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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:

Is social media killing pop music? And where have all the bands gone? Mar 04, 2024

Show notes

Caught in the piercing super-trouper of perusal this week …

... the BRITS 2024, a howling embarrassment.

… Medieval Beatles! She Came In Through the Privy Window, Everybody’s Got Something To Hide Except Me And My Kestrel, Comely Rita, I’m Happy Just To Joust With You …

… the wisdom of Tony Hancock.

… The Last Dinner Party and other ‘art concepts’.

… the Pattie Boyd/George Harrison/Eric Clapton love triangle.

… the days when “forming a band was a conspiracy against the tedium of life”.

… is it all over for young blokes in pop music? And is being in a band still considered sexy?

… the oldest musicians still touring: if Willie Nelson’s still going at 90, won’t Ed Sheeran be on the road at 100?

… “these days hanging a guitar round your neck insinuates that you might be homeless”.

.. and a whole range of facts that make starting groups seem less attractive (the cost, the likely profit, the decreasing appeal of ‘abroad’, digital gangs, how big ticket prices soak up all the live circuit cash).

... plus new patrons piped aboard!

Subscribe to Word In Your Ear on Patreon for early - and ad-free - access to all of our content, alongside a whole load more!: 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.

For Henry Normal comedy is like “sugar and salt” Mar 03, 2024

Show notes

Henry Normal set up Baby Cow Productions with Steve Coogan, co-wrote the Royle Family, Coogan’s Run and Mrs Merton and produced Gavin & Stacy and Red Dwarf. He’s been a central plank in British comedy since the early ‘90s and, throughout it all, developed his own stage show built around poems and stories. He’s touring the UK with Brian Bilston. This podcast is full of hard-won insight into what makes comedy work and how the best poetry connects with “a greater truth”. And much besides including …

… what middle-class BBC execs wanted to change about the Royle Family and why it worked as it was.

… touring with John Cooper Clarke “who lived by a cemetery and had egg custard for breakfast”.

… putting on a Pensioners’ Disco, aged 14, that featured The March of The Mods played at 33.

... the influence of Roger McGough and the Liverpool poets.

… how, apart from the Office, American versions of British comedies mostly fail to get the point.

… seeing Juicy Lucy at the Nottingham Boat Club when he was 17.

… what made Spike Milligan’s Small Dreams Of A Scorpion so original.

… working with Caroline Aherne and Craig Cash and the Guardian’s first review – “three middle-class writers”.

… how to structure spoken word shows – “salad rather than soup”.

… and reflections about Mr Inbetween, Derry Girls, Clive James and Norman Gunston.

Get tickets for Henry Normal and Brian Bilston here: https://www.ents24.com/uk/tour-dates/henry-normal

Subscribe to Word In Your Ear on Patreon for early - and ad-free - access to all of our content: 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.

Steve Howe of Yes tells a few tales from topographic oceans Feb 29, 2024

Show notes

Steve Howe talks to us from the old house and studio in Devon where they rehearsed ‘The Yes Album’ in 1970. He’s been recording there for 54 years and is part of the current line-up about to set out around Europe. He looks back here on what he’s learnt from 60 years onstage and mentions …

… the effect of seeing Chuck Berry, Carl Perkins and The Animals in 1964.

… playing old Shadows tunes at the Barnsbury Boys School in Holloway, aged 14.

… how Yes songs evolved and the cover versions they used to play (America by Paul Simon, Something’s Coming from West Side Story).

… “the dark 1968 that followed the rainbow 1967”.

... Duane Eddy, Hank Marvin, Chet Atkins, Alison Krauss and the Big Three.

… how Sgt Pepper – and blues, jazz and classical music - lit prog’s blue touchpaper.

… the value of “homework” and the hours of painstaking rehearsal that allowed them to play Fragile onstage.

… how Iron Butterfly helped transform the Yes stage show.

… Starship Trooper, Roundabout and other songs they’re guaranteed to play.

… old memories of Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe.

