Word In Your Ear

Encountering the cheerful ping-pong bats of conversation this week you’ll find …   … the most unprepossessing rock band on God’s green earth.   … Ed Sheeran v Marvin Gaye – “the case continues”. But does anybody genuinely copy anyone else these days?   … Springsteen and Michelle Obama and their irresistible thirst for publicity.     … the return of the Stack Waddy gam...

Items run up the flagpole this week include …   … our memories of the exquisite agony of teenage dances, especially Dave’s at the Mecca Ballroom in Wakefield, 1965.   ... unforgettable things said and done by Dame Edna Everage and Sir Les Patterson.   … rock stars with Brian Jones’s hair.   … do we care more about the people who make music than the music itself? … a point from...

Dipping our shrimping nets this week into the ever-bountiful rock and roll rock pool we find …   … Dylan, Madonna, Pharrell Williams, Michael Jackson, Nick Cave and Keith Richards – which one didn’t write a children’s book?   … S Club 7, Miles Davis’s sessionmen and others apparently ripped off by the heartless, skinflint music industry.   … the unsung story of Jack Nitzsche, “the m...

The “bargain basement Baudelaire” is setting out on a UK tour in April and tells Mark Ellen here about the earliest shows he saw and played, memories which happily include …   … the subtle art of crowd control.   … seeing Bob Hope when he was 9 and the strange impression of the adult world that suggested.   … the dress code that barred him from a Hendrix gig.   … auditioning fo...

This week’s trawl of the rock and roll outer limits alights, among others, on the following sizzling hot topics …   ... a lost Beatles tape and the night they played Stowe School 60 years ago.   … the return of the Stackwaddy game: were there really ‘60s New Zealand pop groups called the Chapta, Hi-Revving Tongues and the Kal-Q-Lated Risk?   … Todd Haynes’ brilliant Velvet Undergrou...

“Being on tour with King Crimson,” in the words of their film director, “is like being with the school rugby team and, at the last minute, the games teacher falls ill so they send them out with the maths master. But the team starts winning ...” Is there another band remotely like them? Their leader believes in discipline and cold showers in the morning. He practices four hours a day. Life in the g...

Paul Weller’s been writing songs for 50 years now and he’s chosen over 100 of his lyrics for the new and gorgeous, picture-packed publication ‘Paul Weller: Magic – A Journal Of Song’, each accompanied by his memories of how and why he wrote it compiled from interviews with long-time admirer, multiple author and old pal of the podcast, Dylan Jones. No-one was better qualified for the job. The teena...

The Manfreds start their 60th Anniversary Tour in September with Paul, Mike D’Abo and Tom McGuinnness in the line-up. He talks to us here about the first and best shows he’s seen and …     … being told “there’s a soul/R&B singer in Birmingham and if he ever comes to London you’re finished”.   … how Brian Jones “opened up a secret door”.   ... “stealing from Tennyson” f...

In which we cast a warm but appraising glance in the direction of the week’s news and alight upon the following sizzling topics …   … the best media job in the world.   … the most played record in the history of the BBC.   … the Avengers franchise “is just a giant ATM for Marvel and produces argument-proof movies”.   … the most influential thing about John Peel wasn’t the music...

Andrew Lauder started the Radar, F-Beat and Demon labels, worked at Liberty, Stiff and United Artists and signed (or licensed) and helped shape the careers of countess acts we’ve loved over the years, among them the Bonzos, Hawkwind, Captain Beefheart, JJ Cale, Nick Lowe, Creedence Clearwater, Elvis Costello, Can, Dr Feelgood, Stranglers and the Stone Roses. He was one of the main architects of th...

Whistling, clicking our heels, swinging round lampposts and lobbing the odd shiny florin to a flaxen-haired child, this week’s free-wheeling navigation of the rock and roll boulevard alights upon the following hot topics …   … why Indie music is like student drama.   … what the Beatles achieved in “the 585 most productive minutes in the history of recorded music" (aka the recording of Pl...

Teenage Fanclub are touring the UK in November. Norman tells us here about some of the first and best shows he’s seen and played and life in the group's early days. Which involves …   … the band that made him want to start a band.  … the Wombles at a YMCA when he was 12.   … selling a fridge and a washing machine to buy recording time.   … the bouncing balcony of the Glasgow Ap...

