Word In Your Ear

Tyres pumped, engine cranked, chromework winking in the Springtime sun, the two-man conversational jalopy sets off on its weekly spin and visits …   … the day America broke the news and showed its dark side.     … Brian James RIP and Stiff’s brilliant ad campaign for the first Damned album: “Play it at your sister!”   … has entertainment been dwarfed by world events? &nbsp...

We’re long-time admirers of Denny Tedesco’s “Wrecking Crew” doc which celebrated the studio musicians of 60s Hollywood, the unseen hands who can be heard on all those Beach Boys and Spector hits. Now he’s done something similar with the musicians who were so much part of the success of James Taylor, Carole King and Warren Zevon in the next decade in “The Immediate Family”. We’re delighted to have...

Ian Leslie posted his ‘64 Reasons To Celebrate Paul McCartney’ in 2020 and the viral reaction to its piercing and original points encouraged him to write ‘John & Paul: A Love Story In Songs’. Do we need another Beatles book? We do if it’s this one! It’s exceptionally good and highly recommended. The conventional wisdom for decades was that John was the tormented, anti-establishment genius and...

In which we pedal the conversational tandem uphill and down dale, like a rabbit through the pea-vine or a turkey through the corn, stopping for moments of reflection which include …   … “If someone wants to steal your music, it means your music’s worth stealing.”   … cats, birdsong: spot the ‘silent track’ by Kate Bush.     … when Gene Hackman smiles, be very afraid. &nbsp...

We first saw Graham Fellows as Jilted John on Top of the Pops in 1978 and we’ve followed his characters ever since, especially drawn to the keyboard-prodding, car-coated John Shuttleworth and his deathless pop anthems ‘Pigeons In Flight’, ‘Up And Down Like A Bride’s Nightie’ and ‘I Can’t Go Back To Savoury Now’. Graham talks here about how and why he created them (and rock media studies lecturer B...

As sinister autocrats stroke Persian cats in shark-pooled underground bunkers, their bony fingers reaching for the nuclear button, we shake another Vodka Martini and reflect on the week’s events, among them …   … Amazon buys Bond: but isn’t the essence of 007 its droll and unimpressible Britishness?   … and haven’t the lunatics taken over the asylum? Can you still invent unhinged fantasy...

Nights In White Satin - 260 million streams on Spotify - is still the central plank in the set Justin Hayward’s touring in October. He talks to us here about the first shows he ever saw and played, the ballroom circuit of the mid-’60s remembered in particularly vivid detail and involving the odd burst of song - “My kind of town, Great Yarmouth is …!”. Along with …   … the appeal of “a Moody B...

No musician is more closely associated with London or left more footprints than Bowie, and you can trace its influence on his life and work (and vice versa) through a series of landmarks from the suburbs to the centre. Author and curator Paul Gorman has just published an annotated street-map – David Bowie’s London - listing the places that played a formative role in his world and music, the places...

We first saw Eddi Reader singing with the Gang Of Four on Whistle Test in 1982. This eventful pod traces her story from seven kids in a two-bedroom council flat (“me in the toilet with a guitar singing Your Cheating Heart”), to the Scottish folk clubs, busking with circus acrobats on the Left Bank, to radio jingles, life as a backing singer and the rapid rise of Fairground Attraction who reformed...

Passing the Dutchie 'pon the left-hand side, we sift through this week’s events, rants and theories which absorbingly include …   … that Drake v Kendrick Lamar beef in full!   … was Bowie only as good as his collaborators?   … Kingmaker, Toploader, Feeder, Slayer, Longdancer, Widowmaker …. has there ever been a good band with a name ending ‘-er’?   …… seeing the Jam at the Hope...

Direct from the Government Yard in Trenchtown where, over cornmeal porridge by a log wood fire, the events of the week are gently appraised, among them …   … how Bob Marley, the Walker Brothers, the Byrds, Hendrix, Ramones, Blondie and Nirvana “got the dust of England on their boots”.   … Chappell Roan’s demands for “a living wage” in a business built on inequity.   … why audio book...

The teenage Woody Woodmansey was offered the job of under-foreman in the Vertex spectacle factory in Hull but then got a call from Bowie inviting him to move to London and play drums on his new album - “plus food and somewhere to stay”. It took him all weekend to decide. And involved some cultural readjustment when he did. 56 years later he’s a founding member of Holy Holy and touring the UK in Ma...