… and the road ahead: “I’ll keep going while I can still do the twiddly bits”.

Yes tour dates: https://www.yesworld.com/

Subscribe to Word In Your Ear on Patreon for early - and ad-free - access to all of our content, plus a whole load more!: 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 evergreen record that’s 50 years old & Jeremy Thorpe at a hippie commune Feb 25, 2024

Show notes

As this week’s rock and roll steeplechase thunders out over the jumps, the following runners and riders make it past the post …

… “First he changed music. Then he changed the world!” and other over-cooked biopic sells.

… Billy Joel returns by the miracle of Artificial Ignorance.

… what you learn from visiting rock stars’ childhood homes.

… what’s Malta done to deserve a four-day Liam Gallagher festival?

… the one thing that’s never changed about Country Music.

… how Hotel California ended up in court.

… Sam Mendes’ Beatles project and the problem with actors playing very famous people.

… Beyoncé’s ‘Texas Hold ‘Em’: sampled banjo and other misdemeanours.

… from Watergate to Putin: the 50 year-old record so lean, smart and cynical that the world’s only just catching up.

… Don Henley on Irving Azoff: “He may be Satan but he’s OUR Satan.”

… Rock sea-cruises: “get your marital vows renewed by a member of Weezer!”

... why CD has ruined Jackson Browne’s For Everyman.

… what Hugh Grant superimposed on the character of Jeremy Thorpe.

… and birthday guest Adrian Ainsworth - Arse Curtains and other career-limiting band names.

Subscribe to Word In Your Ear on Patreon for early - and ad-free - access to all of our content: 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.

Richard Coles has faced every audience imaginable, one armed with pea-shooters Feb 23, 2024

Show notes

The Reverend Richard Coles is back on tour with his ‘Borderline National Trinket’ show and talks to us from his home in Sussex where he’s “the only person in the village who hasn’t won a BAFTA”. This looks back at his life – “a CV like the work of a fantasist” - and what he’s learnt from 50 years of watching various types of stage entertainment and playing to audiences ranging from the Wollaston Over-‘60s Methodist Ladies Fellowship to a bunch of delinquent Spanish pop fans with catapults. And he talks fondly of the Communards and how ‘80s pop was a Golden Age. Among the highlights …

… Morecambe & Wise at the Kettering Granada with Arthur Tolcher on the mouth organ.

… finding your “pulpit voice”.

… Sir Robert Helpmann’s great gag about referees.

… why time is a healer.

… the “marble denim and mullets” of Legs & Co’s interactive dance to the Communards on Top Of The Pops.

… on the literary circuit sandwiched between John Lydon and Marti Pellow – “dreams do come true”.

… if he’s ever met a shy vicar.

… the stagecraft of Danny Baker, Adam Kay and Grayson Perry.

… standing on a chair to conduct the RPO, aged 8 and the time he wrote a Magnificat For Choir And Snare Drum in A Minor.

… seeing Bauhaus, John Otway and the 4-Be-2s.

… sitting between Lenny Henry and Torvill & Dean at a Kylie show.

… his teenage punk band Zerox playing Clash covers.

… and why there are never any forks in a Green Room.

Get ‘Borderline National Trinket’ tickets here, last date March 11 at London’s Shaftesbury Theatre …

https://www.seetickets.com/tour/reverend-richard-coles

Subscribe to Word In Your Ear on Patreon for early - and ad-free - access to all of our content: 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.

For Jah Wobble driving tube trains was even more thrilling than playing Glastonbury Feb 20, 2024

Show notes

Jah Wobble - aka John Wardle - wrote ‘Dark Luminosity: Memoirs of a Geezer’ in 2009. It’s just been reworked, expanded and republished and it’s well worth reading, full of detail about growing up in the East End, unexploded bombs, pickling factories, grim schooldays, record shops and clubs, the bands he saw and his arrival at Kingsway College where he met John Lydon and Sid Vicious and became a cornerstone of the punk rock inner circle. And then two challenging years as the bassist of Public Image Ltd, the time he worked as a train driver and ticket collector for London Transport, a series of collaborations – Brian Eno, Baaba Maal, Holger Czukay, Sinead O’Connor, Chaka Demus – and some bold and original solo albums (you’ll enjoy Island Records' reaction when he pitches an album based on the poems of William Blake). Among this podcast's highlights …

… the Kafkaesque world of working for the London Underground in the days when you could “punch an area manager and not get sacked”.

