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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

29:11

Neil Hannon - the Divine Comedy, the Father Ted saga...

Word In Your Ear ·

2025/08/22

How can you not love the Divine Comedy whose inspirations include Tom Lehrer and “Landfill Indie”? And Neil Hannon wrote music for Wonka, Father Ted and the IT Crowd. There’s a new album, Rainy Sunday Afternoon, and a tour in October and all bases are covered in this conversation from Kildare, these among them …… seeing U2 at Croke Park “and feeling as though I’d won the Wonka Golden Ticket”.… favourite bands of the ‘80s and ‘90s - Pixies, Sugarcubes, Sonic Youth and Ride.… the miserably cancelled

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57:48

Ozzy Osbourne, Jaws, the lost world of mix tapes &...

Word In Your Ear ·

2025/07/28

Just when you thought it was safe to listen to a weekly rock and roll podcast …… how Black Sabbath discovered the dark side… why Elvis went onstage with a pistol in both boots… rock stars out of their comfort zone… five perfect things about Jaws we’d never taken onboard… Ozzy Osbourne, the bungled burglary and the fingerless gloves… Tony Iommi’s accident and how limitations are always strengths… beautiful men in military jackets and “an Account of the Misfortunes and Disasters Which Befell Barry

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23:24

Suzi Quatro - how Dad, Elvis and Mickie Most...

Word In Your Ear ·

2025/07/22

Suzi Quatro’s been onstage from the age of 14 as the bassist in the all-girl showband the Pleasure Seekers and the rock act Cradle. And then moved to England in 1971 when signed by Mickie Most. This podcast is a testament to the power of self-belief – she’s got more front than Woolworths! - and the two things her father told her. She’s just started another world tour and talks to us here about …… how British “island humour” took a while to get used to.… two deals in a week: “Elektra wanted the

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1:01:12

New Nick Drake tapes, Bob Marley’s masterpiece and...

Word In Your Ear ·

2025/07/21

A rain-splashed, dub-filled, cash-scattering foray into this week’s news and events which happily lands upon …… meeting Maddy Prior – a Prior engagement? – and the time Steeleye Span showered their audience with £8,000.… hearing Nick Drake’s demos on a narrowboat in the pitch dark a few hundred feet below London.… Steve Miller’s cancelled tour, absurdly blamed on the weather.… who’s older, Lulu or the King? Kim Wilde or William Hague? Neil Tennant or Andy Fraser of Free?… Bob Marley at the Lyceum in

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27:59

The story of David Ackles, who never recovered from...

Word In Your Ear ·

2025/07/17

Picked up in the great singer-songwriter sweep of the late 60s and signed to Elektra Records, David Ackles made four albums which went over the heads of the record-buying public, attracted over-the-top reviews and earned the undying devotion of fans like Elvis Costello and Elton John. Now Mark Brend’s book brings together an appreciation of his work with an account of his career before and after the three period when he was going to be the next big thing, taking in…….the night he found himself

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26:41

Ian Anderson, Jethro Tull and 58 years of one-legged...

Word In Your Ear ·

2025/07/01

Ian Anderson is touring again in 2026 and talks to us here about tweed stage-wear, an audience of four, his teenage heroes and the first shows he ever saw and played. There’s all sorts within, including …… playing his first gig to Catholic schoolgirls at the Holy Family Youth Club in Blackpool – “we emptied the room”.… queues round the block at the Marquee in 1968 – “the moment I knew we’d arrived.”… how Joe Cocker nicked his breakfast.… seeing Cliff at the ABC in Blackpool – “he was our Elvis.”…

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54:55

Album sleeves the modern world would ban & the best...

Word In Your Ear ·

2025/06/29

It’s Happy Hour in the Rock and Roll Lounge of News and we’re working our way through anything over 40 per cent proof. Which means ice, a slice and ….… how the F-Bomb lost its impact.… Mick Ralphs and Lalo Schifrin RIP – and chapeau to "There's A Whole Lalo Schifrin Goin' On’.… the Blush-o-meter! Album sleeves that’d get you lynched in the 21st Century – and that means you Roxy, UFO, BowWowWow, Blind Faith, Tom Waits and Supertramp!… why the TV comedy W1A was the last record of the world before

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54:05

10cc’s I’m Not In Love is still weird & wonderful! -...

