Word In Your Ear

Tom Bailey’s been based in New Zealand for the last 30 years, making records, DJing and avoiding British winters. He tours the UK in 2026 playing the Thompson Twins’ greatest hits and looks back here from Auckland at the first shows he ever saw and played, all this high in the mix …   ... dance music and the British Invasion of America   … the inspiring delights of Some Kind Of Mushroom,...

The raw ingredients of this week’s news gently diced, simmered and served as a nutritious broth. And flavoured with the following …   … why Lily Allen’s divorce album doubled the value of her house   … how can you play real living people as fundamentally bad after Steve Coogan’s ‘Lost King’ court case?   … the cowbell on Honky Tonk Women, the guiro on Gimme Shelter, the tambourine o...

Morrissey and Marr both wrote memoirs but Mike Joyce hasn’t read either, preferring to publish ‘The Drums’, his version of one of the great success stories of the ‘80s, a book about “the beauty we’d given to people – and to ourselves”. At one point he and Andy Rourke shout, ‘Where did it all go right?”. He looks back here at …   … the fateful meeting in Geales fish bar when Johnny told them h...

  Boarding this week’s giddy carousel of news, we ride the following ponies …   … the Sliding Doors moment that made a ‘50s star a fortune   … Soft Cell’s Dave Ball and the art of being the Other One in a pop duo    … Bohemian Rhapsody, O Superman, I Feel Fine: records that sounded like nothing before them   … what links the Prodigy, Wet Leg, Daft Punk and Donna Summe...

Paul Young was the bassist in a pub band playing Led Zeppelin and Patto covers ‘til his solo soul and blues slot launched him as a singer. He’s still touring nearly 50 years later, just back from filling Mexican stadiums with Rod Stewart. And next May launching his acoustic ‘Songs & Stories Tour’ in theatres, intercut with film clips and hoary old tales from the battlefield. He looks back here...

‘Billy Bragg: A People’s History’ is just out, a new and wholly original kind of memoir written by himself, friends, collaborators and fans, and packed with old snapshots, concert bills, reviews and ephemera. It’s very good indeed. He looks back here with us at …   … meeting Taylor Swift – “and we both knew who the other was!”   … a total of 2,700 gigs – “not counting prisons, In-Stores,...

The Graduate, Trainspotting, Jaws, Star Wars, Citizen Kane – films you can’t picture without thinking of the music. Mark Kermode has been gripped by the marriage of movie and soundtrack since Dougal and the Blue Cat (aged 6) and, with Jenny Nelson, has just published ‘Surround Sound: the Stories of Movie Music’. We talk to him here about…     … Scorsese, Cameron Crowe, Sofia Coppola...

This week’s news put through the wringer and hung out to dry. On the line you’ll find …   … Taylor Swift and Ophelia and other things pop videos turned into tourist attractions   … the appeal of D’Angelo’s Voodoo: “he made albums with no disdain for the listener”   …. David Hepworth and “the single most exciting thing that ever happened to me in my entire life”   … bands whose...

The Zombies formed before the Stones and had huge hits with She’s Not There and Time Of The Season. Their baroque masterpiece Odessey and Oracle now gets ranked beside Revolver and Pet Sounds. Colin Blunstone has a solo tour in 2026 and looks back here in his wood-panelled den at the first shows he played, the people he met and being No 1 in America aged 19. This too …   … when your career st...

This lavish, beautifully designed collection of late ‘60s news stories, reviews and press clippings sheds new light on the band’s roots and ascent from the days when the Kidderminster Shuttle would spell their name wrong and print their parents’ address. Richard Morton Jack, author and compiler of ‘Led Zeppelin: The Only Way To Fly’, looks back here at ….   … the fact that there was already a...

Shifting the pass-the-parcel of news and removing the wrapping when the music stops. Which this week happens here …   … will rock bands get offered the Saudi money?   … “there could be no British nightclubs in 2030”   … Diane Keaton and why all men were besotted   … the day Led Zeppelin played an Aqua Theatre for an audience swimming and in boats   … “the optimum number of...

The look, sound, story and dynamic of the Beatles can’t be imagined without him. Nor can their success. Tom Doyle, author and drummer, examines the unexplored depths of the one at the back from 70 different angles, one per chapter, in his new memoir ‘Ringo: A Fab Life’ and talks to us here about ….   … how he learnt to read by looking at his Dad’s Beatles singles and the one that first made h...

Steering the supercar of enquiry round the rock and roll racetrack with the occasional stop for a tyre change. Foot-to-floor moments this week include…   … why are the British so hung up about posh pop stars?   … the 10-second moment of his stage routine that Springsteen must find addictive   … the flaming bra, the flying dress, the human horse: Lady Gaga’s most OTT entrances  ...

