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PODCAST

Word In Your Ear

Mark Ellen, David Hepworth and Alex Gold

Mark Ellen and David Hepworth have been talking about and writing about music together and individually for a collective eighty years in magazines like Smash Hits, Mojo and The Word and on radio and TV programmes like "Rock On", "Whistle Test" and VH-1.Over thirteen years ago, when working on the late magazine The Word, they began producing podcasts. Some listeners have been kind enough to say these have been very special to them. When the magazine folded in 2012 they kept the spirit of those

music music commentary

All Episodes

45:27

Stiff Records’ 50th birthday! – the farcical...

Word In Your Ear ·

2026/08/16

Stuff, nonsense, the white heat of debate and yesterday’s news today! Which this week involves …… which of these didn’t host a TV chat show – Ian Botham, Charlotte Church, Lily Allen or Harold Wilson?… if you’d paid £102 to see two-thirds of the Fugees show up an hour late, wouldn’t you SCREAM for a refund?… Britain’s most rock’n’roll hotel and why the idea of “excess” seems purely American… Dave and Stephane Grappelli at the Sunset Marquis… Reversing Into Tomorrow! We Came, We Saw, We Left! The

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28:32

Sandy Denny’s life and luminous talent celebrated by...

Word In Your Ear ·

2026/08/11

‘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 musicians they both knew. Among the many highlights …… meeting Sandy in 1966, onstage doing Jackson Frank’s You

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54:03

The Abbey Road photo miracle, Glen Hansard and TV...

Word In Your Ear ·

2026/08/10

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 punched in the face”… Linda Thompson and the million reasons singers hate listening to their old albums… the fabulous life and times of

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34:00

Bowie, the Cure, Neil Young and the golden age of the...

Word In Your Ear ·

2026/08/06

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 magic age of big budgets and creative freedom in his story-filled memoir ‘I Shoot Rock Stars’, just out, and

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34:19

Pauline Black of the Selecter, the girl who invented...

Word In Your Ear ·

2026/08/05

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 Doors moment supporting Bert Jansch... discovering the Pioneers, Prince Buster and the Skatalites through white skinheads

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46:10

Tony Fletcher - teenage label boss! – remembers the...

Word In Your Ear ·

2026/08/04

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 riches of success in the early ‘80s – and how it felt to be at the heart of it… “I knew nothing about running a

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46:45

Is AI wrecking rock history? – plus festivals in...

Word In Your Ear ·

2026/08/03

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 Ferry taught pottery… is AI erasing our love of rock history?… Wuthering Heights Day: the lone fabulous amateur appeal of Kate Bush v the polished

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37:16

Georgie Fame, Ben Sidran and the golden age of ‘60s Soho

Word In Your Ear ·

2026/07/23

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 the “heavy lift” of being a piano player and Georgie’s unique position in the organic, unhyped, pre-youth

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38:00

Steve Hackett remembers batwings, blues clubs and...

Word In Your Ear ·

2026/07/22

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 being “all fur coats and girlfriends”. Along with …… when bands stood on fishboxes if there wasn’t a

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34:53

Mari Wilson, our favourite girl about town, takes...

Word In Your Ear ·

2026/07/21

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 impression•⁠⁠Half of Scotland coming to stay for the Home Internationals•⁠⁠touring in a Commer van•⁠⁠taking her “Klute”

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52:52

All music is dance music! – and the best stage name ever

Word In Your Ear ·

2026/07/20

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 Not Dance!’… how David Dundas made a fortune from just four notes… Ringo, Dylan, Hank Marvin, Bill Wyman and the magic of cowboy culture… who

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38:07

Adam & the Ants, pop stardom and Marco Pirroni’s...

Word In Your Ear ·

2026/07/15

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 first band writing songs for the video age… “you can’t confuse fans buying records with love, it’s

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23:06

The Specials are no more! Horace Panter remembers...

Word In Your Ear ·

2026/07/14

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 1979 – “like a school trip with no teachers”… bonding with Terry Hall over comedian Ken Platt: ‘I won't take me coat

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52:25

Is Indie the new Good Old Days? And why are there no...

Word In Your Ear ·

2026/07/13

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 & Western is about travelling through the vast geography of America. “Go 200 miles in Britain and you fall off the edge”… Florian Pilkington-Miksa,

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40:42

Kevin Rowland, the new Dexys and what he's learnt...

Word In Your Ear ·

2026/07/08

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 - on bands that inspired him, repaired relationships, a health crisis, what it took to be a singer in

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50:17

Great rock feuds of Manchester, TV comedy & the man...

Word In Your Ear ·

2026/07/05

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’ records so divisive?… happy 200th birthday Stephen Foster, the man who invented the pop song!… and cover versions of his songs you’ll

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39:38

Joan Armatrading, Tom Robinson and the great music...

Word In Your Ear ·

2026/07/03

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 vast pop-cultural shift. We talk to him here about …… violence at gigs and football and on Derek &

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41:40

Prefab Sprout - a tale of mystery, eccentricity and...

Word In Your Ear ·

2026/07/02

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 convinced there’s never been anyone quite like him before or since. This sparks off in a million directions,

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1:02:10

Madonna smoking, the first indie PM and have we just...

Word In Your Ear ·

2026/06/29

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 Fashion Week hoping someone would try to stop her… why Dave doesn’t own any Arista records… which five Paul Simon songs became film titles?… a Prime

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39:08

Gary Numan’s reality check – ‘I’m essentially a guy...

Word In Your Ear ·

2026/06/26

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” and that if he hadn’t come along, that devotional space in his fans’ lives would have been filled by

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168 results

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