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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

51:11

Which acts will “go down in history” and what matters...

Word In Your Ear ·

2023/09/03

We dipped the shrimping net of curiosity in the rock and roll rockpool this week and transferred the following items to the podcast bucket …… who now regrets being the “little tyrant” that broke up their band 30 years ago?… who was the real Bungalow Bill and how did the song about him change his life?… Bing Crosby and Paul Whiteman are almost forgotten. Are the Doors and the Kinks heading the same way?… the unique and extraordinary Bill Wyman, “more a witness to the Rolling Stones than a member”,

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25:06

Bob Dylan - why he signs autographs left-handed and...

Word In Your Ear ·

2023/09/02

Ray Padgett lives in Vermont, first discovered Dylan when he was 16 in the 21st Century and was fascinated and besotted, later launching the newsletter ‘Flagging Down the Double E’s’ and now publishing the enthralling ‘Pledging My Time’, a collection of his interviews with over 40 people who’ve worked, performed and recorded with the inscrutable old rogue. Both the book and this fast-moving, whip-smart and very funny conversation are revelatory and highly recommended, the podcast shedding light on

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47:48

Achtung Baby, rock fantasy friends and the band that...

Word In Your Ear ·

2023/08/29

Its tyres pumped, its engine tuned, its air-con still on the blink, the rock and roll charabanc trundles off on its circuit which, this week, makes the following stops …… the singer who sold vials of her tears as part of a merchandise range.…when Billy Bragg entered a Paul Simon lyric in his school poetry contest and only got 7 out of 10.… why our favourite music still tends to be the stuff we heard in our teens.… how Bill Graham’s “Electric Ballroom Experience” changed the landscape – “we were out

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1:03:30

Robbie Robertson, Billy Connolly, Bridge Over...

Word In Your Ear ·

2023/08/21

Even podcasts take “annual leave” but we’re back and once again propelling the two-man Pedalo of Enquiry down the rock and roll seafront stopping off at sundry wave-rippled spots, among them …… what Chuck Berry said about the Clash.… a band whose keyboard player is the King’s second cousin.… the song Art Garfunkel sang for years without realising it was about him.… Billy Connolly’s bicycle gag and other things you couldn’t get away with now.… Ian Hunter remembering “that little bloke from

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53:18

Sinead O’Connor, that Morrissey outburst, over-long...

Word In Your Ear ·

2023/07/31

The mellifluous melody and soaring counterpoint of this week’s podcast were comprised of the following notes …… Morrissey’s broadside on the treatment of Sinead O’Connor – and her electrifying moment at Dylan’s 30th Anniversary tribute two weeks after she’d torn up a picture of the Pope on Saturday Night Live.… two unsettling events in the later life of Randy Meisner.… Adele revives the old Las Vegas business model (at about £8m a night).… the eternal mystery of Bob Dylan’s motorcycle crash and his

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1:15:08

Tales of Hipgnosis sleeves (and the new film) and why...

Word In Your Ear ·

2023/07/24

Blips on the rock and roll radar this week include …… Things You No Longer See, No 97: the celebrity airport arrival shot... do we, in all honesty, need Roger Waters’ re-interpretation of the Dark Side Of The Moon for it is upon us on October 6?… is there really an Edinburgh Fringe show called ‘Bald Man Sings Rihanna”, ‘A Shark Ate My Penis’ or ‘In The Court Of The Crimson Ting: Prog Rock in A Reggae Style’?… a 1976 clip of Elton John as the jobbing pianist on the Morecambe & Wise Show. “Elton John

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35:24

PP Arnold remembers life in the Ike & Tina Turner...

Word In Your Ear ·

2023/07/19

Pat “PP” Arnold was hired as an Ikette by Ike & Tina’s Revue in 1965 and set off a 2,000 mile tour of America, coming to London a year later to support the Rolling Stones. Offered a record deal by Andrew Oldham, she lived in England for many years becoming “the First Lady Of Immediate” with a wide circle of friends and collaborators including the Small Faces, Cat Stevens, Hendrix, Rod Stewart, Nick Drake and the Bee Gees, all recorded in her memoir 'Soul Survivor'. Here she looks back at:-… the

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45:12

The things Bruce and Bing have in common and the...

Word In Your Ear ·

2023/07/17

As Mark Ellen had taken his shrimping net to the coast Alex Gold steps into the breach to talk to David Hepworth about….how solo acts like Bing Crosby and Bruce Springsteen get to play the common man in a way they never could if they were in a band….the extraordinary sight and sound of the band called Punch trying to make their name on “Opportunity Knocks” in the vanished land of 1976….what to do with your wedding ring if you find yourself on the world’s largest cruise liner….Cat Stevens’ “Father

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49:57

Nick Drake - and what Richard Morton Jack learnt from...

Word In Your Ear ·

2023/07/14

In his new biography “Nick Drake: The Life”, Richard Morton Jack set out to correct the misconceptions spread by magazines and former biographies, some ending up on Wikipedia. This involved talking to as many people as he could track down who’d met and remembered him, from key players like Joe Boyd, Francoise Hardy and Drake’s sister Gabrielle to the girl who played the cello on ‘Cello Song and a childhood friend who wrote a poem about him in the school magazine. The result is, by some margin, the

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33:05

Cathi Unsworth was a teenage goth. Think “Robert...

Word In Your Ear ·

2023/07/13

Growing up in remote rural Norfolk, crime writer Cathi Unsworth had a Goth conversion, a condition from which, she happily admits, you never fully recover. And never want to. She discovered Dennis Wheatley’s ‘To The Devil A Daughter’, heard Siouxsie & the Banshees on the Peel Show and saw a picture of Robert Smith in a magazine which she stuck by her bedroom mirror to help her construct his spectacular dishevelment. She’s just published ‘Season Of The Witch: the Book of Goth’, a highly entertaining

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49:12

Wham!, Rock Follies and lost ‘70s prog foot-soldiers...