London’s Blitz club in 1980 had a huge impact on the way the decade looked and sounded, the launchpad for Boy George, Spandau Ballet, a new age of electro-pop and many writers, designers and photographers. The author and broadcaster Robert Elms was one of its cornerstones, “a place for people who’d outgrown the 20th Century”. We talk here about his book ‘Blitz: the Club That Created the ‘80s’ with...

Prince’s commercial peak was Purple Rain but John McKie thinks Sign O’ The Times was his creative masterpiece and tracked down over 200 collaborators, girlfriends, “Prince whisperers”, assistants and admirers to piece together the story of its construction (without allowing himself to use the word “genius”). Which leads us up some colourful, spot-lit alleys, among them …   … “a man in suspend...

Paul Gorman, biographer of Malcolm McLaren and friend of the pod, tells the extraordinary story of the three young hipsters behind Granny Takes A Trip, the Kings Road store that was a magnet for rock’s glitterati in the late 60s. •⁠ ⁠Sheila Cohen, the first queen of cool; she invented the whole idea of vintage •⁠ ⁠Nigel Waymouth, who never went to art school but changed the face of Londo...

News, rants, theories, stories and assorted old hokum which this week stumbles into …   … Kate Bush, Thunderbirds, Tim Buckley, the Blind Boys of Alabama … the magical bass adventures of Danny Thompson (and the time he headlined over the Beatles)   … how Claudia Cardinale wound up on the sleeve of Blonde On Blonde   … would Roxy Music have made it if their albums had been released i...

We’ve always liked Thea Gilmore who once crossed America with Joan Baez in a pre-Election campaign tour and has released 21 albums (“I’ve got musical ADHD!)”. She looks back here at the first shows she ever saw and played which involves …     … a deep dive into Jake Thackray – “Last Will And Testament still makes me cry”   … spotting her dad in the crowd in the 1970 Isle of Wig...

Roger Armstrong co-founded the legendary Rock On record shop and was running the Chiswick label long before the punk rock explosion of independents, a believer that you could license rare R&B, soul and rockabilly classics while cutting new records with rising stars (Shane MacGowan, Kirsty MacColl and Joe Strummer among them). He then co-founded Ace Records and talks to us here about the thrill...

On the menu at the rock and roll state banquet …   … Into the Mystic, Meet On The Ledge, In My Life, Tom Waits’ Take It With Me and other perfect songs for a last farewell   … the day we joined the world’s best band   … Robert Redford’s blinding handsomeness and the greatest moment – all three seconds of it – in Butch Cassidy And the Sundance Kid   … best-looking rock stars &nb...

Novelist and journalist Tom Piazza struck up a friendship with the irreplaceable John Prine in the last years of his life. This relationship, which began as a profile for a magazine, almost blossomed into an autobiography and involved a road trip in an inadvisable vehicle, has resulted in a new book “Living In The Present With John Prine”. Which involves: •⁠ ⁠setting off in a 1977 Coupe De Vi...

Having disposed of the surprising history of pop stars who posed for Playboy, discussing whether the universe really needs another album called "Play", come up with a couple of nominations for Best Album Title Of All Time, we hear about Alex's experiences seeing Oasis in the midst of 90,000 who have never been to Manchester and how he "used the force" to get some face time with Jack Black and Dave...

Peter Hammill, adored by Bowie, Mark E Smith and many others, co-founded Van Der Graaf Generator when he was 19. And he’s made 47 albums since, powered by “hubris, enthusiasm and sheer bloody-mindness” and celebrated in a new 18-CD box set. He talks to us here from Somerset about …   … supporting Hendrix at the Albert Hall and being ‘the Shirley Bassey of the Underground’   … meeting Dav...

Has there ever been a group like Talking Heads? Jonathan Gould’s Burning Down The House explores their affluent background, the root of their ambition and the springboard of the New York scene of the late ‘70s (he was a regular at CBGB). Along with …   ... the romanticised image of CBGB and the reality   … their black music roots: “the same instrumentation as Booker T & the MGs” &nbs...

Freddie Mercury had an affair with a close friend’s wife and, in 1977, became a father. He’s now a grandfather. That’s the foundation of a new book ‘Love, Freddie’ by his highly respected biographer Lesley-Ann Jones which details a four-year, detailed exchange with his daughter ‘B’, now 48, and the contents of the 17 notebooks he gave her before he died in 1991. We talk to Lesley-Ann here about th...