In The Pleasure Groove..Love, Death and Duran Duran by John Taylor

Taylor and the group he is apart of Duran Duran, defined the musical life of a generation. And along with all the Duranies that worshipped the band and its members were all those people who were slightly older(me) who enjoyed their music and could mark milestones by certain songs.
The only child of John and Jean, Taylor has a life as a youngster that would be recognised the Commonwealth over, it was replicated except in our case on a much smaller level. Well loved and well brought up, Taylor takes us through the more mundane aspects of his young years with a very descriptive brush, the picture he paints is well able to be identified with and for thousands of his peers the same issues and interest laid the platform that saw them choose a different life than that lived by their Parents, the values and aspirations had changed and Taylor well hits this on the nail...the soaring failure at school and the bewilderment about what to do after it...
The book maintains a sedate pace until this point in time when it fairly takes off as Taylor starts out on the road to Rock Superstar, the processes and the descriptions are real and they are vivid, words are not mixed and as the plan starts to take flight, the reader finds themselves caught up in an almost shared adventure.
An honest and searing book, the drugs, the drinks, the girls,the fame, the pressure, nothing is spared, certainly not Taylor himself. As the lofty, dazzling  heights extract their toll and his life falls away, one cannot fail to be moved by Taylor`s anguish, nor can one but hope that salvation is actually around the corner. Taylor does those that come after him a service in laying out his woes so spectacularly, one only hopes that some of them read his book and check their habits before they slide off the track....
This book is extremely well written and beautifully illustrated. While there is a lot of rather tacky stuff in its pages, there is also a lot of humour, compassion and hope. Taylor`s experience in trying to find out about his father`s war experience so resonate with me, although we lived in different worlds, my father also served and also would not talk about those experiences, the chapters where Taylor relates his fathers decline and eventual death had me in tears...I`m not a book crier, so one can see the powerfulness of Taylor`s writing., one would imagine that the basic values that the Taylor`s instilled in their son... decency, kindness and family have now fully flourished.
An excellent read, one of the best of this genre and I`ve read them all, it is available in Trade Paperback and well worth the purchase price.