Book review: I'm Not with the Band by Sylvia Patterson – a gripping account of a golden age in music journalism

A memoir that mixes autobiography with rock-star encounters

From a generation that produced – now we can look back on it with the benefit of hindsight – a golden age of writing about music in Britain, comes a reflective middle-age spent collating the experience of the time into memoirs. Writers such as Stuart Maconie and, famously, Caitlin Moran started out in the vivid, inventive and booming landscape of pop journalism in the 1980s and 1990s, and to their paperback-producing number we can now add Sylvia Patterson, a Perth-raised pop omnivore of the early Eighties who cut her teeth on the wildly successful Smash Hits later in that decade, and went on to freelance for titles including NME, Q and Glamour.

Part of the beauty of this comprehensive look back on her career – told through accounts of the famous rock stars she’s interviewed, befriended and offended, with a liberal dose of charmingly unflinching autobiography about family, bankruptcy, feminism in rock and almost having her arm amputated – is not just how good a storyteller Patterson is, but the very natural arc her career has taken as it’s followed the boom and decline of the late 20th century music journalist’s trade.

The changing face of music in that time is tracked with both a sense of passion for its creators, no matter what personality defects they enjoyed, and with a keen understanding of how the business and the nature of pop has changed in that time. When she started out, the bands she interviewed at similar career stages were happy to be doing what they did for a few pounds a week benefit money, rather than a few pounds extra to learn a trade, and among her great heroes were the “Marxist” Housemartins; in 2015, by contrast, she was told in interview by a straight-faced and professional Marcus Mumford: “We’re not into being influential in culture. I don’t want people to listen to what I say, really. I don’t think it’s important.”

Which is a reasonable path to take with one’s career, but Patterson deftly shows us the other side: the lack of guard shown by one big-name British star that caused her to inadvertently end his marriage by revealing his on-the-road dalliance; the unchecked emotional honesty of Britpop stars from Damon Albarn to the Gallaghers; the fierce in-person charm and wit of Bono, defying his public image; and even the unexpected humanity of a mid-career Madonna, a new mother at the time. In the middle of her own career, Patterson felt things change when the NME put breasts on the cover, her pre-megastardom interviews with Beyoncé Knowles found a heroically guarded character, and the job became comical press junkets when granted an audience with the Beckhams.

She writes with easy humour and an unrepentant honesty, but the coda is devastating; arriving at a vision of what pop culture has left behind in its pursuit of inoffensive immediacy, yet also a realisation that generational change is inevitable. It’s a hilariously authentic love letter to youth and learning to grow up.

I'm Not with the Band by Sylvia Patterson (Sphere, £18.99)