x

75% of people globally want unbiased news (Pew Research) but are concerned they're not getting that.

Get balanced coverage with Symby. See how stories are covered across diverse outlets and spot when one side covers a story the other skips.

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

41:44

Britpop, its peaks and its spiritual godfather: a...

Word In Your Ear ·

2024/10/17

You’ll know Miranda Sawyer from the Observer and the radio and, possibly, from her days at Smash Hits and Select magazines that form the foundation of her new book, Uncommon People: Britpop and Beyond in 20 Songs, a time spent watching, interviewing and hanging out with the collection of misfits and outsiders fast becoming the last great musical movement this country ever saw. This pans in on the period between April 1993, Select’s ‘Yanks Go Home’ cover, and August 1997 when Oasis released Be Here

en

37:56

How Christine McVie saw Fleetwood Mac and the real...

Word In Your Ear ·

2024/10/04

Christine McVie - one of only two British girl rock musicians in the ‘60s and part of the greatest pop soap opera of all time. Neither in the backline or the frontline but occupying a unique middle ground. Packed it in for 16 years then returned to the fold. Lesley-Ann Jones’ fresh and emotional memoir Songbird follows “the trajectory of a male rock star played by a woman”, the home she was keen to escape, the outer limits of life in Fleetwood Mac’s “toxic Camelot” and the rigours of holding her

en

33:12

Nick Heyward dressed like Cary Grant – then the Jam,...

Word In Your Ear ·

2024/10/03

Nick Heyward was one of our favourite cover stars when we were at Smash Hits in the ‘80s, the days when hardcore Haircut One Hundred fans turned out in Fair Isle sweaters and Sou’Westers. He now lives mostly in Florida, he’s made nine solo albums – one magnificently titled Open Sesame Seed - and he’s toured again with his old band after ten years’ painful separation. Touring the UK in October, he couldn’t be more upbeat about the road ahead – “I can do anything!” – and looks back here at the first

en

46:59

The deep secret of Abba’s “music without nostalgia”...

Word In Your Ear ·

2024/09/25

Abba’s biographer Jan Gradvall met and interviewed Abba many times and builds a fresh picture of their internal chemistry in his new book Melancholy Undercover. Highlights of this illuminating pod include …… how Sweden rejected their early hits for not being sufficiently “socialist”.…. the discomfiting early life of Anni-Frid Lyngstad.… what Max Martin and Denniz Pop thought made Abba’s music so durable.… Strindberg, Bergman, the climate, the eight months of darkness and the role of melancholia in

en

55:54

Fond memories of lost ‘80s London, Morrissey v Marr...

Word In Your Ear ·

2024/09/23

A free-form spontaneous jam this week - the Dark Star of podcasts – which navigates the outer reaches of the rock and roll stratosphere by way of the following …… was Michael Stipe’s father a military helicopter pilot in Korea?… our fantasy Odd Couple tragi-comedy: Morrissey and Marr in a thin-skinned middle-aged flat share.… how the Golden Egg launched Roxy Music.… can anyone name more than one member of Coldplay?… did Paddy McAloon’s mum make the sets for the Clangers?… the ’80s version of the

en

48:18

Joe Boyd – Little Richard, Nick Drake, Tight Fit and...

Word In Your Ear ·

2024/09/18

Joe Boyd produced Fairport Convention, Nick Drake and many others, released acts from all over the globe on his Hannibal label and has just written a mighty and definitive account of the history of popular music, And The Roots Of Rhythm Remain, tracing the way different sounds from different countries became interwoven. Nobody is better qualified to write this book as you’ll discover from this enthralling conversation. Among the highlights …… “if Mick and Keith had had Spotify there’d have been no

en

39:03

The Buskers’ Hall of Fame – from Moondog and Billy...

Word In Your Ear ·

2024/09/10

Louis Armstrong, Wild Man Fischer, Irving Berlin and Lucinda Williams all started out as buskers and Cary Baker’s ‘Down On The Corner’ traces the romance and influence of street players from Ancient Rome via Chicago’s Maxwell Street to Elvis Costello outside the CBS conference and beyond. Cary, David and Mark chuck coins in the conversational hat, among them …… the turban and rollerblades stagewear of Harry Perry aka “the Skating Sikh”.… Blind Arvella Gray who took up busking because of a gun

en

38:09

Who should follow John Lydon with a Spoken Word...