… why great rhythm sections are like great football players.

… his dad, an El-Alamein survivor, on seeing Mick Jagger on Top of the Pops: “the Rolling Stones should be used for mine clearance.”

… Public Image Ltd – “three of the weirdest people you could ever meet”, the band that kept their cash in a shoebox.

… “you can’t go through life as a tourist”.

… the secret of the perfect bass sound.

… watching the first Sex Pistols’ rehearsal.

… seeing Bob Marley & the Wailers at the Lyceum.

… the record that reversed his dislike of the Beatles.

… why working with Pharoah Sanders was the highlight of his musical life.

… his 2023 album, ‘The Bus Routes of South London’.

… Jim Reeves, Burl Ives and further sounds of the family homestead.

... and a powerful aversion to hippies.

Order John’s memoir here …

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dark-Luminosity-Memoirs-Geezer-expanded/dp/0571375359\

Subscribe to Word In Your Ear on Patreon for early - and ad-free - access to all of our content, plus a whole load more: 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.

Steve Wright and other great radioheads, McCartney’s bass & the non-profits of Python Feb 19, 2024

Show notes

Pausing occasionally to spark a Senior Service and sink a milk stout, we kick cans down this week’s rock and roll boulevard stopping off at the following hotspots …

… the “Grunge Dripdown”: why Pearl Jam can play 60,000 seaters.

… the Elton Line, the Dury Line, the Bragg Line, the Kirsty Line …. What the London Overgrounds should have been called and why.

... how Steve Wright made radio and sowed the seeds of the Fast Show and Stella Street.

… actors who’ve joined the Choir Invisible but live on in voice-over.

… is any musician as closely linked to any instrument as McCartney to his Hofner bass? And the mysterious tale of its theft.

… J&M Studios (where Little Richard’s Tutti Frutti was recorded) is now a launderette with a jukebox. What became of Olympic, Town House, Motown and Bearsville?

… the Radio 2 v Greatest Hits ratings land-grab.

… does anyone under 60 still care about Monty Python?

… the latest glorious chapter in Taylor Swift and Kanye West’s 15-year “beef”.

… “All pop music is Strictly”: what David learnt from his six-year old granddaughters.

… the voice of Tommy Vance returns by the miracle of AI.

… “an elephant is a horse designed by a committee”.

... plus birthday guest Nick Foreman and why “underrated” is overrated.

Subscribe to Word In Your Ear on Patreon for early - and ad-free - access to all of our content, alongside a whole load more!: 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.

Max Décharné reboots the golden age of the Teddy Boys Feb 18, 2024

Show notes

If a film director wanted to flag up incoming violence in the late ‘50s, the camera would fall upon a couple of Teds lurking in the street outside. The teenage Keith Richards remembers razors, bike chains and bloodshed at dance halls and there was an infamous Teddy Boy murder on Clapham Common that plunged the nation into frantic, media-led moral panic. Max Décharné sets out to reclaim the Teds from their “Cro-Magnon, knuckle-dragging cliché” in his new book Teddy Boys and relives this dangerously thrilling rock and roll revolution – the music, clothes, films, press stories, the birth of Ted, Peak Ted, its eventual demise and what’s kept the flame alive since. Things of note include …

… the full effect of Blackboard Jungle on a packed 4,000-seater cinema.

... that poignant sight of an old Ted pushing a pram with a woman with a beehive.

… Joan Collins in ‘Cosh Boy’.

… the first UK rock and roll gig, Bill Haley & the Comets at the New Theatre Royal in Portsmouth in 1956.

