Perth-born journalist Sylvia Patterson shares unforgettable tales from a career interviewing music’s biggest names
Pete Doherty outside Thames Magistrates Court in January 2007 where he appeared for sentencing for drug possession(Image: FilmMagic via GettyImages)
During a 2006 interview at Pete Doherty’s Hackney home, music journalist Sylvia Patterson found herself witnessing a scene she would never forget. The notorious Babyshambles frontman sat on his bed, took out a crack pipe and began smoking while Patterson sat opposite him on a purple-covered duvet.
Now 61, Sylvia says the encounter remains one of the most extraordinary moments from her 40-year career. “I’d never actually seen anybody smoke crack before…certainly not in an interview situation,” she said. “I didn’t know where to look. There was a used needle in the bathroom, and the whole place was in darkness.”
Sacked from The Libertines in June 2004 by co-frontman Carl Barât, largely due to his escalating heroin and crack addiction, Doherty later showed Sylvia his rehab diary from his time at Arizona’s Meadows clinic in 2005.
Doherty, now 47, had spent time in treatment before returning to London, where his struggles continued. Reflecting on the pages he shared with her, Sylvia says: “He showed me what he’d been writing when he was there, lyrics, poetry. After he got out, he went straight back to London and got straight back on the gear.
“After that, his diary entries were just swirls of his own blood, tapering out to absolutely nothing.”
Sylvia, who lives in Hornsey, north London, with her partner Simon Goddard, 54, has built a career spanning some of the biggest names in music journalism.
She has written for several publications including Smash Hits, NME, Glamour and Q, interviewing stars ranging from Sinead O’Connor to Snoop Dogg. Now, she reveals her behind-the-scenes experiences of rockstar behaviour in her new book, I’m Not With The Man.
“They don’t make them like they used to,” she says of the wide mix of nonconformist characters she’s met. Johnny Marr, who she met in Manchester’s Central Library was ,“physically slight, psychologically robust,” while Adam Ant, who she interviewed in a dingy Camden boozer was “exceptionally attractive.”
Describing the 80s, 90s and noughties as decades filled with “movers, shakers, eccentrics and one-of-a-kinds”, Sylvia returns to Doherty, adding: “He’s a great talent, but misunderstood. He has always, put it this way, done his own thing on his own terms, at great risk to himself.
“He’s very personable, very disarming. He’s really open and he understands the nature of addiction.”
Although when she met back up with Doherty in 2024, she says he was a changed man, the Mirror reports. Sylvia added: “The pandemic did him a massive favour, because the drug supplies were cut off.
“He arrived in the foyer of a hotel with his baby daughter in his arms and his beautiful big dog Gladys was at his feet. He was about three stone heavier than before, but that’s a good thing.”
Sylvia, who was born and raised in Perth, Scotland, began her journalism career straight out of school when she joined the iconic music magazine Smash Hits. She says: “In the early 80s there were no jobs in Scotland, because of Margaret Thatcher, so I was very lucky to get one.
“The first big star I interviewed was Diana Ross, and I was beside myself. I couldn’t keep a straight face. This legend from the 60s, sat right in front of me. She was incredibly gracious, as you would imagine.”
However the Britpop era was her favourite time, with some of her most memorable moments being with Liam Gallagher. She said: “He walked into a room and everyone would look at him. He was strikingly beautiful, and oozed cool, although he still called his mum Peggy every day to keep him grounded.
“Oasis embodied everything that was the spirit of rock and roll. First and foremost, it was the brilliant songs. They wrote music for romantics. As Noel once said to me, ‘Oasis is a celebration of the euphoria of life’. I talked to Liam about that once, and he said, ‘oh, you can tell he reads books’, but replied, ‘to me, Oasis is all about freedom’.”
During a 2010 interview for Q magazine, while Liam was fronting Beady Eye, the singer challenged Sylvia to down a large glass of red wine in one go. She agreed to the dare, only for the situation to quickly get out of hand.
Sylvia says: “I caved and agreed. He did the same. And five collective down-in-ones later, I walked straight into a glass wall, which Liam found hilarious.”
Another music legend who made a lasting impression with Sylvia was Sinead O’Connor. Speaking about the Nothing Compares to You singer, she added: “I met her in the elegant drawing room of a five star hotel in Dublin in 2009, we sat on a white leather sofa suite. Her no-longer shaven head was crowned with a dark, unwashed, shoulder-length bob.
“Because of her look in the late 80s alone, we knew she was a unique individual. Then she opened her mouth to sing. I’ve never heard anything as striking, powerful and bewitching as that.”
Fearlessly using her platform to highlight issues including child abuse, human rights, racism and women’s rights, the singer spent decades speaking out against systemic abuse and cover-ups within the Catholic Church.
In 1992, she made headlines around the world when she tore up a photograph of Pope John Paul II during a live television appearance, protesting against the Vatican’s handling of child sexual abuse allegations.
And she tried to enlist Sylvia’s help in exposing paedophiles, alleging she had evidence of a ring operating at the heart of power. Sylvia recalls: “She was convinced she had evidence.”
The star, who died in 2023, aged 56, clearly made a big impression on Sylvia: “She cared about the bigger picture. She didn’t care if she threw it all away. She wouldn’t have even cared if she had been arrested, and in fact, I think she’d have liked that – it would have made more of a point.”
Another iconic figure Sylvia interviewed was Marianne Faithfull, who died in 2025 at the age of 78. Reflecting on Faithfull’s extraordinary life and career, Sylvia says: “She was an aristocrat who gave it all up and was at the centre of the ’60s counterculture.
“She rejected everything that everyone really craves now – acclaim, success, fame, beauty – and deliberately went to live in a bomb site in Soho to become a heroin junkie, at major risk to herself.
“It’s one of the most extreme stories you’ll ever hear. Keith Richards is an extreme character, but what she did was a lot more extreme than anything he ever did.”
The pair met in 2013 in Belgravia, and by then Faithfull’s only vice was green tea and Marlboro Lights. The singer spoke openly about her romance with Mick Jagger, which was highly publicised during their four years together in 1966 to 1970.
Sylvia says: “She said ‘I hated being famous with Mick. A lot of people can’t take fame and I’m one of them’.”
By 2010, Sylvia believes the wild days of the naughty noughties had given way to a far more predictable and less rebellious music scene.
She says: “The stars I interviewed, Nicky Wire from the Manic Street Preachers, Noel Fielding and his pal Serge from Kasabian , without really prompting it, started talking about the flatlining of culture, and how all the intriguing and really eccentric, oddball, maverick, outsider personalities were disappearing from view all of a sudden.
“And they really were. Without casting any aspersions on Ed Sheeran and Adele, it had become more like that world at that point. They were the new massive stars. And, you just know actually, Adele would be the first one to say, ‘where have all the weirdos gone?’”
With renewed interest in the 1990s and its culture, Sylvia is hopeful that a little more unpredictability and chaos could return to the music world.
She says: “Oasis are back, and arguably bigger than ever. Lady Gaga is a true punk rock spirit. People are clamouring for something real, and raw. So maybe the mavericks will come back too.”
I’m Not with the Man: A Writer’s Life with the Music Mavericks by Sylvia Patterson is published by Fleet, out now in Hardback and eBook. HB RRP £25.
