I'm Not with the Band by Sylvia Patterson

The world of music publishing and writing is not what it used to be when Sylvia Patterson first made her mark in popular culture. She worked at Smash Hits, the NME, Loaded and other magazines so she speaks and writes from experience with eloquence and wit. Then we knew less of the personal lives of personalities, and less about music production, so being able to spend time with figures from the 1980s and 1990s pop culture was a rarefied life, and luckily writers like Sylvia Patterson were there to document it all for us.

We find out about stars such as Madonna, or how New Order’s Bernard Sumner still seems to hold a grudge. There are tales of generations of pop stars here, some still famous, some now infamous, some that have faded from the stage, to never leave any impression at all.

In addition to the music, there are also the storied adventures of young adult life from that time. The seeming glamour of working for best-selling music magazines, and moving in certain circles, but knowing that things could end anytime. The wrong story, even the wrong heading (often the responsibility of sub-editors, rather than the writer) being able to remove the writer from lists forever.

We learn of the stress, the competition, the bad diets and living conditions, unsuitable shoes and more unsuitable romantic entanglements. We learn of her troubled relationship with her troubled mother, but there are also some elements of the book that may only interest some people

It is a bit of good luck at the business of music, and how it is now micro-managed by brands and content creators. In its day, The NME was a rebellious magazine, like Melody Maker, they were irreverent, able to see how po-faced and serious some bands were, and had the power to burst that bubble of pomposity.

In the 1980’s and 1990’s, the world of magazine writing welcomed talents and characters who could write and there was a career there that could pay the very lucky people who were in the right place at the right time. There are middle-aged people walking around now who listen to music recommended to them by figures such as John Peel, or the writers in the magazines. It is good that those times are still remembered and celebrated in books like this one.