… the crepe-soled, velvet-collared Duke of Edinburgh, unlikely ’50s fashion icon.

… Little Richard, Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis at the London Rock and Roll Show at Wembley in 1972, a key point in the Ted revival.

… Malcolm McLaren, Johnny Rotten, Wizzard and assorted Ted torch-carriers.

… Viv Stanshall and ‘Teddy Boys Don’t Knit’.

… fingertip drapes from Savile Row and how Teds subverted top-end fashion.

… Fleetwood Mac as Earl Vince & the Valiants doing ‘Somebody’s Gonna Get Their Head Kicked In Tonite’.

… and how the Beatles and James Bond helped kick the Teds into touch.

Order Max’s book here …

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Teddy-Boys-Post-War-Britain-Revolution-ebook/dp/B0C3SFMTFH

Subscribe to Word In Your Ear on Patreon for early - and ad-free - access to all of our content, plus a whole load more!: 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.

Guy Garvey remembers the Grumbleweeds in panto, Santana fantasies & a song nicked from Roy Castle Feb 14, 2024

Show notes

Guy Garvey and Elbow start touring the UK in May and he looks back here at the first shows he saw growing up in Bury in the ’70s - when his five elders introduced him to punk, prog, folk, soul and Elton John - and proudly admits he still doesn’t know the names of the guitar strings. Look out for …

… the secrets of the “Vanity Thrust” and other 21st Century stagecraft.

… the time they supported the Stones.

… being with the same band members for 34 years and each “wanting to be a different member of Santana”.

… what he’s learnt about live performance - “never announce new material”.

… his 6Music show, Guy Garvey’s Finest hour (“one hour too long” – Mrs Guy Garvey).

… the un-PC death of Roy Castle in the Peter Cushing movie Dr Terry’s House of Horrors.

… good things about Little Simz.

… the time a snowstorm doubled their audience.

… working with the BBC Concert Orchestra – “if it’s Wagner you’ll miss two tea breaks”.

… when Paul McCartney turned “Partridge-esque”.

… and the possible ‘star guests’ on the upcoming tour.

Elbow tour dates …

https://www.ticketmaster.co.uk/elbow-tickets/artist/886289

Guy Garvey’s Finest hour …

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0072q60

Elbow are on Radio 2’s Piano Room with the BBC Concert Orchestra on Feb 21…

https://elbow.co.uk/bbc-radio-2-piano-room-month/

Subscribe to Word In Your Ear on Patreon for early - and ad-free - access to all of our content, plus a whole load more!: 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.

Lulu, when Prince did a bad thing and how the Beatles changed the shape of the human head Feb 12, 2024

Show notes

This week the two-man kayak of curiosity tackles the following rock and roll rapids …

… when was the last time there was a truly universal hit?

… why Waylon Jennings walked out of We Are The World.

... the story of Everybody’s Talkin’ and Midnight Cowboy.

… why the Beatles’ 1964 American invasion was the biggest surprise party in the world and how the Maysles Brothers’ doc became the template for A Hard Day’s Night.

… the secret haikus of Wes Anderson.

… the best moments in Jaws.

... why Tracy Chapman stole the Grammys.

… how USA For Africa v Band Aid showed a fundamental difference in the British and American character.

… the inscrutable world of Spotify royalty payments.

… when Lulu, Dusty and Sandie Shaw were re-booted.

… Mojo Nixon RIP, a “corner on two wheels on fire” kinda guy.

… Springsteen and Steve Van Zandt’s hair.

… “Let me die a young man's death” - Adrian Henri.

… plus birthday guest Keith Adsley suggests cover versions in movie soundtracks that are better than the originals – eg Fiona Apple’s Across the Universe, the Gypsy Kings’ Hotel California and the Soggy Bottom Boys’ Man of Constant Sorrow.

Subscribe to Word In Your Ear on Patreon for early - and ad-free - access to all of our content, pus a whole load more!: 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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