Mark Blake's book

With a giant sigh of relief, I have finally finished Is This The Real Life? And just in time for 40 Years Of Queen!

I really enjoyed Mark's book, but it was sobering to read that someone the author referred to was quoted as saying that John Deacon looked like he had become a rock star by accident, and that he probably wanted to be done with music since The Works. On one hand, I'm thinking "How on earth could anyone not want to be one quarter of Queen??" On the other, I can totally see that. The music business is indeed, a right pain in the ass. And to badly quote Elton John in an interview from The Magic Years: "You are more or less public property." I wouldn't be able to handle that either.

So John, if you happen across this by accident: Thanks for sticking with it. Your contributions to music have not been lost on me - particularly Spread Your Wings.

My only complaints about the book are that my copy had some typos and small things the proofreaders missed. Apart from that, I really loved how thorough it was and that it didn't focus too much on Freddie, as books about Queen do too often. It wasn't something I used to pay attention to all that much before since I'm such a huge Freddie fan, but as I was reading about how Brian, Roger and John became interested in music and their childhoods in general, it occurred to me that I really have no fucking clue who those guys are and where they came from. I should see about changing that...

But yeah, apart from the typos I highly recommend this book! Depending on the textual content of this 40 Years Of Queen book, Mark Blake's might be worth buying if you haven't already. And even if this upcoming thing completely upstages it, there's no harm in adding it to your collection for the sake of having a bigger collection if it's financially feasible ;-)