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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

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All Episodes

44:16

Peter Frampton – ‘the Face of 1968’ looks back!

Word In Your Ear ·

2026/06/19

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 - at how he adjusted to such mountainous success and to “when it all came crashing down” while throwing

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50:35

Nick Lowe’s miracle payday, Rock feuds and a giant...

Word In Your Ear ·

2026/05/25

Panning for gold in the murky waters of this week’s news, we found the following ……is Sabrina Carpenter’s aunt the voice of Bart Simpson?… is punk now just a small room in the giant apartment block of Goth?… why band life was different for Ringo, Kathy Valentine and Clem Burke… Barack Obama’s songs that define America and how you can’t do the same for Britain… what you notice about the Who’s ‘Tommy’ 47 years later… the night Tom Fogerty’s widow brought his ashes to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame…

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35:42

The Damned at 50 and the memories (and regrets) of...

Word In Your Ear ·

2026/05/20

The Damned are – yes! - 50 years old with three of the originals still onboard. And just starting a world tour. In this immensely funny and touching podcast, Rat Scabies (who’s smoking!) points up the repercussions of life in a band. He looks back at their first shows, their devoted audience, “old-fashioned rules”, highlights, regrets, the value of friendship, “putting on the black suit again” and how it felt to rejoin after 30 years on the outside. And all this too …… playing drums in an Essex

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44:38

Shoegaze, slackers, ‘noise chasms’ and the 10-year...

Word In Your Ear ·

2026/05/19

A whole new age of psychedelia kicked off in the mid-‘80s, of dream-weavers and glorious underachievers, a complete rejection of the standard rock approach to stagecraft, sound and self-promotion. Simon Reynolds was at the heart of it, writing for Melody Maker and piping aboard the pioneering noise-mongers aiming to entrance and disorientate, as recalled in his new book ‘Still In A Dream: Shoegaze, Slackers and the Reinvention of Rock 1984-1994’. He looks back with us here from his home in Los

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54:00

Famous rock locations, His & Hers records and weird...

Word In Your Ear ·

2026/05/17

This week’s news gets a thorough shake-down to see what falls out of its pockets. Which includes …… cupcakes, mobiles, rubber ducks, a dead swan: weird things thown at rock stars… “polka-dotted micro-tonal space-rock from the planet Zog”: Alex gets the Angine de Poitrine live experience!… is Shoegaze the Adrian Mole of pop?… “Hands off my Husker Du!” Joint record collections and who gets what when you split… Sun Studios, the Albert Hall stage, the Savile Row roof: places where we’ve shivered with

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30:59

Brian Eno’s restless creative adventures with Roxy,...

Word In Your Ear ·

2026/05/15

For nearly 60 years, Brian Eno has been a “proud non-musician” who changed the way people thought and sounded while inventing whole new ways of recording. We loved reading the updated edition of ‘On Some Faraway Beach’ which examines his staggering catalogue of avant garde experiment and wonders if there’s anyone remotely like him. Author David Sheppard looks back with us here at …… a life of great good fortune: “luck is being ready”… the rivalry with Bryan Ferry sparked by his getting more

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30:11

Pleasure Gardens, cabaret, nightclubs, rave & 350...

Word In Your Ear ·

2026/05/07

Mass commercial nightlife began in a Japanese Pleasure Garden in 1657 and it’s blossomed ever since – via Victorian Vauxhall, cabaret Paris, jazz-driven New Orleans, flappers, speakeasies, moonshine, Studio 54 and the rave palaces of the 21st Century. Imogen Willetts tracks its riotous evolution in ‘Up All Night: A History of Going Out’ and wonders if the invention of the iPhone has burst the balloon. She talks to us here about …... the Tango, the Can-Can: dances that got you arrested… how bourgeois

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33:46

Andy Earl’s memories of photographing Prince, Madonna...

Word In Your Ear ·

2026/05/05

Andy Earl helped create the new dawn of colour photography in the ‘80s pop video age and went on to shoot a series of unforgettable portraits, album sleeves and magazine covers, many featuring in his new exhibition in Bankside Yards, London. He looks back here at some of his subjects and the analogue days when you flew halfway round the world for the right light and backdrop and every prop in the picture was real. Along with …… that controversial BowWowWow shoot and how he got the job… Johnny Cash

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45:14

Talk Talk, a deep-dive tale of mystery and imagination

Word In Your Ear ·

2026/05/04

Talk Talk made just five albums, all written and recorded unconventionally and no-one’s entirely sure how they did it. And in the last two decades of his life Mark Hollis released only 92 seconds of music. Lifelong admirer Graeme Thomson explores the band’s endless mysteries in his memoir ‘In Another World: the Four Seasons of Talk Talk’, and looks back here at the last hurrah of the days of studio extravagance, which includes …… why Traffic in 1967 was the Mark Hollis Holy Grail… “25 per cent of

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28:33

The Clash, the Cramps and Penny Kiley’s teenage punk...

Word In Your Ear ·

2026/05/01

Penny Kiley moved to Liverpool in 1976, ran into punk rock and “became the person I’d never been allowed to be”, as vividly remembered in her memoir, Atypical Girl. It’s a moment of liberation mapped out by records, nights at Eric’s and the big personalities in the city’s Second Coming, the beat she later covered for Melody Maker. She looks back here at some unconquerable moments, among them …… the impact of Marc Bolan and David Cassidy - and later Patti Smith, Siouxsie, Pauline Murray and Poly

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44:25

Van Morrison’s agent writes crime fiction as the...

