Is This the Real Life?: The Untold Story of Freddie Mercury and Queen

I was drawn to this book after reading Blake's equally entertaining, "Comfortably Numb: The Inside Story of Pink Floyd." As much as I enjoyed that, I have to admit to my surprise, this one's better. I approached the Floyd story as a slightly skeptical non-fan of that legendary band. The book made me not just appreciate but come to actually love their music. It's a good story well told.Blake's telling of the Queen tale is even better. In this case, I admit that, unlike with Pink Floyd, I was a huge Queen fan when I was a teenager, but had fallen away in my appreciation of the band. Not only did "Is This the Real Life?" bring me back to fully-fledged fan (not an easy task, given my reluctance), but Blake's structure and tone lead the reader to a comprehensive appreciation of the band and their music. And, through an almost cinematic story-telling technique, Blake accomplishes a rare feat among rock bios. He manages to inform the reader about time, place, history and culture, too, without sacrificing one iota of the fun (and sometimes sordid) tidbits of the band members' offstage lives.Yes, the few ("rife" is a wild overstatement) typos should be corrected in the softcover edition. But this reviewer's advice: don't wait. You'll want this one in hardcover to read again and again. It's that good. It's that much fun.

If you're looking for a book on Freddie Mercury that will keep you transfixed-you know, a real page turner...the kind you can't put down? This is NOT that book. However, if you are looking for an excellent reference on the man, his artistry, and his legacy, this IS the book for you. It is the creation of a pop music/pop culture journalist. The book is thoroughly researched, logically organized, and extremely well sourced. And while it is not the kind of work that inspires cover to cover reading, it is in my opinion, a must-have for any Queen fan. Forget the table of contents. Utilize the index. From there you can select a particular page or chapter. It also works if you want to read about a certain subject, or a person or event. It's all in this definitive work.

This is not my first Band-related biography, with that in mind, this was interesting and easy to read. It goes into a lot of details of the previous bands the members were before forming Queen, that might have been the most tedious part, later on the emphasis on each album was informative and for some parts, eye-opening. I did like Queen before but didn't know lots of things until now and how the band worked together was very interesting considering lots of the other bands around the time. Overall, I think it is a worth reading book, not sure if its true entirely but very entertaining

Another great book on this performer. A small insight into the man who is a Legend in RocknRoll music. Truly underrated in his time. Wish I had known more about this band when I was younger. Remember, in every book about him, it's someone else's perspective of the man himself. He was a kind soul. Recommend reading....

This book is packed with details about the music and journey of Queen. It's written in a dense but pleasantly readable style. Two things trouble me about it:1. The author doesn't seem to have much regard for Freddie Mercury. Almost every personal anecdote about him is tinged with disparagement. I also don't agree with some of his thoughts about Freddie's songs. For example, he dismisses "My Melancholy Blues" as "fine but undistinguished". I regard it as a haunting song that shows the remarkable breadth of Freddie's singing and composing range.2. I'm not an expert on Queen but I am a former New Yorker and a dance historian. Based on facts I know, I find errors in this book that are small in themselves yet leave me wondering what other "facts" are wrong. For instance, Freddie's NYC apartment was on 57th Street not 5th Street as Blake claims. He mentions that Freddie could see the 59th Street Bridge from his apartment windows which would be difficult to do from 54 blocks away.He also says that in the video for I Want to Break Free Freddie "romped with members of The Royal Ballet in a routine that borrowed from The Rite of Spring". Actually, the routine was based on another Nijinsky ballet titled Afternoon of the Faun. Small details, as I said...but when a writer makes false claims about things you know it inevitably diminishes his or her overall credibility.So while this book is worth reading, i can't take it as the final word on the history of Queen.

