Me and Mr. Jones: My Life with David Bowie and the Spiders from Mars

by Suzi Ronson

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.

Genres: Music, Memoir, Nonfiction, Autobiography, Biography, Biography Memoir, Audiobook

Audiobook

Published January 1, 2024

Reviews

[*TUDOR^QUEEN* · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an interesting memoir from the widow of Mick Ronson, the guitarist for David Bowie during his iconic Ziggy Stardust days. Through working as a hairdresser and having David Bowie's mother as a client she wound up working for David Bowie and his band. She created the spikey red hairdo that's seen so often in Bowie's early rock photos. She always had a crush on David's lead guitarist Mick Ronson and wound up marrying him.

Suzi chronicles working as a crew member on the Ziggy Stardust world tour, handling countless tasks like helping Bowie change costumes, band hair and makeup, and even costume repair. When David changed course and disbanded this version of his show, Mick meandered through various band situations like Mott the Hoople, Bob Dylan, and having a go at being a solo artist. For most of the book this couple is not settled in one place, but house hopping and intermingling with other famous musicians as Mick constantly looks for opportunities in the music industry. When she falls pregnant they hastily get married (in 1977)...and before you know it the book is over.

Mick Ronson died in 1993, yet there is no coverage of what happened between the time he and Suzi got married and when Mick died. I took a quick look at Wikipedia and saw that he had another child with another woman in 1990. At the end of the book it just suddenly jumped to an Epilogue when she got a call from someone that David Bowie just died from the same cancer her husband did "years ago". So I felt like there was a chunk of interesting stuff missing between their marriage and birth of their daughter Lisa and getting the phone call decades later about the David Bowie death. Maybe she could have cut out some of the endless trappings of life on tour buses and commune-type living and injected some of the "real stuff" concerning their marriage life- but I guess she didn't want to share it.

[Graham Power · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s 1970 and young Suzi Fussey is working as a hairdresser in Beckenham High Street, South-East London. She lives with her parents in a semi-detached house in neighbouring Bromley. One day a Mrs Jones comes into the salon for a shampoo and set. She starts telling Suzi about her ever so talented son David who plays piano and guitar. It turns out that David is the one-hit wonder who did that song a while back about the astronaut who went off into space and was never heard of again - rather like David. Shortly after this Suzi is invited round to the Victorian Villa that David lives in to cut his hair: short spiky and bright red. Mrs Jones talented boy has been transformed into Ziggy Stardust, the bisexual rock star from outer space. In the time it takes to remove the gown from Mrs Jones and hand her the bill, David is the biggest thing in British pop music since the Beatles, and Suzi is touring the world with him as his personal stylist. Just an everyday story of Bromley and Beckenham folk.

This is the story of the hairdresser who ran away to join the rock ‘n’ roll circus. Ronson tells it with an unforced enthusiasm which conveys the excitement of stepping through the hairdresser’s looking glass from the quotidian world of Bromley to the extraordinary world of Ziggy Stardust. Along with the excitement there is also a rather touching sense of not quite belonging to the glamorous and bohemian milieu she has entered. At first she is slightly shocked by Bowie’s open and bisexual marriage; not in any moralistic way, it’s just not how they did things in Bromley. The hip names dropped in Bowie’s circle - Burroughs, Velvet Underground, Iggy Pop - mean nothing to her. Sometimes the mundane and the bizarre meet with comic effect: she dyes Bowie’s jock strap, bought to be worn with an exotic but slightly too revealing costume by Kansai Yamamoto, bright red on top of the gas stove in her mum’s semi. At the poolside in LA, with Bowie’s exotic Warholian entourage, she is self-consciously aware that her swimsuit is from Marks & Sparks. What’s great about all this is that almost any teenage Bowie fan of the time, myself very much included, would have felt exactly the same had they suddenly found themselves transported into his world: thrilled to be there, but slightly out of place.

