Word In Your Ear

‘Sandy Denny: A People’s History’ has just been published, memories from fellow musicians, old friends, producers, writers, fans and admirers. Linda Thompson met her when they were both 16 and was devoted to her ‘til she died in 1978 – “she’s still with me, I talk to her all the time”. She looks back here at their lives in Soho bars, folk clubs and studios, the world they inhabited and the musicia...

The news slapped on the conversational barbecue and served with a side of old hokum. This week’s mixed grill includes …   … our favourite story in the whole of popular music!   … Lisa Marie Presley & Michael Jackson, Neil Young & Daryl Hannah and other weird celebrity weddings   … how Glen Hansard got hired for the Commitments   … “Everybody has a plan ‘til they’re punc...

Tim Pope caught the video wave in 1981 and made hundreds of promotional clips, often three or four a week, edited at night and on-air days later. You’ll have seen them, singles for the Style Council, The The, Iggy Pop, Hall & Oates and many others. For 15 years he was the man to call – inventive, caffeinated, risk-loving, clubbable – and “nothing was too mad or stupid”. He celebrates that magi...

Pauline Black was seen singing Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell songs in Coventry folk clubs and recruited by a local reggae band. Then converted to ska and joined the Selecter - back on tour this summer and with a box-set of live recordings, ‘The Selecter at the BBC’. She looks back here at …   … their first gig with Madness for 47 years in Brighton – “very red fezzy!”   … her Sliding Do...

Tony Fletcher launched Jamming! when he was 13, wrote for the Face at 16, ran a label with Paul Weller at 17 and a year later was presenting the Tube. And was in a band signed to EMI. If anyone did more as a teenager, we want to meet them. It’s all in his coming-of-age memoir ‘Pow! When UK Punk Went Pop 1980-84’ - discussed here - which touches on …   …the speed, the possibilities and the ric...

Testing the temperature of this week’s news to see what trips the fire-alarm, which includes …   … does having a Number One still matter?   … Pauline Black’s sliding doors moment   … rock stars you can’t imagine dancing   … heatwaves, fire, rain, dust and thunderstorms: how extreme weather’s changing the festival circuit   … when Jarvis Cocker was a fishmonger and Bryan Fe...

This week’s news in a conversational cocktail-shaker and served with ice and a little paper parasol. Those Happy Hour highlights include …   … six musicians who keep getting better looking   … Plas Johnson RIP, a part of everyone’s life for 60 years     … the Odyssey and how Hollywood thinks the rest of the world has a foreign accent   … why you couldn’t make Bugsy Ma...

Ben Sidran was in a teenage band with Steve Miller and Boz Scaggs, a session pianist with the Stones in 1969 and carved a brilliant career as a jazz musician, producer, author and broadcaster. He’s just written ‘Cool Cat Blues’ about his old friend and collaborator Georgie Fame and the brief, luminous, pre-rock London blues and jazz scene that launched him. This enthralling conversation looks at t...

Steve Hackett’s seven years in Genesis get re-explored when he tours in October, along with ‘solo gems’ from the records he’s made since, the latest ‘the Roaring Waves’, a collaboration with old pal Steve Rothery. He looks back here at defining moments in the Genesis story such as the stage props, the early American tours and Phil Collins when he met him having just auditioned for Zeffirelli and b...

Mari Wilson has drunk deep of all that London nightlife has to offer, from a London Transport social club in Wembley to a posh venue in Chelsea via the Cooks Ferry Inn in Edmonton, and she remembers it well. Here she marks the release of her new album “Girl About Town” by talking about: •⁠ ⁠making bacon sandwiches for Mott The Hoople •⁠ ⁠entertaining her dad’s mates with her Alma Cogan i...

Another over-heated week put through the conversational air-conditioner, which involves …   … the man who got rich writing words that could never be sung   … Anna Bullock? Stefani Germanotta? People who’d never have made it if they hadn’t changed their names   … and the best stage name ever!   … Marco Pirroni’s jukebox   … when the Rock'n’Roll rulebook declared ‘Thou Shalt...

Marco Pirroni’s moment in the sun was big, lucrative but incredibly short. It was under a year from Adam & the Ants’ first hit to their last and immediate break-up. Adam, he remembers, was the perfect writing partner – driven, intensely competitive and with “a pathological fear of only being Number 2”. He’s got no regrets, hasn’t had to do day’s work since, and looks back here at … … being the...

