Word In Your Ear

Joel worked for various labels - Mushroom, Atlantic and Sony among them - and was the man who signed the Darkness. Training to become a psychotherapist, he began trading in rare records, travelling all over the country to buy collections and, during Lockdown, starting a special “mystery vinyl” service where he’d send people albums he thought they’d like based on their musical taste.   &n...

Peter Asher started out as a child actor in films with John Mills, Alastair Sim and Boris Karloff. He was in the Adventures of Robin Hood with his sister Jane but they were eventually “demoted to peasant children”. He then formed Peter & Gordon, had a global number one with A World Without Love (written by his sister’s boyfriend who was living in the family home) and then began a career in pro...

Things featured this week in hot pursuit of entertainment and enlightenment …   … seeing Television in 1975 for £1.50 - support act, Blondie.   … Kaleidoscope, Country Joe & the Fish, Fairport Convention and other origins of the Tom Verlaine guitar sound.     … the mystery voices on The Dark Side Of The Moon, the Clare Torry story and how Pink Floyd used Abbey Road as...

The Long Ryders are touring in May and our old pal Sid Griffin tells us what to expect and looks back here at …   … Herman’s Hermits and the Dave Clark Five playing on a steamboat.   … his first live performance aged 16 in a glam-rock red dress at a barbecue in Kentucky (fee a colossal $100) playing Paul Revere, Kinks and Byrds covers.   … seeing Big Joe Turner with the Lee Allen Or...

David Crosby was famous for nearly 60 years, a celebrity sustained by records, tours, brushes with the law and serial disagreements with old pals and collaborators (he was the very definition of a non-team player). We look back fondly at various stops along the way - his upscale background, his role in the Byrds, his ‘Will Scarlet in Robin Hood’ haircut and unsexy cape ensemble, CS&N as the so...

Suzannne Vega is touring throughout the UK in February. Here she talks to David Hepworth about what she’s learned about live in the course of: ….starting off on stage with Pete Seeger at Carnegie Hall ….taking her sister to see Billy Joel at Madison Square Garden …learning about communication from the jazz bassist Richard Davis …laying in sufficient snacks for the rehearsal period ….playing your o...

Our old pal from Word magazine Kate Mossman adored Jeff Beck and the whole range of his recordings and interviewed him recently for the New Statesman. This pod features the outlandish techniques he developed, his cars and Afghan hounds, his “six wives”, his unchanging look (with occasion detours into “satin leggings and boxing boots”), the “Clapton is God” myth, his job offer from the Stones, fall...

Tony King was there when it all started, working for Decca in the late ‘50s, plugging records on Housewives’ Choice and Family Favourites and looking after visiting Americans like the Ronettes, Roy Orbison and Phil Spector. He went on to become a close friend of many of the acts he worked with and his memoir ‘The Tastemaker’ is full of wonderful tales and revelations about all of them. As is this...

… in which we amble fearlessly into the New Year in tireless pursuit of amusement, stopping off at various stations along the way, among them …    … can any song be completely original?   … meeting Sun Ra.   … the time Gianluca Vialli kissed David’s wife’s hand.   … does streaming make us more adventurous?   … did Frank Zappa ever appear in Miami Vice?   … tortuo...

Things explored this week in pursuit of entertainment and diversion …   … Neil Tennant interviews Malcolm McLaren and other delights in Smash Hits, January 1983.   … “there’s no such thing as a finished record!”   … the link between Cliff & the Shadows and the Merry Pranksters.   … a touching interview with Jim Morrison’s father and sister about the son/brother who cut them...

The full and extraordinary story of “the Zelig-like” Cutler – poet, performer, broadcaster, playwright, surrealist, humorist – is mapped out in Bruce Lindsay’s exceptional new book, ‘Ivor Cutler: A Life Outside the Living Room’. Most of us discovered him through the patronage of fans like John Peel – or first saw him as part of the Magical Mystery Tour cast – but this fascinating conversation cove...

Army greatcoats, plastic trousers, cowboy boots, scoop-neck t-shirts with bell sleeves … the list of laughable clobber and accessories we briefly thought were acceptable because rock stars wore them is delightfully long and shameful. Also in the crosshairs this week … … the rudest line the Beatles ever wrote.  … Randy Newman – ‘the poet of the unworthy thought’. … do bands with comic lyrics g...

Gordon Raphael was the sonic architect of arguably the two most important and influential albums of the noughties - The Strokes' 'Is This It' and its follow-up 'Room On Fire', and in this special Word In Your Ear chat with 'Magic' Alex Gold he talks about the creation of those seminal records alongside other key moments in his life as told in his memoir 'The World Is Going To Love This: Up From Th...

