A reissue of the classic rock novel to coincide with the publication of Flame Music: Part II: The True Story of Resurgam Records by One Who Was There.
Rock and Roll is Life pays homage to a formative period in music history, at the height of the Helium Kids’ popularity. Three decades after their heyday in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, the band’s publicist Nick Du Pont looks back on the turbulent trajectory of the supergroup, traversing the bacchanalian excesses and tragedies of a golden age in British music.
"Taylor's magnificent new novel is Spinal Tap for literary types . . . thoroughly entertaining, knowledgeable romp through the fear and loathing of rock's golden age. Beautifully written and consistently funny, it is also a poignant account of one man's search for his own identity." - Mail on Sunday
"Hugely entertaining . . . perceptive and sardonic . . . a dazzling rollercoaster homage to an era both bacchanalian and oddly innocent." - The Guardian
"A highly entertaining riff on the music business in the 1960s and 1970s . . . an immensely satisfying portrait of a creative and occasionally monstrous industry." - Literary Review
"An affectionate homage to a sub-genre of music journalism that has lost much of its cultural cachet in the internet age. Taylor skillfully combines nostalgic reverence and ironic distance in this genial romp, puncturing the mythology of the era while never quite repudiating its charms." - The Spectator
"This tale of pop group excess cleverly slips fact into fiction . . . Taylor's wry, detached style and eye for detail is a pleasure to read." - The Times
"D. J. Taylor has a gift for rendering the defining details of a world . . . It might be said that the book depicts a world that comes with the satire built in, but for good or ill rock music and its successors have taken on a cultural and economic importance that no one could have predicted. The subject requires a powerful imaginative chronicler. In D. J. Taylor it finds a writer closer to Balzac than it may even deserve." - Times Literary Supplement
"A literary version of Rob Reiner's hilarious mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap, tragically narrated by a provincial depressive." - Daily Telegraph
"Entertaining . . . By the end, you'll almost be humming the music." - The Tablet
"The list of truly great music-based novels might be a short one, but with the addition of Rock and Roll is Life it just got slightly longer." - Shindig
