about stuff that happened when you were actually old enough to be paying attention. As in, I've read a lot of music biog/autobiog, but only this and the Nirvana stuff actually happened while I was watching, as it were. So that's fun. And it's well written, but he's a bit of a tit, isn't he. I mean he seems nice enough and everything, but. Worth a read though.
amyg42's review
4.0
Loved this book. Alex James - bassist from Blur - talks about his life in the band, living the cliche of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll. He spent a million pounds on champagne and coke, and doesn't regret a minute. Alex James is honest, insightful and dreadfully funny. Recommended for anyone that's ever sang "woo! hoo! I got my head something ... something something ... woo! hoo!"
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