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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

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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53:32

Pin-Ups’ 50th, Morrissey The Eternal Teenager and...

Word In Your Ear ·

2023/10/23

Toothsome hors d’ouvres, mains and ‘items from the trolley’ on the rock and roll menu this week include …… Bowie’s Pin-Ups v Ferry’s These Foolish Things: who won?… the worst band name in history and why.… the fan who hired a plane to fly a message past Morrissey’s record label.… the Stones’ Hackney Diamonds: best album since Black And Blue or tedious riff-less dirge?… why only solo acts can tell stories onstage.… why the Dutch love the Byrds.… things we never imagined 50 years ago.…Spanky

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41:12

The “gangsterish” charm of Andrew Loog Oldham and...

Word In Your Ear ·

2023/10/21

The godfather of British independent labels, Immediate, was started in 1965 by the Stones’ manager Andrew Oldham and Tony Calder, its winning slogan: “happy to be part of the industry of human happiness”. As Simon Spence correctly puts it, “it all got very messy”. Oldham tended to fall out with people and then threaten to kill them. Simon’s excellent book, ‘Immediate: the Rise And Fall of the UK’s First Independent Record Label’ has the details (he also co-authored Oldham’s two memoirs, ‘Stoned’ and

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27:02

Denmark Street, London's Tin Pan Alley, where the Sex...

Word In Your Ear ·

2023/10/19

As it emerges from the upheaval of Cross Rail, music historian Peter Watts looks at this densely-packed thoroughfare between Charing Cross Road and Covent Garden, which started off selling sheet music, grew into the place where many writers sold their tunes for a few quid while a wise minority hung on and made fortunes, a street that continues to provide a home for music businesses to this day. Includes.......the Victorian "rookeries" of St Giles...how a coal mining accident made the street's first

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54:08

Madonna’s karaoke show, albums that sound their...

Word In Your Ear ·

2023/10/17

Spicy and nutritious items in the rock and roll bouillabaisse this week include …… Roger Waters at the Palladium: a masterclass in how to insult an audience.… “without Andrew Loog Oldham, the Stones would have been Manfred Mann.”… the only rock star who can tell a story onstage.… Nempnett Thrubwell, Hinton Blewett, Glaister Fagan … Leafy Somerset hamlet or venerable reggae dubmeister?… the money Dave Grohl made from Nirvana (and it’s less than you’d imagine).… why Barry McGuire’s Eve Of Destruction

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39:14

Jarvis v Jacko and why drummers are like goalkeepers....

Word In Your Ear ·

2023/10/12

Nick Banks - nephew of the great Gordon Banks – saw a note pinned by his favourite band to a wall in 1986, his Sliding Doors moment: ‘Pulp Want Drummer. Call Russell or Jarvis’. What happened next he records in his memoir ‘It Started There: From Punk To Pulp’. We talk to him about life in Sheffield in the ‘70s and ‘80 and why it took 15 long years for Pulp to crack it. Among the highlights …… why punk rock was like “Harry Potter’s Sorting Hat”.… what drummers bring to groups.… Pulp’s stage act in

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1:00:28

Smoking on album sleeves, Smash Hits The Musical and...

Word In Your Ear ·

2023/10/09

Engaging blips on the rock and roll radar this week include:-… Iron Maiden album title or novel by Jeffrey Archer?… selling Ringo’s ashtray.… the Blood Doner: the Hancock script that keeps on giving.… “Terrible album title. Terrible album cover, too.” The start of Rolling Stone’s review of which immortal record?… how come acting runs in families but writing and music don’t?… Smash Hits: the Musical - you heard it here first. And why the Live Aid musical will work.… A Salty Dog, Shades, Smokin’ OP’s

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43:00

Echo & the Bunnymen, why the rock press were “divs”...

Word In Your Ear ·

2023/10/08

Will Sergeant’s just put out the second volume of his memoirs, both of them Sunday Times best-sellers, Echoes and the first edition, Bunnyman. Here he revisits the Liverpool of the ‘60s and ‘70s in extraordinary detail - the clothes, the records, the gangs, the school days, the early shows he saw - and the many reasons he wanted to form a band. On the agenda …… ‘rockist’ cliches the Bunnymen detested.… why America loved early ‘80s British groups.… the powerful appeal of Jethro Tull, Status Quo,

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36:33

An Insider’s Guide To Goth by Cathi Unsworth (via...

Word In Your Ear ·

2023/10/04

Crime novelist Cathi Unsworth turned Goth in her teens in rural Norfolk fired by a cocktail of Dennis Wheatley, the Damned on the Peel show and the dark arts of the York Festival “Gothtopia” bill in 1984. She devoted long hours to trying to construct Robert Smith’s “tarantula hair” and acquiring black lace garmentry. Something about its music and folklore chimed with a life marooned in the middle of an East Anglian beanfield pondering tales of Shuck, the fabled fire-eyed ghostly hound alleged to

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37:10

Nick Drake – a whole new perspective by Richard...

Word In Your Ear ·

2023/10/03

Richard Morton Jack interviewed over 200 people when assembling what’s unquestionably the best, most colourful, comprehensive, revealing and accurate portrait of Nick Drake ever published. We talked to him about ‘Nick Drake: The Life’ at a live podcast recording at 21Soho on September 25 and explored various remote corners of this sad, surprising and eternally gripping story, among them ….… the fate of the tape of the 20-year old Drake playing for the Stones in Morocco in 1969.… what the press and

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54:34

Gary Numan, unlikely sex symbols and U2’s £1,000...

