Sylvia Patterson
{{Short description|Scottish musical journalist}}
Sylvia Patterson (born 8 March 1965) is a Scottish author and music journalist. A former contributor to Smash Hits and the NME, she is the author of the memoirs I'm Not With The Band (2016) and Same Old Girl (2023).
Life
Patterson grew up in Perth, Scotland, the youngest of five children. Her father, an accountant, had been a Japanese prisoner of war on the Burma railway.{{cite book |last=Patterson |first=Sylvia |year=2016 |title=I'm Not With The Band |publisher=Sphere |isbn=978-0-7515-5868-5 |page=12}} Her mother worked as a psychiatric nurse.
Career
Her writing career began straight from school. She worked on various magazines for Dundee publisher D.C. Thomson. In February 1986 she moved to London after successfully applying for a staff writer job on her favourite magazine, Smash Hits.{{cite news| last=Ellen | first=Barbara | title=Sylvia Patterson: 'The famous can be fairly obnoxious' | url=https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/jun/12/sylvia-patterson-interview-not-with-the-band-smash-hits | work=The Observer | date=12 June 2016 | language=en}} Inspired by her mentor, Tom Hibbert, who interviewed her for the job,{{cite book |last=Patterson |first=Sylvia |year=2016 |title=I'm Not With The Band |publisher=Sphere |isbn=978-0-7515-5868-5 |page=35}} Patterson was a key contributor in shaping the magazine's much-celebrated irreverent, comic style during its mid- to late-1980s sales peak of a million copies a fortnight. By the early 1990s, Patterson had left Smash Hits to work freelance, going on to become a prolific contributor to the NME, The Face{{cite web| title=The Face - Sylvia Patterson| url=https://theface.com/contributors/sylvia-patterson | work=The Face| access-date=3 April 2023}} and, by the late 2000s, Q magazine, as well as writing for broadsheets and women’s magazines including Glamour,{{cite magazine|url=https://www.irishtimes.com/business/media-and-marketing/glamour-hovers-on-the-brink-of-the-dumper-as-magazine-fades-to-digital-1.3249859|title='Glamour' hovers on the brink of the 'Dumper' as magazine fades to digital|first=Laura|last=Slattery|newspaper=The Irish Times|date=10 October 2017|access-date=3 April 2023}} The Guardian, the Sunday Times and as a weekly columnist for Scotland’s Sunday Herald.
As one of the most prominent female pop journalists of her generation, Patterson is often cited as an inspiration by those who followed her, including Miranda Sawyer (who started at Smash Hits two years after Patterson in 1988), Caitlin Moran and Jude Rogers.{{cite news| last=Rogers | first=Jude | title=This Happened | url=https://thequietus.com/articles/20560-sylvia-patterson-miranda-sawyer-jude-rogers-interview | work=The Quietus | date=12 July 2016 | language=en}} Her radio and TV appearances include BBC Radio 4 Woman’s Hour ,{{cite web| title=Woman's Hour| url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07djv5l | work=BBC Radio 4| date=7 June 2016 | language=en}} BBC4's Top Of The Pops: The Story of 1986, and BBC1's The One Show as part of its 2018 retrospective Smash Hits celebration.
Memoirs
In 2016 she published her memoir I'm Not With The Band (its title a play on Pamela Des Barres’ I'm With The Band).{{cite magazine|url=https://www.vice.com/en/article/65zx75/sylvia-patterson-interview-im-not-with-the-band|title=This Journalist Lived Every Rock 'n' Roll Cliché You Could Dream Of|first=Eve|last=Barlow|magazine=Vice|date=7 July 2016|access-date=3 April 2023}} It follows Patterson’s journalistic career from the 1980s to the present (revisiting her classic interviews with Madonna,{{cite news| title= NME presents Madonna the Head of Light Entertainment | url= https://www.nme.com/news/music/madonna-623-1393493 | work=NME | date=3 Feb 1998 | access-date=3 April 2023}} Prince,{{cite news| last=Smith | first=Thomas| title=Prince: His Best Quotes From His Final NME Interview | url=https://www.nme.com/blogs/nme-blogs/prince-his-best-lines-from-his-final-nme-interview-767567 | work=NME| date=21 April 2017 | language=en}} Eminem, Beyonce, George Michael, Kylie Minogue, Richey Edwards, Amy Winehouse{{cite news| last=Lynskey | first=Dorian | title= Escape Into Pop | url= https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/escape-into-pop/ | work=The Spectator | date=2 July 2016 | access-date=3 April 2023}} and others) as well as her personal experiences growing up as the child of an alcoholic parent, multiple miscarriages and financial insecurity in the face of the gradual collapse of the music magazine industry itself. The book was shortlisted for the Costa Biography Award,{{cite news|url=https://www.costa.co.uk/docs/past-shortlists.pdf// | work=Costa Book Awards | title=Costa Book Awards Past Shortlist (2016) | date=2016 | access-date=3 April 2023}} the Penderyn Music Book Award{{cite news|url=https://www.penderyn.wales/2017/03/09/penderyn-music-book-prize-shortlist-2017// | work=Penderyn Music Book Prize Shortlist | location=Wales | title=Penderyn Music Book Prize Shortlist 2017 | date=March 2017 | access-date=3 April 2023}} and the NME Awards Best Book Of The Year, eventually winning BBC Radio 1 DJ Annie Nightingale's Book Of The Year.{{cite news|url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04lnzhx// | work=BBC Radio 1 Annie Nightingale | location=London | title=Sylvia Patterson Book of the Year | date=December 2016 | access-date=3 April 2023}}
Her second memoir, Same Old Girl, was published in April 2023. Triggered by Patterson's diagnosis of breast cancer in late 2019, it is described as an "unflinching, poignant and gallows-funny odyssey through the mid-life trials we all face".{{cite book| title=Same Old Girl| url=https://www.hachette.co.uk/titles/sylvia-patterson/same-old-girl/9781405554800 | publisher=Hachette| date=January 2023 | isbn=978-1-4055-5480-0 | language=en}}
In addition to her own books, Patterson is the ghostwriter of My Amy: The Life We Shared, the memoir of Amy Winehouse's best friend Tyler James, and a 2021 Sunday Times Book of the Year.{{cite news| last=Segal | first=Victoria | title=Best Rock and Pop Music Books of 2021 | url= https://www.thetimes.com/culture/music/article/best-rock-pop-music-books-2021-pk6zz773z | work=Sunday Times | date=December 2021 | language=en}}
Works
- I'm Not With The Band: A Writer’s Life Lost in Music, (2016, Sphere)
- Same Old Girl: Staying Alive, Staying Sane, Staying Myself, (2023, Fleet)
References
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Category:20th-century British women journalists
Category:21st-century British women journalists
Category:20th-century Scottish journalists
Category:21st-century Scottish journalists
Category:21st-century Scottish memoirists
Category:21st-century Scottish women writers
Category:Writers from Perth, Scotland
Category:British women memoirists
Category:The Guardian journalists
Category:The Sunday Times people
Category:The Herald (Glasgow) people