Anyone ask what you are reading you can simply respond with "I'm reading a GOOD BOOK" This penning by Mark Blake goes way back to either high school or community college years.Regardless this book will remind some of those years attending our community Battle of The Bands.So you've already read one possibly two Freddie bio's you will enjoy this book. Some details are accentuated just a bit more.There is not one Bio of this man that resembles another. Suppose that's due to the nature of our Divine Freddie Mercury.Really don't need to add that this book is FUN No surprises there since they pretty much all are again relying on the subject. And why we keep them to read over and over.

Have read one of Mark's other books about Queen and enjoyed this one just as much as the other! He writes from extensive interviews even from those who knew Freddie in his earlier days, and takes from other reliable sources (except from Jones' book which is unreliable). Hated to put the book down every evening. Managed to finish all of the nearly 400 pages in 3 days.

I just finished reading this for the second time. Easy to read, well written, full of lots of details about the experiences of May, Mercury (Bulsara), Deacon, Taylor, on their way to becoming Queen. Very good book and I recommend it, probably the best Queen book I've read. (But if you read several books and watch documentaries, you will find discrepancies, this one included. Keeps you on your toes.)

Libro en perfecto estado. La entrega varios días retrasada, pero llegó por fin. Merece la pena.

This book gives a great background on one of the greatest bands ever existed: QUEEN.I can’t compare this one to other biographies of Queen, but this one gives a very detailed description about how 4 guys became Queen. The author’s structure and tone lead the reader to a comprehensive appreciation of Queen and their music.This book will rock you!

L'ho regalato a mia moglie ma lo sto leggendo io. Si legge abbastanza bene, ci sono diverse informazioni che non conoscevo, ottimo soprattutto per la parte pre-Queen.Ci sono tanti errori di battitura e alcune cavolate come "In the Lap of the Chords" invece che "Gods". Ci sono alcune foto un po' più rare ma non molte. Comunque un buon acquisto, consigliato ai patiti dei Queen

A very good look at what made the band do great found it very well researched with a lot of quotes from all band members

