Tony Fletcher launched Jamming! when he was 13, wrote for the Face at 16, ran a label with Paul Weller at 17 and a year later was presenting the Tube. And was in a band signed to EMI. If anyone did more as a teenager, we want to meet them. It’s all in his coming-of-age memoir ‘Pow! When UK Punk Went Pop 1980-84’ - discussed here - which touches on …
…the speed, the possibilities and the riches of success in the early ‘80s – and how it felt to be at the heart of it
… “I knew nothing about running a label – and then discovered Paul Weller didn’t either”
… Madness being interviewed by “spiky-haired, Harrington-jacketed, Ben-Sherman-shirted me”
… when confidence meets ignorance
… when bands went from selling 2,000 records to 20,000 and, in America, 200,000: “Phil Oakey always carried £500 in cash”
… the research meetings that launched the Tube and his two-minute audition
… the day Leslie Ash called in sick and he covered for her on live TV
… Pete Townshend, 35, convinced the Who were finished
... discovering the inner circle within the inner circle
… “to the Rainbow for the Mod Revival all-dayer!”
… and memories of Wham!, Paula Yates and Pete Wylie and what he learnt from running labels and magazines.
Order copies of ‘Pow! When UK Punk Went Pop 1980-84’ here:
US: https://www.trouserpressbooks.com/pow
UK: https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/pow-when-uk-punk-went-pop-1980-84-tony-fletcher/74b193de4c1dee68
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