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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

53:43

Do all panned albums end up loved? And what’s the...

Word In Your Ear ·

2025/12/21

Deck the halls with cheese and Bolly! … and a dish of the usual rock and roll distraction which this week throws the following logs on the fire …… the greatest Xmas single ever?… Metal Machine Music, Cut the Crap, Two Sides of the Moon … can panned records ever be rehabilitated?… how Roxy Music invented ‘rock brand-value’ and turned it into pictures… Joe Ely and the romance of songs about the American landscape… Rob Reiner and why that scene in When Harry Met Sally is the greatest marriage of people

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48:11

Paul Kelly – ‘national treasure!’ - and the song that...

Word In Your Ear ·

2025/12/18

Beloved Australian songwriter Paul Kelly has just turned 70 – “it sounds Biblical, threescore years and ten.” He looks back here at the road he took to get there, from early days in Adelaide to the pub circuit to his catalogueof stirring and eloquent songs about the big issues of life and love, as Neil Finn says, “with not a trace of pretence or fakery”. You’ll find …… the moment he felt he’d arrived… the story of How To Make Gravy – “a Christmas song with no chorus about a man in prison” – and Rita

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32:00

Lucinda Williams is fighting on every front

Word In Your Ear ·

2025/12/17

Lucinda Williams was a teenage activist singing We Shall Overcome at protest marches and she’s taken up the cudgels again on her new album World’s Gone Wrong. She talks to us here from her home in Nashville about …… early inspirations - Dylan, Donovan, Joan Baez, Peter Paul & Mary, Buffy Sainte-Marie – and her love of Sandy Denny, Bert Jansch, Nick Drake and ‘60s British folk… playing Delta blues for tips at Andy’s in Bourbon Street in 1971… her sudden favourite Beatle switch – “Paul … then

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1:02:40

Beastie Boys, Frankie, teds, punks, raves - ‘moral...

Word In Your Ear ·

2025/12/15

Shock, horror, public outcry and moments of moral turpitude plus with the usual news, rants and old hokum, which this week alights upon …… why Gene Simmons thinks “musicians are treated worse than slaves”... the high noon of Madonna and her foil-wrapped Sex book… is Rufus Wainwright pop’s most successful nepo-baby?… how CMAT forced Bertie Ahern to pull out of the Irish Presidency… the Stackwaddy Quiz: If I Had Legs I’d Kick You? Getting Killed? Sinister Grift? Pitchfork Album of the Year or an entry

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34:03

Punk Rock recalled by Chris Sullivan - can music...

Word In Your Ear ·

2025/12/09

What’s the word ‘punk’ come to mean 50 years later? It’s been adopted by the very people it sought to unsettle. Chris Sullivan – DJ, club runner, lecturer, former band-leader – arrived in London just as it kicked off and looks back at a time when everything was a challenge, no-one apologised, outsiders linked up and fought for recognition, and pop culture could change overnight. We talk to him here about ‘Punk: the Last Word’ which traces its roots from Socrates to Soho, touching on…… does ‘punk’

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32:43

UK Subs’ Charlie Harper (81) has served 50 years in...

Word In Your Ear ·

2025/12/08

UK Subs formed in 1976 when Charlie Harper was 32. They’ve had over 80 members, some of whom he can’t remember. They never split up and are touring in 2026 to celebrate his 82nd birthday. “I vowed I’d keep playing as long at the Stones - which I’m now starting to regret!” After 50 years on the punk frontline, he’s the first to see the humour in going deaf and “having to have the occasional sit-down”. This fond and honest conversation looks back at …… seeing the Stones at Ken Colyers’ jazz club and

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54:20

Fairytale of New York's full story & the imperishable...

