Word In Your Ear

The first record by the Beatles came out on the same day as the first James Bond film. Over sixty years later they still send their differing forms of Britishness out into the world. John Higgs has written a book, “Love And Let Die”, about how closely they have been intertwined over the years, about how they stood for very different sorts of masculinity, how they changed the way we wanted to dress...

Author, DJ, member of St Etienne and a regular on our podcasts, Bob Stanley was the second guest at our sun-baked garden party in the auditorium of Opera Holland Park on June 3 talking about his new book “Bee Gees: Children Of the World”. He feels – and very rightly – that in some quarters they’re still the punchline to a heartless joke and deserve infinitely more critical respect. This illuminati...

It’s a barely believable sixty years since the Rolling Stones put out their first single, “Come On”, so we asked Lesley-Ann Jones, the author of “The Stone Age", along to talk about them and how they have related to the women in their lives, from Brian Jones’s strange relationships with his Cheltenham girlfriends, Mick Jagger’s powerful attraction to women who look like him, the sexual competition...

This week’s rock and roll gumbo includes the following spicy and nutritious ingredients …   … “the internet is designed to let middle-aged men think they’ve had the last word”.   … will the Royal Blood storm-in-a-teacup do them more good than harm?   … Barry Gibbs’ beard.   … what ‘Three Lions’ did to the Lightning Seeds’ Scottish, Welsh and Irish fanbase.   … old memories...

Fond and appraising enquiry of recent events, this week featuring …   … we now feel we have to approve of artists/musicians/writers before we can say we like what they do. When did all this start?   … a new Stackwaddy game – Hari-Krishna Stomp Wagon? Starchelle Chicago Bear? Flaming Lips song title or exotically named winner of Crufts’ Best In Show?  … in defence of men with bad rep...

A special extra podcast recorded just after hearing the news. We can barely remember a time when we weren’t aware of her. This looks back at the Ike & Tina R&B hits of the ‘60s, the Ikettes dance routines and how he copyrighted her stage name, the story of the recording of River Deep Mountain High with Phil Spector, Proud Mary on the Ed Sullivan Show, supporting the Rolling Stones, her uni...

Put through the boil-wash of enquiry and hung upon the washing line of truth this week you’ll find the following one-size-fits-all garments …   … which acts are fading from memory and who’ll be remembered in 50 years’ time?   … how Paul Simon, Leonard Cohen and Warren Zevon addressed mortality – (‘My Ride’s Here', ‘Enjoy Every Sandwich’ ...).   … actors who’ve made albums.   …...

Further nutritious items on the pod’s tasting menu this week include …   … the story of Tubular Bells and how the Exorcist sent its sales through the roof.   … beneath the surface of every band is a drama waiting to kick off: the View’s reunion gig was “a brotherly bust-up that went too far”.     … one of the following didn’t endorse a credit card, but which? – Beyoncé, Mi...

Where the Gold Bracelets of Sincerity and Wisdom and the Rod of Equity and Mercy meet the piping hot music news agenda in a weekly podcast and alight upon the following ….   … the greatest singer of sad songs we’ve ever heard.   … the extraordinary tale of the B-side of ‘13 Women And Only One Man’.   … songs you couldn’t record these days.   … Rufus Wainwright’s re-recording of...

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...