Word In Your Ear ·

2025/06/23

Chasing the shade and applying Factor 50 in the wilting heat of this week’s rock and roll news turns the conversation to …… Kneecap v the Prime Minister.… will any openly anti-Trump musician find it hard to tour the States?… the girl who’s listening to all 10,000 of her late father’s albums, one 60-second Instagram reel at a time.… a bottle of Snoop Dogg rosé, anyone?… why Carol Kaye turned down the Hall Of Fame.… Hollywood and “the genius of the system” v the current vogue for applauding individual

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46:49

Stuart Maconie – every character in the Beatles’...

Word In Your Ear ·

2025/06/06

Stuart Maconie – broadcaster, prolific author – has a brilliant and original new perspective on the Beatles. His latest book With A Little Help From Their Friends identifies the 100 people who had the greatest impact on their story, from the inner circle to bit-part players – schoolfriends, girlfriends, managers, muses, support acts, advisors and exploiters. It’s immensely entertaining – and revealing, even for obsessives like us. Look out for these in particular …… memories of his Mum taking him to

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48:57

Genuinely ‘iconic’ rock pictures, words we should ban...

Word In Your Ear ·

2025/06/01

Hoary old tales retold – ideally in an Irish accent - and new ones prized from the giddy carousel of rock and roll news which, this week, features …… was there a better stage name than Rick Derringer?… Linda Ronstadt, Ronnie Spector, Sister Rosetta Tharpe and other new biopics under construction.… genuinely ‘iconic’ rock images – the Ziggy lightning stipe, Johnny Cash at San Quentin, Elvis dancing in Jailhouse Rock, Dylan and Suze Rotolo in Jones Street …… our old pal Barry McIlheney, his Belfast

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24:27

Martha Wainwright - ‘never nervous, always ballsy’...

Word In Your Ear ·

2025/05/30

Martha Wainwright is a key member of the Wainwright/McGarrigle clan, all of them big favourites of ours. She’s currently on her 20th anniversary tour and looks back here at the first shows she ever saw and played which involves …… growing up in a folk dynasty in Montreal.… the sight of Perla Batalla and Julie Christensen, backing singers on Leonard Cohen’s I’m Your Man tour, “who made me want to be onstage too”.… the story of ‘Matapedia’, the song Kate McGarrigle wrote when an old boyfriend thought

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41:27

Budgie of Siouxsie And The Banshees started out in...

Word In Your Ear ·

2025/05/29

Small boy begins breeding budgerigars in Liverpool, makes enough to buy a drum kit and becomes the power behind Big In Japan, the Slits, the Creatures and Siouxsie and the Banshees. And one half of punk rock’s most famous couples. The immensely engaging Budgie has finally written his memoir, ‘The Absence’, and talks to us from Berlin about …… are bands only as good as their drummers?… Siouxsie, the Ice Queen goth-in-waiting who was actually “a cackling crazy tomboy from Chiselhurst”.… playing

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38:14

Books rock stars want you to read, sacked drummers...

Word In Your Ear ·

2025/05/26

The two-man pedalo of enquiry sets out on the Bank Holiday boating lake of news pausing to consider …… Florence Welch, Dua Lipa and the rise of the rock and roll book club.… the 92 year-old that Bob Dylan supported at the Cascades Amphitheatre, Ridgefield.… the Beatles had 18 drummers!… the sad end to Billy Joel’s tour schedule.… is Hollywood dead?… what’s your relationship with reading if your first experience of literature is dressing up as a wizard on World Book Day?… why is there something

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32:22

Dylan Jones bangs the drum for 1975, an explosion of...

