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Word In Your Ear — Music
Word In Your Ear

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 podcasts alive in regular Word In Your Ear evenings in which they spoke to musicians and authors in front of an audience.

Over these years they’ve produced hundreds of hours of material. As of the Current Unpleasantness of 2020, they’ve produced yet hundreds of hours more with a little help from guests kind enough to digitally show them around their attics such as Danny Baker, Andy Partridge, Sir Tim Rice and Mark Lewisohn. For the full span of the Word In Your Ear world, visit wiyelondon.com.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Copyright: © Word In Your Ear

Latest Episodes:

Seven ‘lost’ Springsteen albums, romance in sitcoms and the age of spectacle Apr 08, 2025

Show notes

The runners and riders in the rock and roll steeplechase first past the post this week include …

… how Ed Sheeran protects himself against song theft claims.

… ‘lost’ Hendrix, Beach Boys, Amy Winehouse and Jeff Buckley records: is anything unfinished ever any good?

… “The Unauthorised Breakfast Item”: can YOU tell a Bob Newhart sketch title from a Caravan song?

… US Office versus the UK original and the genius of Steve Carrell.

… The West Wing, Frasier, the Good Life and how romance is the root of all great sitcoms.

… rock and roll lighting: “you can do whatever you want now but that doesn’t mean you should”.

… Judge claims busking is “noise pollution”!

. … Pink Floyd: “it’s not going to work without the gong!”

… and a giant poster of David Hepworth and Mark Ellen pinned to a tree outside Wareham.

Plus birthday guest Stephen Lambe on the downside of the age of spectacle.

Find out more about how to help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear

Help us to keep The Longest Continuous Conversation In Rock'n'Roll going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ed Tudor Pole – singer, actor, serial showman – saw the pop and punk wars as ‘pure theatre’. Apr 02, 2025

Show notes

Ed Tudor Pole entered punk rock from stage school and always felt he was playing a part. After being hired to act in the Great Rock’N’Roll Swindle, he formed Tenpole Tudor and had a brief and dramatic moment in the sun, all recorded in his rollicking memoir ‘The Pen Is Mightier.’ He talks here about …

… his “quite posh” ancestry and a great-grandfather bankrupted by the Wall Street Crash.

… a “Damascene conversion” to the Rolling Stones and ten hours in the burning sun at their Hyde Park show, aged 14.

… being at RADA with Timothy Spall, Imelda Staunton and Juliet Stevenson.

… The Great Rock’N’Roll Swindle audition and the “really horrid” Nancy Spungen’s striptease.

… how everyone’s related to Edward 111.

… the secret of a One-Man Show – adopt the voice of Will Hay and “let the audience do the work!”

… why “most actors are awful people and all crippled in some way” and his time in theatre was “like being a cow in a field of sheep”.

… how Stiff’s Dave Robinson hated punk and wanted Tenpole Tudor to be a novelty act.

… three months with five acts in a coach on the Stiff Tour.

… how the success of Swords Of A Thousand Men didn’t affect their ticket sales - “it was bought by 350,000 12 year-old boys who weren’t old enough to go to gigs”.

… why the Tenpole Tudor split broke his heart.

… as Socrates said, “the unexamined life is not worth living.”

Find out more about how to help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear

… surprise paydays like the use of Who Killed Bambi? in the Zero Day soundtrack to accompany Robert De Niro’s nervous breakdown.

Order ‘The Pen Is Mightier’ here …

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Pen-Mightier-Autobiography-Punk-Rocker/dp/0857306057

Help us to keep The Longest Continuous Conversation In Rock'n'Roll going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

AI’s Word In Your Ear theme tune (!!), the four stages of showbiz & taking kids to concerts Mar 30, 2025

Show notes

Scanning the rock and roll ether with our patent heat-seeking Ripple-Detector®️ to see what rings the bell. Which this week includes …

… how reformed ‘90s pop groups all look like Paul Whitehouse characters from the Fast Show.

… the mutual agony of parents taking kids to concerts.

