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Reading lists

Perfect books for the music lover in your life

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Books to read if you love David Bowie

A Life

David Bowie

In the manner of George Plimpton's ground-breaking oral biographies of Truman Capote and Edie Sedgwick, this is the definitive oral biography of David Bowie told through over 180 carefully edited and curated original, exclusive interviews with those who knew Bowie best from school friends to global megastars.

Dylan Jones made absolutely the right decision to frame his superb life of David Bowie as a multi-voiced oral biography. David Bowie: A Life suits the shape-shifting, beguiling, enigmatic complexities of its subject perfectly. It’s hard to imagine 
anything that will do Bowie better justice

Jones constructs an oral-history mosaic that will engage even those whose lives 
were not changed by the appearance of Ziggy Stardust on Top of the Pops in 1972

The best book on David Bowie you’ll ever need or read.

Worthy of the Starman … Of all the volumes to appear since Bowie’s death, this is the most useful: an oral history that brings together the most incisive reminiscences and memorials

Dylan Jones has excavated the cacophony of voices that make up a life and curated a phenomenal portrait of the artist from childhood to the final days. The witnesses who comprise this oral biography animate the pages like characters in a non-fiction novel. Damn nigh peerless.

Studded with shiny nuggets

The perfect present for music mums and dads

Sparks with admiration and grievances, lust and envy

There have been many books about David Bowie ... but Dylan Jones's is among the best

The definitive account of the great man’s life, in the words of those who knew him best … lively, funny and warm – and the story, even the well-known bits, still staggers and amazes. It’s a brilliant story, and it is tremendously well-told here

A magisterial compilation of startling insights

One of the most colourful and intimate portraits yet painted of Bowie

A vivid catalogue of anecdote, opinion, gossip and memoir

There is literally no better way to spend your time than by reading about the late, great, beautiful and brilliant David Bowie, brought to you by fellow superfan and GQ editor Dylan Jones

This oral history is by far the best … It’s gossipy, fascinating stuff

The perfect accompaniment to roaring fires and languid winter evenings, this book 
guarantees to see any man through the festive period

Revelatory and surprising – perfect for the Ziggy completist

Beguiling … the fabulosity of Bowie’s life and times lends itself extraordinarily well 
to the oral history form

An affectionate, sometimes surprising, always fascinating picture of a Star Man in the real world

Of all the volumes to appear since Bowie’s death last year, this is perhaps the most useful

A treat for enthusiasts […] it bulges with essential and telling Spinal Tappish gossip

An intimate, detailed and gossip-spangled survey of the life of the great enigma

There are sixty-two and a half million books written about David Bowie; this is the one that has been unanimously praised. Indeed, David Bowie: A life might be the only one that you really need.

You can go to any page and read something really interesting. It’s the only book about another artist that I’ve really enjoyed.

Dylan Jones is the multi-award winning editor of GQ magazine.He has been an editor at i-D magazine, The Face, Arena, the Observer and the Sunday Times. He is a Trustee of the Hay Festival, a board member of the Norman Mailer Foundation and was awarded an OBE in 2013 for services to publishing. He has written twenty books including the critically aclaimed When Ziggy Played Guitar and From the Ground Up, U2's celebration of their record-breaking 360° tour.

** Shortlisted for the NME Best Music Book Award 2018 ** 
THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER 
A TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 
A GUARDIAN BOOK OF THE YEAR 
A HERALD BOOK OF THE YEAR 
AN IRISH INDEPENDENT BOOK OF THE YEAR 
 
'The definitive book on Bowie' The Times 
 
Drawn from a series of conversations between David Bowie and Dylan Jones across three decades, together with over 180 interviews with friends, rivals, lovers, and collaborators - some of whom have never before spoken about their relationship with Bowie - this oral history is an intimate portrait of a remarkable rise to stardom and one of the most fascinating lives of our time. 
 
Profoundly shaped by his relationship with his schizophrenic half-brother Terry, Bowie was a man of intense relationships that often came to abrupt ends. He was a social creature, equally comfortable partying with John Lennon and dining with Frank Sinatra, and in Dylan Jones's telling - by turns insightful and salacious - we see as intimate a portrait as could possibly be drawn. 
 
Including illuminating, never-before-seen material from Bowie himself, drawn from a series of Jones’s interviews with him across three decades, DAVID BOWIE is an epic, unforgettable cocktail-party conversation about a man whose enigmatic shapeshifting and irrepressible creativity produced one of the most sprawling, fascinating lives of our time. 
 
***NOW REVISED AND EXPANDED***

One Day, One Decade

The Eighties

Multi-award winning editor of GQ magazine and former 'Blitz Kid' Dylan Jones writes his personal history of the 1980s.

Fascinating ... a unique insight into the day, and the decade.

