Despite the death of their exuberant front man Freddie Mercury in 1991, Queen remains one of the most popular bands on the planet, with 300 million global album sales and the biopic Bohemian Rhapsody, a "foot-stomping celebration of Queen," hitting theaters. Yet the full story of their extraordinary success and the truths behind the enigmatic Mercury has never fully been told, until now.

Journalist Mark Blake, author of the bestselling Pink Floyd biography Comfortably Numb, has drawn on his own earlier interviews with the band and conducted nearly 100 exclusive interviews with record producers, ex-band members, personal assistants, and school friends, including many of Freddie Mercury's earliest associates, to produce a complete, fascinating account of the band's rise from suburbia to worldwide super-stardom. Is This the Real Life? tells, for the first time, how this groundbreaking band became champions of the world.