… “Tap! Tap! Tap!”, the “gacked up” sound of the Heartbreakers’ at work in Fort Petty.

… “Two old voices crack through the static/ Vinyl souls dissected so erratic”: AI’s nerve-jangling interpretation of Word In Your Ear – in song!

… the four stages of showbiz … and three stages of hearing music.

… the miracle birth of Don Henley’s ‘The Boys Of Summer’.

… why we tend to run the other way when people insist we’d like something.

… records that make sense 40 years later – and a message from Brian Eno.

… EMF and the graffiti, Carter USM rugby tackling Phillip Schofield, Radiohead playing ‘My Iron Lung’: bands “too cool” for the Smash Hits Poll Winners’ Party.

… how simpler music appeals as you get older.

Plus the new Patreon roll-call and, from Les, the unsettling AI-generated tribute to Word in Your Ear:

https://suno.com/song/ba364f5a-1b39-4d77-8f5b-bcdb9bad6760?sh=N3TMfcz8YUIxPIyl

Find out more about how to help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear

Help us to keep The Longest Continuous Conversation In Rock'n'Roll going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hearing 45 year-old records you’d never played & the least likely-looking person to become a rock star Mar 25, 2025

Show notes

The super-trouper of scrutiny scans this week’s events and lands upon …

… the man who’s played on 21,000 records.

… how Joni Mitchell is still stirring it up aged 81 and why we love her for it.

... the impact of the stadium circuit on rock festivals.

… the longest-surviving group in the world – bowing out at Glastonbury after 66 years!

… “fake indignation” on social media.

… the 40th anniversary of Dead Or Alive’s stunning You Spin Me Round (Like A Record).

… the most unlikely looking person to have ever become a rock star.

… the serial winner of the Bass Player Who Most Resembles An Old Testament Prophet contest.

… why a record untouched for four decades – eg Day Of Radiance by electronic zither master Laraaji - seems to have matured like a fine wine.

… how Donna Summer’s I Feel Love was a new kind of music, one that made you one want endless repetition rather than change.

… “Kevin Ayers drank a pint of Pernod then drove me down a mountain”.

Plus birthday guest Avi Chaudhiri on the connection between Buddy Holly, Mike Mills and Paul ‘Bonehead’ Arthurs.

Find out more about how to help us to keep the conversation going: https:/www.patreon.com/wordinyourear

Help us to keep The Longest Continuous Conversation In Rock'n'Roll going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What Kate Mossman discovered about rock’s elder statesmen Mar 21, 2025

Show notes

Kate’s an old pal from our days at Word magazine. She was on the staff for six years before heading off to the New Statesman and has just put out a collection of the sizzling and revelatory profiles she wrote for us, them and the Observer about a particular sector of the musical landscape for whom she’s always carried a torch. As she wonders in ‘Men Of A Certain Age: My Encounters with Rock Royalty’, “how is it that in the presence of wrinkly rock stars twice my age I sometimes think I’m meeting … me?” This tremendous exchange is full of hard-won insight about the mind-set of musicians and stops off at the following …

… the fascinating appeal of rock stars’ vulnerability, giant egos, oddness and obsessions – “they’re often frozen at the emotional age they became famous”.

… growing up with Britpop, the decade when “teenagers weren’t allowed to like anything”.

… things women notice and men often miss: the difference between male and female journalists.

… being driven down a mountain by Kevin Ayers after he’d drunk a pint of Pernod.

… why she’s so drawn to the critically unfashionable acts like Bruce Hornsby, Kiss and Terence Trent D’Arby.

… what she learnt from interviewing Joni Mitchell’s old boyfriend Cary Raditz.

… why the best route to understanding any rock star is via their parents.

… her obsession with “the shamefully unfashionable” Queen, aged 11, and the appeal of these self-styled “fun ambassadors” against the grating irony of the ‘90s.

… the “charming yet awful” Paul O’Neill of the Trans-Siberian Orchestra handing out $50,000 bundles of cash to the homeless.

