Tony Fletcher - teenage label boss! – remembers the Jam, the Tube and the ‘80s pop explosion

2026-08-04

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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 Wel...

…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: