Word In Your Ear

Direct from the Government Yard in Trenchtown where, over cornmeal porridge by a log wood fire, the events of the week are gently appraised, among them …   … how Bob Marley, the Walker Brothers, the Byrds, Hendrix, Ramones, Blondie and Nirvana “got the dust of England on their boots”.   … Chappell Roan’s demands for “a living wage” in a business built on inequity.   … why audio book...

The teenage Woody Woodmansey was offered the job of under-foreman in the Vertex spectacle factory in Hull but then got a call from Bowie inviting him to move to London and play drums on his new album - “plus food and somewhere to stay”. It took him all weekend to decide. And involved some cultural readjustment when he did. 56 years later he’s a founding member of Holy Holy and touring the UK in Ma...

In a courageous stand against AI technology, a pair of old lags communing via two cocoa tins and a piece of string attempt to put the rock and roll world to rights. Which this week involves …   … what David saw in the HMV record store in Oxford Street “that shook me to the ground”.   ... music that only works played loud.   … Marianne Faithfull - there’s no middle ground between Sac...

When we get off of this mountain, you know where we want to go? Straight down the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico. While surveying the week’s events as we paddle, which involves …   … the genius of Garth Hudson and the magnificent way he looked - “part lumberjack, part Old Testament prophet, part Brahms.”   … how Glyn Johns invented the sound of the Eagles.   … Carrie Underw...

We put Howard Jones on the cover of Smash Hits in 1983 billed as ‘the Most Promising New Act’ and, 15 albums and 42 years later, he’s about to set out on another tour, a double-bill with ABC. He looks back here at the first shows he ever saw and played which involves … … rehearsing his Live Aid slot backstage to an audience of one: David Bowie.  … pioneering the “one-man show” in the early da...

Another great hero on the podcast! We first heard Andy Fairweather Low with Amen Corner on jukeboxes in the late ‘60s and he’s touring the UK from February. Ten albums and countless collaborations later, he looks back here at teenage life on the psychedelic circuit and the first shows he saw and played, stopping off at …   … the Stones in Cardiff in ’64 - “they opened with Talkin’ ‘Bout You a...

David feels a rant coming on. Mark lights the blue touchpaper, pulls on a tin hat and retires to a safe distance as they consider …   … the US closure of TikTok: has a single governmental act ever had such impact on the music business?   … film posters, Dinky Toys, “obscure vinyls”: the new record stores that are effectively antique shops.     .. why Virtually Parkinson is...

Something happens when he walks out under the lights. He can never predict what but he’s programmed to perform. As he has for over 60 years and will again when he sets out on a 63-date tour in April peppered with stories of an extravagant life and billed as ‘an evening of Francis Rossi songs from the Status Quo songbook and more’.   He looks back here at the acts that showed him the way (Gene...

We both first heard Graham Nash just over 60 years ago when the Hollies’ Just One Look was on the BBC’s swinging Light Programme and we’ve followed him ever since, not least his transformational shift in the late-‘60s from suburban Salford to the wood cabins of Laurel Canyon. He’s touring the UK in October, An Evening of Songs and Stories with Peter Asher in support, and looks back here at the fir...

Though you might hear laughing, spinning, swinging madly across the sun, it is in fact just two old lags reviewing the current events, which this week include …   … the made-up scene in A Complete Unknown which Dylan apparently insisted was included.   … the Day of the Locust: do the LA fires spell the end of the Hollywood Dream?   … why does no-one write songs about world events an...

It’s perishing cold in our frostbitten London HQ but we warmed our toes around a blazing conversational fire and roasted the following chestnuts …   … “the job of pop records is to be better than the year before”.   … the real reason new music tends to sound the same.   … Johnnie Walker – “his voice was his instrument”.   … The Kinks, The Shangri-Las, the Beach Boys, the Suprem...

Among the walnut shells, wrapping paper, dried tangerine peel and broken toys beneath the Christmas Tree Of News we found a few unopened presents, among them …   … Marine Homicide Unit solving murders in Scottish waters or former rock star dumping toxic waste? A crime drama Stackwaddy special.   … Roy Bittan, Duke Ellington: how musical “professors” date back to ragtime.   …’Suzanne...

Deck the halls with beers and Stoli! The nutcracker of scrutiny was applied to this week’s noisettes of news and the following discussed over a glass of port …     ... are a lot of new song catalogues just blogs set to music?   … can any actor be convincing playing someone really famous?   … Robbie Williams’ Better Man: it’s the way forward! Who can his CGI’s monkey play n...

