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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

54:56

The story of Wild Thing and whatever happened to...

Word In Your Ear ·

2026/04/13

Take your protein pills and put your helmet on as we voyage to the far side this week to take a picture of …… the Kanye West & Wireless ding-dong… Springsteen with Tom Morello, Pet Shop Boys with Johnny Marr: the fine art of the ‘special guest’… when Time Magazine invented Swinging London… Gregg Allman and the judge’s wife… Fake Plastic Trees! Pressure Drop by the Clash! Waka Waka (This Time for Africa)! Politicians trying to be hip… a primal howl from the Troggs written by the son of a golf

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35:01

How Tony Visconti keeps the Bowie flag flying

Word In Your Ear ·

2026/04/02

Tony Visconti left Brooklyn for London in 1967, began working with the Move and Marc Bolan and formed a life-long friendship with the teenage David Bowie, playing on his first two albums and producing 10 of ones that followed. And in 2014 he formed Holy Holy with Woody Woodmansey, a live celebration of Bowie’s music from 1970 to Blackstar. They’re touring again in September with Glenn Gregory as lead singer – “you can’t mourn forever.” He talks to us here about …… the gig they played the night Bowie

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38:44

Matt Johnson & the unique story of The The plus...

Word In Your Ear ·

2026/04/01

Matt Johnson’s life story has been mapped out as one long Q&A conversation from meetings with old friend, fan and BFI director Jason Wood. ‘Cognitive Dissident’ traces his trajectory from the East End to Soho to the beloved albums he made with a series of super-groups and his 2021 comeback. He looks back here at …… his earliest musical memories – Donovan, the Move, the Crazy World of Arthur Brown… the old East End and the Two Puddings pub run by his parents, “full of ghosts”, Bobby Moore,

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28:29

At home with Nick Drake, Sandy Denny & John Martyn in...

Word In Your Ear ·

2026/03/31

When he was 19, New Yorker Brian Cullman covered the London music scene for Crawdaddy, landing at the birth of folk-rock and the singer-songwriter boom and watching its leading lights from unimaginably close quarters - Sandy Denny, Nick Drake, John Martyn among them. He even played on the same bill as Drake at Les Cousins club, all this recorded in his book ‘How To Prepare for the Past: Travels in Music and Time’. He talks to us here about that golden age and the American stars he met later,

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45:24

The Jarrett movie, Macca’s secret & when did standing...

Word In Your Ear ·

2026/03/29

Whooping, whistling, punching the air, standing on the arm-rests and generally adding our voice to the sound of the crowd this week involves …… the creepy way Google eavesdrops our conversations… the cleverly positioned “secret” on McCartney’s new album… why a knackered piano made Keith Jarrett’s Cologne Concert a success… Daryl Hannah, Mick McCarthy, Ray Manzarek: people who hated the way they were played in biopics… Pectoralz? The Rain? Tony Flow and the Miraculously Majestic Masters of Mayhem

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57:29

Mustn’t grumble! Songs with the essence of Englishness

Word In Your Ear ·

2026/03/23

A milky tea, a jam sponge and this week’s news served on a tin tray with a steam train painted on it points our very English conversation towards the following …… what connects the Monkees and a British Prime Minister?… when are you too old for Indie?… A Certain Je Ne Sais Quoi? A Bar on The Piccolo Marina? Noel Coward or Neil Tennant?… the Move, the Streets, the Kinks, ELO, Ian Dury, Anthony Newley, the Jam, Herman’s Hermits, Cat Stevens, Arctic Monkeys and other acts with a sense of Englishness…

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54:35

Neil Tennant revisits songs he’s written since the...