Word In Your Ear ·

2025/05/25

Dylan Jones – writer, former editor of i-D, Arena and GQ - was 15 in 1975 and dressed like Henry McCullough of Wings (“a lot of denim and silk scarves”), a time he thinks had enormous influence on the following five decades. There are many highlights in his latest book ‘1975: The Year The World Forgot’, a lot of them discussed here with David and Mark, including …… the lasting impact of the cover of Patti Smith’s Horses.… the “frightening” Millie Jackson, 50 years ahead of her time.… why Blood On

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51:45

The great lost Beach Boys SMiLE album – David Leaf...

Word In Your Ear ·

2025/05/19

The Beach Boys’ SMiLE was abandoned by Brian Wilson in 1967 and eventually performed at an emotional gathering of the faithful in London 37 years later. For writer and lecturer David Leaf it became an obsession. He made a documentary about it in 2004 and has just published ‘SMiLE: The Rise, Fall and Resurrection of Brian Wilson’ drawn from detailed conversations with the people involved. He talks to us here about his discoveries, which include …... the Rolling Stone story that kick-started his

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49:29

Peter Capaldi’s life in a teenage Glasgow punk band...

Word In Your Ear ·

2025/05/13

Peter Capaldi – aka Malcolm Tucker, Dr Who, the universal screen delight and an Oscar-winning film director – was the singer in the punk band the Dreamboys in the late ‘70s who put out a single when he was at the art school in Glasgow. And then became an actor. And then - in the grand tradition of actors who’ve made albums, Hugh Laurie, Scarlett Johansson, Jeff Bridges and Keanu Reeves among them – released St Christopher in 2021. He’s just recorded a second, Sweet Illusions, and talks to us in this

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34:42

Alan Parsons – from the rooftop of Savile Row to Pink...

Word In Your Ear ·

2025/05/12

The teenage Alan Parsons was hired as a tape op by EMI and worked with the Beatles, Pink Floyd, Steve Harley, orchestras, comedians, Pinky And Perky and countless others in the control room at Abbey Road, and saw almost 60 years of technical revolution. He’s just finished a 50th anniversary box set of Harley’s the Best Years Of Our Lives and talks here from his Santa Monica home studio about …… the things you find buried in old recordings.… how AI will allow anyone to remix their favourite record.…

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40:10

Mom Rock v Dad Rock, the Oasis rumour mill and Kanye...

Word In Your Ear ·

2025/05/11

Perched outside the Vatican Of News awaiting puffs of white smoke, which this week arrive in the following fashion …… Brandi Carlile’s Mothership Weekend and her genius for publicity.… Jim Morrison is alive and living in Syracuse, New York!: barrel-scraping new rock documentary incoming.… Hip Hop Wealth v Rock Wealth: the $57m house Kayne West bought, gutted and left to disintegrate.… real or fictional ‘religious’ musicians – Saint Pepsi, Cardinal Rex, Pope Plastique, the Reverend Horton Heat?…

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39:54

Dennis McNally saw the Summer Of Love in London, New...

Word In Your Ear ·

2025/05/08

Dennis McNally was the Grateful Dead’s publicist in the mid-‘80s, one of many reasons why he’s supremely qualified to write his new book about the birth of the counterculture in America’s West and East Coast and Britain. ‘The Last Great Dream: How Bohemians Became Hippies And Created the Sixties’, a celebration of music, beat poetry, radical thinking, free speech and artistic liberty, seems even more precious now in the light of recent events. All sorts are discussed here, these being some of the

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49:39

The greatest duet, rock cameos in Miami Vice and the...

Word In Your Ear ·

2025/05/05

Passing the thermometer of conversation over the rock and roll news to see where the mercury rises, which this week includes …… the new Barbra Streisand duets album. Duets are ‘playlets’, small intense dramas that depend on human interaction, but so many are recorded separately (including, tragically, Ain’t No Mountain High Enough by Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell).… but … duets you HAVE to hear! eg Cash & Carter, Otis Redding & Carla Thomas, Ray Charles & Betty Carter, Siouxsie & Morrissey, Nick

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109 results

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