Word In Your Ear

Our record-breaking partnership faces a fresh set of spin bowlers on the rock and roll pitch but rifles a few shots over the pavilion roof, among them …

… the time Elvis let his daughter ride her pony through the house.

… when Moon Zappa (10) found naked hippies making candles in the garden.

… “Can you get that? It might be someone important.” The Queen when her mobile rang.

… Billy Joel’s daily commute to work by helicopter.

… John Peel, Elton John, Robert Christgau … who’s listened to the most music in the history of the planet?

… “Choice is a tax, a penalty”: the faint sense of nausea you get from Netflix’ fathomless sense of abundance.

… how Elvis became a hillbilly with an unlimited budget.

… are ChatGPT’s music recommendations actually quite useful? We test the Beatles, Joni Mitchell and Miles Davis.

… “what kind of a genius doesn’t have medical insurance?”

… old WW2 movies v the new Netflix series? There’s only one winner …

… plus Abba, Steampacket, Steeleye Span and Humble Pie: supergroups that worked.

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Hugh Cornwell is preparing for his “All The Fun Of The Fair” tour which begins in November and here he talks to David Hepworth about:

….why rehearsals are best in bursts

….why he no longer carries keyboards

….the special magic of going to see Chuck Berry with Richard Thompson

….how the two of them have recorded “Tobacco Road” for an Alzheimers benefit record

…being at the Marquee when Clapton, Beck and Page all played with the Yardbirds

….playing the Golders Green Ionic with Helen Shapiro

….how there are nights when the guitarist think it’s been a disaster but the drummer knows it’s been a triumph

…the film podcast (http://mrdemillefm.com/) that started as a hobby

…what you can expect when his tour (http://www.hughcornwell.com/tour/) hits your town.

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We aimed the airgun of enquiry at this week’s rock and roll side-stall and dislodged the following coconuts …  

… sports star, Rhodes scholar, bohemian: why Kris Kristofferson was a whole new breed of American hero.  

… the letter his parents wrote disowning him.

… how he invented the crossover hit.

… echoes of his life in Five Easy Pieces.

… Fellini’s La Strada and the story of ‘Me And Bobby McGee’.

…. ‘(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman’ and other songs written to order.

… why the past is the age before mobile phones.

… Joni Mitchell, James Taylor, Leonard Cohen, Carly Simon: the kiss and tell school of songwriting.

… why Tracey Thorn misses the age of the autograph.

… who’d be famous in the 21st Century?

… “What do you think about when you’re playing the drums?” Cameron Crowe’s lost 1983 time capsule.

… in a lift with Ken Barlow.

Plus birthday guest Paul Cook and the furthest you’ve ever travelled for a gig.

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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 ground in a man’s world. We cover all sorts here including …

… the lasting effect of not having “an ordinary mother”.  

… the night in Sunderland that made her think again.

… when your best friend sleeps with your fiancée.

… supporting the Shadows when she was 15 at the 2I’s in Soho.  

… Etta James, Chicken Shack and playing the Reeperbahn.

… why rock stars can never be part of a village community.

… Fleetwood Mac’s West Coast Elysium: “they were all as bad as each other”.

… “cute and dangerous” meets “lifeline and anchor”: the love affair with Dennis Wilson.

… why she and John McVie both needed a wife.

… and her lifelong connection with the blues, “a sadness you can’t cure”.

Order Songbird here:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Songbird-Intimate-Biography-Christine-McVie/dp/1789467217

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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 shows he saw and played himself. Which involves …

… seeing Count Basie, Ray Charles and Oscar Peterson on the same bill when he was 12.

… “if you stop playing music you’re like the boxer that gave up the fight”.

… pop dress codes, knock-off pop merchandise and trips to Shellys Shoes.

… growing up in Beckenham where Bowie was “the lighthouse beam that made being a pop star possible”.

… old schoolfriends and Haircut One Hundred members Les and Graham and how “we got our friendship back”.

… why seeing XTC was “like plugging into electricity”.

… Buzzcocks and Boomtown Rats at the Croydon Greyhound.  

… how he was saved by management.

… singing Love Plus One in Salisbury Cathedral.

… and the lingering thrill of his first reviews (by Graham K Smith and Adrian Thrills).

Nick’s tour dates here:

https://nickheyward.com/

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“There was no Command-Zed back then!” John Wood engineered or produced some of the most magical, timeless and affecting records ever made - by Nick Drake, John Martyn, the McGarrigles, Fairport Convention, Sandy Denny, John Cale, Squeeze and many more. He’s 85 now and looks back here at a luminous career that started with mastering singles at Decca and transferred to Sound Techniques, the mecca he co-founded in an old cowshed in Chelsea when takes were spontaneous and even the tape-op was part of the performance. He misses those days, when albums were organic and the labels had less control, and talks here about …

… “the age when sound had perspective and seemed three-dimensional”.