She writes about Angie Bowie with warm admiration. In the early seventies Angie was just as famous as David. Since then her role in the Bowie story has been sadly marginalised. Ronson returns her to centre stage. I’m sure she was the big influence on Bowie that Ronson says she was; always encouraging him to be that little bit more outrageous and an important catalyst in his transformation from curly-haired folkdom to Ziggy stardom. According to Suzi it was Angie who persuaded Bowie to come out as gay in the 1972 Melody Maker interview which helped to make him famous.

For a couple of years or so Ronson was part of Bowie’s inner circle. She was often the only person with him in the dressing room before a show and always ready in the wings with a cigarette and glass of wine. She doesn’t use the book to betray confidences or settle scores. A clear-eyed portrait of Bowie emerges nonetheless, and not an entirely flattering one: charming yet distant, charismatic but enigmatic, overweeningly ambitious and with a ruthless streak. Bowie displayed that ruthlessness onstage at the Hammersmith Odeon on 3 July 1973 when he announced the death of Ziggy and the end of the Spiders from Mars. This came as a shock not just to Bowie’s fans but also his bassist and drummer as he hadn’t bothered to tell them in advance. Suzi was dropped along with the band. Still, she has no regrets: ‘My life was all black and white until I met David, and afterwards it was glorious technicolour, as bright as the hair on his head’. Her entertaining memoir provides a fresh perspective on the rise to stardom of Mrs Jones talented boy.

[Rita da Nova]

«Suzi Ronson escreve com muita honestidade, mesmo quando trata os momentos em que as coisas não correram tão bem entre ela e Bowie — no fundo, é a história de uma amizade real, com os seus altos e baixos, e acaba por dar espaço para que pensemos as nossas próprias relações de amizade (as que existem e as que deixaram de existir).»

Review completa em: https://ritadanova.blogs.sapo.pt/me-a....

[Rachel Louise Atkin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Suzi Ronson was a hairdresser when one day Mr Jones walks in and her life changes. Mrs Jones turns out to be David Bowie’s mother and she recommends Suzi to him, who gives him the iconic red Ziggy Stardust haircut.

This is a really captivating and fun memoir in which Suzi writes about meeting David and Angie Bowie, following them on tour and discovering the rock and roll lifestyle she always dreamed about having. I know quite a bit about Bowie and that scene already but it didn’t make the memoir any less interesting as Suzi writes with such excitement and passion and it’s so great to follow her along to all of Bowie’s best shows where she dresses him and has to make sure his hair and makeup is perfect for every show.

I loved the sections in the latter half of the book where she was in New York and writing about Bob Dylan and Allen Ginsberg. It’s such a dream to think about and just being on the fringes of it would have been so wonderful.

Really enjoyed this memoir and happily read it listening to David Bowie all the way through and singing the songs so would recommend if you’re a fan of his or are interested in the scene.

[Louise Bath · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a good read and is fantastic when it's focused on Suzi Ronson's time on tour with David Bowie and The Spiders From Mars, as she really brings this period in the early 70s to life, as well as her own upbringing in the 50s and 60s. I can only assume that she was an assiduous diary-keeper, as the amount of detail in her recollections of emotions, conversations, clothes, interior decoration, and so on is remarkable! Sadly, the book begins to fall apart, just as life does for herself and Mick, once David Bowie makes the famous announcement of the end of the Ziggy Stardust era.

The rather longer section of the book dealing with Suzi and Mick's lives as he seeks to carve out a solo career, and she tries to find purpose, is fascinating at first in terms of the people they meet, and their experiences in America and elsewhere bring home what an unsettling, difficult, and uncertain time they had. But after a while, this rollercoaster of false starts, success, and frustration becomes repetitive and dull to read - especially if you're not a fan of Mick Ronson.

