Friends of Mine: Thirty Years in the Life of a Duran Duran Fan Paperback – Big Book, 4 September 2013

I got the book for my girl,who is a pure Duran Duran fan,and she loved this look at the era through the eyes of a kindred spirit in the fandom.She saw a lot of herself in the words of another fangirl. Highly reccommend

"There's a dream that strings the road with broken glass for us to hold ..."Elisa Lorello's highly-emotional memoir Friends of Mine is a journey back to a time where a lot of Generation X kids had begun to find the world around them, which had been pulling away from Reagan's 'Morning in America' - and stepping into the late afternoon of a super-charged pop music scene that had been climbing to reach its zenith, going worldwide with Live Aid in 1985.Taken directly into the proliferation of the culture via MTV, cassette Walkmans, glossy wall posters of Madonna, Madness and Duran Durans' Patrick Negal iconic album cover, Lorello walks us through the hallways of her 80s childhood like a sun cast shadow clinging lovingly to every forgotten surface that you've longed for ever since which she wonderfully resurrects. Reading about her life back then is touching, tragic and many times teary.In an era where large vinyl collections were the touchstone of almost every middle-class home and Rio was ever present, the effect of Duran Duran on a young girls heart and mind is an all too dangerous proposition from the start.Friends of Mine is the story of a young Elisa's journey through a turbulent adolescence, finding herself relating more to the music of Duran Duran than most of the people outside of her own house, including her friends caught in the same cultural new wave of sound that was coming from almost every speakered surface of the time. She found herself coming of age in a family of frenetic, talented siblings that buzzed around her, growing musically, like an 80s rendition of the Partridge Family, but with a greater factor of cool, angst and far more interesting.The deepest message of the story is about the power of music and the power it has on the listener over the long passage of years when we've somehow moved on from our youth, and achingly into adulthood. We cling to the comforting icons of that time and for whatever the reasons, we take them with us, forever paired.Music effects everything about who we are, where we're going and the times in which we have lived. You'll hear echoes of it when you hear people drone on about how the 1980s was easily the greatest time to have lived through. Having been through it, you find yourself on the outside of it, not disagreeing at all, and the music being the last and only delivery system to the past. For those that hadn't, the effect of those years travels with them almost as indelibly.The author gives us something better to think about when our faded hits are now no more than just the three minutes on whatever classic rock station while driving through our lives.Elisa Lorello's very touching and hypnotic memoir is a powerful tale, evoking shadows of all of our years through one very different and lasting decade. Having shared the journey, the best antidote to being without - is that we can always find it in others....This review covers the Advance Review Copy of the book I received earlier in Summer. What a fantastic gift to anyone who is a fan of Duran Duran, the eighties or Elisa Lorello. Thumbs up....

I really liked this, it was fun to read. I could relate to everything re Duran Duran, it reminded me of myself growing up in the early eighties, the only difference being the author grew up in America instead of Yorkshire! Still, I would recommend to Duranies.

Bought for my wife who is an old school DD fan ( someone has to be 😛 )She loved this book and the way it was written

I had never heard of or read anything by this author before, but just seeing the title and knowing nothing else, it went on my wishlist. Now, I have too quickly finished reading it and want more. I had such a big grin on my face thru most of this because it reminded me so much of myself back in the 80's. I even shed a few tears. I swear my heart was thumping in my chest and my face turned red along with the author's as she waited in line for the book signing at the end. I'm still "Duran Duranged" at 48, apparently. A must-read for all of us former "Mrs. John Taylor"'s out there. :) I now feel I need to go back and listen to all my Duran Duran albums and collect the more recent ones I never got around to getting.