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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

53:36

Great albums now 50 years old, the best gag ever &...

Word In Your Ear ·

2024/01/07

Leaping across puddles, walking between the raindrops, its collar turned to the cold and damp, our weekly podcast builds a defence against the rigours of the rock and roll weather and offers shelter from the storm. Remain warm and dry with the following …… the 11 musicians who turned down a Knighthood, MBE etc.… why Dylan & the Band’s 1974 tour set the template for all tours to follow.… Rod Stewart minus the hair: unimaginable.… the old duffers’ perfect New Year’s Eve.… happy 50th to Joni Mitchell’s

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54:57

Noel Coward, Gallagher & Squire’s superpower summit &...

Word In Your Ear ·

2023/12/31

Amid the detritus of tangerine peel, half-eaten chocolates, broken toys and jars of home-brewed chutney beneath the rock and roll Christmas tree we found various items still unwrapped and awaiting this week’s podcast, among them …… how to create the Dylan Blonde On Blonde shuffle in under two minutes.… “Middlesex Hepworth!” David’s triumph on University Challenge and an inside view of the whole experience.… Noel Coward revisited through the 21st century lens in the ‘Mad About The Boy’ documentary.…

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48:34

Hipgnosis album art, the hardest working man in...

Word In Your Ear ·

2023/12/18

We check this week’s luggage on the rock and roll baggage carousel and remove the following items for inspection …… The People v OJ Simpson and why it’s worth re-watching.… the only two convincing films about magazines and journalism.… bands that look like mini-cab drivers.… David’s upcoming appearance on University Challenge (cue the voice of Roger Tilling: “Middlesex Hepworth!”)... the source of the phrase “Bring on the empty horses!”… why someone called Riley asked John McVie and Nick Mason for

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59:19

Denny Laine, the Move’s catastrophic court case & the...

Word In Your Ear ·

2023/12/10

This week’s wheat/chaff separation process sifts the following from the rock and roll cornfield …… Tony Secunda, his gangsterish suits and the publicity stunt that backfired spectacularly.… our old Word magazine pal Rob Fitzpatrick talking about the Japanese composer Michiru Aoyama who's released an album a day since December 2021, each 20 minutes 20 seconds long. And the role of streaming in the ambient music boom.… the life of Denny Laine and the great “chamber pop” hit he wrote.... why the Move’s

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43:31

The Beatles as seen by their roadie, co-conspirator &...

Word In Your Ear ·

2023/12/05

Mal Evans was the Beatles’ right-hand man, their bouncer, bodyguard, gofer, chauffeur, drug-runner, roadie, fellow party animal, confidante and friend. Along with Neil Aspinall he was the man who allowed the band to function daily and catered to their every need. He was such a central cog in the machine that Ringo declared, “now Mal’s left, the Beatles are really over.” Mal’s son delivered his archive of photos, manuscripts and memorabilia to the author, lecturer and world-renowned Beatles authority

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40:31

A drink to Shane MacGowan, Spinal Tap rebooted and...

Word In Your Ear ·

2023/12/04

Belfast author and old pal of the pod Stuart Bailie joins us to remember the lost captain of the good ship Pogues and we touch on Shane’s “feral” early life and the character he constructed to keep the world at bay; his place in the Irish literary pantheon, his intelligence worn lightly and Joycean use of language; the night they drank the proceeds from Fairytale Of New York; why the band’s St Patrick’s Day shows were three-day events and a magnet for lost Celtic souls, and how they became good by

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41:36

Pauline Murray’s kids have finally found out what Mum...

Word In Your Ear ·

2023/12/03

Pauline Murray kept a diary when she and Penetration were on the punk rock frontline and her vivid and emotional memories appear in a new memoir, Life’s A Gamble, beautifully illustrated with personal photos, press cuttings, late ‘70s gig listings and other lovingly archived memorabilia. It teleports you back to a time when pop music made daily headlines and battles were lost and won in fragrant dancehalls and knackered vans on motorways. As does this podcast, recorded with an audience at London’s

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1:02:35

Glen Matlock and the ‘Sliding Doors moment’ that...