In which we boldly tackle the burning issues des nos jours in our restless forage for entertainment. Nutritious items on the tasting menu this week include …   … albums whose cover was over half the sell.   … was Jet Black older than all the Beatles and Stones? Dave Greenfield and Edgar Allan Poe – separated at birth.   … that brief moment when Creedence Clearwater were the biggest...

Danny’s done two hysterically funny, cartwheeling canters round the UK in the last few years and sets out again in February for 49 nights with ‘At Last …The Sausage Sandwich Tour’, another ‘panjandrum of unstoppable anecdote’. His memories of old rock and roll and theatre shows are high in the mix in this crackling exchange. Among the highlights …   … Anita Harris at the ABC in Yarmouth. &nbs...

In which the piercing searchlight of conversational scrutiny points in the direction of …   … Christine McVie’s early adventures, our burning love for Chicken Shack’s ‘40 Blue Fingers’, her Sliding Doors moment in a Dickins & Jones window display, supporting the Shadows at the 2I’s coffee bar in ‘59, writing Songbird, the forgotten years of Kiln House and two film clips that point up Flee...

Phil and his brother Steven started a market stall in Cheltenham in the mid-‘80s and made enough money selling rare records to open the world-famous Badlands (now occupying three floors of an old coach house). It’s been thriving ever since specialising in Springsteen and Dylan, collectible vinyl, books and box-sets and branching out into concert package tours all over Europe. Here he talks about t...

… in which we remember watching and talking to the magnificent Wilko Johnson and look back at extraordinary moments in his life – the hippie trail to India, his appearance on Question Time, the three albums the Feelgoods made in a year, how they discovered what made them unique and the effect on everyone from Television to the Clash, Gang of Four, Blur and Franz Ferdinand of the band “who could st...

Ken’s a world authority and he’s been on the pod twice before, talking about his books about George Martin and the last days of John Lennon. He’s just revised and updated the one he wrote in 2007, ‘Long And Winding Roads’, partly to add new observations and material, especially in the light of Peter Jackson’s Get Back, and partly because the beleaguered world now needs the Beatles more than ever....

Further free-wheeling conversational detours include …   … “like the consequences of mating Patti Smith with a Hoover vacuum cleaner”: barbed reviews in the Rolling Stone Record Guide. … ‘Bowie and Bing in a bauble’? The Taylor Swift ‘Merry Swiftmas’ t-shirt? Real or fictional Christmas accessories. … the four tracks by women - and there are only four! – among the 66 records Bob Dylan conside...

Things run up the flagpole this week in pursuit of entertainment …   … Irish/American punk rock group or 19th Century criminal gang?   … the eternal dependability of the first Stones album.   … does ANYONE not like ska?   …. seven “legends” you can still see for under £30.   ... the now-for-sale cache of ‘50s love letters by a besotted Bob Dylan (and would you want anyone...

On the radar this week in an enquiring, celebratory or goat-getting capacity …   … has the World Cup balloon already been unmendably punctured?   … and is the same thing happening to Twitter?   … “if social media had come along earlier would Sergeant Pepper exist?”   … Richard Osman-created fictional sleuth or rock stars’ real names: you decide.   … a chance meeting with J...

The teenage Trevor Horn could be found playing bass in dance bands on the Top Rank circuit supporting acts like Tommy Cooper (and singing Long-Haired Lover From Liverpool and Hi-Ho Silver Lining). He began writing songs for Tina Charles, had a worldwide hit with Buggles and went on to produce Dollar, ABC, Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Malcolm McLaren, Grace Jones, Pet Shop Boys and countless others....

… in which we remember the luminous music and diabolical life of the last of the old rock and roll guard standing. And this includes … the weird old America he came from (backwoods country, religious sects with their transporting songs), the career-cancelling British tour in 1958, the electrifying Live at The Star Club album, the Steve Allen Show breakthrough and the Seven Wives of Jerry Lee Lewis...

Sheila’s portraits of ‘80s musicians and the club circuit filled the pages of magazines like the Face and Smash Hits at the time and now feature in her book ‘80s: Sound And Vision’. You’ll know a few from album sleeves too. She talks here about some favourites – Nick Logan in the Face office, Bryan Ferry, Bowie with Marc Bolan, Martin Fry in the famous gold lamé suit, Siouxsie in ‘Japanese chic’,...