Word In Your Ear ·

2024/09/09

We applied dynamic pricing to this week’s news and various stories trebled in value, among them …… further adventures in the Oasis ticket fiasco.… the greatest band name ever.… the only rock star born under Adolf Hitler.… Marianne Faithfull? Ian Anderson? Elvis Costello? Musicians you’d rather hear talk than play.… rock stars telling jokes.… “if it isn’t hard to get it’s not worth having.”… is hype generated from above or below?... the return of old-school analogue: David Gilmour’s Golden Ticket.…

en

33:36

The Oasis reunion – feuds, cash, symbolism and the...

Word In Your Ear ·

2024/08/31

David, Mark and our token bucket-hatted parka monkey Alex tackle the return of Oasis, its grip on the public imagination and why they’re the biggest band of the last 30 years, which includes …… the Gallaghers’ mixed fortunes since 2009.… who won the battle of the underdogs.… “Noel has a thousand buttons, Liam has a thousand fingers”.… why the ‘90s was just like the ‘60s, a golden age of British pop culture.… no whizz-bangs required, no props, no choreography, no lasers, no extras … why Oasis is the

en

44:15

Are comedians more competitive than rock stars?

Word In Your Ear ·

2024/08/28

In a concerted effort to put the world to rights, David and Mark ruminate upon the following …… Kylie and the Wiggles? Canned Heat and the Chipmunks? Real or invented pop star/childrens’ entertainer collaborations... the charmed life of Greg Kihn.… will the BBC have any archive left if it keeps cancelling presenters?… why Inside Llewyn Davis works and so many other biopics fail.… the full story of the statement Springsteen made with the Born To Run cover shoot.… Stewart Lee’s long-running beef with

en

42:01

One-word rock star mimicry, bands who shouldn’t...

Word In Your Ear ·

2024/08/19

With David asleep on a French sun-lounger beneath a copy of Summer Lightning, Alex and Mark pour themselves a cold drink and consider …… the great ska floor-fillers.… taking kids to rock concerts.… the fate of all bands: “as musicianship improves, vocals decline”.… left-field Beatles songs reworked as nursery rhymes.… why 2-Tone had pop’s “triple threat” (and the genius of Mike Barson).… of the five big acts with all original members intact, only one should reform.… how “Tay-gating” became a thing.…

en

34:04

The extraordinary story of Arthur Lee, Love and the...

Word In Your Ear ·

2024/08/15

Love’s official biographer John Einarson tells David Hepworth the star-crossed tale of the band who made the least psychedelic album of the psychedelic era. Their conversation takes in:….Lee’s growing up between Memphis and L.A., dealing with the problems of looking more like Johnny Mathis than Otis Redding.….how being indulged as a youngster by his family made him a tyrant as a band leader.….growing up with a prodigious musical talent but without the mastery of a single instrument.….refusing to put

en

38:59

Buddy Holly airlines and the inimitable Bob Dylan

Word In Your Ear ·

2024/08/12

As Mark Ellen goes shrimping at Frinton David Hepworth and Alex Gold links hands across the Atlantic to discuss:….why a quick turn around Mount Hood in a Cessna should never be confused with pleasure….why all the highly-rated albums are actually over-rated.….why Timothee Chalamet has no hope of being able to capture more than one facet of Bob Dylan….the name of the only music-related location in the whole of Oxford Street which has managed to survive the great hollowing-out….why there really is no

en

50:25

“Pop music is 80 per cent about hair”, remaking...

Word In Your Ear ·

2024/08/04

A small Pastis, a game of boules and a conversation putting the rock and roll world to rights, which this week includes …… why Debbie Harry and Mick Jagger worked so well on the small screen.…Elvin Pelvin on the Bilko Show and how Elvis was modelled on Tony Curtis.… An American Werewolf In London, The Birds, Invasion of the Bodysnatchers, Don’t Look Now, Nightmare On Elm Street and other old movies being rebooted.… how Patti Smith based an entire career on looking like Keith Richards in 1972 and

en

31:59

Queen, Bowie and other residents of Rockfield Studios...