I think I expected much more from this book, especially as Hanif Kureishi gives such a glowing quote on the back cover. Maybe I expected *too* much? For one thing, the title's quite misleading, given that David Bowie has faded from the picture well before the end. It's also written in the kind of breathless style I associate with teenage girls' diaries and Jackie magazine, especially at the beginning; sometimes it's all a bit "Gosh! Wow! OMG! It's Lou Reed!/Iggy Pop!/Bette Midler!/Bob Dylan!/Allen Ginsberg!", etc. It's one 'clang' after another, perhaps not surprisingly - although the Ronson's friendship with Mott The Hoople's Ian Hunter and his wife Trudi is a beautiful thing.

David Bowie comes across as quite steely and ruthless, and it's not hard to feel sympathetic towards Angie Bowie, Trevor Boulder, and Woody Woodmansey. And yet, through Ronson's descriptions, he's still the most charismatic character in the book, even when he's not present. Again, to be fair, the Bowie chapters are great: it's breezy and exciting, and it really motors along. But in all honesty, if, like me, you're not a Mick Ronson fan, M&MJ becomes increasingly dull, and it's all fallen apart by the end. If you're unfamiliar with Mick's post-Bowie career, you're lost - but from a purely objective view, it's still educational!

Suzi Ronson herself comes across as a charming, lovely lady; she's down to earth, unpretentious, open-hearted, and generous. The way she writes about her time on tour with the Spiders is terrific and so vividly depicted that you're right *there* with her and the band and crew. And whilst her gushing prose showing her adoration of Mick and countless swooning passages about how handsome/gorgeous/talented/sexy/etc he is gets wearing, it's also endearing and clearly heartfelt!

But, as I've said, perhaps once too often, Me and Mr Jones has issues. An index would be nice, for one thing. For another, Ronson makes much of a 16 year old female fan being underage, and yet the age of consent in 1972 *was* 16.

Another major issue I have is Ronson's insistence on writing out Mick, Woody, and Trevor's dialogue phonetically in order to emphasise their Hull accents, which I found both patronising and insulting. She makes all three of them sound like naive, wide-eyed simpletons from "Oop Nörth", compared to more 'sophisticated' Southerners like Bowie and herself. I hated it. She does the same with certain characters that she meets in the US, and again, it's embarrassingly crass, seeming to mock those she sees as being inferior and of lower status in some way; the way she does it doesn't feel like she's adding "local colour", and I think this was a *massive* misjudgement.

Above all, the major issue with M&MJ is the abrupt way in which it ends. The major part of the narrative finishes with the birth of the Ronson's daughter Lisa, the end of the Rolling Thunder Review tour, and the family looking forward to the future. When the narrative picks up again, it's to talk about Suzi's reaction to David Bowie's death. She mentions in passing that Mick had died 20 years previously of the same cancer - and it's like, *whaaat*?! There's a massive black hole in the story, with no reference to her life with or without Mick up to this point, leaving a huge void for a casual reader and/or casual David Bowie fan who'll want to know what the hell happened in the interim. Even a brief summation of Ronson's life to this point would've sufficed, as I would love to have known what she'd been up to, good or bad. Maybe she didn't think we'd be interested in her own life, which is a sad thought.

In summation, this book is *definitely* worth reading if you remember the Ziggy Stardust days and the very early 1970s in general, as it will take you right back there! I just wish the latter part of it was better composed and more informative, instead of coming across as rushed and badly thought-out.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

The hairdresser and wife of Mick Ronson’s memoir of her life and most of the time she spent as David Bowie’s hairdresser, stylist and go to person. She is the one that came up with Bowie’s iconic haircuts and colors in the 1970’s.

For the most part I was quite impressed with her story and style of writing. Of course, it was much more about herself than it was about Bowie but there is some great insight to Bowie behind the scenes.

I knew this was going to happen but by page 189 the David Bowie part of the book ends shortly after he breaks up his band ‘The Spiders from Mars’. At this point there is still roughly 100 pages to go in the book. From then on David is mentioned often but the story carries on with Suzy’s romance with Mick Ronson, his career and their marriage. She never sees or talks to Angie & David Bowie again shortly after the band is dissolved.