Word In Your Ear ·

2026/04/29

In the 70s Paul Charleswrote lyrics for an Irish prog band. Now he writes mystery novels. Inbetween he’s been agent for Tom Waits, Nick Lowe, Van Morrison, Hothouse Flowers and many others and has forgotten more about live shows than most of us will ever know. Here he talks about:•⁠⁠hearing the Beatles for the first time through the family radio•⁠⁠meeting Tom Waits in a queue at Tower Records in Hollywood•⁠⁠why he likes to watch the way bands take the stage•⁠⁠the changes he’s seen in the live music

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54:28

Andy Kershaw & Dylan’s jar of jam plus the things...

Word In Your Ear ·

2026/04/19

Be glad for the pod has no ending! Now in our 20th year and, this week, ruminating fondly on the following …… the “underhand” selling of Geese… Morrissey’s absurd whinge about the Salford Lads Club photo… Jay Leno’s $50 ruse to get comedy gigs… when bands “didn’t even know what a hotel was”… radio sessions in Andy Kershaw’s flat… what’s the point of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame?… when has any aspect of the entertainment business EVER been “fair”?… “Four eyes, one vision!” Elvis Costello busking

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54:56

The story of Wild Thing and whatever happened to...

Word In Your Ear ·

2026/04/13

Take your protein pills and put your helmet on as we voyage to the far side this week to take a picture of …… the Kanye West & Wireless ding-dong… Springsteen with Tom Morello, Pet Shop Boys with Johnny Marr: the fine art of the ‘special guest’… when Time Magazine invented Swinging London… Gregg Allman and the judge’s wife… Fake Plastic Trees! Pressure Drop by the Clash! Waka Waka (This Time for Africa)! Politicians trying to be hip… a primal howl from the Troggs written by the son of a golf

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35:01

How Tony Visconti keeps the Bowie flag flying

Word In Your Ear ·

2026/04/02

Tony Visconti left Brooklyn for London in 1967, began working with the Move and Marc Bolan and formed a life-long friendship with the teenage David Bowie, playing on his first two albums and producing 10 of ones that followed. And in 2014 he formed Holy Holy with Woody Woodmansey, a live celebration of Bowie’s music from 1970 to Blackstar. They’re touring again in September with Glenn Gregory as lead singer – “you can’t mourn forever.” He talks to us here about …… the gig they played the night Bowie

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38:44

Matt Johnson & the unique story of The The plus...

Word In Your Ear ·

2026/04/01

Matt Johnson’s life story has been mapped out as one long Q&A conversation from meetings with old friend, fan and BFI director Jason Wood. ‘Cognitive Dissident’ traces his trajectory from the East End to Soho to the beloved albums he made with a series of super-groups and his 2021 comeback. He looks back here at …… his earliest musical memories – Donovan, the Move, the Crazy World of Arthur Brown… the old East End and the Two Puddings pub run by his parents, “full of ghosts”, Bobby Moore,

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28:29

At home with Nick Drake, Sandy Denny & John Martyn in...

Word In Your Ear ·

2026/03/31

When he was 19, New Yorker Brian Cullman covered the London music scene for Crawdaddy, landing at the birth of folk-rock and the singer-songwriter boom and watching its leading lights from unimaginably close quarters - Sandy Denny, Nick Drake, John Martyn among them. He even played on the same bill as Drake at Les Cousins club, all this recorded in his book ‘How To Prepare for the Past: Travels in Music and Time’. He talks to us here about that golden age and the American stars he met later,

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45:24

The Jarrett movie, Macca’s secret & when did standing...

Word In Your Ear ·

2026/03/29

Whooping, whistling, punching the air, standing on the arm-rests and generally adding our voice to the sound of the crowd this week involves …… the creepy way Google eavesdrops our conversations… the cleverly positioned “secret” on McCartney’s new album… why a knackered piano made Keith Jarrett’s Cologne Concert a success… Daryl Hannah, Mick McCarthy, Ray Manzarek: people who hated the way they were played in biopics… Pectoralz? The Rain? Tony Flow and the Miraculously Majestic Masters of Mayhem

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57:29

Mustn’t grumble! Songs with the essence of Englishness

Word In Your Ear ·

2026/03/23

A milky tea, a jam sponge and this week’s news served on a tin tray with a steam train painted on it points our very English conversation towards the following …… what connects the Monkees and a British Prime Minister?… when are you too old for Indie?… A Certain Je Ne Sais Quoi? A Bar on The Piccolo Marina? Noel Coward or Neil Tennant?… the Move, the Streets, the Kinks, ELO, Ian Dury, Anthony Newley, the Jam, Herman’s Hermits, Cat Stevens, Arctic Monkeys and other acts with a sense of Englishness…

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54:35

Neil Tennant revisits songs he’s written since the...

Word In Your Ear ·

2026/03/20

Neil Tennant co-wrote a musical at Primary School and soon decided that “learning other people’s songs was hard work compared with making up your own”. He’s chosen some from the Pet Shop Boys’ 40-year catalogue, hits and obscurities, in ‘One Hundred Lyrics and a Poem’, just out in paperback, and added fascinating notes about their context and composition. This very funny and revealing conversation lands on the following …... the first song he ever wrote… auditioning for Rocket Records in 1975… does

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42:36

Steve Nieve looks back at Costello, Stiff tours and...

Word In Your Ear ·

2026/03/16

At the age of four, Steve Nieve drew pictures of piano keys and pretended to play them. He joined Elvis Costello & the Attractions when he was 19, the start of a life that involves having to find a flight case for a Steinway Grand. He talks to us here from his Paris apartment about Stiff package tours, recording remotely, his upcoming shows with the French singer Kessada and …… being a teenager as fond of Stravinsky as Alice Cooper and the Carpenters… playing in a mid-‘70s Top Forty covers band…

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146 results

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