by Mark Ellen (Author)
'The book is f***ing BRILLIANT! Just arrived NYC and wanked myself laughing. Literally tears. Irritated looks all around. What a great writer you are. It's a classic. You absolutely got the whole shite early 70s thing down precisely as it was. Names, smells, sounds, looks, the food, drink, girls, boys! Mega! Well done.' - Bob Geldof
In a sodden tent at a '70s festival, the teenage Mark Ellen had a dream. He dreamt that music was a rich meadow of possibility, a liberating leap to a sparkling future, an industry of human happiness - and he wanted to be part of it. Thus began his 50-year love affair with rock and roll. From his time at the NME, Radio One, The Old Grey Whistle Test and Live aid, he has been at the molten core of pop's evolution, and watched its key figures from a unique perspective. This funny and touching personal memoir maps out his eventful journey in rock and roll.
It tells stories and settles scores. It charts the peaks and disappointments. It flags up surprising heroes and barbecues the dull and self-deluded. It puts a chaotic world to rights and pours petrol on the embers of a glorious industry now in spiraling decline.
For more exclusive pictures visit www.rockstarsstolemylife.com
Format: Paperback
Pages: 352
Edition: First Paperback Edition
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Published: 26 Mar 2015
ISBN 10: 1444775510
ISBN 13: 9781444775518
Book Overview: New adventures in Rock and Roll.
Thumbs Aloft!
For men of several generations, the most eagerly anticipated memoir of the year is Mark Ellen's Rock Stars Stole My Life! and it doesn't disappoint. Subtitled 'A Big Bad Love Affair With Music', Ellen's book describes in beautifully crafted gambols his time working for the music press, from the NME in the Seventies right through to The Word in the noughties, via Smash Hits, Q, Mojo, Select and all places in between.
Ellen has been at the coalface of rock hackdom for 40 years, yet unlike many of his contemporaries, he has always viewed his relationship with the music industry - and the preposterous entertainers it throws up - as a ridiculous pleasure rather than a burden. Ellen is not only one of the nicest men in the industry, he's also one of its funniest writers, and this books picks away at the hand that has fed him for all these years with such humour, and such delicacy, that it becomes impossible to put down. Here is a man who presented Live Aid, who presided over the most popular music magazine in the world, and who unwittingly became one of the last people to interview Michael Jackson in print. And it is never less than hilarious. This book will make you laugh, make you cry with joy, and send you scuttling over to what is left of your record collection to look for an Elvis Costello album you probably have not played since it was released.
Award-winning writer and broadcaster Mark Ellen was born at the wrong time. Five years older and he would have seen The Beatles and The Byrds; five years younger and he'd have been plunged into punk rock. He spent his teenage years sitting at the feet of bands like Hookfoot, Wishbone Ash and Brewers Droop -- the half-baked rear guard of underground rock -- and he knew no better than to admire them.
Mark went on to write for Record Mirror and New Musical Express, and edited Smash Hits, Q and Select, and helped to launch MOJO. He stood in for John Peel on Radio One and then joined the Old Grey Whistle Test, becoming one of the TV presenters of Live Aid in 1985.
For ten years from 2002, he edited the much-missed music publication, The Word.