[Freddie Bishop · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first few chapters where she talks of her life before, leading up to and whilst on tour with David Bowie are electrifying. Paired with colourful and inventive descriptions of his many costumes and mishaps on tour. But afterwards the pace of the book slows and becomes repetitive. The final parts of her life leading up to the present are extremely rushed and there’s barely any detail about her life with Mick after their first child, just an offhand remark in the Epilogue that he died of the same cancer that killed Bowie in 2016.
Essentially read it for the first half, but after she leaves the Bowie camp I wouldn’t waste your time.

[F.R. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is actually more the author's life with Spiders from Mars lead guitarist, Mick Ronson. (In case her name didn't give it away: reader, she married him.) Bowie disappears from the narrative two thirds of the way through. But after that there's Mott the Hoople and Bob Dylan, so it's not without interest.

However, the depiction of Bowie is fascinating. Suzi Ronson started working as a hair stylist and costume person with him right before he becomes huge. Beforehand there's an annoyingly needy, fame crazed theatre kid quality to him (which I imagine how he was.) Afterwards the mystique becomes part of his posture, but to those who knew him before, it seems both cruel and alienating.

A fascinating read (although with an abrupt end.) I dreamt about Ziggy and the Spiders while reading this.

[Tina · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is actually not at lot about Mr Jones here - certainly not as much as the title promises. But we do get a feeling of how much he meant to the way her life turned out.

[David Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ends abruptly, with only an epilogue at the end covering anything post-1976, but otherwise this is a fascinating account of Bowie's Hunky/Ziggy/Aladdin years. Always lurking in the background was Bowie's right hand man, the great guitarist/arranger Mick Ronson, who made our Suzi his wife. Covers the Mott the Hoople/Ronson debacle as well, and discusses Mick's solo efforts- I didn't know Mrs. Ronson was one of the people who fleshed out the concept behind the cover and publicity shots of Ronson's first solo record Slaughter on 10th Avenue. All I can say is that she must have kept very thorough diaries. If you're inclined to want to know more about this period in Bowie's life, this provides some valuable first-person insight.

[Julie Haydu · Rating 3 out of 5]

Judging from the small amount of ratings on this book many people may have thought as I did it is about another person trying to capitalize on Bowie’S life and death. Otherwise why wasn’t it called My Life With Mick Ronson and the Spiders from Mars? I downloaded from my library for a trip as a light read to give it a chance. Suzi does have her own valid story to tell as a woman on the road with some of the most exciting musicians in the world. She was in a very rare position for the times to be backstage and on the tour bus. I love Mick Ronson and his talent beyond The Spiders so I was interested in the rest of his life. However, as the title implies, this book is only about Mick to an extent and the narrative cuts out his later years and skips to the end in an abrupt and unsatisfying way.

[Peter Richardson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was looking forward to reading this book, at 67 years of age I was a teenager at the time of Glam Rock and was a fan of David Bowie among others, also I lived just down the road in Bromley. When I saw this book I thought it was going to be fascinating, however, to me it read like a late teenage girl's diary. As Suzi says in the book there are some confidences she would not betray, these are the very things we the reader would like to know. She writes as though she was all important to the Bowie touring machine when all she had done was invent a haircut, iconic though it may be. All the hairdressers in Bromley were doing it, even Alec at the end of my road, whose previous claim to fame was the Tony Curtis cut. There are I suspect 100's of additional "workers" who could tell similar tales of life on the road. This book was not for me I'm afraid maybe I've missed the point.

[Maria · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF 3/4 of the way through. It felt like the author was just listing event after event so it wasn’t particularly interesting

[Kristy · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars!

It was really great until 70% of the book, the rest felt a bit filler and name-dropping tbh.

[Dahlia · Rating 3 out of 5]

While the first half of this book is an engaging fly-on-the-wall recounting of the author’s time on tour with David Bowie and the Spiders, overall it fails as a compelling memoir.

Towards the end of the book, Suzi writes about feeling out of place at a party filled with intellectual activists, saying, “I start to feel inadequate, less serious than the people who surround me. They look for the meaning of life and I’m just living it without a thought.”

