I'm Not with the Band: A Writer's Life Lost in Music

Author(s): Sylvia Patterson

Music Biography

'This is a three-decade survivor's tale of music, magazines, silly jokes, stupid shoes, useless blokes, hopeless homes, booze, drugs, love, loss, police cells, A&E, disillusionment, redemption and trying to make Prince laugh, cheer up Eminem and finish off Westlife forever (with varying degrees of success)'

In 1986, Sylvia Patterson boarded a train to London armed with a tea-chest full of vinyl records, a peroxide quiff and a dream: to write about music, forever. She got her wish.


What's It All About, Kylie? is both a wild, hilarious, sometimes devastating memoir and a joyful compendium of her encounters with some of pop's biggest names. (And Milli Vanilli.) Here is Madonna in her Earth Mother phase, flinging her hands up in horror at one of Sylvia's trademark Very Stupid Questions. Meanwhile Bono is unexpectedly mischievous, chasing her around the table in mock-outrage. Johnny Cash is hypnotic, Amy Winehouse an erratic but charismatic force-of-nature, the Beckhams are regal and remote in LA, Richey Edwards soulful but nihilistic in a Soho pub.


A fascinating and brutally honest memoir, What's It All About, Kylie? is also a chronicle of the last thirty years in music.


'Sylvia Patterson is Britain's greatest music journalist'
David Quantick


'It's people like you who send people like me mad'
Rick Astley

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[A] mercilessly funny memoir...the riotous superstar profiles are only one of several threads in this gripping and multi-layered book -- Mark Ellen Mail on Sunday This very funny, glowingly humane memoir ... I'm Not With The Band is, ultimately, a thing of joy Sunday Times It's absolutely hilarious - there were times I could barely breathe because I was laughing so hard -- Barbara Ellen Observer Sylvia Patterson is one of the best music writers of all time, an inspiration and a genius David Quantick

Sylvia Patterson is one of pop journalism's best-known voices. She joined Smash Hits as Staff Writer aged 20 during its mid-late 80s heyday when it sold a million copies a fortnight. Life thereafter as an acclaimed freelancer has seen her sprinkle irreverence throughout NME, The Face, Guardian Guide, The Observer, Sunday Times, Interview, The Word, Q and Glamour. She's also the only writer to have penned sleeve-notes to the greatest hits of both Take That and Oasis. Because that's how she rolls (with it).

General Fields

  • : 9780751558685
  • : Little, Brown Book Group
  • : Sphere
  • : 0.71
  • : June 2016
  • : 234mm X 153mm
  • : United Kingdom
  • : June 2016
  • : books

Special Fields

  • : Sylvia Patterson
  • : Hardback
  • : 1
  • : en
  • : 781.66092
  • : 448
  • : 16pp photos b/w