Showing results by author "Lesley Jones" in All Categories

A story about a boy who dreamed of rock and roll. A story about a girl who dreamed about a boy. An epic, all-consuming love story about betrayal, loss and learning, that spans over 20 years. This is the story of us: "I was just 11 years old, but I knew without a shadow of a doubt I was staring into the eyes of the boy I was going to love forever." An edgy coming-of-age love story that breaks all the rules and transcends the decades.

This is the definitive biography of Freddie Mercury. Written by an award-winning rock journalist, Lesley-Ann Jones toured widely with Queen forming lasting friendships with the band. Now, having secured access to the remaining band members and those who were closest to Freddie, from childhood to death, Lesley-Ann has written the most in depth account of one of music's best loved and most complex figures.

Few people knew that Freddie Mercury kept a diary. When he died in 1991, he left behind seventeen handwritten notebooks chronicling his life and times, which he had begun to write in 1976 when Queen were at the height of their global fame. His final entry was made just weeks before his death. Only four of his nearest and dearest ever knew what became of those diaries. To one of them, Freddie secretly entrusted the collection just before he died. A mind-blowing listen, they constitute the closest thing to a Freddie Mercury autobiography that the world will ever know.

His music thrilled the generation it was written for and has entertained and inspired every generation since. Hero: David Bowie is an exploration of the man behind the myths and the makeup told from the very beginning. Respected music journalist and biographer Lesley-Ann Jones knew David Jones from the days before fame, when he was a young musician starting out, frustrated by an industry that wouldn't give him a break and determined to succeed at whatever cost.

So, they want me to write a book? They want to know about my band, my life, my loves and my losses. But they have no idea what they’re asking for. If I give them what they want, they’ll get so much more than the sex and drugs and the rock and roll they’re expecting. They’ll get the secrets that I’ve kept for so long, they’ll get an insight into the person I really am, or at least was. They think they know my story, they know nothing. If I do this, if I write honestly and give them the ugly truth, people will get hurt.

When your world, your life, and all of your hopes and dreams for the future are ripped out from under you, how do you go on? Death without dying is not only the most painful kind of death, it's also the most painful kind of life, and I don't know if I'm strong enough to live it. I spend my lonely days and nights trying to make sense of what my life has become. Do I have the strength to move forward into the light, or should I just let the darkness take me? I'm Georgia Rae Layton McCarthy, and this is the story of me, just me. I'm no longer a part of an us, it's just me. By myself.

No comprehensive biography of the time Paul McCartney spent with Wings has ever been published. A period often dismissed as McCartney's 'missing' years, in fact the band lasted for a decade: two years longer than the Beatles, and wielded such impact and influence that they at one point achieved the status as the biggest live band in the world. Band on the Run sold over 6 million copies worldwide and became EMI's biggest selling album of the 1970s in the UK. Music biographer Lesley-Ann Jones presents the first definitive account of Paul McCartney's time in Wings.

Who - or what - was the real love of Freddie Mercury's life? Millions of Queen and screen fans who watched the Oscar-winning film Bohemian Rhapsody believe that Mary Austin, the woman he could never quite let go of, was the love of Freddie Mercury's life. But the truth is infinitely more complicated. Best-selling biographer and music writer Lesley-Ann Jones explores the charismatic frontman's romantic encounters and reveals why none of his love interests ever perfected the art of being Freddie's life partner.

I've known him my entire life. Before marriage. Before fatherhood. Before betrayal. Now, he's one of rock's bad boys trying to be good. Trying to be the best father he can for his daughter. He's my brother's best friend. He's my boss. He has a wife. Max isn't mine to have, but I want him all the same. And I haven't survived all that I have to not go after what I want.

Christine McVie - born Christine Perfect - was the quintessentially English rock star, as both the backbone and the beating heart of Fleetwood Mac. Straddling the band's incarnations to achieve global fame alongside Stevie Nicks, Mick Fleetwood, Lindsey Buckingham and John McVie, the classic line-up, she wrote and performed many of their greatest hits.

Since the night we met, he's been my constant. Carefully reconstructing the pieces of my broken heart and making it whole again. But we can't catch a break. As hard as we try to make it work, the blows keep coming. When I'm finally ready to hand him all of my bruised and battered pieces, he shatters the trust we've built, and I don't know if I have it in me to fight for what we have. Is it time to walk away and save myself? Or do I take a chance on loving Gabriel Wild?

Lesley-Ann Jones's new history tracks this contradictory, disturbing, granitic and unstoppable band through hope, glory and exile, into the juggernaut years and beyond into rock's ongoing reckoning...where the Stones seem more at odds than ever with the values and heritage against which they have always rebelled. Good, bad and often ugly, here are the Rolling Stones as never before.

Late on 8th December 1980, the world abruptly stopped turning for millions, as news broke that the world's most beloved bard had been gunned down in cold blood in New York City. The most iconic Beatle left behind an unrivalled catalogue of music and legions of faithful disciples - yet his profound legacy has brought with it as many questions and contradictions as his music has provided truths and certainties. In this compelling exploration, acclaimed music biographer Lesley-Ann Jones unravels the enigma that was John Lennon to present a complete portrait of the man.

Nachdem seine Mutter ihm zuvor ein paar Akkorde auf dem Banjo beigebracht hatte, gründete John Lennon zusammen mit ein paar Kumpels aus der Schule 1956 die Band "The Quarrymen". Wenige Jahre später benannten sie sich um in "The Silver Beatles" – der Rest ist Musikgeschichte. Die Beatles wurden zur erfolgreichsten Band aller Zeiten und John Lennon zur Legende. Er schuf mit "Help!" oder "Imagine" Songs, die jedes Kind kennt, und war das Gesicht der Friedensbewegung.

"We Are the Champions", "I Want to Break Free", "Bohemian Rhapsody", "We Will Rock You" oder "Another One Bites the Dust" - die großen Hits der Band Queen kennt jeder. Doch wie wurde aus dem 1946 in Sansibar geborenen Beamtensohn Farrokh Bulsara der schillernde Weltstar Freddie Mercury? Sein Privatleben hielt er stets weitestgehend aus der Öffentlichkeit heraus. Lesley-Ann Jones war als junge Rockjournalistin einige Jahre mit Queen auf Tour und ist seitdem eng mit der Band befreundet.

After 24 years, I discovered there's more than one way to break your marriage vows. The life I thought would always be mine was over, and I'm now facing it as a single woman in her forties. I need to get my life back on track—a job, somewhere to live, and time to get to know this new version of me. What I don't need is to be saved by Gabe, the gorgeous, 35-year-old, blue-eyed god I met on a drunken girls' night out.