In a courageous stand against AI technology, a pair of old lags communing via two cocoa tins and a piece of string attempt to put the rock and roll world to rights. Which this week involves …   … what David saw in the HMV record store in Oxford Street “that shook me to the ground”.   ... music that only works played loud.   … Marianne Faithfull - there’s no middle ground between Sac...

When we get off of this mountain, you know where we want to go? Straight down the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico. While surveying the week’s events as we paddle, which involves …   … the genius of Garth Hudson and the magnificent way he looked - “part lumberjack, part Old Testament prophet, part Brahms.”   … how Glyn Johns invented the sound of the Eagles.   … Carrie Underw...

We put Howard Jones on the cover of Smash Hits in 1983 billed as ‘the Most Promising New Act’ and, 15 albums and 42 years later, he’s about to set out on another tour, a double-bill with ABC. He looks back here at the first shows he ever saw and played which involves … … rehearsing his Live Aid slot backstage to an audience of one: David Bowie.  … pioneering the “one-man show” in the early da...

Another great hero on the podcast! We first heard Andy Fairweather Low with Amen Corner on jukeboxes in the late ‘60s and he’s touring the UK from February. Ten albums and countless collaborations later, he looks back here at teenage life on the psychedelic circuit and the first shows he saw and played, stopping off at …   … the Stones in Cardiff in ’64 - “they opened with Talkin’ ‘Bout You a...

David feels a rant coming on. Mark lights the blue touchpaper, pulls on a tin hat and retires to a safe distance as they consider …   … the US closure of TikTok: has a single governmental act ever had such impact on the music business?   … film posters, Dinky Toys, “obscure vinyls”: the new record stores that are effectively antique shops.     .. why Virtually Parkinson is...

Something happens when he walks out under the lights. He can never predict what but he’s programmed to perform. As he has for over 60 years and will again when he sets out on a 63-date tour in April peppered with stories of an extravagant life and billed as ‘an evening of Francis Rossi songs from the Status Quo songbook and more’.   He looks back here at the acts that showed him the way (Gene...

We both first heard Graham Nash just over 60 years ago when the Hollies’ Just One Look was on the BBC’s swinging Light Programme and we’ve followed him ever since, not least his transformational shift in the late-‘60s from suburban Salford to the wood cabins of Laurel Canyon. He’s touring the UK in October, An Evening of Songs and Stories with Peter Asher in support, and looks back here at the fir...

Though you might hear laughing, spinning, swinging madly across the sun, it is in fact just two old lags reviewing the current events, which this week include …   … the made-up scene in A Complete Unknown which Dylan apparently insisted was included.   … the Day of the Locust: do the LA fires spell the end of the Hollywood Dream?   … why does no-one write songs about world events an...

It’s perishing cold in our frostbitten London HQ but we warmed our toes around a blazing conversational fire and roasted the following chestnuts …   … “the job of pop records is to be better than the year before”.   … the real reason new music tends to sound the same.   … Johnnie Walker – “his voice was his instrument”.   … The Kinks, The Shangri-Las, the Beach Boys, the Suprem...

Among the walnut shells, wrapping paper, dried tangerine peel and broken toys beneath the Christmas Tree Of News we found a few unopened presents, among them …   … Marine Homicide Unit solving murders in Scottish waters or former rock star dumping toxic waste? A crime drama Stackwaddy special.   … Roy Bittan, Duke Ellington: how musical “professors” date back to ragtime.   …’Suzanne...

Deck the halls with beers and Stoli! The nutcracker of scrutiny was applied to this week’s noisettes of news and the following discussed over a glass of port …     ... are a lot of new song catalogues just blogs set to music?   … can any actor be convincing playing someone really famous?   … Robbie Williams’ Better Man: it’s the way forward! Who can his CGI’s monkey play n...

The tremendous Bill Bailey is staging “a magical, musical mystery tour of the mind, along with other pressing matters” for 42 nights in London from December 28, a celebration of what makes us human in an age threatened by AI. There'll be “a laser harp”. There’ll be electronic drum balls played by audience members. There'll be extracts from Kraftwerk’s lost album of children’s songs. He talks to Ma...

The 17 year-old Al Stewart played electric guitar in a dance band in Bournemouth in 1963. When he borrowed an acoustic and sang Masters Of War in the break, he heard the sweet sound of applause. The next night he played three Dylan songs and sensed which way the wind was blowing. He talks here about moving to London, playing at Bunjies and becoming the compere at Les Cousins as his now 60-year car...