Ellen - Rock stars stole my life! : a big bad love affair with music

Table of Contents

www.hodder.co.uk

First published in Great Britain in 2014 by Coronet
An imprint of Hodder & Stoughton
An Hachette UK company

Copyright Mark Ellen 2014

The right of Mark Ellen to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

ISBN 9781444775525

Hodder & Stoughton Ltd
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London NW1 3BH

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For Clare, Tom and Robbie, the classic line-up, and for my ninety-six-year-old mum. And for Dave Hepworth who was such a big part of this story.

Most of the photographs are from the authors collection with thanks to Q Magazine.

Additional acknowledgements:

Anton Corbjin: 6 (middle right), Virginia Turbett/ Redferns/ Getty Images: 8 (middle), Chris Ridley: 9 (top), NI Syndication: 11 (middle).

Every reasonable effort has been made to contact the copyright holders, but if there are any errors or omissions, Hodder & Stoughton will be pleased to insert the appropriate acknowledgement in any subsequent printing of this publication.

All hurrahs to the magnificent M&M (my editor Mark Booth and agent Mark Lucas). Also to Vero Norton, Bea Long and Jason Bartholomew at Hodder, and Alice Laurent for the wonderful cover. Thanks, too, to Paul Du Noyer, Trevor Dann, Nick Leslie, Anton Corbijn and Neil Tennant for jogging my memory and to Michle Noach, Mark Billingham, Adam Boulton and Elizabeth Kinder for encouraging me to write it. And to Annabel Brog, who thinks this book should be called How Mark Ellen Was Totally Washed Up Till His Career Was Saved By Annabel Brog From Elle Magazine which, to be fair, it was. And thanks for being the photographer all those years ago to Anji Hunter, Mary Ingoldby, Nick Sayers, Johnny Felton, Allyce Hibbert and Clare Belfield. And much love to Tommy Hibbs.

Its five in the morning somewhere over Greenland and the noise is beginning to fade.

I lift my little window-shade and watch the dawn glow on a curved horizon, then melt back into the deep blue darkness. Is it day or night? Not even the Earth seems to know. Its the weekend and Ive had four hours sleep since Tuesday.

The plane is heaving with bloggers, gossip hacks, journalists, DJs and TV presenters, and weve been hoofing down champagne on the people who manage and make records by Rihanna. Its November 2012, and their twenty-four-year-old pop siren is the hottest ticket on the globe below us. Shes playing seven shows in seven countries in seven days, her band, their entourage, the press corps and a handful of fans all transported in a Boeing 777. When some marketing wonk cooked up this caper there might well have been whooping and punching of the air, but its starting to unravel and its costing three-quarters of a million dollars a day.

A hush descends and the cabin shuts down with a soft clicking of switches. Theres only two of us still awake in the pale lamplight, filing pieces for our magazines websites, mine tapped out with one quivering finger on an iPhone. Its thirsty work, this reporting, so I wander down the aisle to see if I can scare up some more booze, and there, in the gloom, I see a third face lit by the luminous glow of a laptop, a teenage blogger from Berkeley, California pointy shoes, skinny jeans, big hair, a self-styled Rihanna nut. Id talked to him earlier.

What did you think of the show? I whisper.

Didnt see it, man. He doesnt look up. The whole thing was, like, fucked.

The whole thing? You sure?

I get to the venue, OK, and Im supposed to have a seat but I, like, dont? Every time I sit down someone comes along and says its reserved, he shrugs, so obvy I go to the bar across the road and have a drink.

How many times did this happen?

Twice, he says, stabbing at a computer game. Maybe three times. A whole bowl of wrong.

He left and went to a bar?

You left and went to a bar?

To a bar, totes. Stabbing away. Im, like, outta here!

Now Im thinking: Hang on a minute. This is the same guy, right, who boarded this tub in Los Angeles and was then flown to Mexico City and Toronto. And hes now en route to Stockholm, Paris, Berlin, London and New York with some $800-a-night hotel suites along the way. Total cost to him: nothing at all. On the same plane as the pop star hes totally mental about, whos asleep in her pod up the sharp end, just the other side of that curtain. And when he first sank into his capacious seat he was given we all were a bulging gift bag containing clothes, books, perfume, a digital watch, an expensive set of headphones and a little bracelet with a rock in it. Not a big one, I grant you, but a genuine diamond nonetheless. Rihannas show normally fills packed football stadia in a vast, cranked-up spectacle of sound and light but on the 777 Tour shes playing clubs, last nights a tiny Canadian music-hall with chandeliers and a moulded plaster ceiling. Hardcore supporters travelled thousands of miles in the hope of a ticket.

And hes walked out of her concert why? Because he didnt fancy standing up to watch it.

At this point something snaps in the back of my head. Some rogue neurone kicks in and I find myself thinking, This kids taken leave of his senses. For crying out loud, what is the problem? Was his champagne not quite chilled enough? Champagne, I might add, that was personally served him on the flight to Mexico by the smiling and powerfully attractive figure of Rihanna herself; champagne, I might also add, thats fifty dollars a glass and tipped from bottles that appear to be fashioned from pure gold. Did the cognac run out? Are we out of hot towels and sushi? Was there no square of speciality nougat on the counterpane in his hotel room, no linen napkin folded into the shape of a swan with a flower in its beak? I mean, what?

Look here, mate, I huff to myself. We fought this war for you, the wind-lashed foot-soldiers of the seventies! We bought the records, we queued for the tickets, we served in the dug-outs, we kept the ball rolling so that years later, in the twenty-first century, a highly refined, multi-billion-dollar industry could ferry massively over-served seventeen-year-olds like this guy, eighteen thousand miles round the planet to see his favourite act seven nights in succession for free!

Except he goes across the road for a drink.

I didnt say it out loud, of course. Had I actually delivered this monologue, it would have sparked hoots of derisive mirth. Hed probably have filmed me, too, and stuck the footage on the internet in pursuit of mass public humiliation. So, I give a crumpled smile and slink back to my seat, handing a chinking glass to my fellow reporter.

How are you feeling? she says.

Great, I say, poking a straw into a Bloody Mary and tapping my phone. And I am, Im enthralled by everything. But when I switch off my light and try to close my eyes, I cant sleep. I keep thinking back to when