Word In Your Ear

We’ve known Alan Edwards since the days when we’d ring him for a quote from Blondie or the Stranglers in the late ‘70s and he’s still one of the key figures in music PR. He’s looked after the Stones, Prince, Michael Jackson, Blondie, Amy Winehouse, the Beckhams and many others. No-one is better positioned to see how that world has changed, from the pre-Google days when you could invent a story and...

This week’s items slapped on the rock and roll barbecue and lightly grilled include …   … why Eurovision will never avoid political controversy.   … when AI does David Hepworth!   … what’s the secret of NTS radio?   … “there are two types of wedding disco, ones that start with Abba's Dancing Queen and terrible ones.”   … Tony Hall’s prophetic preview of Revolver in May '66...

We’ve followed Paul Carrack for 50 years, a big hit single – How Long – when he was with Ace, 19 albums, countless sessions (the Smiths, Eagles and Pretenders among them) and a touring band member with Squeeze, Roxy Music, Roger Waters and Nick Lowe. He once put out an album called ‘I Know That Name’ as for so many people he’s still under the radar. His newsagent assumes he’s called “Mike” as he w...

Nige Tassell used to go to school in full donkey-jacket-and-woolly-hat ensemble to express his boundless devotion to Dexys Midnight Runners. Forty years later he set out to find and interview everyone who’d ever been a member. For some, their time in the ranks was a joyful, career-launching delight. Others felt it was like a slightly chilly and controlling cult. They all took a while to recover an...

Missing being on tour and exasperated by internal disputes, Nick Mason set out to tour small-scale venues with his band Saucerful Of Secrets in 2018. They’re mid-way through another world tour (Gary Kemp’s the main singer and one of the guitarists). He doesn’t miss the stadium circuit where “you need a golf cart to get from one side of the stage to the other” and they play only the early psychedel...

We were at the Curzon Mayfair on May 7 for the premier of the rebooted Let It Be in all its burnished finery and came away with a ton of things to unravel, among them …   … what we never knew when the film came out 54 years ago.   .. seeing it in the shadow of Peter Jackson’s Get Back.   … how the edit was overtaken by events and the tangled reasons it turned out the way it did. &nb...

We stuck a few coins in this week’s Wurlitzer and these were the tunes that got played …   … when records became all about sound not songs.   … Fonzworth Bentley, Puff Daddy’s butler, the man who held an umbrella over him on the beach at Cannes.   … what Henry Kissinger, Martha Stewart and Leonardo DiCaprio kept very quiet about.   … Manchester’s Co-Op, a tale of unprecedented...

Steve Diggle met Pete Shelley when the Pistols played Manchester in 1976 and the Diggle-fronted Buzzcocks are now on a world tour that began in Mexico and takes in North and South America, Europe and Australasia before winding up at the 100 Club where they played the Punk Festival 48 years ago – “we’ve come full circle”. He looks back here at the first shows he saw and played himself and talks abo...

This week’s theories, rants, ruminations, recollections, weak gags and free and frank exchanges of view alight upon the following …      … is pop music now all about identity?   …. the recording of the Animals’ House of the Rising Sun and other apocryphal tales.   … has any act been as ubiquitous since Frankie Goes to Hollywood in 1984?   … or has anyone inspired...

File this under ‘right place, right time’. Harold Bronson was a teenager in mid-60’s Los Angeles and saw every act imaginable. Then wrote for the Daily Bruin and Rolling Stone and interviewed everyone that interested him. Then managed a music store and co-founded Rhino Records, pretty much inventing the idea of the top-end reissue – “Sooner or later everyone ends up in a box.” All of this is in hi...

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...