Word In Your Ear

We’ve known Dylan since the days he was editing i-D, Arena and GQ and he’s been a regular on our podcasts talking about his books on Live Aid, the ‘80s, David Bowie and Wichita Lineman. And he’s finally written his memoir, These Foolish Things, full of insights and stories about glam rock, punk, the Blitz, four decades of the magazine world and the people he interviewed and shepherded into awards...

In which we hoof a few balls round the rock and roll pitch and try to stick some in the net. Extracts from the live match commentary include ….   … “Whipping Post!” “Paint it black, you devil!”: when did the audience become part of the show?   … the special, unrepeatable thing about Bill Evans At The Village Vanguard.   … GambleGate and the most we’ve ever bet on anything.   …...

The two-man tandem of curiosity wobbles its way down the rock and roll cyclepath pausing here to admire the view …   … “We’re captive on the carousel of TIME-AH!!”: tuneless Northern club singer Reg “Reg” Snipton performs Ver Greats.   … is going to gigs alone becoming a thing?   ... why Phil Oakey was a better musician than any of ELP.   … Seven Nation Army in football stadium...

Clare Grogan, a regular on our podcasts and rarely off the cover when we were at Smash Hits, is on tour again with Altered Images and playing festivals in the summer – indeed her fabulous description of the bus ferrying her, Midge Ure, Nik Kershaw, Kim Wilde and Living in A Box to the stage at Rewind sounds like an old Smash Hits cartoon come to life. As she points out, “the ‘80s revival has gone...

Graeme is an old friend of the podcast. We’ve talked to him in the past about his books on Phil Lynott and John Martyn. ‘Under The Ivy: the Life And Music of Kate Bush’ first appeared in 2010, and was revised in 2015 after her Before the Dawn concerts and it’s now been updated again as, despite no new music or public appearances, her worldwide reputation has rocketed through the roof. We look back...

Among the logs tossed on the conversational bonfire this week to combat mid-June’s British winter you’ll find … … ‘I Managed Van Morrison’ and other films screaming to be made.  … how it feels to watch someone play from the best seat in the house. … Françoise Hardy, her unsmiling photos and legions of besotted male admirers (ie us and everyone else).  … the time she met Dylan and Nick Dr...

Stewart Lee – beloved writer, columnist and stand-up - was on the podcast in 2022 talking about the first records he bought, immensely funny and fascinating, and we’ve been praying for an excuse to get him back since. And it’s here! - he’s on tour again and his ‘Basic Lee’ show is on Sky/Now TV on July 20. This covers his first memories of live entertainment - in the audience and as a performer –...

You’ll always find us in the kitchen at parties, near the hoppy summer ale and sausage rolls and, and this week discussing …   … he hasn't changed his look or sound for 30 years: is there a more conservative concept than Liam Gallagher? And how he became the one-man Oasis.   … the eye-watering sum Kevin Hart made from Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle.   … Loudermilk, Rob Gordon in Hig...

“I thought Dave Davies of the Kinks was a girl. When I discovered he was a boy, that’s when I got interested.” Jon’s an old friend of the podcast and the author of some highly regarded and influential books about pop and its repercussions, ‘England’s Dreaming’ and ‘1966: the Year The Decade Exploded’ among them. His latest is ‘The Secret Public: How LGBTQ Performers Shaped Popular Culture 1955-197...

Giles was 12 when he watched Abba win Eurovision in 1974 and was instantly besotted – and thus required to spend the next 20 years wrestling with The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name. His thunderingly funny, fond and illuminating book – My My!: Abba Through The Years – traces their story, looks at the snobbery and critical mauling they endured and figures out how they made records so universally...

Peter Meaden was a key figure in the Mod movement. He changed the world view of Andrew Loog Oldham, which shaped the early Stones, and he managed the Who, remodelling their look and sound, writing their first single and turning them into Mod figureheads. Steve Turner interviewed him in 1975, an exchange that's now the centrepiece of his new book 'King Mod: the Story of Peter Meaden, the Who and th...

This week the conversational Super-Trouper of Enquiry lights up the following … ... why care when "rock critics get it wrong"?  ... the dreadful death of the Allman brothers' dad.  ... is there any other branch of entertainment where you can be two hours late onstage? ... has any show got worse reviews than Eddie Izzard's one-woman Hamlet? ... the unlikely tale of how Iron Butterfly chan...

Tuning into this week's rock and roll soundwave to filter signal from noise, we cranked up the volume on the following ... ... 'Zuma Nester Rock' and the eternal curse of rock stars' kids' names.  ... Bowie's spat with Robbie Williams at Netaid.  ... celebrating awkward sods like Kevin Rowland. ... why Paul Carrack has seen it all. ... 'Lewis' Armstrong, 'Hoosker Doo' and others we've be...

They Might Be Giants – old school fiends John Flansburgh and John Linnell – have been making elliptical, funny and adventurous records for over 40 years and writing music for children, advertising and TV comedies. We talk to John Linnell here about songwriting, early shows in art spaces, the way you saw the world when a "wiseacrey teenager" and what you can expect from their autumn tour. Which, in...

Guy Chambers was a teenager in Liverpool and at John Lennon’s old school - "same headmaster, Mister Pobjoy". He remembers the Beatles, Queen, Abba and Jesus Christ Superstar sparking his interest in the "perfect song package" and went on to work with Tina Turner, Rufus Wainwright, Kylie, Diana Ross and scores of others. He talks here about early shows he saw, records bought and his own tour in the...

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...