Word In Your Ear ·

2026/03/20

Neil Tennant co-wrote a musical at Primary School and soon decided that “learning other people’s songs was hard work compared with making up your own”. He’s chosen some from the Pet Shop Boys’ 40-year catalogue, hits and obscurities, in ‘One Hundred Lyrics and a Poem’, just out in paperback, and added fascinating notes about their context and composition. This very funny and revealing conversation lands on the following …... the first song he ever wrote… auditioning for Rocket Records in 1975… does

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42:36

Steve Nieve looks back at Costello, Stiff tours and...

Word In Your Ear ·

2026/03/16

At the age of four, Steve Nieve drew pictures of piano keys and pretended to play them. He joined Elvis Costello & the Attractions when he was 19, the start of a life that involves having to find a flight case for a Steinway Grand. He talks to us here from his Paris apartment about Stiff package tours, recording remotely, his upcoming shows with the French singer Kessada and …… being a teenager as fond of Stravinsky as Alice Cooper and the Carpenters… playing in a mid-‘70s Top Forty covers band…

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41:29

The Kinks’ chaotic ascent mapped out day-by-day is ‘a...

Word In Your Ear ·

2026/03/08

A gorgeous and lavish new publication tells the story of the Kinks in the ‘60s via the key events in their unsteady trajectory plus concert bills, letters and ephemera assembled by Andrew Sandoval, the kind of non-digital research that’s filled his archive with yellowing back numbers of Disc & Music Echo. It’s “nirvana for any fan”, the title hinting at the level of detail – ‘The Kinks: All Day and All of the Night, the Day By Day Story Part 1: 1940 – 1971’. He joins us here from Los Angeles to

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44:15

How A Hard Day’s Night ripped up the pop movie rulebook

Word In Your Ear ·

2026/03/06

Author and broadcaster Samira Ahmed used to watch A Hard Day’s Night once a week and she’s just written an enthralling account of the shoot and its impact for the BFI’s Classic Films series. A movie, she points out, that celebrates Britishness and suburbia made largely by immigrants that broke every Hollywood rule, a film made to capture the essence of the Beatles before the bubble burst “which turned out to be the start of something not the end”. She talks to us here about …… the film’s connections

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36:24

Bob Dylan and the Beatles, a tale of envy, affection...

Word In Your Ear ·

2026/03/05

Bob Dylan and the Beatles watched each other closely. Jim Windolf is fascinated by the parallels in their stories, the obvious moments they influenced each other and the unconcealable tensions at the times they met, all mapped out in his book ‘Where The Music Had To Go: How Bob Dylan and the Beatles Changed Each Other – and Changed the World’. He talks to us here from New York about what he discovered when writing it, which touches on …… deep-end Dylan and Beatles fans: which can be “crankier”?… the

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49:12

Mark Lewisohn and why writing the real Beatles story...

Word In Your Ear ·

2026/03/03

Mark Lewisohn began his Beatles’ trilogy in 2003, the first volume appearing ten years later. He’s hoping the second, Turn On, which covers 1963 to 1966 and every recording session, might be ready by 2031 and working “nine days a week to achieve it, assembling a framework and then sliding it together”. Further good news – his lecture about their life in 1962, Evolver62, is now available on film! “No matter how deep you dig, there’s gold there”. He talks to us here about …… how you research such an

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46:12

The Skids, Big Country and the unsettling story of...

Word In Your Ear ·

2026/02/24

Stuart Adamson co-founded the Skids and Big Country but was profoundly ill-suited to the spoils of his success. Author Scott Rowley unpacks his passage from Dunfermline to Nashville and Hawaii to get a sense of his demons and what drove and inspired him. He talks to us here about his compelling new memoir ‘Stay Alive: the Life and Death of Stuart Adamson’ and touches on …… hints of troubled family life in his early lyrics and the shadows of his father and grandfather… that famous three-word review:

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49:25

There are only three Rock National Treasures – and we...

