Word In Your Ear

Hugh Cornwell is preparing for his “All The Fun Of The Fair” tour which begins in November and here he talks to David Hepworth about: ….why rehearsals are best in bursts ….why he no longer carries keyboards ….the special magic of going to see Chuck Berry with Richard Thompson ….how the two of them have recorded “Tobacco Road” for an Alzheimers benefit record …being at the Marquee when Clapton, Bec...

We aimed the airgun of enquiry at this week’s rock and roll side-stall and dislodged the following coconuts …     … sports star, Rhodes scholar, bohemian: why Kris Kristofferson was a whole new breed of American hero.     … the letter his parents wrote disowning him.   … how he invented the crossover hit.   … echoes of his life in Five Easy Pieces.   …...

Christine McVie - one of only two British girl rock musicians in the ‘60s and part of the greatest pop soap opera of all time. Neither in the backline or the frontline but occupying a unique middle ground. Packed it in for 16 years then returned to the fold. Lesley-Ann Jones’ fresh and emotional memoir Songbird follows “the trajectory of a male rock star played by a woman”, the home she was keen t...

Nick Heyward was one of our favourite cover stars when we were at Smash Hits in the ‘80s, the days when hardcore Haircut One Hundred fans turned out in Fair Isle sweaters and Sou’Westers. He now lives mostly in Florida, he’s made nine solo albums – one magnificently titled Open Sesame Seed - and he’s toured again with his old band after ten years’ painful separation. Touring the UK in October, he...

“There was no Command-Zed back then!” John Wood engineered or produced some of the most magical, timeless and affecting records ever made - by Nick Drake, John Martyn, the McGarrigles, Fairport Convention, Sandy Denny, John Cale, Squeeze and many more. He’s 85 now and looks back here at a luminous career that started with mastering singles at Decca and transferred to Sound Techniques, the mecca he...

Ian Hunter – an image so familiar you’d recognise his silhouette - now lives in Connecticut and he’s just released expanded versions of two of his best-selling solo albums, You’re Never Alone With A Schizophrenic and Short Back N' Sides. He’s 85, born before any of the Beatles. We talk to him here about life growing up in the ‘40s and ‘50s when your father’s a copper and “music wasn’t allowed in t...

As the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness draws in, we poke the embers of this week’s rock and roll bonfire and rake out the following chestnuts …   … Maggie Smith on ‘70s chat shows.   … when Radiohead meets Shakespeare.   … the strange, circuitous and downright disgraceful launch of Francis Ford Coppola’s majestically bonkers Megalopolis.   … Chappell Roan and Sabrina Ca...

Simon Raymonde’s affecting and beautifully written memoir ‘In One Ear’ records life in the ‘60s growing up with a father who wrote and arranged for Dusty Springfield, Helen Shapiro and the Walker Brothers, the impossibly shy promotional activities of the Cocteau Twins and This Mortal Coil and the struggles and eventual jackpot of the Bella Union record label he founded. He’s so perceptive, observa...

Abba’s biographer Jan Gradvall met and interviewed Abba many times and builds a fresh picture of their internal chemistry in his new book Melancholy Undercover. Highlights of this illuminating pod include …   … how Sweden rejected their early hits for not being sufficiently “socialist”.   …. the discomfiting early life of Anni-Frid Lyngstad.   … what Max Martin and Denniz Pop though...

A free-form spontaneous jam this week - the Dark Star of podcasts – which navigates the outer reaches of the rock and roll stratosphere by way of the following …   … was Michael Stipe’s father a military helicopter pilot in Korea?   … our fantasy Odd Couple tragi-comedy: Morrissey and Marr in a thin-skinned middle-aged flat share.     … how the Golden Egg launched Roxy Mus...

Mike Batt still wrestles with the emotional legacy of the Wombles, the act that simultaneously made him and cast a shadow over the rest of his career, not least his early days as a songwriter at Liberty Records, discussed here, hired after he’d answered the same ad as Elton John and Bernie Taupin, a time when A&R men wore kipper ties and had Picassos on their wall. He forged a path through psy...

Joe Boyd produced Fairport Convention, Nick Drake and many others, released acts from all over the globe on his Hannibal label and has just written a mighty and definitive account of the history of popular music, And The Roots Of Rhythm Remain, tracing the way different sounds from different countries became interwoven. Nobody is better qualified to write this book as you’ll discover from this ent...

With Mark Ellen rambling in the West Country it’s left to David Hepworth to talk Alex Gold down from the ledge in the light of the Dave Grohl news and discuss: •⁠ ⁠just how many offers come the way of rich and famous rock stars •⁠ ⁠whether his recent admission will in any way detract from the most winning smile in rock •⁠ ⁠is this an opportunity for Jon Bon Jovi to step up? •⁠ ...

