Is This the Real Life?: The Untold Story of Queen by Mark Blake (Book Review)

Is This the Real Life?: The Untold Story of Queen
By Mark Blake
Published by Aurum Press Limited, 2010
Print: $16.08
Ebook: $12.99

I've been a big Queen fan since I was a kid and have all their albums...well, except for Hot Space...but I had never really read any biographies of the band or its members. So I was looking forward to this book. The problem is that even after reading 392 pages and finishing the book, I still don't feel like I know Queen. Mark Blake quotes a lot of people that were around Queen and even the band members themselves, but I felt like he was only scratching the surface of who Freddie, Brian, Roger, and John really were or are. So they all come off as caricatures. Freddie is a guy who seems really self conscious of his teeth, who once he hit it big, just used his success to live out his fantasies. He wrote great songs, but his primary interests seemed to be sex and money and surrounding himself with sycophants. Towards the end of the book, one of his fellow Queen bandmates even describes Freddie as a "mystery", like even they never really got to know him. Brian comes off as an anal retentive guitarist that would sometimes get so lost in the tiny details of his sound that he would forget about the song he was working on. Roger was the most like Freddie in that he became caught up in his own press and enjoyed the rockstar life. He liked women, cars, and all the other trappings of his new found richness. John Deacon is a bit of an odd duck. He's so quiet and just shows up to do his job, but he feels a shadow. Don't get me wrong, I think he's a great bassist and he wrote some awesome songs. He just seemed to have very little interest in anything beyond coming in and working on an album, and then going home to be with his family.

Needless to say, I was really disappointed in the book because I didn't really feel like the Queen as presented here were "knowable". Maybe it's not Blake's fault. Maybe the way I described the four is how they really ARE or were. But nobody can be defined that shallowly. The closest comparison I can think of is if someone wrote a biography of the Beatles based solely on watching the movie A Hard Day's Night. It didn't help that Blake spends around the first 100 pages writing about the lead-up to the formation of the band. Maybe he spent so much time on that side of the story because the people involved were more easily accessible than the entourage that surrounded them after they became successful.

Something that made me laugh a lot was Freddie's "closet" homosexuality for the first few years of the band. Everyone in an around the band didn't know Freddie was gay. Every time an outsider would be around Queen, one of the first things they would notice was that Freddie was really intensely homosexual. But when they would say something about it, the other members and managers and roadies would say "What? You're crazy! He's not gay!" It's pretty comical. Maybe a clue would be when him and Roger Taylor got into a fight over who was going to get to wear a blouse on stage. Another funny moment is when Freddie tells his girlfriend that he thinks he's bisexual. She replies, "No, Freddie, you're GAY".

If you're a big Queen fan, I would skip this book and look for something better. It's really not worth your time.

My Grade: C-