I’m Not With the Man: A Writer’s Life with the Music Mavericks

by Sylvia Patterson

From the Costa-shortlisted author of I’m Not With The Band, a collection of interviews with the weird and wonderful musicians who defined an iconic era

Whatever happened to the weirdos? The rock’n’roll rebels? The children of The Revolution who not so much raged against The Man as barely acknowledged the concept of authority?

Sylvia Patterson remembers them. The freaks, geeks and oddballs who picked up microphones and instruments not to become rich or famous but because they were too mad (or unemployable) to do anything else.

I’m Not With The Man is the flipside to Sylvia’s award-winning memoir I’m Not With The Band, celebrating the era of ‘the rock ‘n’ roll nutter’ through her own encounters with some of music’s most uncompromising mavericks. From a cursing Adam Ant to a formidable Chrissie Hynde, from a carousing Liam Gallagher to a coruscating Sinead O’Connor, from a comedy Wu Tang Clan to an unrepentant Marianne Faithfull, and many, many more.

Hilarious, revealing and poignant, I’m Not With The Man heralds a farewell fanfare to the heroically unhinged, those who lived on the edge of not only society but their own precarious sanity. We will not see their like again.