… why musicians are more interesting when they’ve peaked.

… “the cartoon characters” of Shaun Ryder and John Lydon.

… “the only people at Jeff Beck’s interment were his wife and Johnny Depp”.

… and being refused an interview by Janelle Monae for not being sufficiently “queer or black”.

Order ‘Men Of A Certain Age’ here:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Men-Certain-Age-Encounters-Royalty/dp/1788705645

Tickets for Kate’s launch event on April 3:

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/men-of-a-certain-age-kate-mossman-with-alexis-petridis-tickets-1270535970289

Find out more about how to help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear

Help us to keep The Longest Continuous Conversation In Rock'n'Roll going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

How John Harris and his son found a life-changing connection through music Mar 20, 2025

Show notes

John Harris is an old pal from our days in the music press. You might remember him from Sounds, the NME and Select (which he edited) and he’s been one of the mainstays of the Guardian ever since, writing mostly about pop culture and politics. When his son James was diagnosed with autism and, looking for ways to connect with him and help his development, John began playing him various types of music. The results were life-changing for the family and recorded in his moving and revelatory book ‘Maybe I’m Amazed - A Story Of Love And Connection In 10 Songs’. With autism, John points out, “you can see the trees but seeing the wood is harder”. This fascinating conversation involves …

… have we misread the eccentricities of John Coltrane or Van Morrison, Prince, David Byrne and Gary Numan?

… how many musicians are outsiders in an industry requiring them to be the opposite of what they feel capable of.

… how people with autism hear songs differently each time and “music is an endlessly replenishable source of wonder”.

… why so many lead guitarists are loners.

.. how James has perfect pitch and hears everything – birdsong, lawn-mowers, police sirens – as notes. And how music taught him to sight-read.

… vivid, unforgettable, emotional recollections of the moment you first heard records – in John’s case Sir Duke, Baker Street, Strange Town.

… “blokes in black denim jackets drinking Becks”: the allure of working for the West End rock press.

… “all records are novelty records when you’re young”.

… how 50-year-olds marvel at Spotify and 20-year-olds at vinyl.

… the artistic rise and fall of Britpop.

Order John’s highly recommended book ‘Maybe I’m Amazed’ here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Maybe-Im-Amazed-Story-Connection-ebook/dp/B0D6B7H5NY

Find out more about how to help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear

Help us to keep The Longest Continuous Conversation In Rock'n'Roll going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Mike Rutherford looks back at 60 years onstage and the art of cheap rock theatre Mar 18, 2025

Show notes

This one starts with memories of Genesis at Farnborough Tech in 1972 – Batwings? Fox heads? - looks back at school bands and the early ‘70s and ends with the current Mike & the Mechanics tour. But it mostly centres on the first live shows Mike Rutherford ever saw and played which features …

… his mum making him wash the Brylcreem from his hair before seeing Cliff & the Shadows when he was 17.

… buying an electric guitar before you realised it needed an amplifier.

… playing the same theatres he played with Genesis when he was 19.

… Cream at the Marquee Club - “the volume was like an atom bomb!”

… supporting Mott the Hoople at Farx in Southall, “the moment I felt we were getting somewhere”.

… the contract for their £7 fee he still has for Genesis on the Eel Pie Island, “like ancient fading parchment”.

… the non-competitive days of Yes, King Crimson, Rare Bird and the rock underground when there was room for everyone.

… making an album in three days with Jonathan King in Regent Sound (where the Stones recorded).

… Peter Gabriel developing his on-stage theatre because no-one could hear the words.

… ‘Man up!’ Note to self after breaking a hip skiing with his grandchildren.