Whistling, clicking our heels, swinging round lampposts and lobbing the odd shiny florin to a flaxen-haired child, this week’s free-wheeling navigation of the rock and roll boulevard alights upon the following hot topics …   … why Indie music is like student drama.   … what the Beatles achieved in “the 585 most productive minutes in the history of recorded music" (aka the recording of Pl...

Sauntering in carefree, conversational mode down the rock and roll bridleway this week, pausing briefly to lean against a tree and tootle upon a mouth-organ, we came across the following …   … bands with no original members left - Lynyrd Skynyrd, Motorhead, the Crickets, the Ramones, the Jimi Hendrix Experience, the Drifters … any more?   … things musicians are obsessed with.   … al...

Things in the crosshairs this week include …   … why it took 34 years to get De La Soul on a streaming service.   … Radio 2’s ham-fisted handling of the departure of Ken Bruce – and are R2 and Greatest Hits Radio two bald men fighting over a comb if music radio seems doomed to die?   … the new fun-sized Axl Rose.   … U2’s stand-in drummer Bram van den Berg is like “Jimmie Nicol...

Karen Carpenter died 40 years ago at the age of 32, a life mapped out in a new biography by Lucy O’Brien called Lead Sister. It’s a chilling, cautionary tale of how she and her brother became international stars and the devastating personal repercussions that were the consequence. Our conversation with Lucy covers the waterfront and includes …   … the perils of “helicopter parents”.   &n...

The teenage Michael Cragg was obsessed with the “glorious shiny ludicrous pop” of the period that began with the Spice Girls, included Hear’Say, Five, Steps, Atomic Kitten, Blue and countless others and ended with the closure of Popworld and Smash Hits ten years later, a tale less about music than the media that covered it and the machinations of the industry. All the key leading players – bands,...

This week’s crackling logs on the conversational fire include …   … the attractively unchanging sound of Joe Henry’s 15 albums (the man PRs still sell as “Madonna’s brother-in-law”).   … the 45th anniversary of David and Mark’s first meeting – at an Earth Quake gig at Salford University on February 10 1978.   … Neil Tennant’s letter to Janice Long.   … the recommended TV tribul...

Of all the figures who built rock and roll back in the 1950s, Chuck Berry was arguably the most influential and certainly the strangest. In a new biography, which could never have been written when he was alive, R.J. Smith tells a story which is still hard to believe. His conversation with David Hepworth includes: * how the nerd Charles Berry discovered the key to impressing women * How a reckless...

Eels are touring the UK in March/April and E talks here about what he’s learnt about live performance from being onstage or in the audience. And this includes …   … a valuable lesson from watching Leon Russell’s deserted matinee at a racetrack in Maryland.   … his mum’s reaction to him singing Plastic Ono Band songs in the car when he was 10.     … seeing George Harri...

Given the once-over this week in vigorous pursuit of edification and amusement …   … should a Fawlty Towers sequel be illegal?   … over-refreshed audiences wrecking Jukebox Musicals.   … our hunt for the elusive album sleeve with the long-haired girl/Afghan hound.   … how acts signal their popularity now the charts no longer matter.   … critics who attacked people who atta...

The dazzling super-trouper of gentle enquiry is trained this week upon:-   … Sam Smith’s inflatable suit.   … “TV kills everything”.   … What do producers actually do? Old pal Kate Mossman joins us to talk about the inscrutable working methods of Rick Rubin, “the golden ratio”, the significance of his beard, the concept of being “Rubinised” and his transformation of Johnny Cash (and...

Midge Ure starts a UK tour in April (with Band Electronica) and talks here about bands that left an impression and what he’s learnt about live performance. This includes …   … audiences “wanting their pound of flesh”.   … lessons learned from watching Derek Nimmo in panto.   … “cheesy” stage effects - eg Bowie’s mirrorball in Space Oddity.     … Stan Webb of Chicken S...

Conversational footballs punted about the park this week include …   … why George Harrison’s trip to Benton, Illinois, in 1963 would make a great Netflix drama – the $400 Rickenbacker, the local gig billed as “the English Elvis”, the roller-skating waitresses. “I’m in a band called the Beatles back home and we’re doing quite well.”   … buskers being allowed to use amplification is a mons...

Ron Sexsmith starts a UK tour at the end of April and talks about what he’s learnt about live performance, which includes:-   … “notes from girls” after winning the High School Variety Show.   … playing for drunks in his local bar when he was underage and being hidden when the police arrived.    … Elton John at the Rich Stadium in Buffalo (and being a member of the Fan Club). &...