Best-Selling Biographer Tony Fletcher to Publish Memoir
TROUSER PRESS TO PUBLISH
POW!
WHEN UK POP WENT PUNK 1980-1984
A MEMOIR BY TONY FLETCHER
AUGUST 18,2026
“TONY WRITES WITH THE ENERGY OF THE MUSIC HE LOVES AND KNOWS.
FORWARD MOTION: IT’S THE LIFE HE’S LIVED.”
– JOHNNY MARR
“POW! IS QUITE AN EXTRAORDINARY ACHIEVEMENT, AT THE VERY LEAST FOR SHOWING THAT TONY’S MEMORIES ARE AS DETAILED AND FULL AS IF THESE THINGS HAPPENED JUST LAST WEEK. MOST AUTO-BIOGRAPHIES SKIM OVER THE BAD BITS WITH A WRY EYE,
A “WHOOPS” WITH A GRIN, BUT TONY HAS NO SUCH TONE.
HIS GODS ARE AS SLAMMED AS THEY ARE REVERED, BY SHOWING BOTH
THEIR HUMANITY AND THEIR HUMAN-NESS, THEIR OWN FAULTS AND PROBLEMS.”
– HUGO BURNHAM, GANG OF FOUR
Before authoring 11 books, including best-selling biographies of Who drummer Keith Moon, R.E.M. and the Smiths, Tony Fletcher was a teenage music magazine publisher in his native England. But, with a degree of industry that sounds absolutely exhausting, he also ran a record label, interviewed rock stars, led a band, promoted concerts, worked as an on-air TV interviewer — and still found time for romance.
Fletcher chronicled the early days of his life and career in Boy About Town (2013), but had enough extraordinary experiences left over for this colorful and engaging memoir.
1980–’84 was an explosive time in British rock, as the disruptive energy of bands like the Clash and Sex Pistols gave way to more sophisticated and chart-friendly genres and bands. Fletcher was on the front lines, running a record label with the Jam’s Paul Weller, attending all the important concerts and meeting the top acts, many of whom became MTV regulars: Madness, Dexy’s Midnight Runners, Wham!, Echo & the Bunnymen, Killing Joke, Adam and the Ants, the Smiths and more. Then there’s the time he interviewed Paul McCartney…
This is a coming-of-age story, the tale of a naïve young man in a cultural whirlwind who learns some hard lessons about business, journalism, love and sex – all the while trying to get his own band a record deal.
From POW!:
When the encores had subsided and the crowd had dispersed, Richard and I walked back into the city centre in the confident knowledge that we would soon be sipping pints in the comfortable confines of the Piccadilly Hotel. There turned out to be only one problem with this plan: it was a Saturday night, the city centre was heaving, and the Piccadilly had proper bouncers at the front door.
“You staying here, lads?”
“Um, no. But…”
“Then you can’t come in.”
“But the Jam are expecting us.”
“Got a tour pass?”
“Um, no. But…”
“Scarper.”
“But really, the Jam told us to stop by. You can ask them.”
“No, I can’t mate. You think I was born yesterday? Now bugger off.”
We hung around for a few minutes in the hope that John Weller or Kenny Wheeler would pop out to look for us, but chances were slim, we had to admit, that anyone connected with the Jam was giving much thought to our whereabouts at this moment of the post-gig piss-up.
We moved on to the nearby Piccadilly Railway station, where we learned that a cheap-ticket milk train would get us home around dawn if we could scrounge up the money. But that was not going to happen, either — as Richard learned when he visited the police station within the railway station, politely explained our situation in the hope that we’d be given the funds from whatever rainy day jar the local coppers kept pennies in to send Cockneys back where they came from, and was instead shown the door with a not rudely dismissive Mancunian “good luck, lads.”
It having turned to November in the midnight hour, we were now cold as well as hungry and broke and tired. We trekked back to the Piccadilly Hotel, where we opted to do what seemed very Jimmy-from-Quadrophenia-like under the circumstances: we huddled down outside the back of the hotel, next to some warm air vents. This approach proved successful for all of about ten minutes, until hotel staff opened up the door to throw out the evening’s rubbish, saw some human rubbish in the process, and told us to move on.
We then had what seemed like the bright idea of returning to the Apollo, figuring maybe someone in the road crew would recognise us and take pity on us (though to what end we hadn’t figured). We walked the 30 minutes back down to Ardwick, only to find that the venue was shut: had we really expected anything else?
ADVANCE PRAISE FOR POW!
“Tony Fletcher, one of the great post-punk inspirational writers and thinkers: his fanzine Jamming!inspired me to start Creation. POW! is his story of that period. Take a bow Tony, you always were a cool chap.”
– Alan McGee, author of Creation Records: Riots, Raves and Running a Label
“What makes POW! special is that it captures the early ’80s UK music storm not from the top of the industry but from knee height, through the eyes of a 16-year-old who had somehow blundered into the middle of it.”
– Mark Jay, author of The Nudniks of 1977
“Tony writes with the energy of the music he loves and knows. Forward motion: it’s the life he’s lived.”
– Johnny Marr, author of Set the Boy Free: The Autobiography
“POW! is quite an extraordinary achievement, at the very least for showing that Tony’s memories are as detailed and full as if these things happened just last week. Most auto-biographies skim over the bad bits with a wry eye, a “whoops” with a grin, but Tony has no such tone. His gods are as slammed as they are revered, by showing both their humanity and their human-ness, their own faults and problems.”
– Hugo Burnham, Gang of Four
“Fletcher’s POW! is one of those brilliant memoirs that reveals the stories behind all those pieces that many of us remember from his precocious journalism in Jamming! and The Face, etc, as well as the inside skinny
on running a record label with Paul Weller. It’s a fascinating insider account of
the British music business in that wonderful early ’80s era.”
– Pat Gilbert, author of Passion Is a Fashion: The Real Story of the Clash
“Tony’s compulsively readable memoir takes me right along with him on his
youthful adventures in grimy early ’80s London and beyond.”
– Dan Epstein, author of Now You’re One of Us: The Incredible Story of Redd Kross
ABOUT TONY FLETCHER:
Tony Fletcher is the author of eleven books, including best-selling biographies of Keith Moon, the Smiths, and R.E.M., a memoir, a novel, and more. As a London teenager, he started a fanzine called Jamming! in 1977, followed by a record label of the same name. He moved to New York in the late 1980s. Fletcher has played in bands, promoted concerts, DJed, written for numerous publications, hosted podcasts, and appeared on and/or produced TV and radio shows. His hobbies include running mountains, from the Catskills to the Himalayas, and any points in between. He writes twice weekly at tonyfletcher.substack.com.