Rock Stars Stole My Life!: a Big Bad Love Affair with Music Free

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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! Well done. 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 year love affair with rock and roll. 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. Thumbs Aloft! 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. Mark Ellen wanted to be in the music business. When Rock Stars Stole My Life!: A Big Bad Love Affair with Music a rock star doesn't work out, he tries his hand at being a member of the music press. And Rock Stars Stole My Life!: A Big Bad Love Affair with Music follows many years of success at magazines such as NME and If like me you grew up reading Smash Hits, moved on to the NME and then read the sadly departed Word Magazine, or if you were just a fan of music in the 80s and 90s Mark Ellen Please sign in to write a review. If you have changed your email address then contact us and we will update your details. Would you like to proceed to the App store to download the Waterstones App? We have recently updated our Privacy Policy. The site uses cookies to offer you a better experience. By continuing to browse the site you accept our Cookie Policy, you can change your settings at any time. Rock Stars Stole my Life! In stock Usually dispatched within 24 hours. Quantity Add to basket. This item has been added to your basket View basket Checkout. Your local Waterstones may have stock of this item. View other formats and editions. For more exclusive pictures visit www. There's a misty-eyed reverence for the past in Ellen's entertaining memoir of five decades surrounded by music. It is a tribute to Ellen's resilience that not even this sensory assault can erode the powers of humour and observation that make his book so enjoyable. As the image of today's stars becomes ever more tightly controlled, Ellen's experiences make him one of the few who can pull back the curtain to expose the smoke and mirrors of this most glamorous, exciting and tawdry of industries. It's terrific! Exposes the smoke and mirrors of this most glamorous and tawdry of industries. Knowingly ridiculous and very funny. A series of golden ages witnessed first-hand. Rock Stars Stole My Life! Is an upbeat and immensely readable account of a joyous addiction. Having such a funny, charming guide doesn't hurt either. Ellen relates a blessed life Ellen sails through pop history Rock Stars Stole My Life!: A Big Bad Love Affair with Music an infectious joie de vivre that sends laughter tumbling from every page. Added to basket. Tall Tales and Wee Stories. Billy Connolly. A Life on Our Planet. Sir David Attenborough. Limitless: The Autobiography. Tim Peake. Gotta Get Theroux This. Louis Theroux. Year of the Monkey. Patti Smith. Captain Tom Moore. Ramble Book. Adam Buxton. To the End of the World. Rupert Everett. How to Fail. Elizabeth Day. Gary Numan. This Is Me. Mrs Hinch. Just Ignore Him. Alan Davies. Life's Rock Stars Stole My Life!: A Big Bad Love Affair with Music You Make It. Phillip Schofield. Behind the Sequins. Shirley Ballas. Claudia Winkleman. Hardback edition. Lucy OConnor Walton on Thames. Comment 0. Gary Ashwell. Your review has been submitted successfully. Not registered? Remember me? 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Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read. Want to Read saving…. Want to Read Currently Reading Read. Other editions. Enlarge cover. Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Open Preview See a Problem? Details if other :. Thanks for telling us about the problem. Return to Book Page. Rock Stars Stole My Life! 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 year love affair with rock and roll. This funny and touching personal memoir maps out his eventful journey. It tells stories and Rock Stars Stole My Life!: A Big Bad Love Affair with Music 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 spiralling decline. Get A Copy. Kindle Editionpages. More Details Original Title. Penderyn Music Book Prize Nominee Other Editions 4. Friend Reviews. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. Lists with This Book. This book is not yet featured on Listopia. Community Reviews. Showing Average rating 3. Rating details. More filters. Sort order. Mar 17, Emma rated it it was ok. I felt a bit disappointed with this one. I really was expecting to enjoy it, but I ended up skim reading it. I read another review, where the reviewer said she felt she was a bit young to appreciate it, and I feel similarly. Also, we dont really get to know Mark at all. View Rock Stars Stole My Life!: A Big Bad Love Affair with Music comment. This is an engaging and fascinating memoir by Mark Ellen — music journalist, critic, radio and television presenter — whose life has been completely wrapped up in his love of music. He begins with his sisters love of The Beatles, and his early musical interest in bands such as The Kinks and Bob Dylan in the Sixties. His childhood love of music was misunderstood by his parents, who disapproved of Top of the Pops and these new long haired bands taking over the airwaves. However, as so Rock Stars Stole My Life!: A Big Bad Love Affair with Music happen This is an engaging and fascinating memoir by Mark Ellen — music journalist, critic, radio and television presenter — whose life has been completely wrapped up in his love of music. However, as so often happens, parental disapproval only made music even more attractive to Ellen. However, watching the music press of the Seventies many almost as