Me and Mr Jones
My Life with David Bowie and the Spiders from Mars
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- $22.99
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- $22.99
Publisher Description
From the stylist behind David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust look, an electrifying peek behind the curtains during a legendary chapter of pop culture history.
'Suzi Ronson was there as Bowie transitioned from suburban folkie to world superstar and genius. Few can offer such insight, and tell this fascinating story with such verve.'
HANIF KUREISHI
'It's still hard to accept that Ziggy didn't fall from the stars in full makeup to blow our minds. Yes, other people helped create him. One of them was Suzi Ronson.'
DEBORAH LEVY, LITERARY REVIEW
'This candid memoir by the stylist who helped create the singer's Ziggy look offers a vivid snapshot of his golden years . . . As his dresser, Suzi gets as close to him as anyone.'
OBSERVER
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Suzi Ronson was working in a Beckenham hair salon in the early seventies when Mrs Jones came in for her weekly shampoo and set. After being introduced to her son David and his wife Angie, Suzi finds herself at the Bowies' bohemian apartment and is soon embroiled in their raucous world.
Having crafted his iconic Ziggy Stardust hairstyle, Suzi becomes the only working woman in David's touring party and joins the Spiders from Mars as they perform around the globe. Amid the costume blunders, parties and groupies she meets her husband-to-be, Mick Ronson, and together they traverse the absurdities of life in show business, falling in with the likes of Iggy Pop, Bob Dylan and Lou Reed along the way.
Dazzling and intimate, Me and Mr Jones provides not only a unique perspective on one of the most beguiling stars of our time but also a world on the cusp of cultural transformation, charting the highs and lows of life as one of the only women in the room as it happened.
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'A first-hand view of David Bowie's rise to superstardom, in all its glory and cruelty.'
VARIETY
'Whilst the singer moved constantly forward, his huge charisma always tended to consign those around him to neon-signed memories. Ronson's book rises above such nostalgia and shows she at least bore witness to the ever-evolving career of Bowie. Arguably in fact she got as close to Mr Jones as anybody.'
LOUDER THAN WAR
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Ronson debuts with a disjointed and superficial account of her charmed life as David Bowie's hairstylist and the wife of Spiders from Mars guitarist Mick Ronson. A hairdresser in her hometown of Bromley, England, Ronson styled hair for Bowie's wife and mother. In 1971, she was invited to Bowie's house to do his hair and dreamed up the red, spiky hairdo that hallmarked his Ziggy Stardust days. The following year, Bowie hired Ronson to join the Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars tour, where she cut hair, fetched coffee and cigarettes, and witnessed up close the excesses of a rock and roll show—the band spent a quarter of a million dollars on the tour's American leg and was pursued by shrieking groupies Ronson was expected to wrangle ("My new job: tour madam"). Meanwhile, her attraction to Mick Ronson, "a god on guitar," grew, and the couple's courtship took off as he released a solo album and did stints with Mott the Hoople and Bob Dylan's Rolling Thunder Revue. While the author's behind-the-scenes observations hold some unvarnished appeal ("The interaction between the two of them is electrifying, so rare and sexy," she writes of Bowie's and Ronson's onstage dynamic), more often her reflections drown in tiresome clichés ("inside I'm bubbling up like a champagne bottle about to burst its cork"). This misses the mark.