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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

45:54

Del Amitri’s Justin Currie has faced every tough...

Word In Your Ear ·

2025/07/29

Justin Currie recorded and toured with Del Amitri and solo for 30 years and his travelogue The Tremolo Diaries perfectly captures the rhythm of life on the road. He talks to us here about combative crowds, the curious bubble you occupy and a recent shock diagnosis that’s forced some adjustments. This includes …… hard-won rules for life on tour: “Never leave the boat, stay in the bubble, never interact with real life, always maintain low-level adrenaline.”… seeing Dr Feelgood in ’77 “who passed the

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30:13

The late Nick Drake’s manager on the nine-year...

Word In Your Ear ·

2025/07/26

Cally Colomon looks after the legacy of Nick Drake, who died in 1974 but attracts new teenage admirers all the time. Here he talks to David Hepworth about just some of what that involves, including:…chancers getting in touch with a bogus live recording when they’ve got a tax bill to pay… film producers wishing to superimpose their image of Nick Drake on everybody else’s…spending months in the archives finding out exactly what is on every tape…listening to people who claim they know exactly what

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46:00

Kevin Rowland, Oasis, Velvet Sundown – and do we want...

Word In Your Ear ·

2025/07/14

Our patent fact-from-fiction separator goes into overdrive this week though sometimes, as Robert Wyatt observed, Ruth is stranger than Richard. High in the mix …… FOMO (Fear Of Missing Oasis), Gen Z’s love of queuing and has there ever been a greater outpouring of joy at a band reunion?…what’s the greatest musical city?… Kevin Rowland – cheat, burglar, arsonist, menswear salesman – and his capacity for self-sabotage.… the harder to get tickets, the more people feel compelled to go.… Kylie Minogue is

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34:12

John Otway – Micro-stardom, 5,000 gigs and how to...

Word In Your Ear ·

2025/07/10

John Otway – self-billed as “Rock And Roll’s Greatest Failure” - has played 5,260 gigs in 53 years, a record possibly only beaten by BB King. There are more this autumn of course. He simply can’t stop. “People buying me drinks and telling me what a good bloke I am? Why would you stop?” We talk to him here about the art of shambling stagecraft and a life lived almost permanently on the road, which involves …... a burning desire to perform from the age of nine.… “Don’t think before opening your

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31:01

Peter Hook looks back at Joy Division, New Order and...

Word In Your Ear ·

2025/07/08

Peter Hook, bold pioneer of the high, clambering, tune-filled bassline, is touring this autumn with Peter Hook & the Light. We talk to him in Prestatyn - about to deejay at mate’s birthday - about the first gigs he ever saw and played, heavy-handed club owners, tough crowds on dance floors, the world audience for his two old bands and few key moments of a long life onstage, which involves …… why you should never read your reviews.… how Ian Curtis was precisely the opposite of how people imagined

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54:10

Live Aid remembered – from inside and out – on its...

Word In Your Ear ·

2025/07/06

A 40th anniversary special with two of its presenters (Hepworth and Ellen) and old pal and TV critic Boyd Hilton who watched on the day aged 18 (“young, pretentious, idiotic”) and reviews the new BBC documentary. We look back at …… the ways Live Aid changed television – “not about music but spectacle and scale”.… would the idea of staging it have ever come about in the world of social media?… being in the room for the Geldof F-Bomb.… Ian Astbury smoking on live TV, the concrete mausoleum of the old

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23:45

Bobby Bluebell’s thriving third act, ‘80s Glasgow and...

Word In Your Ear ·

2025/06/27

Bobby Bluebell remembers the “cuddly duffle-coat friendship” of Glasgow bands in the early ‘80s and the Bluebells’ second act rebooted by the Volkswagen ad. The band are touring again and an even bigger part of the city’s thriving musical community, and he looks back here at the first gigs he ever saw and played, along with …… singing “When I’m Dead And Gone’ in an old folks home.… on the town with Siobhan Fahey, her sisters and boyfriends Kevin Rowland and Gary Crowley.… buying Rocket Man and Wee

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24:15

Dubmaster Dennis Bovell has had 50 fun-filled years...