famous as the bands they were writing about swanning into the backstage areas at music festivals and concerts, gave him the idea of possibly trying to work for a music magazine. What follows is really a career in music. His section on working at the NME is especially interesting, with office politics and factions developing amongst the journalists, which gave him his first disenchantment of what working in the music business would be, considering his rather youthful and naive views at the time. He was at Live Aid, many different award shows and has seen the best and worst of the music business. Although meeting some of his heroes led to disappointment another highlight was a hilarious, for all the wrong reasons, interview with Roy Harper and Jimmy Pagethis is not, in any way, an unkind or vicious attack on those the author is writing about. Yes, he may muse on how certain superstars have terrible behaviour, but he also understands how difficult living with such huge fame can be. Mostly, his writing is Rock Stars Stole My Life!: A Big Bad Love Affair with Music self deprecating, laughing at himself over anyone else and will not offend anyone mentioned within its pages. Often it is the music business itself, rather than the personalities, that comes under scrutiny. However, for anyone who grew up in the time Mark Ellen is writing about, or who loves music, this is an entertaining and enjoyable read. The author has managed to laugh both himself, and at the business he has Rock Stars Stole My Life!: A Big Bad Love Affair with Music his life working in, yet also convey his immense fondness and affection for the music which has provided the soundtrack of our lives — including his own. If you enjoy books by authors such as Stuart Maconie, then you will probably like this. Jan 24, Patrick rated it really liked it. If Mark Ellen had teenage dreams of being a rock star, then at the same age, knowing even then that I was devoid of musical talent and nobody's idea of a 'front man' I instead fantasised that I might make a living from sharing my ill-informed opinions with the world. Ellen actually got to do it, and this is a book about what it was like. He spent his youth playing bass with Rectal Prolapse not a name that suggests a glittering future awaits, although I suppose Selfish Cunt have a certain cult fo If Mark Ellen had teenage dreams of being a rock star, then at the same age, knowing even then that I was devoid of musical talent and nobody's idea of a 'front man' I instead fantasised that I might make a living from sharing my ill-informed opinions with the world. He spent his youth playing bass with Rectal Prolapse not a name that suggests a glittering future awaits, although I suppose Selfish Cunt have Rock Stars Stole My Life!: A Big Bad Love Affair with Music certain cult following There is though the nagging thought that the direction of British history might have been different had Ugly Rumours' lead singer, a boundlessly energetic Mick Jagger wannabe who said 'guys' a lot and went by the same of Tony Blair, Rock Stars Stole My Life!: A Big Bad Love Affair with Music at it. So instead, Ellen went into music journalism for more than 30 years, starting at the NME during punk's high water mark in the late s, before moving to Smash Hits to cover the early 80s synth pop boom. By the mids, he was one of the people behind the launch of adult-rock oriented Q Magazine originally, it was to have been called Cue Magazine, as in 'cue the record', but it was feared it would have been taken for a snooker magazine. Then he was at Select magazine covering British indie and dance of the early s, before joining the bearded guitar-nostalgists Mojo and finally, spending ten years with long-time partner in crime David Hepworth at Word Magazine. The book is essentially the story of a lifelong obsession not just with music itself but with the whole surrounding soap opera. The value placed on it by those who buy the records and go to the gigs. The early chapters, where pop music is a rare and hard to obtain pleasure - available only via the occasional show on the Light Programme and his elder sisters' stack of 45s left me wondering how much of the magic came from the very unavailability of the music. Can it ever mean as much to anyone when it's all available at the tap of a button on Spotify? The description of how his parents, who had survived World War 2 and now couldn't understand their children's love of the "loutish" Kinks let alone the "weird looking" Frank Zappa, reminded me a little of reading my Dad's memoir about growing up in the s. The idea of music as a statement of rebellion seems curiously quaint now. After all, the children of the rave generation of the late s will many of themselves be teenagers now and it's hard to see how they are going to shock their parents. Perhaps by buying Ed Sheeran and Adele records by the bucketload. One of the aspects of this book that I enjoyed was the short pen portraits of various well kent faces from rock history. Some turn out to be every bit as objectionable as you'd expect. Van Morrison is, shock, hoprror, a Rock Stars Stole My Life!: A Big Bad Love Affair with Music old git. There is something a little sad about his account of going to Ambleside to interview Jimmy Page and Roy Harper, two heroes from his youth - and finding two seedy old burned out cases getting off their faces on red wine and amphetamines in the company of doe eyed teenaged girls who didn't know any better. Others come out rather better. Noel Gallagher, interviewed after the release of Definitely Maybe for Mojo, seems to have