Draws on interviews with producers, managers and ex-girlfriends and boyfriends to provide a history of the band, including how lead singer Freddie Mercury's untimely death from AIDs challenged the band to reinvent itself.

The definitive biography of Queen and Freddie Mercury, by the author of Comfortably Numb and Bring It On Home Despite the death of their exuberant front man Freddie Mercury in 1991, Queen remains one of the most popular bands on the planet, with 300 million global album sales and the biopic Bohemian Rhapsody, a "foot-stomping celebration of Queen," hitting theaters. Yet the full story of their extraordinary success and the truths behind the enigmatic Mercury has never fully been told, until now. Journalist Mark Blake, author of the bestselling Pink Floyd biography Comfortably Numb, has drawn on his own earlier interviews with the band and conducted nearly 100 exclusive interviews with record producers, ex-band members, personal assistants, and school friends, including many of Freddie Mercury's earliest associates, to produce a complete, fascinating account of the band's rise from suburbia to worldwide super-stardom. Is This the Real Life? tells, for the first time, how this groundbreaking band became champions of the world.

Imagine being alongside one of the greatest bands in the history of rock, touring the world and being there as they perform at some of the best and biggest music venues in the world. Peter Hince didn't have to imagine: for more than a decade, he lived a life that other people can only dream of as he worked with Queen as head of their road crew. In 1973, Queen was the support act for Mott the Hoople, for whom Peter was a roadie. Back then, Queen had to content themselves with being second on the bill and the world had not yet woken up to the flamboyant talent of Freddie Mercury. Peter started working full time for Queen just as they were making A Night at the Opera, the album which catapulted them to international stardom. In this intimate and affectionate book, Peter recalls the highlights of his years with the band. He was with Freddie when he composed 'Crazy Little Thing Called Love'; he was responsible for making sure that Freddie's stage performances went without a hitch - and was often there to witness his famed tantrums! He was also party to the sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll which are invariably part of life on the road with a rock band.

A FINALIST for the Booker Prize, the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize, the VCU/Cabell First Novelist Prize, the Lambda Literary Award, the NYPL Young Lions Award, and the Edmund White Debut Fiction Award “A blistering coming of age story” —O: The Oprah Magazine Named a Best Book of the Year by The New York Times, The Washington Post, New York Public Library, Vanity Fair, Elle, NPR, The Guardian, The Paris Review, Harper's Bazaar, Financial Times, Huffington Post, BBC, Shondaland, Barnes & Noble, Vulture, Thrillist, Vice, Self, Electric Literature, and Shelf Awareness A novel of startling intimacy, violence, and mercy among friends in a Midwestern university town, from an electric new voice. Almost everything about Wallace is at odds with the Midwestern university town where he is working uneasily toward a biochem degree. An introverted young man from Alabama, black and queer, he has left behind his family without escaping the long shadows of his childhood. For reasons of self-preservation, Wallace has enforced a wary distance even within his own circle of friends—some dating each other, some dating women, some feigning straightness. But over the course of a late-summer weekend, a series of confrontations with colleagues, and an unexpected encounter with an ostensibly straight, white classmate, conspire to fracture his defenses while exposing long-hidden currents of hostility and desire within their community. Real Life is a novel of profound and lacerating power, a story that asks if it’s ever really possible to overcome our private wounds, and at what cost.

Freddie Mercury was rock’s most dazzling showman, a legendary entertainer who in 1991, at the age of just forty-five, became the first major music star to die of AIDS. Mercury’s soaring four-octave voice was a defining element in Queen’s unique sound, crucial to the success of the band’s fifteen studio albums, from Queen (1973) to Made in Heaven (1995). He was also a supremely talented songwriter and musician who wrote many of the band’s greatest hits, including ‘Killer Queen’, ‘We Are the Champions’ and their biggest triumph, the epic anthem ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’. As a solo artist he released two acclaimed albums: Mr. Bad Guy in 1985 and the operatic 'Barcelona' with Spanish soprano Montserrat Caballé in 1988. Mercury’s extraordinary charisma was perhaps best seen in his imperious live performances, in which he’d hold vast stadium crowds to rapturous attention. His outrageous theatrics, physicality and over-the-top costumes led one commentator to describe him as ‘a performer out to tease, shock, and ultimately charm his audience with various extravagant versions of himself’. He pushed the limits of camp in everything he did. His extreme behaviour, in a society in which being gay was only starting to be accepted, just added to Freddie Mercury’s allure. With expert understanding, Mark Blake traces Mercury’s life from his childhood in Zanzibar and India to his untimely death, and charts his astonishing achievements including in Queen’s world-conquering performance at Live Aid in 1985. In the year that marks what would have been his seventieth birthday, Freddie Mercury: A Life celebrates a remarkable life, lived to the fullest. Featuring revealing interviews with fellow musicians, producers and collaborators, and a detailed discography and timeline, this is a memorable tribute to a unique recording artist and an irreplaceable performer who rocked the world.