Live Aid was such an utterly humungous phenomenon that, in many ways, it came to define our memories of an entire decade ... Dylan Jones [is] perfectly poised at the heart of it all to give us an electric and sometimes eye-opening account.

Hugely pleasing ... Dylan Jones looks at the Eighties through the prism of Live Aid.

This is a bumper Live Aid book containing a wealth of backstage anecdotes which paint a candid view of the 1980s pop aristocracy.

Dylan Jones is the multi-award winning editor of GQ magazine.He has been an editor at i-D magazine, The Face, Arena, the Observer and the Sunday Times. He writes for the Mail on Sunday, is a Vice President of the Hay Festival and a board member of the Norman Mailer Foundation. He has written eleven books including the critically aclaimed When Ziggy Played Guitar and From the Ground Up, U2's celebration of their record-breaking 360° tour.

One Day: Saturday 13 July 1985, nearly two billion people woke up with one purpose. Nearly a third of humanity knew where they were going to be that day. Watching, listening to, attending: Live Aid. 
One Decade: Britain in the Eighties was different. The culture was different, the politics were different, and our engagement with the world was different. And it was just one day in 1985 that showed how different it was. 
 
In One Day, One Decade Dylan Jones tells the story of the Eighties through that day at Wembley, sweeping backwards to the end of the Seventies, and forward to the start of the Nineties. It draws on his personal reminiscences and perspective of music, media, fashion, politics and all forms of pop culture to frame the decade. 
 
This is a big book but not a exhaustive and dry social history. Live Aid was the decade’s pinch point, when a nation's attitudes and expectations were somehow captured and changed forever. The author suggests that before Live Aid, Britain was one place, and after Live Aid it was another. 
 
Britain in the Eighties was a juxtaposition of militancy and profligacy, a country where industry was being broken down, societies were being demolished, and unemployment became an inevitable lifestyle choice: yet the Eighties was also the apotheosis of pop culture, a decade where entertainment, opinion and subjectivity were more important than ever before. 
 
Dylan Jones was at the heart of the 1980s editing the seminal magazines i-D and The Face. He was one of the Blitz Kids and was both a commentator and one of the style-makers of the time. This is a controversial book, a story told from the inside by one who was at the centre of events.

U2 360° Tour Official Photobook

From The Ground Up

The Official inside story of the biggest rock tour of all time: U2's 360°.

Dylan Jones is editor of British GQ and has won the Editor of the Year Award four times during his tenure. He has published biographies of Jim Morrison and Paul Smith and two anthologies of journalism. He is the author of the book, iPod Therefore I Am: A Personal Journey Through Music and When Ziggy Played Guitar: David Bowie and Four Minutes that Shook the World also published by Preface.

U2 360° BY NUMBERS 
7,100,000 fans saw the show; 10 million people watched a live stream of U2 360° at the Rose Bowl on YouTube; 320,000 fans saw 360° in Mexico City; 9,760 guitar strings utilized; 7,100 miles – approximate distance travelled by space station while talking with U2; 5,200 years – collective touring experience of U2 tour personnel; 400 tons – weight of the fully loaded claw; 134 crew members; 126 truck drivers; 110 concerts; 53 gigs attended by a single fan; 7 astronauts attended. 
 
U2 360°, the most successful concert tour of all time, came to an end in Moncton, Atlantic Canada on July 30, 2011. The massive 26 month undertaking by Live Nation Global Touring saw U2 play 110 concerts in front of more than 7.1 million fans in 30 countries across five continents. 
 
From the Ground Up is the inside story of U2 360° with exclusive contributions from the band, manager Paul McGuinness, world-renowned set designer Willie Williams and exclusive photographs from photographer Ralph Larmann and written by Dylan Jones who was given complete access, including behind the scenes at Glastonbury 2011.

Unto The Wicked

The second Natalie Vine thriller, as seen on the BBC

An ophthalmic surgeon, Dylan Jones has written three novels. Outside The Rules and Unto the Wicked feature Natalie Vine and have now been made into a major BBC series. He lives in West Wales with his family.

It's a dirty job, but someone has to do it. Part of forensic psychiatrist Natalie Vine's job is to assess the risk of danger to the public from convicted criminals applying for release. In her opinion, rapist Colin Heggarty is a scheming, lying, unrepentant recidivist. With his weekend leave disallowed, Heggarty wants revenge and he plots it in the most harrowing and malicious style. 
 
Vine gets caught up in Heggarty's sick games while at the same time trying to salvage the wrecked life of her colleague, Vicky Jarret, who has plummeted from pop-psych breakfast TV darling to murder suspect in one bloody move. 
 
But is she a murderer or the victim of an insanely jealous stalker? In a world where real monsters lurk in prison cells and in the faceless world of the Web, Vine has to pick her way through a maze of depravity and uncooperative authority to find the answers to some deadly questions. At stake are a girl's life...not to mention Vine's own sanity.