Word In Your Ear ·

2025/06/26

Dennis Bovell has worked his dub magic on everyone from Janet Kaye to the Slits, the Pop Group, Jarvis Cocker and Thom Yorke & Jonny Greenwood – and his own band Matumbi. He talks here about the thrill and freedom of making dub records, his new album Wise Music In Dub – which reworks ‘Pass The Dutchie’, Minnie Riperton and the Stylistics – and how the phone never stops ringing with requests for an echo-filled clattery sonic re-boot. And about spending lockdown in a “dub bubble”, how recording has

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32:02

Rick Wakeman once signed a contract guaranteeing he’d...

Word In Your Ear ·

2025/06/25

Rick Wakeman was onstage from the age of five and looks back with us here on a life of live performance – jazz and blues bands, the Strawbs, Yes – and ahead to this autumn’s tour performing King Arthur and the Six Wives of Henry the Eighth. “I wake up every morning, throw off the duvet and – if nothing else has fallen off – have a great day!” There’s more …... how it feels when the rock press call you ‘Tomorrow’s Superstar!’ at the age of 24.… the contract he once had to sign that said “Mister

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40:44

When Peter Hooton, the Farm & Eric Cantona played...

Word In Your Ear ·

2025/06/19

The Farm are touring again this summer and have just made their first album for 31 years (with the same-line-up). This sparky and wide-ranging conversation with Peter Hooton stops off at the following …… the advice Mark E Smith gave him when they were interviewed by Select magazine.… “Suedeheads v Trogs and Greebos”: early ‘70s tribal warfare in Bootle.… seeing Cockney Rebel, the Sensational Alex Harvey Band and Genesis at the Liverpool Empire.… the death of old heroes – “you imagined Bowie was

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35:23

Carol Decker of T’Pau and the ocean-going world of...

Word In Your Ear ·

2025/06/16

Carol Decker - another Smash Hits cover star on the podcast! T’Pau are playing dates this summer and autumn and she talks here – hilariously - about life on the ‘80s package tour circuit and the first shows she ever saw and played, which stops off at ….… does any audience beat a Butlin’s Mid-Weeker on their third pint?… from Black Mirror to PG Tips: the afterlife of a hit.… seeing Rod & the Faces in Stoke-On-Trent and Dire Straits in a Wrestling Hall.… “Appearing In An A&E Near You!”: accident-prone

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35:32

The magnificent Sly Stone & Brian Wilson and the...

Word In Your Ear ·

2025/06/15

As the great Warren Zevon said, ‘Enjoy every sandwich’. The two-man canoe navigates this week’s rock and roll rivulet which sadly entails reflections on a pair of towering musical giants ‘whose legend occupied the space where activity should have been’. Things considered include ……are you born with genius or does a set of circumstances allow it to flourish?… the impossible task of living up to people’s expectations and the calamitous ways it led Sly and Brian Wilson to behave.… like Sly’s plane

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41:58

Why Oasis were God’s gift to the rock press and the...

Word In Your Ear ·

2025/06/12

Liam Gallagher calls Ted Kessler and Hamish MacBain “the Peter Cook and Dudley Moore of music journalism”. Both worked at the NME (and Ted at Q), both interviewed the band many times and have just published ‘A Sound So Very Loud’ which, in the grand tradition of Revolution In The Head, tells the story of every Oasis song ever recorded. They talk to Mark here about …… why Oasis struck such an almighty chord and were the band the press were waiting for.… their dismantling of the notion of rock

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25:03

Elkie Brooks once opened for the Beatles. A lot...