Word In Your Ear ·

2023/07/10

Filling the spinnaker of enquiry on the careering, two-mast schooner of rock and roll this week you will find …… the prog drummer who made a fortune.... did Brian Wilson bring a horse into a recording studio? Or write a symphony for drums? Or have an idea involving a hen in tennis shoes?… why the New York Times review of the new Wham! documentary is ridiculous and wrong.... the eternal allure of The Larry Sanders Show – “Madam, I killed a man like you in Korea!”… the curse of identity journalism.…

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52:36

Cocteau Twins song or Farrow & Ball paint colour?...

Word In Your Ear ·

2023/07/03

This week we paddle the two-man kayak of curiosity across the rock and roll seafront and make a few stops on the way, among them …… “the future is always in the past”.… the pure theatre of the E Street Band and its cast of characters – “our lives are repaired by the fact that they’re still together”.… the growing appeal of Country & Western - and even “shronking” jazz – as you get older.… Bless the Barn, Featherwash and Franny Wisp, Portlandia’s low-volume crowd-pleasers.… the ‘Barry’ TV series

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1:00:29

Grotesque/brilliant sleeves plus does upping the...

Word In Your Ear ·

2023/06/27

Sizzling hot topics patted back and forth across the ping-pong net of conversation this week include …… the republishing of Giles Smith’s Lost In Music, one of the funniest books ever written about our real life relationship with pop stars, records and being in bands. Giles – and Nick Hornby – kick-started a whole new literary vogue.… has Cate Blanchett won Glastonbury?… why do we update book jackets but never change a record cover?… how the Stones’ Steel Wheels tour changed the gig economy.… the

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32:34

Harvey Lisberg – managing 10cc, meeting Elvis and...

Word In Your Ear ·

2023/06/23

Aged 21 in 1963, Harvey Lisberg wanted to be the next Brian Epstein and ended up managing Herman’s Hermits and 10cc, among others, before relaunching the snooker stars Jimmy White and Hurricane Higgins. We thoroughly recommend his just-published memoir ‘I’m Into Something Good’ and this wide-ranging encounter takes in …... the unique division of labour in 10cc and the magnificently doomed invention of ‘the Gizmo’.… the perils of $100,000’s credit in Las Vegas casinos.… life for the wives of rock

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58:34

Record shops in movies and what Glenda Jackson did...

Word In Your Ear ·

2023/06/21

This week’s pod veers off the conversational highway to break out its picnic hamper at the following leafy locations ….… the Stackwaddy game: metal band or clawed demon from Dante’s Inferno?… when bands stopped being good-looking.… Paul Simon’s Seven Psalms: how long can you give a record before it clicks?… Tony ‘TS’ McPhee of the Groundhogs (RIP) and the great British blues underground: cue the scent of damp greatcoats.… does anything capture the time better than a record shop in a movie?… the

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47:20

Revenge songs, Nick Drake and that sorry tale about...

Word In Your Ear ·

2023/06/18

The super-trouper of gentle enquiry alights this week upon …… why bands are at their biggest when they’re over the hill.… Fats Waller v Morrissey song titles: can YOU tell your Waller from your Wallower?… how could Dylan have written Queen Jane Approximately aged only 24?… why you should hear Pieces Of Treasure by Rickie Lee Jones, particularly the track All The Way.… the social media bin-fire that’s shredding the reputation of Bobby Gillespie and how Twitter loves a character assassination - “Pound

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26:00

Word In The Park 2023 #4 – Clare Grogan's adventures...

Word In Your Ear ·

2023/06/16

Forty years ago Clare Grogan was on the cover of Smash Hits yet again and was the fourth guest at our garden party on June 3. Here she remembers the key events that have happened since which include meeting Bill Forsyth and the success of Gregory’s Girl (and why she only saw it for the first time recently), touring with Siouxsie & the Banshees when still at school, life as a pop star in the golden age, being Kristine Kochanski in Red Dwarf and its obsessive fans, her time in Father Ted, Kim Wilde’s

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20:58

Word In The Park 2023: How the Beatles and James Bond...

Word In Your Ear ·

2023/06/15

The first record by the Beatles came out on the same day as the first James Bond film. Over sixty years later they still send their differing forms of Britishness out into the world. John Higgs has written a book, “Love And Let Die”, about how closely they have been intertwined over the years, about how they stood for very different sorts of masculinity, how they changed the way we wanted to dress and behaveand how they have, between them, shaped the British psyche of today.Love And Let Die:

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22:33

Word In The Park 2023 #2 – 60 years of the Bee Gees...

Word In Your Ear ·

2023/06/11

Author, DJ, member of St Etienne and a regular on our podcasts, Bob Stanley was the second guest at our sun-baked garden party in the auditorium of Opera Holland Park on June 3 talking about his new book “Bee Gees: Children Of the World”. He feels – and very rightly – that in some quarters they’re still the punchline to a heartless joke and deserve infinitely more critical respect. This illuminating conversation touches on the “teenage delinquent” years in Manchester, their struggles in Australia,

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18:46

Word In The Park 2023: 60 years of the Stones with...

Word In Your Ear ·

2023/06/08

It’s a barely believable sixty years since the Rolling Stones put out their first single, “Come On”, so we asked Lesley-Ann Jones, the author of “The Stone Age", along to talk about them and how they have related to the women in their lives, from Brian Jones’s strange relationships with his Cheltenham girlfriends, Mick Jagger’s powerful attraction to women who look like him, the sexual competition that raged between him and Keith Richards and the mid-life crises of Charlie Watts and Bill Wyman. As

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