When UK Punk Went Pop - The Jam, Madness, Fanzines, The Face & more

When UK Punk Went Pop - The Jam, Madness, Fanzines, The Face & more

Author: Rock n Roll Book Club September 7, 2026 Duration: 46:59

Tony Fletcher joins us to talk about his new book POW!: When UK Punk Went Pop, 1980-84.


Starting with his Jammin’ fanzine at age 13, by the time he is 14 Tony writes a letter to Paul Weller & receives a reply. 


He is invited to RAK Studios in London whereThe Jam are making what becomes All Mod Cons.


He begins a relationship with The Jam & amongst other tales nearly ends up with the famous WHAM! Roy Lichtenstein guitar from the Start! video, his band Apocalypse open for the band air their final gigs at Wembley Arena & in Brighton. 


Concurrently Tony is also writing for The Face magazine & is dispatched to Nottingham with Madness, the thinking being they may open up to a 16 year old rather than an established music writer. 


Tony puts on early gigs for his band Apocalypse along with other bands including The Birthday Party at The Africa Centre in Soho. 


He has a ringside seat for the end of The Jam & shortly after Paul Weller simply gives him the Jamming record label they had founded together. 




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Hosted, Produced & Edited by Simon Cardwell

Music by Andy Maxwell


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The Music Maps Podcast from the Rock n Roll Book Club isn't your typical music show. It's an audio expedition where geography is the guide. Every episode starts with a specific location-a city, a venue, a forgotten roadside attraction-and uses that place as a launchpad to explore the sounds, stories, and scenes connected to it. You might find yourself deep in the blues clubs of Chicago one week and tracing the underground punk threads of a small European town the next. The conversations are wide-ranging, connecting the dots between iconic artists and obscure movements, all anchored to a point on the map. Listening to this podcast feels like adding a new, richly detailed pin to a global atlas of musical influence. It’s about the context behind the chords and the cultural soil from which genres grow. The result is a continuously evolving, deeply human portrait of how music and place are inextricably linked, one fascinating destination at a time.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 50

Music Maps Podcast
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