Bit of a Blur

by Alex James

Overview

I was the Fool-king of Soho and the number-one slag in the Groucho Club, the second drunkest member of the world's drunkest band. This was no disaster, though. It was a dream coming true.'

For Alex James, music had always been a door to a more eventful life. But as bass player of Blur - one of the most successful British bands of all time - his journey was more exciting and extreme than he could ever have predicted. In Bit of a Blur he chronicles his journey from a slug-infested flat in Camberwell to a world of screaming fans and private jets - and his eventual search to find meaning and happiness (and, perhaps most importantly, the perfect cheese), in an increasingly surreal world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780349119939
Publisher:	Little, Brown Book Group
Publication date:	07/03/2008
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.00(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Alex James is the bass player with Blur. He is also a Visiting Scientist at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Europe's largest space research facility. He lives with his wife and children in the Cotswolds.

Editorial Reviews

Alex James is a witty, engaging guide to the mad goings-on behind the scenes of Britpop. Blur's bassist famously estimates that he blew around £1m on champagne and cocaine during the Nineties. Here's how.—INDEPENDENT

Bright, passionate . . . James writes with wit and flair—TIME OUT

*'The definitive guide to Britpop . . . this effervescent memoir emerges as the most fascinating, as well as hilarious, document to date of those times—OBSERVER

Guaranteed to bring a tear to your eye - in a good way—ELLE

From the Publisher

James, bass player of the British group Blur-which rose to stratospheric fame in Britain and had varying degrees of success worldwide in the 1990s-has penned a roguish portrait of his hedonistic and compelling life that also illuminates the music and art worlds of the time. James recounts his childhood in middle-class England and the early years of Blur with tales of touring and promotional jaunts. As success and fame increase, his bustling social life takes center stage and is rendered with bons mots on topics ranging from art and travel to astronomy and cheese that illustrate a pleasure in discovery and an unabashed joy in living. James's amiable storytelling of a wild life lived without remorse concludes with the portrait of a man who has ultimately achieved stability and contentment. Fans of Brit pop and music of the 1990s will find this essential reading, but it should also appeal to those who appreciate popular culture, as James's writing transcends the traditional music memoir with freshness, humor, and pithy social observation. Recommended for larger public libraries.
—Jim Collins

Library Journal

A breezy, boozy account of an explosive moment in pop music. London in the mid-1990s was an epicenter of the music and art worlds, verging on a major political shift. James, formerly the bassist in Britpop band Blur and contributor to several British magazines, recounts his ascent to rock stardom and the subsequent rapid explosion of his ego with plenty of wit in hindsight. He affectionately recalls his boyhood in Bournemouth dreaming of appearing on Top of the Pops. "In all the time I have been making music, nothing quite so fantastic as what happened in the next five minutes has ever happened again," he writes of a teenage bedroom rehearsal with two friends. In 1988, enrolled at London's Goldsmiths College, James met best friend and Blur band mate Graham Coxon ("brilliantly artistic, but vulnerable"), artist Damien Hirst and first-love Justine, with whom he fell in and out for several years. Blur, originally called Seymour, signed with EMI Records at the height of pop music's obsession with grunge. When the shambling Britpop sound caught on globally, James found himself rich and famous in his early 20s. "I'd tell myself it was the duty of rock stars to indulge themselves beyond reasonable limits," he writes. "If I couldn't be reckless and extreme, I wasn't doing my job properly." James felt free to indulge his passions, which in addition to the usual drink and drugs included astronomy and fancy cheeses, extolled in refreshing, if long-winded vignettes. Readers may feel slightly overstuffed by the time the rock star sobers up and settles down in the country, but James's self-awareness on the page saves him from innumerable tabloid cliches. He'd rather name fine hotels and bars than theglitterati frequenting them, and he never forgets how he arrived at such a rarefied perch, looking back with a teenager's sense of awe. A rock bio with snap.

Kirkus Reviews