Word In Your Ear

Pausing occasionally to spark a Senior Service and sink a milk stout, we kick cans down this week’s rock and roll boulevard stopping off at the following hotspots …      … the “Grunge Dripdown”: why Pearl Jam can play 60,000 seaters.   … the Elton Line, the Dury Line, the Bragg Line, the Kirsty Line …. What the London Overgrounds should have been called and why.   ......

If a film director wanted to flag up incoming violence in the late ‘50s, the camera would fall upon a couple of Teds lurking in the street outside. The teenage Keith Richards remembers razors, bike chains and bloodshed at dance halls and there was an infamous Teddy Boy murder on Clapham Common that plunged the nation into frantic, media-led moral panic. Max Décharné sets out to reclaim the Teds fr...

Guy Garvey and Elbow start touring the UK in May and he looks back here at the first shows he saw growing up in Bury in the ’70s - when his five elders introduced him to punk, prog, folk, soul and Elton John - and proudly admits he still doesn’t know the names of the guitar strings. Look out for …   … the secrets of the “Vanity Thrust” and other 21st Century stagecraft.   … the time they...

This week the two-man kayak of curiosity tackles the following rock and roll rapids …   … when was the last time there was a truly universal hit?   … why Waylon Jennings walked out of We Are The World.   ... the story of Everybody’s Talkin’ and Midnight Cowboy.   … why the Beatles’ 1964 American invasion was the biggest surprise party in the world and how the Maysles Broth...

We spun the week’s rock and roll roulette wheel and this is where the balls landed …    … why all rock biopics are worth seeing once.   … ‘demixing’: we spent ages perfecting records. Now we’re unperfecting them.   … the adorable hand-drawn flyer the 15 year-old Robert Plant made for his band Blacksnake Moan 60 years ago – “the weirdest, wildest sound in R&B!”   … are...

Our piercing Hubble Telescope Of Truth scans the rock and roll heavens to see what new patterns emerge, among them …   … running into Rod Stewart at a friend’s funeral.   … the priceless spectacle of rock critics dancing.   ... Prefab Sprout and the fine art of bathos – “We were songbirds, we were Greek Gods, we were singled out by fate/We were quoted out of context - it was great!”...

 Applying our patent ACME wheat/chaff separator to the rock and roll cornfield, this week’s podcast reaps the following harvest ….   … Stray, Budgie, Fat Mattress, Atomic Rooster … ropey bargain-bin fixtures reborn as costly and collectible vinyl classics.   … Neil Or No Neil: Let’s Impeach the President, The Lone Ranger And Tonto Fistfight in Heaven … spot the fake Shakey song titl...

In March Graham Gouldman and 10cc are coming your way and here he talks to David Hepworth about: - seeing Cliff and the original Shadows at his first live show - playing live in the sixties, when a band would plug all three guitars into the same amp - where he keeps his fifty guitars - what’s going on when it all goes quiet on the 10.c.c. tour bus - the songs you have to play for the audience - th...

We stuck a coin in this week’s jukebox of news and cranked up the volume and these were the tracks that got played …   … fond memories of Annie Nightingale at Radio One and Whistle Test.   … the delicious melancholy of Sunday night pop radio.   … how David Gilmour writes songs.   … sex, clothes, gangsters: the eternal allure of Bonnie & Clyde.   … how the first Police...

Jim Gordon played the drums on Wichita Lineman, Good Vibrations, the Byrds’ Mr Tambourine Man and hundreds of other recordings we all own and worked with pretty much everyone including Steely Dan, Tom Waits, Tom Petty, Randy Newman, John Lennon, Frank Zappa and the Everlys. He toured with Delaney & Bonnie and Joe Cocker’s Mad Dogs And Englishmen package and was a member of Derek & the Domi...

Leaping across puddles, walking between the raindrops, its collar turned to the cold and damp, our weekly podcast builds a defence against the rigours of the rock and roll weather and offers shelter from the storm. Remain warm and dry with the following …   … the 11 musicians who turned down a Knighthood, MBE etc.   … why Dylan & the Band’s 1974 tour set the template for all tours to...

Amid the detritus of tangerine peel, half-eaten chocolates, broken toys and jars of home-brewed chutney beneath the rock and roll Christmas tree we found various items still unwrapped and awaiting this week’s podcast, among them …   … how to create the Dylan Blonde On Blonde shuffle in under two minutes.   … “Middlesex Hepworth!” David’s triumph on University Challenge and an inside view...

