I'm Not with the Man

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? Like vividly plumed birds of paradise whose habitat is gone, they're practically extinct. In their place? The communal voice of the on-trend musical activist, forever saying and doing The Right Thing. The opposite, in fact, of what we used to know as the free-wheelin' rock 'n' roll nutter...

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. The true radicals and loose cannon lunatics who pandered to zero PC tropes, and even less societal rules, determined to live their worst lives.

I'm Not With The Man is the freaky flipside to her 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, from a fragile Evan Dando to a furious Thom Yorke... and many, many more.

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