Word In Your Ear ·

2026/02/22

Our ‘big air’ manoeuvres on the rock and roll ski jump this week land the following tricks …… why don’t we re-use old protest songs instead of writing new ones?… “a temple of music and gothic lust:” would YOU buy Jim Steinman’s unsellable home?… when Madness played on the Buck House roof… Ptolomaic Terrascope? Aquarium Drunkard? Real and made-up music magazines… “too complicated, not catchy, like a high-minded think-piece”: U2’s Days Of Ash EP… when the Ramones invaded the London library… Rod,

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32:20

Andy Bown remembers the Herd, Judas Jump and 47 years...

Word In Your Ear ·

2026/02/10

Andy Bown found the 20 year-old recordings of “a deep-space love story” he’d written with the sci-fi author Russell Hoban and he’s just reworked and released them. He talks to us here about “Out There” and life in the Herd, Judas Jump and Status Quo, which involves …… playing the Three Tuns in Beckenham with Bowie… “Foot gun, gun foot. I always tell the truth.”… Peter Frampton when he was The Face of ‘68… “we were earning £225 a night and got £15 a week. Where did the money go?”… Quo’s Whatever You

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38:46

How the album survived and why it satisfies the soul!

Word In Your Ear ·

2026/02/10

The album has had 25 years of being hammered by other formats – Napster, iTunes, Spotify, TikTok – and not only survived but thrived. For Keith Jopling it’s the irreplaceable way to hear music and to measure the people who make it. His new book Body Of Work celebrates its battle-scarred trajectory from the beating heart of pop culture to 21st Century affordable luxury, and stops off at …… growing up in the age of cassettes… his lifelong devotion to a Police album left on his doorstep… Adele’s battle

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47:26

Racy pulp paperbacks, teenage Joni and the BRIT...

Word In Your Ear ·

2026/02/08

Unredacted exchanges about the rock and roll underworld this week highlight the following …… real or made-up stars’ kids’ names: Speck Wildhorse? Blue Ivy? Everly Bear? Motorhead Michelob?… man plays drum solo with his head!… Olivia Dean, Lola Young, FKA Twigs: what do today’s ‘professionals’ learn at the BRIT School and what happened to the age of the amateurs?… why Joni Mitchell’s life was even more extraordinary before she was famous… Three Dog Night, Kiss, Grand Funk Railroad, Linda Ronstadt:

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39:26

David Bowie and the triumph, mystery and struggle of...

Word In Your Ear ·

2026/02/03

Bowie’s early years have been scrutinised repeatedly but people tend to speed through the last act, from the early ‘90s to his death in 2016. Alexander Larman’s ‘Lazarus: The Second Coming Of David Bowie’ looks at his resurrection and the mystery of his final days in Manhattan in attractively honest detail, a book that’s as fondly critical of his artistic decisions as it’s celebratory. Under discussion here …… ‘David Bowie was a fictional invention and much of his life an act’… how wrong so many

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1:02:16

Days with Bowie, Prince, the Stones, Hendrix & the...

Word In Your Ear ·

2026/02/02

David Sinclair was a long-running rock critic for the Times, Rolling Stone and many others and now makes records himself. He looks back here at some of the first bands he saw and the extraordinary people he interviewed, which touches on …… the day Bowie took him to the Hammersmith Odeon to stand on the spot where he announced his retirement… Keith Richards’ dark side (and what he said about Lady Di)… interviewing Prince “who seemed like a shadow”… seeing Free in 1970: “I still think about it. Some

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52:26

Pet Shop Boys at 40, missing folk star found! & rock...

Word In Your Ear ·

2026/01/11

‘January,’ a revered pop lyricist once wrote, ‘sick and tired you've been hanging on me.’ And if that’s the mood down your way, this might help crank up the heat, alighting as it does upon the following …… Guns N’Roses and the imperial age of the pop video: director Nigel Dick remembers the $750,000 budget… ‘lost elfin Scots superstar’: missing Incredible String Band member found after 40 years!… comparing the original West End Girls to the re-made worldwide hit: “like a Top Of The Pops album doing

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134 results

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