a down to earth attitude to music and a refreshing lack of 'front'. He comments that when he was sued for plagiarism by the New Seekers, he thought it was a fair cop, but would rather the Beatles had gone after him instead because he'd stolen just as much from them. Mark Ellen speculates that those who don't find success in the first flush of youth are better able to take it in their stride Gallagher was 28 and Tennant 31 when their bands' first records came out. Page and Harper found fame in their teens and appeared stuck in a permanent adolescence in their early 40s. Something that amused me as I read the book was how Ellen was involved in so many magazines which were so mutually dismissive and snotty about each other's output. And the man who was beaten up when he went to interview Elvis Costello just after his first album came out is, a few years later, telling us what Sheena Easton's favourite food is for Smash Hits. Towards the end of the book, Ellen finds himself wondering if he would really have enjoyed rock stardom anyway. Flying away from a U2 gig with the band in the Sultan of Brunei's private jet complete with gold taps he finds himself asking: Who would want to be Bono? All the time? You may find it insufferably glib. Personally, I found its lack of pretension rather refreshing. Rock Stars Stole My Life!: A Big Bad Love Affair with Music there is an overarching theme to the book, it is perhaps that of a man making a life-long career out of a youthful obsession with the magical world of rock music, slowly coming to realise that the magic is mostly smoke and mirrors and deciding, 'what the hell, it'll be fun to stick around for the ride' and so ending up remaining a believer of sorts to the end. Dec 10, Nigeyb rated it really liked it. As a subscriber to the late lamented Word magazine, and someone who has enjoyed every one of the Word magazine podcasts, I am familiar with both Mark Ellen and many of the anecdotes which appear in Rock Stars Stole My Life! This prior knowledge did not detract from my enjoyment one jot. Mark's musical consciousness started in the sixties and continues to the present day, and as such he has anecdotes galore from his long and illustrious career which saw him pass As a subscriber to the late lamented Word magazine, and someone who has enjoyed every one of the Word magazine podcasts, I am familiar with both Mark Ellen and many of the anecdotes which appear in Rock Stars Stole My Life! Mark's musical consciousness started in the sixties and continues to the present day, and as such he has anecdotes galore from his long and illustrious career which saw him pass through the NME, Smash Hits, the BBC and Whistle Test plus the small matter of Live AidMojo, and the Word. Needless to say he has great insights about the way the music industry worked and works ; his numerous and eclectic musical passions; his own life story; and much Rock Stars Stole My Life!: A Big Bad Love Affair with Music. This book is a joy. Mark Ellen: Rock Star Stole My Life - A Big Bad Love Affair With Music - book review

An important one. Mark Ellen, more than anything else perhaps, was the designated driver of 70s and 80s popular music. He was the kindly friend who got you into bed, tucked you in, then in the morning reminded you where you vomited, who you insulted and what stimulo-depressant cocktail was to blame for it all. That is to say, Mark Ellen was present and largely correct throughout the giddy, gaudy peak of pop. He did drugs in earnest just the once. It was while interviewing The Teardrop Explodes, Liverpool, Several bumps of ropey speed, he and the band "filled both sides of a cassette with fizzing gibberish," then he spent the night juddering away in bed, "brain mushed to guacamole… feeling as though [his] internal organs had been taken out, pummelled with a milk bottle then put back in the wrong places. So begins a period of clarity perhaps unrivalled in the history of music journalism. Mark has a great, gawky love of pop music and culture. He adores the unabashedness of it all. Take two days he spent with Rod Stewart, for instance. Again symbolic of a world where you can make absolute fat loads of cash. He could not spend it fast enough! He used money as a kind of suit of armour. Instead of 17th Rock Stars Stole My Life!: A Big Bad Love Affair with Music Versailles, he got 20th century Britain, London mostly. His gossipy tidbits come from the courts of Stewart, Jagger and Morrissey. The tension resides in the scrupulously-created Morrissey persona. He loved that sense of theatre and artifice. The episode even brackets his book. The problem lies in accessibility and the generation of the mythos, the star persona. Mark trumpets a positive role for the music journo, whose job it is "to be evangelical, to bang the drum, but also to bring to life the music people are already listening to. They were brutal in the 70s and 80s, and back then it mattered. Some kind of grumpy old man. Elton John — another eccentric with whom Mark has of course spoken — seems an interesting case study in the game of persona management. Yet old Reggie also seems to give something of his private self, something authentic. The guests are ushered out into the evening light of a stubborn mid-summer sun. Is that happening with Ed Sheeran? About us Advertise Get involved Magazines Contact us. Here he regales us with tales of those times and offers a lament on why modern day stars just don't cut the mustard or anything else. Feature by Angus Sutherland 04 Mar Rock Rock Stars Stole My Life!: A Big Bad Love Affair with Music Stole My Life!