Word In Your Ear

With Mark Ellen in foreign parts David Hepworth and Alex Gold light cigars, pass the port in the correct direction and discuss….. …..the fact that there is only one way to play a Beatles song and that is the way the Beatles did it. …..the chances that Taylor Swift is reaching her imperial phase and nobody is prepared to tell her what she really needs to hear. ….the very good reason that all contem...

We lobbed the feathered arrows of enquiry at the rock and roll dartboard this week and these got the highest scores …   … rock stars v the new league of the Super-Rich.   … package tours of the mid-‘60s – eight acts, an interval, a compere plus God Save the Queen.   … ‘Hits, Flops and Other Illusions’ by Edward Zwick and the fantastic tale about arrogance, money-squandering and Juli...

Neil’s an old friend from our days back at Smash Hits in the early ‘80s. The first Pet Shop Boys demos were played on the office tape machine, though he was a bit self-conscious about “the one with the rap on it”. He’s always had a journalistic capacity for story-telling, remembering everything in famously entertaining detail, and we had so much material from this reunion we turned it into a two-p...

Richard Thompson first appeared onstage aged 14 playing Beatles covers in a school group “so bad we were pelted with pennies”. Sixty years later his range of operations includes touring solo and with his band, occasional reunions with Fairport Convention, residencies on Adriatic cruise ships and running a Guitar Camp in the Catskill Mountains (along with his sons and grandson). Much has he seen an...

Neil’s an old friend from our days back at Smash Hits in the early ‘80s. The first Pet Shop Boys demos were played on the office tape machine, though he was a bit self-conscious about “the one with the rap on it”, and he’s one of the few people who’s seen the music press from every angle - as a reader in the ‘70s, as a writer and interviewer and as a musician on its front covers. We had so much gr...

We lobbed the cracked wooden ball of enquiry at the rock and roll coconut shy this week and a few choice items dropped off their perch, among them … … was Kate Bush ‘the Queen of Prog’?   … ELP, Black Sabbath and Deep Purple playing to 350,000 people on a Speedway track.   … the three things that sparked the Abba revival.   … the Further Adventures of Desmond and Molly Jones, Mean M...

We’ve applied our celebrated sheep/goats separation technique to the rock and roll pasture and shepherded the following into this week’s pod …   … Beyoncé and why it’s hard to connect with songs written by committee.   … are we too old for biopics?   … Marvel films, the Arctic Monkeys and other things you either love or avoid.     … reviewing Human Touch and Luck...

Paul Cook’s post-Pistols band the Professionals were once, rather surprisingly, on the cover of Smash Hits - “the pinnacle of our success!” – and they’re including the 100 Club on their upcoming tour, the location of another career highlight. He talks to us here about how the first time he played live was also the Pistols’ first appearance (Saint Martin’s College of Art - “utter chaos”), how their...

exas are touring in the autumn and she talks to us here about what’s required to make it all look easy, a conversation that includes …    … why working in a Glaswegian hair salon was the perfect preparation for pop stardom.   … the difference between the first second onstage and everything that follows.    … the advantage of being a singer with an instrument.   &...

The all-seeing telescope of truth scanned this week’s rock and roll heavens and noticed a few patterns emerge, among them …   … the real story of the writing of Layla and who nicked what from where. And who didn’t get paid.   … why Sally Grossman was on the cover of Bringing It All Back Home.     … album sleeves with overflowing ashtrays that screamed ‘welcome to my bohemi...

Phil Manzanera – who thought “every day in the band felt like Christmas” – has just published his memoir, Revolución to Roxy, and talked to us about it in front of a rammed and captivated audience at London’s 21Soho, an evening so full of detail, intrigue and revelation we’re putting it out as two podcasts. This is the second. He lifts the bonnet of the Roxy Music “art collective” in its various l...

Phil Manzanera – whose relatives include a Colombian pirate, a spy and an Italian opera musician - has just published his memoir, Revolución to Roxy, and talked to us about it in front of a packed and enthralled house at London’s 21Soho, a life so fascinating, detailed and colourful we’re releasing the conversation as a two-part podcast. Here’s Part One which looks back at an exotic childhood in H...

Fish has announced a Farewell Tour in 2025. “I’ve been there, done that and sold the t-shirt.” He’s moving to a croft on a remote Scottish island with nesting eagles, a flock of sheep named after the Hibernian FC team of 1972 and part-ownership of what’s just been voted “the best beach in the world”. Getting there is like the journey in Brigadoon. This covers a wide range of bases, among them … &n...

Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me) was a slow-paced, vicious dirge about the band members who forsook and betrayed him which magically evolved into what appeared to be an optimistic love song, a radio staple that never stopped selling. David and Mark remembered its transformation. Subscribe to Word In Your Ear on Patreon for early - and ad-free - access to all of our content, plus a whole load mor...

Various items set off the alarm in the rock and roll bag-check this week and were hauled back for closer inspection, among them …   … when did records first try to sound like the past?   … why Karl Wallinger and Robbie Williams fell out over She’s the One.   ... how Marillion and Chuck D changed the digital landscape.   … the only word for the sound of Free is “lascivious”. &nb...

Stephen Fall wrote reviews of his records, one a day, to make him a better listener. A decade later he published them in a book so colossal that we drop it on a desk to prove it’s passed the Boff Test. ‘Reviewing My Record Collection: 3,333 Albums from A to Zuma’ is a laudable labour of love, records he bought years ago and revisited, records he found in charity shops and took a punt on, records w...

Arthur Brown – enduring psychedelic godfather – is out on tour again 57 years after first performing Fire in a flaming metal crown. He’s nearly 82. This is the most old-school podcast we’ve ever done, talk of seeing Salvador Dali in his audience in a Paris nightclub, jazz bands on the back of trucks, his grandmother’s hotel being bombed in WW2, the birth of Flower Power, gigs at the UFO club, Pala...

Suzi Ronson was working in a hairdressers in Beckenham in 1970 when a Mrs Jones dropped in for a shampoo and set talking gaily about her son, “an artistic boy who plays guitar and piano”. The same son who’d had a hit with Space Oddity and occasionally drifted down the High Road in a dress. Within weeks she’d become the first rock stylist, transforming Bowie’s hair, image and stage clothes and laun...

Nutritious items on the rock and roll tasting menu this week include …   … the curious life of Tom Verlaine, his grocery cart and his 50,000 books.     … was March 9 1984 the worst week ever for the British album charts?   … what all great records have in common.   … Yesterday’s news today! ‘Soundies’ at the cinema and the Scopitone colour video jukebox.   … why...

Caught in the piercing super-trouper of perusal this week …   ... the BRITS 2024, a howling embarrassment.   … Medieval Beatles! She Came In Through the Privy Window, Everybody’s Got Something To Hide Except Me And My Kestrel, Comely Rita, I’m Happy Just To Joust With You …   … the wisdom of Tony Hancock.   … The Last Dinner Party and other ‘art concepts’.   … the Pattie B...

Henry Normal set up Baby Cow Productions with Steve Coogan, co-wrote the Royle Family, Coogan’s Run and Mrs Merton and produced Gavin & Stacy and Red Dwarf. He’s been a central plank in British comedy since the early ‘90s and, throughout it all, developed his own stage show built around poems and stories. He’s touring the UK with Brian Bilston. This podcast is full of hard-won insight into wha...

Steve Howe talks to us from the old house and studio in Devon where they rehearsed ‘The Yes Album’ in 1970. He’s been recording there for 54 years and is part of the current line-up about to set out around Europe. He looks back here on what he’s learnt from 60 years onstage and mentions …     … the effect of seeing Chuck Berry, Carl Perkins and The Animals in 1964.   … playing...

As this week’s rock and roll steeplechase thunders out over the jumps, the following runners and riders make it past the post …   … “First he changed music. Then he changed the world!” and other over-cooked biopic sells.   … Billy Joel returns by the miracle of Artificial Ignorance.   … what you learn from visiting rock stars’ childhood homes.   … what’s Malta done to deserve a...

The Reverend Richard Coles is back on tour with his ‘Borderline National Trinket’ show and talks to us from his home in Sussex where he’s “the only person in the village who hasn’t won a BAFTA”. This looks back at his life – “a CV like the work of a fantasist” - and what he’s learnt from 50 years of watching various types of stage entertainment and playing to audiences ranging from the Wollaston O...

Jah Wobble - aka John Wardle - wrote ‘Dark Luminosity: Memoirs of a Geezer’ in 2009. It’s just been reworked, expanded and republished and it’s well worth reading, full of detail about growing up in the East End, unexploded bombs, pickling factories, grim schooldays, record shops and clubs, the bands he saw and his arrival at Kingsway College where he met John Lydon and Sid Vicious and became a co...