Word In Your Ear ·

2023/10/02

Spice-filled items tossed into the conversational cooking-pot this week include:-… our charming encounter with Gary Numan, possibly the world’s most contented man.… the next step in the age of spectacle: the sensory bombardment of U2’s shows at the Las Vegas Sphere and the crippling cost of experiencing it.… Taylor Swift’s genius for publicity and the subtle art of connecting with “Joe Six-Pack”.… the shockingly unwise and unfathomable pronouncements of Roger Waters and how his fall-out with David

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26:52

Does Gary Numan regret throwing the glo-stick that...

Word In Your Ear ·

2023/10/01

Gary Numan is about to set out on a UK acoustic tour, some of it in churches and one date in a cathedral. He talks here - from the Scottish estate house he’s just bought – about some of the first shows he saw and what he’s learnt about live performance. This includes ...… the peculiar effect of seeing Nazareth at the Rainbow in 1973.… the fate of the £5 note he’d asked Queen to autograph.… why he doesn’t talk onstage, and why that’s about to change.… what musicians take for granted.… the church that

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39:46

Why a sumptuous new book about the Island label is...

Word In Your Ear ·

2023/09/27

Neil Storey is an old pal from our magazine days who worked in the press office at Island. He looked after U2, Bob Marley, Steel Pulse, the B-52’s and many others. About 15 years ago he began the mammoth task of compiling a series of books telling the story of virtually every record the label released in its pioneering history, tracking down and talking to all those involved - musicians, producers, designers, photographers, label staff – and collecting old music press ads and ephemera from the time

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54:42

Mojo’s 30th birthday plus bands whose t-shirts you’d...

Word In Your Ear ·

2023/09/25

Both of us were involved in the launch of Mojo 30 years ago in the autumn of 1993 and we dug out our copies of the first issue. As editor Paul Du Noyer said on page 3, it was “our confirmed intention to pitch a wang-dang-doodle – all night long, if necessary.” The cover story was about a sequence from Eat The Document, the film by DA Pennebaker of Bob Dylan’s ’66 tour that was never released and could only be seen on bootleg VHS cassettes. And this bit was so rare and controversial it had even been

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39:43

The “unknown woman” in McCartney’s photos, the Human...

Word In Your Ear ·

2023/09/18

This week’s pod was recorded just after we saw ‘Paul McCartney Photographs 1963-64: Eyes of the Storm’ at London’s National Portrait Gallery, a warm and winning show that starts with him as a wide-eyed fan trying to take pictures of his heroes and soon switches to his shots of the whole world trying to photograph him. We talk about his pictures of French jazzers, Paris boulevards, backstage rooms at TV shows, models, paparazzi, light entertainment stars, screaming fans, American police guns, Miami

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29:13

Pulitzer Prize winner David Remnick takes the long...

Word In Your Ear ·

2023/09/17

David Remnick got his Pulitzer for his reporting on Russia. These days he edits The New Yorker, in which capacity he has had close encounters with some of music’s legends during their final acts, some of which is gathered in “Holding The Note”, a collection of his writings on music. From his ill-lit Manhattan eyrie he talks to David Hepworth of many matters, including:….what was in the handbag which remained on the piano during Aretha Franklin shows….what it was like being on the receiving end of an

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46:10

The Stones return, rock’n’roll marriages and...

Word In Your Ear ·

2023/09/12

Recorded together in Mark Ellen’s attic! Among the conversational footballs booted round the park this week you’ll find:-… Freddie’s “exquisite clutter”: would YOU buy one of his bonzai plant-holders, his catsuit with ballet shoes and a $0.5m silver bangle?… when did the story change from “the Stones are old, knackered and ought to give up!” to “the Stones are old, brilliant and should carry on forever!”?... do all enduring legacies need an element of tragedy?… who calls the Ezra Collective “a jazz

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31:54

Plaid shirts? Brown ale? A smoke-stained pub rock...

Word In Your Ear ·

2023/09/06

Fired by the rock and roll revival of 1970 and a post-Easy Rider taste for American music, a circuit of some 35 London pubs filled with bands playing fizzing, small-scale shows that never sounded quite the same on record, bands whose moment in the sun was ultimately wrecked by the arrival of punk rock. This pod – and Simon’s book ‘Before It Went Rotten: the Music That Rocked London Pubs 1972-1976’ – raises a dimple jug to some of its forgotten heroes including Meal Ticket, Roogalator, Ducks Deluxe,

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30:33

What Kevin Armstrong learnt as the sideman for Bowie,...

Word In Your Ear ·

2023/09/05

Kevin Armstrong was the guitarist in the band David Bowie asked him to assemble for Live Aid and toured and recorded with him many times. Playing the guitar intro to Rebel Rebel in a stadium, he says, is “like lighting a match”. Start the Passenger with Iggy Pop and you’re greeted with “a great mass of love”. His memoir, Absolute Beginner, is “a window onto the high table of rock and roll” and full of insights into life in studios and on the road and the fathomless levels of diplomacy often required

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776 results

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