Word In Your Ear ·

2025/12/07

The boys of the NYPD choir are still singing Galway Bay, so pour yourself a measure of the Rare Old Mountain Dew and warm your toes on the following …… Steve Lillywhite (in Bali!) remembers making Fairytale Of New York and how “a fiery redhead” kicked the Chrissie Hynde duet into touch… the most recent singer-songwriter you could call “a ledge”?… records we loved in our 20s but now feel a bit embarrassing… “discipline and economy, tension and release”: the immortal twangs and tweaks of Steve Cropper

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47:26

The Beatles versus Capitol Records and ‘the greatest...

Word In Your Ear ·

2025/12/03

In 1963, Capitol Records considered the Beatles “a band who looked and sounded weird with an odd name and no leader” and refused to release their records in America, despite being owned by EMI. As author Andrew Cook points out, “the truth is stranger than fiction”. New correspondence unearthed in his fascinating Capitol Gains maps out the tortuous wranglings of the deal-makers and “pantomime bad guys” behind the greatest and most successful marketing hype in history, all jockeying to take credit and

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34:13

The Undertones are 50! And no-one’s more amazed than...

Word In Your Ear ·

2025/12/02

Glorious news! The Undertones, dependable symbols of eternal youth, are setting out on a 50th anniversary tour in 2026, still playing Teenage Kicks and Here Comes the Summer in their mid-60s. Damian O’Neill joined when he was 14 and can’t believe it either. He looks back here at …… their first gig in a scout hall - “Feargal was a Scout leader!” - and their second for 1,000 schoolkids at St Joseph’s in Derry… the world-wide appeal of their Irish identity and why “America never got us”… David’s

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1:03:41

Jimmy Cliff, unseen Beatles and the greatest bassline...

Word In Your Ear ·

2025/12/01

Twenty pounds of headlines plus rants, theories and the odd slice of old hokum: served hot. Which this week involves …… Jimmy Cliff and how his versatility worked against him… the Conjuror? Eyeball Tickler? The Concert in the Egg? Hieronymus Bosch painting or late-period Oasis B-side?… Motown, Jacksons, Beatles, Chili Peppers? What’s the greatest bassline on record?… what you notice watching the new Beatles’ Anthology 4... why the leading edge of novelty is the internet… from Eddie Cochran to the

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34:11

Boo Hewerdine’s funny and alarming account of real...

Word In Your Ear ·

2025/11/26

Boo Hewerdine, beloved singer-songwriter, has been onstage for 40 years in venues of every type, shape and size. He thinks of himself as a “tradesman”, a world that’s immensely satisfying but a tough call. This very funny, poignant podcast paints a vivid picture of the best and worst of times. Which include …… playing scout huts, libraries, churches, folk clubs and the Palladium… the world’s best dressing-room (it’s in Stroud) and worst venue (Pittsburgh)… “the engine inside you that makes you want

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38:14

Kula Shaker’s Crispian Mills had a colourful childhood

Word In Your Ear ·

2025/11/19

Crispian Mills knew he’d be onstage as he’s from a “family of professional show-offs” but they begged him not to be an actor. He talks here about his extraordinary showbusiness childhood and the band that emerged from it full of psychedelia, echoes of the East and warm invitations to join the First Congregational Church of Eternal Love and Free Hugs. Along with …… his mother Hayley Mills playing him Tubular Bells to get him to sleep - “profoundly scary”… Roman Polanski’s ‘special’ Marlboro

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36:29

The Beach Boys’ story gets more tangled by the minute

Word In Your Ear ·

2025/11/18

“All bands are sad stories,” Peter Doggett points out, but is there a more woven, moving and, at times, farcical tale than that of the Beach Boys? It gives the sound of them a greater melancholy and resonance with every passing year. As his fascinating new book Surf’s Up reveals, nothing that happened is straightforward and very little as simple as it sounds. We talk here about …… Dennis Wilson and the Beach Boys’ creation myth… what started their revival… why they’d never have survived beyond 1962

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50:39

What makes a rock star a ‘ledge’ & the daft rituals...

