Word In Your Ear

Paul Rees fell in love with AOR when it began with Boston in 1976, the polished, ramped-up hits that were briefly the music of the American heartland. His book ‘Raised On Radio: Power Ballads, Cocaine & Payola – the AOR Glory Years 1976-1986’ remembers the age when records were launched via car stereos, their eternally appealing sound and the preposterous lives of the people who wrote and play...

After 40 days of relentless rain, you need our little ray of sunshine. And here we all are! Sitting in the rock’n’roll rainbow this week you’ll find …   ... the Wuthering Heights instagram gold-rush   … licensing Foreigner and Lynyrd Skynyrd: when is a band not a band?   .. what Michael Jackson asked the Superbowl promoter   … one long video for Charli XCX: “if that film was pl...

Andy Bown found the 20 year-old recordings of “a deep-space love story” he’d written with the sci-fi author Russell Hoban and he’s just reworked and released them. He talks to us here about “Out There” and life in the Herd, Judas Jump and Status Quo, which involves …   … playing the Three Tuns in Beckenham with Bowie   … “Foot gun, gun foot. I always tell the truth.”   … Peter Framp...

The album has had 25 years of being hammered by other formats – Napster, iTunes, Spotify, TikTok – and not only survived but thrived. For Keith Jopling it’s the irreplaceable way to hear music and to measure the people who make it. His new book Body Of Work celebrates its battle-scarred trajectory from the beating heart of pop culture to 21st Century affordable luxury, and stops off at …   …...

Unredacted exchanges about the rock and roll underworld this week highlight the following …   … real or made-up stars’ kids’ names: Speck Wildhorse? Blue Ivy? Everly Bear? Motorhead Michelob?   … man plays drum solo with his head!   … Olivia Dean, Lola Young, FKA Twigs: what do today’s ‘professionals’ learn at the BRIT School and what happened to the age of the amateurs?   … wh...

Bowie’s early years have been scrutinised repeatedly but people tend to speed through the last act, from the early ‘90s to his death in 2016. Alexander Larman’s ‘Lazarus: The Second Coming Of David Bowie’ looks at his resurrection and the mystery of his final days in Manhattan in attractively honest detail, a book that’s as fondly critical of his artistic decisions as it’s celebratory. Under discu...

David Sinclair was a long-running rock critic for the Times, Rolling Stone and many others and now makes records himself. He looks back here at some of the first bands he saw and the extraordinary people he interviewed, which touches on …   … the day Bowie took him to the Hammersmith Odeon to stand on the spot where he announced his retirement   … Keith Richards’ dark side (and what he s...

A bone-shaking ride on the weekly news cycle, stopping off here to pump up the tyres ….   … Springsteen’s Streets Of Minneapolis: it’s not what he said but the fact that he’s said it     … “they’re all just Sly & Robbie records but with someone different singing on them”   … the price of stadium tickets: if it’s too high, don’t go – but stop complaining!   … Cathe...

Adele Bertei got a Greyhound to New York in 1977 intent on joining a band. James Chance thought she “looked like a pimp” and hired her as the organist in the Contortions, an instrument she couldn’t play. Her memoir No New York captures the most intoxicating times imaginable, the rise of Blondie, Talking Heads, Television, Madonna and her fellow raft of No Wave cheerleaders in pursuit of dismantlin...

Steve Lillywhite first got a foot in the studio door aged 17 making demos for Ultravox and became a producer with credits on over 500 records. He doesn’t have a copy of any of them but kept his Grammys and his CBE. The job involves being a lightning-rod, cheer-leader, editor, finisher and “as diplomatic as Henry Kissinger”. He looks back here from his ‘Lillypad’ in Bali at the milestones along the...

Scanning the baggage carousel of news to see what sets off the alarm, which this week involves …     … Springsteen: why is America’s most American American so quiet about his President on home turf?   … the Seven Ages of Nepo: in defence of Julian Lennon, Joe Sumner and Brooklyn Beckham    … the Robbie Williams story that gets our goat … why do half the UK music venue...

Fairport tour again in 2026 and are playing their annual Cropredy Convention in August, its 50th year. The rolling Kent landscape behind him, co-founder Simon Nicol looks back at almost six decades in the line-up, the first shows he ever saw and played, why he can’t wait to get back on the tour bus again, and …     … the intoxication of live music – “lost in a moment that’s never ha...

Miles Hunt is on tour in 2026 – solo, with Vent 414 and the Wonder Stuff - and looks back here at his 40 years on stage, which involves …   … stifling hecklers the John Lydon way: “the exits are clearly marked!”   … what percussion does to your ears   … “when a tout’s selling your £3 ticket for £50 you know you’ve made it!”   … keytars, flat drums, guitars without headstocks: t...

Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake is being reissued on Kenney Jones’ Nice Records, along with unheard outtakes discovered when the original master was found in one of his battered old drum cases. He talks to us here – with the compiler Rob Caiger – about the chaotic construction of the Small Faces’ 1968 masterpiece and his mission to “carry on the legacy”. Are you all sitting comftybold two-square on your bo...

A tie-dyed-in-the-wool rock & roll space odyssey to infinity and beyond which stops off this week at …   … why the Dead’s music was “like lighting a match in the wind”   … Ha Ha Harlem! Rebels Without Applause! – Morrissey song or Lenny Bruce comic routine?   … Sting v Sumner & Copeland and what Every Breath You Take makes daily just from streaming   … is Oasis “the big...

Steve Cradock’s touring with Ocean Colour Scene in 2026 and in his own show, Travellers Tunes, with his wife and son Steve – “we’re like the Von Trapps!” This highly original night involves them “living like gypsies in the spirit of Ronnie Lane”. He looks back here, from his psychedelic Mod-shrine converted garage in Totnes, at the first shows he ever saw and played, which touches on …   …see...

Mary Coughlan – aka “Ireland’s Billie Holiday”, adored by Nick Cave, Shane MacGowan and Elvis Costello - is on tour again in 2026. This warm, funny and circuitous conversation looks back from her home in Wicklow at the first shows she ever saw and played and various milestones along the road, among them …   … singing Two Little Orphans (aged 5) at a Christmas party: “The adrenaline rush! Appl...

‘January,’ a revered pop lyricist once wrote, ‘sick and tired you've been hanging on me.’ And if that’s the mood down your way, this might help crank up the heat, alighting as it does upon the following …    … Guns N’Roses and the imperial age of the pop video: director Nigel Dick remembers the $750,000 budget   … ‘lost elfin Scots superstar’: missing Incredible String Band member f...

Cartwheeling into 2026 with the usual cast of rock and roll heroes and pantomime villains. Behind you this week you’ll find …   … Boy George? Rick Wakeman? Chas Smash? Vanilla Ice? Pop stars who’ve done panto   … will there ever be another Rock Knighthood?   … Dylan, Elton, Chrissie Hynde and Lil Wayne mention Brigitte Bardot in songs: but who’s seen any of her films?   … “the...

Peter Hammill has spent nearly six decades building the most devoted following imaginable – Bowie, Peter Gabriel and Mark E Smith among them. ‘Rock And Role’ tells his invigorating story, beautifully illustrated with photos, cuttings, artwork and memorabilia. Author Joe Banks looks back at his life, impact and captivating way with words, and stops off at …    … the value of looks and cha...

Deck the halls with cheese and Bolly! … and a dish of the usual rock and roll distraction which this week throws the following logs on the fire …   … the greatest Xmas single ever?   … Metal Machine Music, Cut the Crap, Two Sides of the Moon … can panned records ever be rehabilitated?   … how Roxy Music invented ‘rock brand-value’ and turned it into pictures   … Joe Ely and the...

Beloved Australian songwriter Paul Kelly has just turned 70 – “it sounds Biblical, threescore years and ten.” He looks back here at the road he took to get there, from early days in Adelaide to the pub circuit to his catalogue of stirring and eloquent songs about the big issues of life and love, as Neil Finn says, “with not a trace of pretence or fakery”. You’ll find …   … the moment he felt...

Lucinda Williams was a teenage activist singing We Shall Overcome at protest marches and she’s taken up the cudgels again on her new album World’s Gone Wrong. She talks to us here from her home in Nashville about …   … early inspirations - Dylan, Donovan, Joan Baez, Peter Paul & Mary, Buffy Sainte-Marie – and her love of Sandy Denny, Bert Jansch, Nick Drake and ‘60s British folk   …...

Shock, horror, public outcry and moments of moral turpitude plus with the usual news, rants and old hokum, which this week alights upon …   … why Gene Simmons thinks “musicians are treated worse than slaves”   ... the high noon of Madonna and her foil-wrapped Sex book   … is Rufus Wainwright pop’s most successful nepo-baby?   … how CMAT forced Bertie Ahern to pull out of the Ir...

What’s the word ‘punk’ come to mean 50 years later? It’s been adopted by the very people it sought to unsettle. Chris Sullivan – DJ, club runner, lecturer, former band-leader – arrived in London just as it kicked off and looks back at a time when everything was a challenge, no-one apologised, outsiders linked up and fought for recognition, and pop culture could change overnight. We talk to him her...