Mike & the Mechanics tour dates and tickets:

https://www.ticketmaster.co.uk/mike-the-mechanics-tickets/artist/1673635

Pre-order Looking Back: Living The Years here:

https://found.ee/MikeATM_LBLTY

Find out more about how to help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear

Help us to keep The Longest Continuous Conversation In Rock'n'Roll going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Mike Scott of the Waterboys remembers the shows that inspired him Mar 17, 2025

Show notes

The Waterboys’ new album comes with the magnificent title ‘Life, Death & Dennis Hopper’ and the band start touring in May. Mike Scott looks back here at the first gigs he ever saw and played and the performers he watched closely, which involves … the Stones “when they were still dangerous” and the connective genius of Mick Jagger, Dennis Hopper’s lost decade, Nazareth and Emerson Lake & Palmer at the Glasgow Apollo, a love affair with microphones, how not to look at the audience, the days when he wrote songs called ‘Freefall’, Joe Strummer singing on his back and McCartney’s crowd going “totally buck-mental”.

Order Waterboys tickets here:

https://www.ticketmaster.co.uk/the-waterboys-tickets/artist/888869

Order the new Waterboys’ album ‘Life, Death & Dennis Hopper’ here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Life-Death-Dennis-Hopper-Waterboys/dp/B0DQSK48PC

Find out more about how to help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear

Help us to keep The Longest Continuous Conversation In Rock'n'Roll going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The lost world of teenage love songs – and the best pop song ever written! Mar 16, 2025

Show notes

In eager pursuit of dance and merriment, we dust down the current events. Which this week involves ….

… are teenagers no longer in love? And what does this mean for pop music?

… are people better musicians now than 40 years ago? And is that because you can get online tutorials explaining how to play everything?

… Paul McCartney taking two buses across Liverpool just to learn the chord of B7.

… how the best pop songs start with someone walking into a room.

… Ghana! India! New Zealand! The Caribbean! The King’s Spotify Playlist, a carefully chiselled love letter to the Commonwealth.

… do couples still have “Our Tune”? And do they still request songs for each other on radio shows?

… Neil Tennant’s memories of pre-Putin Russia – “we swept into Moscow in Gorbachev’s limousine”.

… Thunder Road, And Then He Kissed Me, Wouldn’t It Be Nice and other magical songs about dating.

… Amanda Seyfried does Joni Mitchell!

… the best pop song ever written - and we know the answer!

Plus birthday guest David Messer and two great Lou Reed live albums (“he heckles the hecklers!”).

David and Mark’s One-Man Show in Wareham on April 4: https://loveitlocalmagazine.co.uk/events/one-man-show/

Neil Tennant’s piece about pre-Putin Russia: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2025/mar/12/neil-tennant-pet-shop-boys-russia-putin-gay-club-mtv

Help us to find out more about how to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear

Help us to keep The Longest Continuous Conversation In Rock'n'Roll going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Nik Kershaw remembers Live Aid, snoods, fingerless gloves & a sudden male-female audience shift Mar 15, 2025

Show notes

Someone else we put on the cover of Smash Hits 40 years ago who’s touring in 2025! He’s playing European festivals, ‘80s packages, dates with his band and a string of solo shows billed as ‘Musings & Lyrics With Nik Kershaw’, and talks to us here about the first gigs he ever saw and played, which involves …

… a bad case of Imposter Syndrome.

… how the relationship with your audience changes over 40 years.

… “it all seemed so important back then. I was in this little bubble where I thought the world was waiting for my next statement.”

… seeing Rory Gallagher, Wishbone Ash, Lindisfarne, Slade, T Rex, the Sensational Alex Harvey Band – and Vinegar Joe at St Matthew’s Baths in Ipswich.

… the sole appearance of his first band Thor at Rushmere Village Hall.

… instant success in 1983: four nights at Hammersmith Odeon without playing clubs first - “We’re going to need a bigger PA!”

… playing Steely Dan and Weather Report one night and The Birdy Song and Country Roads at a wedding the next.

... appearing between Elvis Costello and Sade at Live Aid – “quite a sandwich” - and forgetting the words.

…and the ‘80s festival circuit: “one big club”.

NIK KERSHAW TOUR DATES HERE: https://www.nikkershaw.net/tour-dates/

Find out more about how to help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear

Help us to keep The Longest Continuous Conversation In Rock'n'Roll going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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