Word In Your Ear ·

2024/08/02

Rockfield is a converted farmhouse in the Welsh countryside where, for over 50 years, bands have lived while recording. In the ‘70s Tiffany Murray’s mum was the in-house cook, filling Motorhead to the brim with boeuf bourguignon and Black Sabbath with salmon en croute. Her touching memoir My Family And Other Rock Stars – hailed as “a rock and roll Cider With Rosie” – sees a succession of visiting bands though the wide eyes of a child and in a wholly new light - Freddie Mercury is the man who “smelt

en

45:56

57 years of Fleetwood Mac: author Mark Blake's fond...

Word In Your Ear ·

2024/07/31

Mark Blake calls Dreams: the Many Lives of Fleetwood Mac a “mosaic biography”, their almost six-decade saga presented as a series of enthralling short stories with titles like ‘Mick Fleetwood’s Great Epiphany’ and ‘Rumours: A Doomed Romance in Six Acts’. It opens in fact with a “cast of characters”, the 18 one-time members, as if dramatis personae in a play, a play that gets more outlandish and dumbfounding with every new discovery and much of it based on his interviews and meetings with most of

en

35:14

Ron Sexsmith doesn’t need a teleprompter. He can do...

Word In Your Ear ·

2024/07/30

Beloved Canadian singer-songwriter Ron Sexsmith, old pal of the pod, is touring the UK in November, two of the nights at the Palladium, and looks back here at the first shows he saw and played himself. Which delights include …… what you learn playing Canadian bars aged 16.…seeing Elton John in a 75,000-seater stadium when he was 12.… early memories of the Kinks and the Who.… why every gig is “a mini-battle”.… Bob Dylan’s courage to do what the crowd don’t expect.… original fans in middle-age:

en

52:36

Without John Mayall … no Cream, Fleetwood Mac, Status...

Word In Your Ear ·

2024/07/29

Passing the baton of discourse on the rock and roll racetrack, our Olympian hosts sprint in the following direction ……watching Toumani Diabaté play in the pitch-black Malian night.… Laurel Canyon, the Brain Damage Club and the great fire of ‘79.… the Kinks in Fortis Green Road, the Beatles in Chiswick House and other alternative London rock landmarks.… is Cerrone’s Supernature nicked from the Days Of Pearly Spencer?… lower-level graduates from the John Mayall Academy – Jon Hiseman, Keef Hartley,

en

52:54

Backstage at Live Aid, the first Knebworth and bands...

Word In Your Ear ·

2024/07/15

Employing controversial VAR technology, we re-examine various events on the rock and roll pitch and suggest a new perspective. Those key moments include …… the “bucolic frolic” at Knebworth 50 years ago as seen from 100 yards away just past the burger van and featuring Tim Buckley, Alex Harvey, the Mahavishnu Orchestra, Van Morrison, the Doobie Brothers and the Allman Brothers Band. And a stark naked Jesus.… when did the Age of Spectacle begin?… how Two-Way Family Favourites helped start Live Aid.…

en

37:34

Dylan Jones – Clegg’s women, Hague’s pints and “the...

Word In Your Ear ·

2024/07/03

We’ve known Dylan since the days he was editing i-D, Arena and GQ and he’s been a regular on our podcasts talking about his books on Live Aid, the ‘80s, David Bowie and Wichita Lineman. And he’s finally written his memoir, These Foolish Things, full of insights and stories about glam rock, punk, the Blitz, four decades of the magazine world and the people he interviewed and shepherded into awards shows. You’ll hear the delightful clang of the odd dropped name here, along with …… Shirley MacLaine,

en

115 results

Similar Podcasts

Pasquale Maassen Soundcloud

Pasquale Maassen

Marian Klose

Marian Klose

sevenism

sevenism

Dean Delray"s LET THERE BE TALK

Cactus Radio Network

Word In Your Ear

Mark Ellen, David Hepworth and Alex Gold