Word In Your Ear ·

2025/06/10

Elkie Brooks was on a package tour aged 15, supported the Beatles and the Animals, made a single when she was 19, joined the jazz-rock Dada, then Vinegar Joe (with Robert Palmer) and has since made 20 albums. She’s now out on her ‘Long Farewell Tour’ and looks back with us here from her home in Devon at …… supporting the Beatles in ’64 and an audience already screaming for the headliners.… memories of Dusty, Cilla and Maggie Bell and how few girl singers there were in the ‘60s and ‘70s.… singing

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45:43

Why they MUST make the Cat Stevens movie + rock...

Word In Your Ear ·

2025/06/08

Facing down the leg spinners of rock and roll news while trying to wallop the odd shot across the pavilion roof. On the scoreboard this week …… has there ever been a rock feud as bitter as Trump v Musk?… what Ray Charles, Taylor Swift and Dave Clark have in common.… the 30-year golden age music video.… things Van Morrison can’t forget.… how some songs about lying in hammocks necking cocktails ended up worth $275m.… Beyoncé, Stetsons, pink Cadillacs and how all visiting American acts bring with them

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46:50

Inside the world of reissues with producer Rob Caiger

Word In Your Ear ·

2025/06/02

Rob Caiger is one of those special people who turned their teenage obsession with music into a job… from being the only one in ELO’s office who knew where the old tapes were… to learning that what it says on the outside of the box isn’t always what’s on the tape… through embarking on a ten-year project to put out the last Small Faces album from 1970 in its proper form… via blindfolded journeys to mysterious destinations with the promise of finding some long-lost jewels… and hearing a Rolling Stones

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36:10

The best songs written in seconds, Lennon’s legs and...

Word In Your Ear ·

2025/05/17

Slapping the beanburger of news on the sizzling grill of scrutiny and served with relish by Alex Gold and Mark Ellen (David’s in Spain with his bucket and spade). This week’s specials include …… Springsteen’s unprecedented speech onstage in Manchester about his nation’s “corrupt, incompetent and treasonous administration” and the Dixie Chicks’ career-popping anti-Trump manoeuvre of 2003.… John Niven’s upcoming play ‘The Battle’ and the Blur/Oasis soundclash it celebrates.… the 50th anniversary of

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41:26

Dennis Greaves, Nine Below Zero – old-school R&B,...

Word In Your Ear ·

2025/05/14

Dennis Greaves took a week off from Nine Below Zero in 1980 but otherwise kept his nose firmly applied to the grindstone. They broke up in 1983 when he formed the Truth, who broke up in 1989 when he rebooted the old band. He looks back here at the first gigs he ever saw and played – a world with the attractive scent of spilt beer and tobacco – stopping off at various points, among them …… why blues and R&B flourished in South London, police and villains drinking together at the Thomas A Becket and

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36:27

The entertaining fictions of Max Romeo and Robert...

Word In Your Ear ·

2025/04/29

While Mark Ellen is hanging out with the other old ruins in Athens, David Hepworth and Alex Gold compare and contrast the organisation of the London Marathon with the Travellodge in Frimley and wonder……Rolling Stone cover stars or members of Trump’s clown cabinet?…if you were interviewed as often as a rock star would you too make stuff up?…was Max Romeo’s innocent explanation of “Wet Dream" convincing?…where do you listen to the Word In Your Ear Podcast?All this and more in your favourite

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49:54

Moon Zappa remembers life with her father Frank....

Word In Your Ear ·

2025/04/23

Moon Zappa grew up in what appeared, on the outside, to be an enviably free-wheeling and creative household in Laurel Canyon. On the inside, not so much. Her extremely funny, soul-baring and colourful account of dysfunctional family life in her memoir Earth To Moon is as gripping as it’s unsettling. A typical day: “Your mother’s on the rampage, I need you to hide the gun!” Only other children with famous parents can fully gauge the emotional turmoil. She talks here about her memoir Earth To Moon –

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Word In Your Ear

Mark Ellen, David Hepworth and Alex Gold