“Freddie Mercury was good at being seen and heard but not known.”That telling quote from Queen’s first publicist speaks volumes about the late, great Mr Mercury. He is one of the most famous performers that ever lived but we still know very little about him. That’s the challenge that faced Mark Blake or any author trying to get to the root of this enigmatic diva and he gets as close to the man as is humanly possibly now he’s gone. It’s the Queen equivalent of the book Last Train To Memphis about Elvis Presley (a similar hugely influential and enigmatic presence in music history like Mercury) by Peter Guralnick. Bob Dylan said you could feel Elvis breathe on the page in that book and you get that same feeling with Freddie Mercury here.It does a superb job of reconstructing Freddie’s student days when he was trying to find himself both as a performer and and as a man. He cross-references recollections from people who knew him then to corroborate or, in some cases, contradict each other and it’s fascinating to see how many variations there are as people’s memories fade. Just take Freddie’s acceptance as the new singer of Ibex, one remembers him joining in a meeting in the Kensington Tavern pub while the other two can’t decide if it was at an audition in someone’s basement flat or at Imperial College. Unable to get to the truth, Mark Blake just presents the conflicting stories and lets us make up our own minds about what is true. In the student squat where Freddie was staying, his hippie housemates used to hide their drug stash in with the tea leaves but nobody told Freddie. He makes a cup of tea and they find him half an hour later tripping out as he listens to music.There are also several tales of Freddie spotting his college friends in the street and shouting their names as he runs after them. We don’t think of Freddie Mercury ever walking in the street like a normal person (Mercury, in mythology, was the messenger of the Gods, after all), we think of him as living a rock star’s life in mansions, limousines, private jets and five-star hotels (it really is unbelievable to see how poor Freddie and the others were before and, due to a bad first record deal, after Queen started having hits. Not only that, there’s a great story of Freddie Mercury giving a broke David Bowie a free pair of boots from the market stall he was working at). It humanises Freddie and is also sad to think that that moment in time is gone forever and so is he.It is also incredible to read about Freddie being unable to write songs at first and slamming his piano in frustration. This is the man who in just a few short years would be responsible for Bohemian Rhapsody, a regular winner of The Best Song of All-Time polls. We all have to start somewhere. Through sheer force of will, Freddie forces himself to become a great songwriter, a great singer with stage presence and forces his way into the vacant spot in Brian May and Roger Taylor’s group Smile. There is no doubt that when Freddie heard Brian and Roger play in Smile, he could hear the engine of the group that would take him to success.Freddie’s influence on Queen cannot be underestimated. He named the group, he designed their logo, he made the breakthrough by writing their first Top 10 hit (Seven Seas of Rhye, Brian May wrote Queen’s first ever single Keep Yourself Alive and it flopped badly), he wrote their first number one single (Bohemian Rhapsody) and he even was responsible for the costumes they wore on stage and the lighting that would make them look dynamic. This was in addition to playing piano, doing backing vocals (with their huge stacked harmonies) and co-producing all their records with the rest of the band. That is not to underestimate the other members of Queen who were all highly-intelligent guys, virtuoso musicians and innovative songwriters who could follow the lead of Mercury and write in the style he had established. When Freddie’s songwriting output dwindled in the 80s (and all the tales of cocaine-fuelled lascivious excess are here), it was the others in the band especially Roger Taylor (Radio Ga Ga, A Kind of Magic) and John Deacon (Another One Bites The Dust, I Want To Break Free) that saved Queen from fading away. “I’m nothing without the others,” Freddie said in the 80s when his solo album came out.In tandem with Freddie’s rise to stardom, his struggle with his sexuality is sensitively handled. You can see Freddie slowly beginning to drift away from heterosexuality, spurning female Queen groupies that break into his room and asking his assistant to tell girlfriend Mary Austin that he might be gay and being rebuffed. When Freddie eventually does tell her the truth himself, it is very moving how they react to one another. It gives the whole book a tragic dimension; Freddie had just become the confident, successful and famous star of his dreams and yet, at the same time, he was unwittingly sowing the seeds of his own destruction by rejecting Mary and setting himself on the path to catching the dreaded AIDS virus that killed him. That scene alone shows a writer in total control of his subject that he can put you right at the heart of a crucial, intimate moment in the life of a man who was ferociously private about everything. Blake has clearly done painstaking research over many years to piece all this together and it is a triumph of investigative reporting. Even though the information to go on is thin, the prose is sparse and only a few lines are given to it, it does the trick of filling in the many blanks in the story.On the downside, there are dozens of typos in the book and some phrases repeated twice in the same sentence. Proofreading? There are also some minor but niggling factual errors; Queen played Slane Castle in County Meath not Dublin (Brian May made the same mistake at the Slane gig: “It’s good to be back in Dublin!” to which the crowd shouted back “We’re in Meath!”), Rock Hudson died on October 2nd 1985, not October 3rd. It doesn’t stop your enjoyment of the book but it is careless and takes you out of the story occasionally. Perhaps these errors could be corrected in future versions.The book is good on Queen’s “night of Halloween madness in 1978” in New Orleans, excellent on Queen’s Munich recording sessions for The Game album detailing their working methods, fights and extra-curricular activities. It’s also excellent on the impromptu recording session and massive subsequent power struggle between David Bowie and the Queen camp that resulted in another classic single “Under Pressure.”After Freddie’s death in the book, you really do miss his humour and big personality in it in the way the remaining members of Queen and his fans around the world did and still do. The book ends with “speculation” that Adam Lambert would take over as Queen’s lead singer, “though nothing has come of it.” And Sacha Baron Cohen being set to play Freddie in a “forthcoming” film. We both know that the opposite has now happened to both those bits of gossip with Lambert fronting Queen on their American tour this summer and Baron Cohen dropping out of the film over creative differences.With each passing year, the loss of Freddie Mercury seems greater and greater. Here, for the first time, we have the definitive account of his life, extraordinary career and tragic death plus you get the stories of all the other members of Queen too. There really can be only one and it is Freddie Mercury, we were lucky to have had him as long as we did. May he rest in peace.