Word In Your Ear ·

2025/11/16

Five decades of rock and roll with none of the names redacted. In the despatches this week …… Kevin Rowland? Adam Ant? Toyah? Morrissey? Which Smash Hits cover stars are now ‘legends’?…a classic encounter with Van Morrison down a Bristol alley… the boy who mailed dead rodents and Boomtown Rats singles to radio stations became Pope Leo XIV!… 25 recent big-name Hollywood films all flopped. Are robots the new movie stars?… was Sticky Fingers the last Stones album with songs?… best nights out for a

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39:32

Did rave kill dancing in couples? Stars seen in...

Word In Your Ear ·

2025/11/11

Marking our dance card at the rock and roll hop this week you’ll find …… And Then He Kissed Me, I Saw Her Standing There, Springsteen’s All The Way Home: songs about the theatre of dancing… is there a more influential sleeve than Patti Smith’s Horses?… did Dylan invent the box-set?… records you wish you liked… when the Beach Boys were so off the boil they covered Dylan and three by the Beatles… when did we stop dancing in couples?… Jagger queueing for a sandwich, Beckham in a farm shop, Lady Di in

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30:04

David Bowie and why we need him more than ever. Paul...

Word In Your Ear ·

2025/11/06

David Bowie’s significance just keeps expanding and the look and sound of him never age. Paul Morley has been gripped from the start and his new book ‘Far Above The World’ explores the many reasons why. These among them …… Labyrinth, YouTube and the new ways people discover Bowie… why he’s a figurehead of a vanishing world… dressing up for radio interviews… his almost fatal relationship with America and the 1971 promo tour that was his ‘On The Road’… Haddon Hall and his first key collaborators…

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27:02

‘Bob Dylan is my father’ - and why Sam Sussman is...

Word In Your Ear ·

2025/11/05

Sam Sussman’s mother Fran had a year-long love affair with Dylan when he was working on Blood on the Tracks – she’s mentioned in Tangled Up In Blue – and they met again in 1990. What she told him about that relationship is mapped out in the book he’s just written, Boy From the North Country, along with the firm belief that he’s Dylan’s son. Imagine how that must feel. This extraordinary conversation takes a number of turns and these are among them …… Norman Raeben’s art class where Dylan was trying

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34:38

Thompson Twins’ Tom Bailey had a ‘manifesto for...

Word In Your Ear ·

2025/11/04

Tom Bailey’s been based in New Zealand for the last 30 years, making records, DJing and avoiding British winters. He tours the UK in 2026 playing the Thompson Twins’ greatest hits and looks back here from Auckland at the first shows he ever saw and played, all this high in the mix …... dance music and the British Invasion of America… the inspiring delights of Some Kind Of Mushroom, his local record shop in Chesterfield… seeing Blodwyn Pig, Edgar Broughton and Principal Edwards Magic Theatre when he

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45:48

Cowbells, maracas, gongs, castanets – classic...

Word In Your Ear ·

2025/11/03

The raw ingredients of this week’s news gently diced, simmered and served as a nutritious broth. And flavoured with the following …… why Lily Allen’s divorce album doubled the value of her house… how can you play real living people as fundamentally bad after Steve Coogan’s ‘Lost King’ court case?… the cowbell on Honky Tonk Women, the guiro on Gimme Shelter, the tambourine on classic Motown: Richard Pite gives a percussion demo… Kraftwerk, 10cc, Coolio, George McCrae – more records that sound unique…

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34:59

Paul Young – “Big in the ‘80s! What lucky bastards we...

Word In Your Ear ·

2025/10/25

Paul Young was the bassist in a pub band playing Led Zeppelin and Patto covers ‘til his solo soul and blues slot launched him as a singer. He’s still touring nearly 50 years later, just back from filling Mexican stadiums with Rod Stewart. And next May launching his acoustic ‘Songs & Stories Tour’ in theatres, intercut with film clips and hoary old tales from the battlefield. He looks back here at ……Smash Hits cover shoots and Rewind package tours: “what a glorious time the ‘80s was”… the soul

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