Outside The Rules

An ophtalmic surgeon, Dylan Jones is the author of three novels; Outside the Rules is the first to feature Natalie Vine and has now inspired a major BBC drama series featuring her character. The next Natalie Vine mystery, Unto the Wicked, is also published by Corgi. 
 
Dylan Jones lives in West Wales with his family.

Natalie Vine, one of Britain's top forensic psychiatrists, spends every day trying to get inside the heads of some of the most violent criminals imaginable. It's lonely, harrowing work, but perhaps it helps her deal with the demons of her past. 
 
Locked in the mind of Thomas Meredith are terrible visions of how a serial killer tortured and murdered his girlfriend, in front of his very eyes, a year earlier. Once a doctor, Meredith has become a recluse who only emerges from his isolated home to work the graveyard shift in a local motorway cafe. Natalie Vine is the one person with the ability and empathy to make Meredith open up, to bring to the surface the horror that he has buried so deeply. And she must succeed, no matter how much pain it causes. 
 
For Meredith is the only living witness to this murderer's actions, and he has started killing again...

Dylan Jones

The best music book I have ever read, dislodging Revolution in the Head and England's Dreaming. Superb in every way.

His blow-by-blow account of the performance is breathless in its fan-boy enthusiasm and much of the rest of When Ziggy Played Guitar is rooted in its personal impressions.  “The by-product of Ziggy’s success was the validation of identity, our identity”, Jones writes, and it’s hard not to be moved by his hero worship.

Jones is a wonderfully fluent writer, with a terrific knack for atmospheric phrasemaking, period detail and juicy factoids.

Dylan Jones’s account of David Bowie’s rise to superstardom.  We’ll eat up anything about the greatest pop star who ever walked this planet.

This excellent book looks at the background to that memorable TV event, and its enduring legacy.

Unlike previous Bowie biographies, Jones’ book says less about Bowie and more about the time, reading often, and in a very entertaining way, like a culturally-aware history textbook. For every mention of the miners’ strike or Bloody Sunday there’s a full page devoted to The Velvet Underground or A Clockwork Orange – and these pages are needed to help fully explain how Bowie put together this character who proclaimed "let all the children boogie".

Meticulously researched by GQ editor Dylan Jones…this 214-page tome enlists the help of people like Bono, Neil Tennant, Siouxsie Sioux and ahem, Tony Blackburn to put those 240 glorious seconds into cultural context.

A personal view of one of the most influential moments in pop history.

Jones's engaging personal tribute to Bowie's glittering talent concludes that 'Ziggy is owned by all of us who were touched that day.

David Bowie and Four Minutes that Shook the World

___________________ 
6 JULY, 1972 
 
David Bowie appears on Top of the Pops for a third time. 
 
His quiff is big, bold, and the colour of fire. His make-up is lavish. His jumpsuit is a wild burst of colourful patterns, like a fluorescent fish skin. He carries a brand-new blue acoustic guitar. There's excitement, mixed with incredulity. And then he begins to play. 
 
It's a moment that will change the world of music forever. 
 
This is Ziggy Stardust, what would become Bowie's most famous persona. It's an instant seismic shift in the zeitgeist. This one performance embeds Ziggy Stardust into the nation's consciousness, and music will never be the same again. 
 
In When Ziggy Played Guitar, Dylan Jones looks back at one of the most influential moments in pop history,the birth of an icon, and the myriad unexpected ways that David Bowie reshaped pop culture.

Dylan Jones

Praise for When Ziggy Played Guitar

The best music book I have ever read, dislodging Revolution in the Head and England's Dreaming. Superb in every way.

His blow-by-blow account of the performance is breathless in its fan-boy enthusiasm and much of the rest of When Ziggy Played Guitar is rooted in its personal impressions. “The by-product of Ziggy’s success was the ...

Jones is a wonderfully fluent writer, with a terrific knack for atmospheric phrasemaking, period detail and juicy factoids.

The best music book I have ever read, dislodging Revolution in the Head and England's Dreaming. Superb in every way.

His blow-by-blow account of the performance is breathless in its fan-boy enthusiasm and much of the rest of When Ziggy Played Guitar is rooted in its personal impressions. “The by-product of Ziggy’s success was the ...

Jones is a wonderfully fluent writer, with a terrific knack for atmospheric phrasemaking, period detail and juicy factoids.

The best music book I have ever read, dislodging Revolution in the Head and England's Dreaming. Superb in every way.

His blow-by-blow account of the performance is breathless in its fan-boy enthusiasm and much of the rest of When Ziggy Played Guitar is rooted in its personal impressions. “The by-product of Ziggy’s success was the ...

Jones is a wonderfully fluent writer, with a terrific knack for atmospheric phrasemaking, period detail and juicy factoids.

Books by Dylan Jones

Articles featuring Dylan Jones

Perfect books for the music lover in your life

Books to read if you love David Bowie

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