This quote encapsulates my experience as a reader that the author hasn’t given her life enough thought.

I don’t know if Suzi is truly less serious, if she’s incapable of reflection, or just too guarded to share. She’s happy to name drop, gossip and share frothy anecdotes and many of these are fun and novel. But the problem with this memoir is the lack of reflection and lack of vulnerability of the author.

[spoilers] The three places this lack of reflection bothered me the most were as follows:

Suzi reveals that she had one intimate night with David Bowie. She claims she wasn’t really attracted to him but he was nice to her so she seemingly gave in. She knows David is married and they never speak of it again. She doesn’t discuss how she felt afterwards. She was very young at the time — was she hurt? Relieved it was only once? Does it stroke her ego to think she once slept with the biggest rockstar on the planet? Did it ever come up during her future relationship with Bowie’s bandmate? She’s just so matter-of-fact and then moves right along. I want to know how she looks at that experience decades later.

Worse, she talks about being a procuress or Madame for Bowie during a tour. At one point she brings him a 16 year old girl and helps get the girl out of his room to keep him out of trouble. She doesn’t process this at all. She is a young woman at the time, did she feel that she was doing the right thing? Does she regret it? Was she doing it because she was afraid she would lose her employment? Why? There are so many possible avenues to explore and she doesn’t go down any of them. She simply recounts the events like another escapade. It’s maddening.

Finally the memoir pretty much ends when she marries Mick Ronson. She doesn’t talk about married life or transitioning from life on the road to life as a mother. Other than having to bail him out once she doesn’t talk too much about the consequences of his drinking on their relationship. She doesn’t get into his cancer and early death. I believe he was unfaithful to her throughout their relationship and she doesn’t discuss her feelings on that except to say at one point when she catches him sleeping (just sleeping) with another woman that she’s humiliated. I understand trying to protect the father of her child, but the second half of the book drifts without a meaningful through line.

Several of the main characters in this book have passed away so protecting them should be less important now than sharing her truth (I’d like to think that but understand that it can be more complicated).

You get the sense that the peak of her life was her time with Bowie and the Spiders, but you are left guessing about how she feels about this.

I did enjoy reading about the crafting of Bowie’s persona and stage presence. I respected her early hustle to get herself a job with his crew and how much fun she had. Some of the flying by the seat of our pants faith she and Mick Ronson had when Bowie cut them adrift was interesting too.

I gave this book three stars because I liked hearing from a woman in rock and roll’s orbit and it was mostly a quick, fun read. But the book suffers from either a disappointing lack of self-awareness, or a lack of generosity to the reader. Either way this memoir holds too much back to transcend into a great read.

[Barbara · Rating 2 out of 5]

Suzi was David Bowie’s hairdresser, so you’ll know what level to expect from this book. There are a few revelations about how ruthless Bowie was on the way up, capable of sweeping anyone aside to achieve his ambitions as a star performer, but mostly it’s about her boring background, hair styling, and ironing the bands clothes. She manages to describe the thrilling gigs, the travel, meeting other artists from Dylan to Iggy Pop in the most boring way. She obviously had a marvellous time and ended up marrying the man of her dreams but unfortunately she’s not got a writers skill to bring it all to life.

[Paul Sutter]

