EP156: David Rowe - Super-Fan turns Merch-Man...

On this episode of the podcast, we take a journey from The Jam to Paul Weller Solo via two super-fans... and a wonderful love story...

David Rowe, and his partner, Jo White, have been to around 450 live shows and have some incredible stories and connections over the past 45 years... including joining the merchandise team for The Style Council and Paul Weller Solo!.

David met Jo at school in St.Austell (double history) when she moved to Cornwall from Bounds Green, North London in 1978. They got the same bus to and from school (Jo to Pentewan, and David to Mevagissey). As you'll hear on the podcast, Jo introduced David to The Jam and they formed a great friendship through the music and live performances.

Jo moved back to London in March 1984 when she started her nursing career in Paediatric Intensive Care.

In April 1984, David started working as a Postman in St.Austell but left when he didn’t have enough annual leave to do the 2nd Style Council tour in October 1984!.

David moved to London in 1985 and inspired by messages & campaigning from Paul Weller... he worked for The BUAV (The British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection) , Greenpeace UK and then Amnesty International, where he worked for 26 years....

In 1985, David and Jo started doing ad-hoc merchandising work for Brian Hawkins, who had done The Jam’s merchandise before doing The Style Council.

It started off just selling programmes after gigs and gradually they helped to set up and travelled with Brian, culminating in working on the early Paul Weller solo tours and the U.S. gigs in December 1991 and all Weller solo UK tours until the end of 1992 when Brian sadly lost the contract.

Their only stipulation on doing the merch was that they clocked off at show time and came back out to sell after the encore!.

David says "We’ve attended about 450 Shows (The Jam, The Style Council & Weller solo). Jo did a few more Jam shows than me. We did every Style Council UK tour date ( we both missed the Manchester Apollo gig on 12 October 1984 after the Wembley rail crash and I missed two more whilst doing The Communards ‘Red’ tour in 1987)."

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