We check this week’s luggage on the rock and roll baggage carousel and remove the following items for inspection …    … The People v OJ Simpson and why it’s worth re-watching.   … the only two convincing films about magazines and journalism.   … bands that look like mini-cab drivers.   … David’s upcoming appearance on University Challenge (cue the voice of Roger Tilling: “...

This week’s wheat/chaff separation process sifts the following from the rock and roll cornfield …   … Tony Secunda, his gangsterish suits and the publicity stunt that backfired spectacularly.   … our old Word magazine pal Rob Fitzpatrick talking about the Japanese composer Michiru Aoyama who's released an album a day since December 2021, each 20 minutes 20 seconds long. And the role of s...

Mal Evans was the Beatles’ right-hand man, their bouncer, bodyguard, gofer, chauffeur, drug-runner, roadie, fellow party animal, confidante and friend. Along with Neil Aspinall he was the man who allowed the band to function daily and catered to their every need. He was such a central cog in the machine that Ringo declared, “now Mal’s left, the Beatles are really over.” Mal’s son delivered his arc...

Belfast author and old pal of the pod Stuart Bailie joins us to remember the lost captain of the good ship Pogues and we touch on Shane’s “feral” early life and the character he constructed to keep the world at bay; his place in the Irish literary pantheon, his intelligence worn lightly and Joycean use of language; the night they drank the proceeds from Fairytale Of New York; why the band’s St Pat...

Pauline Murray kept a diary when she and Penetration were on the punk rock frontline and her vivid and emotional memories appear in a new memoir, Life’s A Gamble, beautifully illustrated with personal photos, press cuttings, late ‘70s gig listings and other lovingly archived memorabilia. It teleports you back to a time when pop music made daily headlines and battles were lost and won in fragrant d...

Glen Matlock came to our live podcast recording at London’s 21Soho at the end of November and lit up the audience with tales from his new memoir ‘Triggers’, stories of his early life in the late ‘50s and ‘60s, his brief and riotous shift in the Sex Pistols and his colourful adventures since. The full cast list includes Jeff “Skunk” Baxter, the DJ Mike Raven, Gary Glitter, John Peel, Kenneth Horne,...

You wonder why her life hasn’t been made into a movie. Jenny Boyd’s mother had so many children she didn’t realise her daughter had quit school and become a model. The world of London clubs and fashion magazines was the start of 60 years’ close observation of rock stars in every context leading, eventually, to the publication of ‘Icons of Rock’, her interviews with 65 musicians. Among the highligh...

We ran our metal detector over this week’s rugged rock and roll terrain and dug deep when it beeped. Among those prime locations …   … the secret of Top Gear’s golden age.   … is Bob Dylan a “cold weather concept”?   … why Holger Czukay’s ‘Movies’ is a pivotal record.   … Daryl Hall’s restraining order on John Oates: inter-band fall-out scales brave new heights.   … the gr...

The week’s rock and roll luggage was put through the scanner by our sharp-eyed security chiefs and the following items kept back for scrutiny … … 82 year-old jazzer in lucrative samples windfall! … is there a more excruciating ‘mum’ moment than the 12 year-old Elijah Blue Allman’s in the Cher video If I Could Turn Back Time? …. the staggering sum total of what the Beatles did on 30 July 1963. … “M...

As if by some magical alignment of the planets, the  Specials, Madness and the Beat were all listening to the same music and developing the same look at precisely the same time, though completely unaware of each other. And when they started releasing records, the 10 year-old Daniel Rachel was transfixed. What happen next is recorded in his hectic and engrossing book, Too Much Too Young: the 2...

Jude Rogers – writer, broadcaster, old pal of the pod - first heard Kirsty MacColl when she was nine and felt a connection ever since. She’s just written the sleevenotes for ‘See That Girl’, the best, most diverse and exquisitely packaged compilation of her music ever assembled, an eight CD box-set of singles, rarities, unheard songs, live and Glastonbury appearances, demos, BBC sessions and colla...

This week’s winning hand from the rock and roll card deck includes …   … a silver salute to musicians who don’t dye their hair.   … did Al Pacino play Phil Spector? Roger Daltrey as Franz Liszt? Was Gary Oldman Joe Strummer?   … rock stars you’d swap lives with.   … the “theme-park-ification” of pop music.   … the mysteries of rock and roll are slowly evaporating. As Tom W...

Slade were as revolutionary as T. Rex or Roxy Music, Daryl Easlea points out. At one stage they were outselling Bowie and Bolan. They were the band that hauled the sedentary early ‘70s audience to its feet. The sound of the Ramones was built around ‘Slade Alive!’ and you can feel them in the bones of the Pistols and Oasis. We talk here to Daryl about his funny, energetic, nostalgic and affectionat...