It is interesting how some friendships can start most innocently. That is what happened with Suzi Fussey (Ronson), who at one time back in the 1970’s was working at a hair salon. There she met a woman named Mrs. Jones. She wanted Suzi to style her son’s hair. Suzi lived with her parents and certainly lived a rather calm life. Nothing eventful had happened to her. That was until Mrs. Jones told Suzi about her son who was getting into the world of music. He played piano and guitar. He also had happened to release a song about an astronaut who went into space and was lost.
Suzi didn’t make any connection between the song and the son. Mrs. Jones invited her back to her house, where she met the son David, David Bowie. She wanted her to create a different sort of haircut for her son. She made it spiky and red, which definitely was like his personal calling card. It was more like a woman’s haircut, and David definitely liked the style immensely. Because of this, Suzi was invited to go out on the road with David and his band the Spiders From Mars, to be in charge of his hair and costumes as well. It was the opportunity of a lifetime, which she jumped at the opportunity.
She was the sole female on the road with him, and she certainly experienced things most women could only dream about. She kept a diary of what took place during those days, which she uses as reference for this most entertaining book. David of course had the persona of Ziggy Stardust, creating an image that took him to great heights in the music world. But there was another bonus, getting up close and personal with Mick Ronson, the lead guitarist. Mick was also responsible for helping the careers of Lou Reed and Mott the Hoople, among many others. The tour took Suzi and the band around the world, the adulation for Bowie growing to amazing heights.
But there was also another side to Bowie, and once his career accelerated it was as if he threw some band members under the bus, ditching the Ziggy Stardust for personal solo glory. But a major part of the book is also her relationship with Mick Ronson. It was obvious there was an attraction and eventual marriage, as she mentions other parts of the relationship with Bowie. There were the negatives such as the drug use and Bowie inviting underage girls to his room, but the book for the most part looks Bowie’s beginnings, and her life as part of the tours and that world. There are some sordid moments, but that is the price to pay sometimes for stardom.

[Iain · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's refreshing to get a perspective of Bowie's life from someone who worked alongside him. Many bios and insights have been written about the star that bear little reflection of who he was as a person rather than the persona he sold to the world. Suzi was there during the Ziggy period, witnessed the chaos, and cleaned up after it. When Bowie was asked why he'd never written an autobiography, he shrugged off the suggestion as if to say, what's the point? He'd said all he wanted to say through his art. That's why books like Suzi Ronson's are vitally important if you want a firsthand impression rather than one that's been traced from tittle-tattle.
'David Bowie: The Pitt Report by Kenneth Pitt' (Pitt was David's early manager) is another bio of Bowie that's well worth reading as it precedes Suzi Ronson's time with David.
In my opinion, Bowie's earlier period until his flight to Berlin is far more interesting than his later periods. This statement is not a reflection on his music; it's an observation of how he grew as an individual and an artist.
Suzi talks from her perspective and incorporates various personal life episodes into the mix. She was an integral part of helping create Bowie's Ziggy image and was also part of the Ziggy Stardust crew during the UK, Japan, and US tours. She married guitarist Mick Ronson and later worked as a stylist for other musicians. 'Me and Mr Jones: My Life with David Bowie and the Spiders from Mars' is a vital insight into David Jones's identity, albeit only part of it.
The book is written in a breezy style that keeps the reader interested and conjures up wonderful images of life in the music industry in the '70s.

[Gunther Ramysen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ik heb al talloze boeken over David Bowie gelezen. Meestal vanuit het perspectief van een of andere biograaf. Maar dit boek van Suzi Ronson is wel een wat ander gegeven. Suzi Ronson was eerst de vaste kapster en styliste van David Bowie vooraleer ze een relatie aanging met zijn gitarist Mick Ronson. Suzi Ronson zag vanuit de eerste hand hoe David Bowie zijn creatieve zoektocht ondernam en evolueerde naar zijn iconische alterego Ziggy Stardust. Een enorme evolutie die de popmuziek en de glamrock op zijn grondvesten deed daveren. Me And Mr Jones geeft je echt een zicht op hoe het er achter de schermen aan toe ging en hoe een band en een artiest constant aan het evolueren is. Een erg interessant boek omdat het vooral het bekende verhaal van David Bowie zijn wording tot Ziggy Stardust brengt maar dan wel vanuit een ander perspectief. Het enige minpunt dat ik had is dat het verhaal rond Mick Ronson wel wat overhaast afgesloten werd. Twee extra hoofdstukken rond hun verdere relatie had het boek toch net iets beter gemaakt.

[Karen · Rating 2 out of 5]

So disappointing, for me, anyway. The clue is in the title of course, Me & Mr Jones, so the first half or so was about Bowie, but more about Suzi. But there's lots of books about Bowie and not many at all about Mick (to know him is to love him) Ronson. Really, it wasn't that much about Bowie even. Not really.