The Netflix series of David Nicholls’ worldwide hit novel One Day was Top Ten in 89 countries and he’s been heavily involved in its soundtrack album, a process as enjoyable, he says, as devising the compilation tape the fictional Emma made for Dexter in 1989 featuring the Smiths, Prefab Sprout and Public Enemy. We talk to him here about the glorious pitfalls of using pop music to broadcast your pe...

Old friend of the podcast, Nick Lowe has just released his 15th solo album, Indoor Safari, and he’s about to tour with Los Straitjackets. This absorbing conversation looks back at 60 years onstage and takes in the following …   … the secret of a long career.   … why he resolved “not to get that famous again”.   … touring Germany aged 15 in Brinsley Schwarz’s dad’s Dormobile.  ...

Louis Armstrong, Wild Man Fischer, Irving Berlin and Lucinda Williams all started out as buskers and Cary Baker’s ‘Down On The Corner’ traces the romance and influence of street players from Ancient Rome via Chicago’s Maxwell Street to Elvis Costello outside the CBS conference and beyond. Cary, David and Mark chuck coins in the conversational hat, among them …   … the turban and rollerbl...

We applied dynamic pricing to this week’s news and various stories trebled in value, among them …    … further adventures in the Oasis ticket fiasco.   … the greatest band name ever.   … the only rock star born under Adolf Hitler.   … Marianne Faithfull? Ian Anderson? Elvis Costello? Musicians you’d rather hear talk than play.   … rock stars telling jokes.   … “i...

David’s seventh book in his ‘orange series’ is just out and you’re guaranteed to love it. He and Mark discussed ‘Hope I Get Old Before I Die’ at a sold-out launch event at Waterstones in Piccadilly on the evening of September 3, recorded here. Among the highlights you’ll find …   … the rock career as a three-act play.   … the tour that started the Age Of Spectacle.   … why Live Aid...

David, Mark and our token bucket-hatted parka monkey Alex tackle the return of Oasis, its grip on the public imagination and why they’re the biggest band of the last 30 years, which includes …     … the Gallaghers’ mixed fortunes since 2009.    … who won the battle of the underdogs.   … “Noel has a thousand buttons, Liam has a thousand fingers”.   … why the ‘90s...

In a concerted effort to put the world to rights, David and Mark ruminate upon the following … … Kylie and the Wiggles? Canned Heat and the Chipmunks? Real or invented pop star/childrens’ entertainer collaborations. .. the charmed life of Greg Kihn. … will the BBC have any archive left if it keeps cancelling presenters? … why Inside Llewyn Davis works and so many other biopics fail. … the full sto...

Rock journalism as an occupation is rapidly heading in the direction of the watch-mender or lamplighter so Chris Charlesworth’s account of life at the Melody Maker in the ‘70s is already starting to feel like an historic document. ‘Just Backdated’ covers a time when the rock press set the agenda, sold over half a million copies a week and was courted by attention-seeking musicians of every rank, a...

With David asleep on a French sun-lounger beneath a copy of Summer Lightning, Alex and Mark pour themselves a cold drink and consider …   … the great ska floor-fillers.   … taking kids to rock concerts.   … the fate of all bands: “as musicianship improves, vocals decline”.   … left-field Beatles songs reworked as nursery rhymes.   … why 2-Tone had pop’s “triple threat” (an...

Love’s official biographer John Einarson tells David Hepworth the star-crossed tale of the band who made the least psychedelic album of the psychedelic era. Their conversation takes in: ….Lee’s growing up between Memphis and L.A., dealing with the problems of looking more like Johnny Mathis than Otis Redding. ….how being indulged as a youngster by his family made him a tyrant as a band leader. ….g...

As Mark Ellen goes shrimping at Frinton David Hepworth and Alex Gold links hands across the Atlantic to discuss: ….why a quick turn around Mount Hood in a Cessna should never be confused with pleasure ….why all the highly-rated albums are actually over-rated. ….why Timothee Chalamet has no hope of being able to capture more than one facet of Bob Dylan ….the name of the only music-related location...

A small Pastis, a game of boules and a conversation putting the rock and roll world to rights, which this week includes …   … why Debbie Harry and Mick Jagger worked so well on the small screen.   … Elvin Pelvin on the Bilko Show and how Elvis was modelled on Tony Curtis.   … An American Werewolf In London, The Birds, Invasion of the Bodysnatchers, Don’t Look Now, Nightmare On...