Word In Your Ear ·

2023/12/01

Glen Matlock came to our live podcast recording at London’s 21Soho at the end of November and lit up the audience with tales from his new memoir ‘Triggers’, stories of his early life in the late ‘50s and ‘60s, his brief and riotous shift in the Sex Pistols and his colourful adventures since. The full cast list includes Jeff “Skunk” Baxter, the DJ Mike Raven, Gary Glitter, John Peel, Kenneth Horne, Malcolm McLaren, Nick Kent, Ian McLagan, Ronnie Lane, Midge Ure, Wally Nightingale, Blondie and Bill

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45:50

Does anyone know more about rock stars than Jenny Boyd?

Word In Your Ear ·

2023/11/29

You wonder why her life hasn’t been made into a movie. Jenny Boyd’s mother had so many children she didn’t realise her daughter had quit school and become a model. The world of London clubs and fashion magazines was the start of 60 years’ close observation of rock stars in every context leading, eventually, to the publication of ‘Icons of Rock’, her interviews with 65 musicians. Among the highlights in this pod she talks about...… what life’s like when your sister marries a Beatle.… the day a

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1:00:34

Who’s next for an AI movie, first use of sampling &...

Word In Your Ear ·

2023/11/27

We ran our metal detector over this week’s rugged rock and roll terrain and dug deep when it beeped. Among those prime locations …… the secret of Top Gear’s golden age.… is Bob Dylan a “cold weather concept”?… why Holger Czukay’s ‘Movies’ is a pivotal record.… Daryl Hall’s restraining order on John Oates: inter-band fall-out scales brave new heights.… the ground-breaking ingredient in ‘He’s Gonna Step On You Again’ by John Kongos.… why Joni Mitchell, Lee Perry and Pink Floyd were early pioneers of

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38:40

Kanye West & the billion dollar gym pumps plus the...

Word In Your Ear ·

2023/11/21

The week’s rock and roll luggage was put through the scanner by our sharp-eyed security chiefs and the following items kept back for scrutiny …… 82 year-old jazzer in lucrative samples windfall!… is there a more excruciating ‘mum’ moment than the 12 year-old Elijah Blue Allman’s in the Cher video If I Could Turn Back Time?…. the staggering sum total of what the Beatles did on 30 July 1963.… “Mailbox money”: how Phil Manzanera made more from a hip hop record than from 15 years of Roxy Music… why

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44:29

The 2-Tone story - Daniel Rachel remembers the school...

Word In Your Ear ·

2023/11/18

As if by some magical alignment of the planets, the Specials, Madness and the Beat were all listening to the same music and developing the same look at precisely the same time, though completely unaware of each other. And when they started releasing records, the 10 year-old Daniel Rachel was transfixed. What happen next is recorded in his hectic and engrossing book, Too Much Too Young: the 2-Tone Records Story, the huge characters, the daily dramas, “the dance sensation that’s sweeping the nation”,

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27:49

Why Kirsty MacColl was so funny, honest, original and...

Word In Your Ear ·

2023/11/14

Jude Rogers – writer, broadcaster, old pal of the pod - first heard Kirsty MacColl when she was nine and felt a connection ever since. She’s just written the sleevenotes for ‘See That Girl’, the best, most diverse and exquisitely packaged compilation of her music ever assembled, an eight CD box-set of singles, rarities, unheard songs, live and Glastonbury appearances, demos, BBC sessions and collaborations, along with an entire unreleased album.As Jude points out she wasn’t overlooked, but all the

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53:38

Mystery people on album sleeves, Elton dressed as a...