I had hopes in the second half, that Mick would be more to the fore, but in truth, I felt he was incidental. It was really about Suzi and, to me, the only interesting thing about Suzi is that she was married to lovely Mick. I had hopes that the person who was married to Mick, would talk about him, give a feel of who he was.

And the most unsatisfying ending possible.

Two stars for the photos of Mick.

[Alvin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ironically, for someone who's fabulous contribution to culture is Ziggy Stardust's extremely extraterrestrial hairdo, Suzi Ronson is almost relentlessly down-to-Earth. Her blow-by-blow account of growing up in the boring suburbs and getting swept into the whirlwind of Glam Rock is quite lucid and engaging; Her post-Bowie life as a Rock Wife a little less so. All the same, this is a fun, breezy read about an important era in musical history.

[Dona · Rating 3 out of 5]

Me and Mr. Jones: My Life with David Bowie and the Spiders from Mars by Suzi Ronson is an interesting look at the pop scene in the late 1960’s and early to mid 1970’s. The majority of the artists mentioned I had never heard of but the sections of the book about David Bowie were interesting. I guess I would have liked more of his story and maybe less of the relatively unknown (at least to me) artists.

[Juliana · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although I liked the insider p.o.v. of the book, I've never particularly cared for David Bowie but have enjoyed a few of his songs. It pretty much falls into the excessive artistic performer, controlling manager, dodgy drug, sex, rock & roll stereotypes, hangers on, groupies and free for all everything.

It's split up into the David Bowie era of Suzi's life, the Mick Ronson era and the postscript of David's death but ends with a hopeful future for Suzi, Mick and their child.

[MJ Beaufrand · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ronson came up with the "Ziggy Stardust" red hair. It was great to read about somebody who had an "in" with that glam rock scene.

I would've liked to have heard more about her life with Mick Ronson. We only know in the epilogue that he died more than twenty years before Bowie did of the same kind of cancer. I would've liked to have seen more of the emotional landscape between the two of them.

[Martin Castle · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was a spontaneous buy from the Lyme Regis Bookshop and is a fantastic read. You don’t have to love Bowie as it’s a coming of age story a girl making the most of her talents and opportunities in 1970”s with Bowie on the road. The style is natural and conversational just as I would imagine if you met her. It’s a roller coaster glam rock story perfect!

[Graeme Crombie · Rating 2 out of 5]

A bit disappointed. The subject matter is the draw here and it was interesting hearing a first hand account of the beginnings of Ziggy and of music legends like Lou Reed, iggy Pop, and Bob Dylan as well as Mick Ronson and David Bowie. Writing wasn't great, however, and I didn't like the abrupt end without reference to the rest of her life with Mick.

[Teresa Bonifácio · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.25 ⭐️
The book is very interesting in tge beggining and although I don’t think it’s about David Bowie, it’s interesting to know more of her life on the road. I really liked the parts about her life with Mick but I felt the end was rushed. There’s nothing about her life or his after the wedding and we only know that he died because she mentions it in the end.

[James Tidd · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this fascinating, simply written, book, Suzi Ronson, the widow of Mark Ronson, who played alongside David Bowie in his Ziggy Stardust days, in the band Mott the Hoople, and was in a band that featured Bob Dylan, gives a deeply honest account of before, during and after her time as David Bowie's hairdresser in his Ziggy Stardust days.

[Cathy Graham · Rating 3 out of 5]

The bit about Bowie was interesting and a good insight into the chaotic, creative life. But after the Spiders finished, nothing more interesting happened unless you like Mick Ronson.
Additionally, the story just seems to stop abruptly with a short epilogue to finish the storyline. All a bit Meh.

[Emily Mellow · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's interesting, and I definitely know more about David Bowie than I did before.
Even the stuff about her own life is interesting, though I had never heard of her. She made some terrible choices later in the book that were hard to empathize with...