Twenty-two in '22: Boy About Town

I've set myself modest reading targets in each of the last three years and failed every time (I managed 17 books in '19, 11 in '20 and 18 in '21), so I'm determined to read twenty two books in 2022. I'll review them all here.

8/22: Boy About Town by Tony Fletcher

The blurb:

As a boy, Tony Fletcher frequently felt out of place. Yet somehow he secured a ringside seat for one of the most creative periods in British cultural history.

Boy About Town tells the story of the bestselling author’s formative years in the pre- and post-punk music scenes of London, counting down, from fifty to number one: attendance at seminal gigs and encounters with musical heroes; schoolboy projects that became national success stories; the style culture of punks, mods and skinheads and the tribal violence that enveloped them; life as a latchkey kid in a single-parent household; weekends on the football terraces in a quest for street credibility; and the teenage boy’s unending obsession with losing his virginity.

Featuring a vibrant cast of supporting characters (from school friends to rock stars), and built up from notebooks, diaries, interviews, letters, and issues of his now legendary fanzine Jamming!, Boy About Town is an evocative, bittersweet, amusing and wholly original account of growing up and coming of age in the glory days of the 1970s.

The review: this book was passed to me by The Man Of Cheese; he attached a note that observed "Some parts of this struck a chord with out younger (and finer!) years." And that's all the review really needs to say, for whilst this is Tony Fletcher's memoir, the joy in reading it comes from recognition and identification. Okay, Tony is six or so years older than TMOC and myself, so the bands and scenes discussed in Boy About Town don't align exactly with those that we enjoyed in our youth but the feelings, the interests, the passions - they are pretty much identical. Reading this book, then, gives Proustian rush after Proustian rush.

For someone more famed for writing highly regarded rock biographies, Fletcher still hits the mark writing about himself. There is a blunt honesty in his recollections of youth and teenage years - no sugar-coating, no sanitising. This book is all the better for it. And of course we can all identify with falling in love with bands - The Who first, for Tony, and then The Jam. That feeling of them being your band - we've all been there, haven't we? (Who am I kidding - I'm still there).

What distinguishes Fletcher's memoir, indeed sets it apart from other "my youth in fandom" books, is the turn his young life took when he decided to start a fanzine. It's easy, now, to think of fanzines as little more than A4 photocopied blogs, but they were so much more important then, when the music press was so narrow, and other exposure (TV and radio) narrower still. Tony started Jamming! at 13, running off a hundred copies on a school mimeograph. By the time it wound up, Jamming! sold 30,000 copies a month. Incredible.

What's even more incredible is the access the young Fletcher got to his heroes. He met Keith Moon, interviewed Pete Townshend. And then there was Paul - an exchange of letters led to friendship with Weller, and the sort of access to the band that saw Fletcher and his mates hanging out at the recording studio with the band, even hearing new material before the mainstream music press. And as a thirteen year old fanzine editor, routinely finding his way backstage at all manner of gigs, in all manner of venues - again, incredible. An astonishing time to be a music fan. Oh, and a parallel thread tells of the author's aspirations with his own band - he was a very busy young man.

For all the amazing experiences Fletcher has growing up in the seventies, the more mundane or regular aspects of his teen life are also captured - football, school, girls, parties, drinking and smoking, fighting, all of it. I rather suspect this will appeal to male readers more than female, but it's all relatable, and harkens back to a simpler, happier time. I loved reading it, even though it also made me feel old, stale and well past my prime.

As I hinted earlier, Fletcher went on from his fanzine beginnings to establish a career writing, including pretty much definitive works on Keith Moon and REM. He also (eventually) had minor success with his band, Apocalypse, enough to warrant a "best of" from Cherry Red some years later. My only real criticism of this book then is that it leaves unfinished business, ending as it does with Fletcher playing a valedictory gig at his school as he finishes the fifth form, and then finally getting laid at a party. But there's more I want to know - how did Jamming! go on to get so big, for starters? What happened with the independent record label he set up and ran with/for Paul Weller? And how did Apocalypse go from playing pubs and a school hall to releasing singles? All that and more. I guess what I'm saying is, I enjoyed Boy About Town so much, I'm ready for volume two.

The bottom line: a very enjoyable read that is equal parts nostalgia-inducing memoir and first-hand account of a fascinating time in modern music - bring on the next instalment!

Since everything online is rated these days: ★★★★★☆

Footnote: you can read more about Tony, his books and the history of Jamming! at tonyfletcher.net plus, after not quite breaking through with Apocalypse, he's making music again, as part of The Dear Boys. Yes, he remains that much of a Moon fan...