Word In Your Ear ·

2023/11/13

This week’s winning hand from the rock and roll card deck includes …… a silver salute to musicians who don’t dye their hair.… did Al Pacino play Phil Spector? Roger Daltrey as Franz Liszt? Was Gary Oldman Joe Strummer?… rock stars you’d swap lives with.… the “theme-park-ification” of pop music.… the mysteries of rock and roll are slowly evaporating. As Tom Waits said: “before the internet, we used to wonder. I miss the wondering.”… the immortality of the Florida salesman who appears on the cover of

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33:05

Slade, a rambunctious reminder of a vanished world by...

Word In Your Ear ·

2023/11/09

Slade were as revolutionary as T. Rex or Roxy Music, Daryl Easlea points out. At one stage they were outselling Bowie and Bolan. They were the band that hauled the sedentary early ‘70s audience to its feet. The sound of the Ramones was built around ‘Slade Alive!’ and you can feel them in the bones of the Pistols and Oasis. We talk here to Daryl about his funny, energetic, nostalgic and affectionate new book, ‘Whatever Happened to Slade?: When The Whole World Went Crazee’, stopping off at various

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47:10

The KLF torched £1m "and are haunted by it daily"....

Word In Your Ear ·

2023/11/07

John Higgs' brilliant and wide-ranging book 'The KLF: Chaos, Magic and the Band Who Burned A Million Pounds' came out ten years ago and just keeps on selling. It sold initially to the fans who bought their records. Then to those absorbed by the fringe figures in their mythology - Ken Campbell, Alan Moore, Robert Anton Wilson, the Discordians. And then to people who just wanted a staggering and barely believable story about the attacks by two free-wheeling cultural terrorists on the worlds of art and

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1:00:38

What did we think of the Beatles' last hurrah?

Word In Your Ear ·

2023/11/05

"The Beatles gave us a continuing soundtrack of unparalleled charm and reassurance", Derek Taylor said. "As long as they kept on delivering fresh songs along with the morning milk, everything was right in our optimistic world". It happened again on Thursday. Is the old magic still there?Also on the menu in this week's podcast...... Fact or fiction? The extravagant adventures of Bill Drummond and why burning £1m still haunts the KLF.... does it matter if musicians falsify their past? Paging Buffy St

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44:19

For Ian Broudie & the Lightning Seeds, 'Three Lions'...

Word In Your Ear ·

2023/11/03

There are broadly three Ian Broudies in the public imagination. One is the songwriter with a catalogue of softly psychedelic left-field pop tunes. The second is the record producer behind Echo & the Bunnymen, the Fall, the Coral and Terry Hall. The third is the co-composer of our new national anthem. He talks here about early life in Liverpool and the records that enthralled him (See Emily Play, Autobahn), what he learned from his mentor Roger Eagle (who ran Eric's Club), a life-shifting moment with

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38:02

Billy Sloan, the man who interviewed Grace Jones in a...

Word In Your Ear ·

2023/11/02

Billy Sloan, Glaswegian broadcaster and music columnist, has written his memoir, ‘One Love, One Life’, about a career that’s allowed him to point his microphone at an astonishing array of musicians and started back in the old analogue world of tight-deadline newspaper journalism where you hammered out your Chuck Berry interview as the rolls of film were biked back to the office to be processed. This covers a lot of ground including …… the moment that changed his life.… why the London Press Corps

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44:08

The greatest guitarist & the strange tale of Mike...

Word In Your Ear ·

2023/10/30

We spin the reels of the rock and roll fruit machine this week and get the following pay-outs …… the preposterous present they gave Bobby Charlton when he retired.... “the leaning man from Alabam”.… ‘Skinny Minnie Shimmy’ by Lattie Moore And The Emperors and other apparently fictitious rock and roll hits.… a Radio One DJ who was also an actor, erotic sculptor, travel writer, sheep farmer, flamenco guitarist and ballet dancer. Why has no-one made a film of the life of Mike Raven?… why Born To Run was

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