If you’re a music lover you may well have given thought to how you might get yourself a slice of that there scene, at some point. Growing up as an avid reader of the NME and Melody Maker, amongst other music based publications, writing for them was something I wondered how to do, but never dreamed that I’d be able to do it. I couldn’t play an instrument and would have been far too nervous a boy to give signing a go, so writing came in as a close second. But in those pre-internet days, and with only a school careers officer and the local library to rely on, I never worked out how to follow my dream and by the time I did, it was far too late.
Sylvia Patterson, on the other hand, found that music was among her only real interests and, force of nature that she seems to have been, found herself a job that would lead to her writing for the NME, not just reading it! And she’s been writing about music ever since.
‘I’m not with the band’ tells of her adventures in music in a career that, at the time of publication, had just gone beyond 30 years. As you’d imagine there’s lots of the expected hedonism of following bands and artists around. There are tons of tales of the somewhat anarchic and also juvenile things that happened when Silvia was a writer on the sadly missed Smash Hits. It seems that their motto was something like ‘either make it up, take the piss or both’ which sounds right up my street!
There’s also loads of really interesting stuff about big hitters like Madonna, the Manics, Prince, U2, Beyonce, New Order and Oasis and yet you’re often left with the reality that Patterson’s life as a writer isn’t at all as glamorous as you’d imagine. In fact, at times I was thankful for falling into being an English teacher just for the sake of my own safety and sanity! But then you read stuff about people like Black Grape and a notorious trip to the Caribbean to record a video, as well as Cypress Hill and Eminem it helps you to see that while life as a music writer isn’t glamorous, it’s rarely dull.
And ultimately, that’s the saddest part of this memoir. I’d set out into reading it thinking that meeting all of those musicians and following them round the world would be enormously fulfilling and glamorous. But it doesn’t seem to have been so for Patterson. The pay seems barely enough to get by on and the perks never really seem, well, perky enough. In fact our writer seems at her happiest just when taking the piss out of pop stars early on in her career at Smash Hits.
Patterson also details the decline of the music press as well as the closure of many magazines that we may well have read back in the day. The internet has a lot to answer for and part of it is that writers like Sylvia Patterson are forced to work as freelancers, surviving on scraps really. Again, not what we’d expect from someone who on the surface of things, seems to have the kind of job we’d all kill for.
‘I’m not with the band’ is a fantastic, illuminating read. For starters, it’s just very, very funny. But then there’s also a great deal of depth too. Patterson clearly thinks that music – and writing about it – is something life changing. And she’s right. And so the book is equal parts vibrant, honest and thoughtful. With tales of just anyone you could think of within the British music scene of the last 30 years, ‘I’m not with the band’ is a must read for all music lovers.
I give ‘I’m not with the band’…
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