Word In Your Ear

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...

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...