The tremendous Bill Bailey is staging “a magical, musical mystery tour of the mind, along with other pressing matters” for 42 nights in London from December 28, a celebration of what makes us human in an age threatened by AI. There'll be “a laser harp”. There’ll be electronic drum balls played by audience members. There'll be extracts from Kraftwerk’s lost album of children’s songs. He talks to Ma...

The 17 year-old Al Stewart played electric guitar in a dance band in Bournemouth in 1963. When he borrowed an acoustic and sang Masters Of War in the break, he heard the sweet sound of applause. The next night he played three Dylan songs and sensed which way the wind was blowing. He talks here about moving to London, playing at Bunjies and becoming the compere at Les Cousins as his now 60-year car...

  Gary Kemp has been posting reels of his recent visits to old haunts in Soho where he and his early bands used to rehearse, this in the run-up to releasing a third solo album, ‘This Destination’, in January. We talk to him here about how records were made and promoted in the ‘80s and how radically that’s changed today. Which includes …   … “all media is now about getting and keeping peo...

We ran our patent heat-sensing Scrutiniser®️ over the week’s news and here’s what set the bells off …   … are buskers now more expensive live entertainment than Taylor Swift?   … a Dickensian oik in Chapel Market and other riddles of modern etiquette.   … ‘Holiness and horniness’: how Hallelujah rebooted Leonard Cohen and became a one-song industry.   … the teenage self-promoti...

Paddling the three-man conversational kayak across the rock and roll rapids this week involved …   … Olive Mess, Candied Yams, Gorilla Biscuits …? Challenging indie act or seasonal vegan recipe?   … the amount YMCA earned through Donald Trump and why the man who wrote it is complaining.   … Tom Hanks’ valuable words of wisdom.   … Neil Tennant’s favourite bridge in a pop song (...

Joni Mitchell called it “stoking the star-maker machinery behind the popular song”. Every record sent out for review used to come with a press release knocked together by an over-excited PR before terms like “psychedelia” or “prog” had been invented. They were scanned once for the odd fact or quote and usually chucked in the bin. Richard Morton Jack has tracked down scores of these handouts from 1...

Reversing into tomorrow! This week’s news events given a vigorous once-over include …   … what will a Trump guitar be worth in 30 years’ time?   … the average age of a Glastonbury goer and how it sells its TV coverage.     … “the Beatles in America was like Cortez arriving in South America, the clash of two civilizations. How did this film manage to balls the story up so c...

R.E.M. considered themselves missionaries against the prevailing pop culture – no solos, no old-school stagecraft, no printed lyrics, no lip-syncing, no hard-sell videos, no obvious leader – and mapped out a whole new route to international success. Peter Ames Carlin, whose books include biographies of Springsteen, Brian Wilson and Paul Simon, talks to us here about ‘The Name of this Band is R.E.M...

Neil Storey worked in the Island press office in the ‘70s and ‘80s and has set out on mammoth undertaking, to compile a series of gorgeous, album-sleeve-sized books telling the story of virtually every record the label released in its pioneering history and talking to all involved - musicians, producers, designers, photographers, label staff – and collecting old music press ads and ephemera from t...

Danny Baker, the act you’ve known for all these years, is kicking his legs up again in 2025 on a thundering new theatre tour, ‘Aye Aye! Ahoy Hoy!’ “Dead men tell no tales,” he points out, “so we might might as well get ‘em all told now.” This will be another barnstorming one-man circus - as, naturally, is this barrelling conversation with the two of us which collides with the following …   …...

This week’s events piled into a pipe and enthusiastically smoked include …     … our memories of being at the Band Aid recording in Sarm studios, November 25 1984.   … why it was the last dance of the mass media and why nothing could have the same impact now.   … the “household name” that made all the difference.   … the real reason Bob Geldof could be involved. ...

One of our rays of sunshine in the dark days of Lockdown was Toyah and Robert’s Sunday Lunch, fizzing clips of the two of them in their Dorset kitchen, him playing off-brand rock and roll, her singing in extravagant finery, occasionally on an exercise bike. Their version of Metallica’s Enter Sandman got 8.6m views alone. One time they were dressed as bees, another re-staging Swan Lake wearing tutu...