Dylan Jones

This is a witty, stylish and indispensable guide to being a modern man. It is tough being a man in the twenty-first century. First there are the big dilemmas, like how to get a pay rise and how to suck up to your boss. Then there are the minor irritations: how do you beat jet-lag, and how do you stop your trousers sliding off their hangers? And finally there are all those things you ought to know, but don't: how to jump-start a car, how to buy lingerie, how to stop smoking, how to tie a Windsor Knot, how to behave at a lap-dancing club ...the list is endless. Fear not. In "Mr Jones Rules", the highly respected editor of "GQ" magazine draws on his wealth of experience to give the final answer to these questions and more. It will be the must-have present for every husband, boyfriend and son this Christmas.

A witty, stylish and indispensable guide to being a modern man. It is tough being a man in the twenty-first century. First there are the big dilemmas, like how to get a pay rise and how to suck up to your boss. Then there are the minor irritations: how do you beat jet-lag, and how do you stop your trousers sliding off their hangers? And finally there are all those things you ought to know, but don t: how to jump-start a car, how to buy lingerie, how to stop smoking, how to tie a Windsor Knot, how to behave at a lap-dancing club ... the list is endless.Fear not. In Mr Jones Rules, the highly respected editor of GQ magazine draws on his wealth of experience to give the final answer to these questions and more. It will be the must-have present for every husband, boyfriend and son this Christmas.

David Bowie. Culture Club. Wham!. Soft Cell. Duran Duran. Sade. Adam Ant. Spandau Ballet. The Eurythmics.ExcellentGuardian Hugely enjoyableIrish Times DazzlingLRB FascinatingNew Statesman An absolute must-readGQ One of the most creative entrepreneurial periods since the Sixties, the era of the New Romantics grew out of the remnants of post-punk and developed quickly alongside club culture, ska, electronica, and goth. The scene had a huge influence on the growth of print and broadcast media, and was arguably one of the most bohemian environments of the late twentieth century. Not only did it visually define the decade, it was the catalyst for the Second British Invasion, when the US charts would be colonised by British pop music - making it one of the most powerful cultural exports since the Beatles.In Sweet Dreams, Dylan Jones charts the rise of the New Romantics through testimony from the people who lived it.For a while, Sweet Dreams were made of this.

Its just another song to me. Ive written 1,000 of them and its really just another one. Jimmy Webb When I heard it I cried. It made me cry because I was homesick. Its just a masterfully written song. Glen CampbellThe sound of Wichita Lineman was the sound of ecstatic solitude, but then its hero was the quintessential loner. What a great metaphor he was: a man who needed a woman more than he actually wanted her. Written in 1968 by Jimmy Webb, Wichita Lineman is the first philosophical country song: a heartbreaking torch ballad still celebrated for its mercurial songwriting genius fifty years later. It was recorded by Glen Campbell in LA with a legendary group of musicians known as the Wrecking Crew, and something about the songs enigmatic mood seemed to capture the tensions in America at a moment of crisis. Fusing a dribble of bass, searing strings, tremolo guitar and Campbells plaintive vocals, Webbs paean to the American West describes a telephone linemans longing for an absent lover, who he hears singing in the wire - and like all good love songs, its an SOS from the heart. Mixing close-listening, interviews and travelogue, Dylan Jones explores the legacy of a record that has entertained and haunted millions for over half a century. What is it about this song that continues to seduce listeners, and how did the parallel stories of Campbell and Webb - songwriters and recording artists from different ends of the spectrum - unfold in the decades following? Part biography, part work of musicological archaeology, TheWichita Lineman opens a window on to America in the late-twentieth century through the prism of a song that has been covered by myriad artists in the intervening decades.Americana in the truest sense: evocative and real. Bob Stanley

Biografías de David Bowie hay varias, pero nos atreveríamos a decir que ninguna tan rica, compleja, entretenida y repleta de revelaciones como esta. Compuesta a partir de siete largas conversaciones con el propio Bowie y mas de 180 entrevistas con amigos, rivales, familiares, complices, amantes y colaboradores varios de los cuales nunca habian hablado con anterioridad sobre su relacion con el, esta historia oral teje un vibrante y caleidoscopico tapiz para narrar su singular camino al estrellato y una carrera artistica inimitable. Desde su infancia en un suburbio londinense hasta la grabacion de "Blackstar", su ultimo disco, "Vidas" ofrece la que posiblemente sea la mejor manera de acercarse a la trayectoria de un artista tan camaleonico: dejando que sean quienes le trataron durante sus distintas etapas quienes nos describan a "su" Bowie particular. No a Ziggy Stardust, ni a Aladdin Sane, ni al Delgado Duque Blanco, sino a la persona detras de todos esos personajes.Siguiendo de manera cronologica su trayectoria desde Londres a Nueva York, Los Angeles, Berlin y mas alla, este relato coral describe la vida de un Bowie profundamente moldeado por la relacion con su padre, de oficio publicista, y con su hermanastro esquizofrenico, que le descubrio el jazz y la generacion beat; un artista intuitivo dado a absorber influencias mediante relaciones intensas que terminaban bruscamente cuando dejaban de tener utilidad para el. Perspicaz y repleto de anecdotas, "David Bowie: Vidas" es posiblemente el retrato mas intimo jamas escrito sobre el hombre detras de todas las mascaras, detras de los disfraces, detras del genio. Una biografia compleja y reveladora del musico, el actor, el artista... y la persona.