The Specials have officially disbanded, bowing out with a swansong album recorded in the ruins of Coventry Cathedral in 2019. Horace Panter looks back at the first shows they played - when Jim Callaghan was still PM! - and the rigours of mastering ska when some of the group thought it was “old man’s music”. Along with …   … the dignified way for any band to retire   … the 2-Tone tour of...

As this week’s news hurtles over the net, we sort the aces from the double-faults. The final score …    … Madonna, Shakira, Chris Martin and World Cup 11-minute half-time overload!   … how many Stones albums were “the best since Exile On Main Street”?   … Kevin Rowland’s heart-breaking songs about Life’s Third Act   … 10 good reasons to miss the Nineties   … Country &...

We first saw Kevin in ‘77 wearing jodhpurs onstage with his art-punk band the Killjoys! He’s formed a new version of Dexys, made an album, starts a tour in October, and looks back here at central moments in his life, some recent ones so huge and affecting “that I put them to music” and they’ll be performed as a drama in the first half of these upcoming theatre shows. This touches - in vivid detail...

This week’s penalty shoot-out of news sorts the surefire hits from the over-the-bar misses. That final score again …  … what Morrissey’s only gone and done now  … when your logo’s worth than your songs  … Taylor Swift’s wedding and how Sly Stone got there first  … do musicians care about awards? … Divine Comedy, Jonathan Richman, Fountains of Wayne, Zappa: why are ‘humorous’ re...

The blistering heat of 1976 burnt various things onto the memory – standpipes, strikes, Entebbe, ‘Confessions’ movies, Jeremy Thorpe – but most of all the records that became its soundtrack, some of them revolutionary, others begging for extinction. John L Williams captures the moment in ‘Heatwave: the Summer of 1976, Britain at Boiling Point’ and a paints of picture of a country on the brink of a...

Nige Tassell fell in love with the literary allusions of Prefab Sprout when at school and his new book ‘Truly Gifted Kids’ tells their unique and inscrutable story – and involves some delightfully off-road “deerstalker” investigation. You’ll find self-sabotage, square pegs in round holes, the eternal pressure to have hits, and a devoted portrait of ringmaster Paddy McAloon that leaves you convince...

Tapping the barometer of news to see what’s blistering or stormy, which this week includes …   … “The Man can’t bust our music!”: the crimes and misdemeanours of Clive Davis   … the single biggest change in our lifetimes   ... when did musicians become ‘artists’?   … Johnny Marr’s guitar habit   … unlimited cash and what we’d spend it on   … Madonna smoking at Paris F...

Seven hundred fans have contributed to ‘Gary Numan: A People’s History’, a lavishly published compendium of memories of discovering, hearing and watching him over the 50 years he’s been making music. As you might imagine, he’s immensely touched, not least because – in this honest and extremely modest conversation – he feels his roller-coaster career was down to “perseverance not God-given talent”...

David Gray went through the roof with his White Ladder album in 2000 and he’s toured and recorded ever since, ending this summer’s loop at Latitude. He talks to us here about the rigours of seeing bands when you lived in rural Wales and the hilarious, hard-won lessons of the first gigs he played himself and every possible shade of crowd reaction. It’s an absolute whirlwind from start to finish and...

Digging deep in the icebox of news to choose the following lightly chilled refreshments …   … 500 Miles, Wonderwall, Yes Sir I Can Boogie(?): what does it take to be a football anthem?   … Gorillaz brilliant reinvention of the “guest appearance”   … Jerry Dammers' father was the Dean of Bristol Cathedral? Siouxsie’s dad milked venom from snakes?   … Rod Stewart’s “laryngitis”-...

Peter Frampton, for goodness sake! Part of our lives at Word In Your Ear since we were teenagers. Played guitar on national telly when he was 14. Joined the Herd at 16 and Humble Pie two years later. Had the biggest-selling album in American history in 1976 and now releasing his first new record in 16 years. From his home in Nashville, he looks back here – with great modesty, humour and affection...

‘Graceland’ was an almighty gamble for Paul Simon, a costly, high-risk departure from the music he’d been making and a complex international venture. And a game-changing, worldwide triumph. When Ashley Kahn taught a course about it at New York University, Simon turned up to contribute. His book ‘Days Of Miracle And Wonder’ tells the story of what inspired the album, the way it was recorded and the...

Kate’s an old pal of ours from Word magazine who writes scintillating columns and profiles for the New Statesman and Observer. We loved her book ‘Men Of A Certain Age: My Encounters With Rock Royalty’ – just out in paperback! – where she relives her meetings with a variety of legends, eccentrics and old lags whose music she finds particularly compelling and wonders what they all have in common. Th...