At first glance Rock Stars Stole My Life! may seem like the kind of read you’d be able to relate to and empathise with, but, let me tell you, Mark Ellen’s story is not a common one. Having spent his career interviewing music heroes, presenting Live Aid, standing in for John Peel and even gigging about in a band with Tony Blair for a lead singer, his anecdotes will have you doubled over with laughter and yearning for a life in the music industry.
It all begins thousands of feet in the air, which sounds ludicrous enough as it is, but when the scene is set with a squad of music journalists banging on the trays of Rhianna’s private jet chanting “Save our jobs! We’ve got weed!” you can only begin to wonder where it’s going to go from there.
Mark Ellen casts his mind back to the very beginning of his life long love affair with music and finds himself stuck in a muddy field with his best mate – haven’t we all been there? In this case, it’s bank holiday weekend in 1971 and it’s the Weeley Festival that does it for them. They’ve only got a fiver between them and there’s nowhere to put their sleeping bags, but who cares? Their first music festival opens earnest little avenues into some sort of self discovery: “A whole new world of fascination and thrills.”
It’s here that he decides he wants to be a part of it all, and so, from then on, he takes us through his time at NME, Smash Hits, Q, Mojo and The Word, telling stories that almost seem unbelievable, making for something pretty special when they’re told with Ellen’s natural charm and quick wit. In the name of avoiding spoilers, I won’t go into too much detail – but some of my personal favourites include a brutally honest Gallagher interview and a run in with Jimmy Page.
Summed up in the blurb, Ellen always said that he felt like he 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.” However, by making the most of the music scene he was a part of he’s written a belter of a memoir and a reader can only long for a time when the boys “expressed their impeccable taste and individuality by carrying favourite records around like a form if ID,” and when “the girls didn’t care if a single got scratched or covered in jam as long as you could still dance to it.”
For any kind of music enthusiast, this is the stuff of dreams.
Words by Lisa