If you want a detailed account of Blur, get 3862 Days - Rated 
As this is the autobiography of Alex James. Which he makes very clear. If you want an insiders memories of the band, Albarn or Coxons autobio is the one to wait for (probably Albarns if you want stuff about Think Tank).
There is very little focus on the band in the 2nd half of the book, whereas about half of the first involves aspects of the band. There isn't really a need for him to detail the band, there are 2 books already that do that, The Last Party (or Britpop, depending on which edition you get) and 3862 Days. The latter does go into far more detail as it's purely about the band, although it was published in 1999, so it does need an updated re-issue.
This is the book about HIS life, not the bands, and for what it is, it's very good. From the lifestyle he seems to have lead, he really must have written this down before hand, as events would be hard to remember after his nights.
Overall, a very funny book that shows the downsides of rock and roll hedonism, and how you can turn your life around. As he said, "It's horrid being in a rut, no matter how nice the rut looks from the outside."
Amazing band not an amazing autobiography - Rated 
I read this book thinking it would bring back memories of the time and give me an insight into the amazing band that was Blur, although as it developed it was clearly only going to be about the strange small world around Alex James. He was a very selfish man going through an unusual experience and, in my view, took a very arrogant view of the whole period in his life.
There are some very interesting sound bites - "if you know why someone likes you then they are not a friend but a fan" and "when you get what you want you lose what you had" - which give a hint of future promise if he continues to write.
Overall the book was a bit disjointed and it felt like he was trying too hard.
Very blurred - Rated 
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! - Rated 
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 - Rated
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.
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