… Nick Drake’s confidence and his guiding lights - eg the Beach Boys and Randy Newman (“who I’d never heard of”). And his final nighttime sessions.

… the way Fairport recorded – “We’re only going to do it once” – and why they could make three albums a year.

…managing the girls in the Incredible String Band, “especially when Licorice played drums”.

… John Cale in “maniac mode” and his sudden and unexpected friendship with Nick Drake.

… Cale and Nico at the Chelsea Hotel.

… and why ‘Geoff Muldaur Is Having A Wonderful Time’ was the job he remembers the fondest.

Also mentioned: the Downliners Sect, Judy Collins, The Marmalade, Graham Gouldman and Squeeze.

John’s got nothing to plug and just wanted to talk to us. Thanks, John, and bless your cotton socks.

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Ian Hunter – an image so familiar you’d recognise his silhouette - now lives in Connecticut and he’s just released expanded versions of two of his best-selling solo albums, You’re Never Alone With A Schizophrenic and Short Back N' Sides. He’s 85, born before any of the Beatles. We talk to him here about life growing up in the ‘40s and ‘50s when your father’s a copper and “music wasn’t allowed in the house”, and touch upon …

… the debt he owes Freddie ‘Fingers’ Lee.

… café jukeboxes full of Little Richard, Chuck Berry and Fats Domino.

… beating 165 acts at a talent contest at Butlins.

… the record that made the Beatles (which they didn’t write).

… “a two-piece corduroy suit, open-toed sandals, overweight …”: the Mott the Hoople audition.

… Bowie playing All The Young Dudes – “a monster” – cross-legged on the floor in Denmark Street after they’d turned down Suffragette City.

… why Hendrix was thrown out of Regent Sound studios.

… playing the Reeperbahn in 1963.

… recording ‘Schizophrenic’ with three members of the E Street Band.

… “Do you want a cuddle?” The Mick Ronson recording method.

… the good thing about Covid.

… watching punk bands with Mick Jones.

… plus a ‘dyed-black’ Ford Anglia and the Greatest Record Ever Made.

Order Ian’s re-released albums here:

Buy link: https://ianhunter.lnk.to/sbns

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As the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness draws in, we poke the embers of this week’s rock and roll bonfire and rake out the following chestnuts …

… Maggie Smith on ‘70s chat shows.

… when Radiohead meets Shakespeare.

… the strange, circuitous and downright disgraceful launch of Francis Ford Coppola’s majestically bonkers Megalopolis.

… Chappell Roan and Sabrina Carpenter: the slow ascent of two ‘overnight sensations’.

… is it big events anymore or just a low-level hum of distraction?

… Bryan Ferry as an interpreter: why we love his clubby renditions of Dylan, Amy, Frank, Elvis, Broadway ballads and old sea shanties.

… Movies In Waiting no 97: Butlin’s, skiffle, Hamburg and Ian Hunter’s 26-year clamber to the top.

... can any film still have instant world impact?

… the unsettling structure of the Graham Norton show.

… Simon Raymonde’s dad’s oceanic jazz adventure, 1949.

… plus birthday guest Matthew North sees Wayne Rooney doing Ring Of Fire at a Plymouth open mic night.

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Simon Raymonde’s affecting and beautifully written memoir ‘In One Ear’ records life in the ‘60s growing up with a father who wrote and arranged for Dusty Springfield, Helen Shapiro and the Walker Brothers, the impossibly shy promotional activities of the Cocteau Twins and This Mortal Coil and the struggles and eventual jackpot of the Bella Union record label he founded. He’s so perceptive, observant and self-mocking and we loved this energetic podcast which, among much else, lands upon …  

... why 1979 was the Golden Year.

… the time Scott Walker came to his parents’ house.

… why the Cocteau Twins might have tanked in the current age of self-promotion.

… how a loathing for Phil Collins was a Sliding Doors moment.  

… the problem with bands that don’t talk to each other.

… why they refused to appear on Top Of The Pops.

… following Rancid and the Ramones at Lollapalooza in 1996 and the sobering events that ensued.

… why the Old Grey Whistle Test was “not a happy experience”.

… the cryptic language of Elizabeth Fraser’s lyrics why he never asked her what they meant.  

… “if I hadn’t worked at the Beggars record shop I wouldn’t be talking to you now”.

… why bands are “less naïve now”.

… and “Cocteau Twins - swirling sepulchral shards of sound that patter like raindrops against the windows of your mind” – ©️ the Music Press in 1985.

Order Simon’s book here:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/One-Ear-Cocteau-Twins-Raymonde/dp/1788709381

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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 Swedish pop culture. 

… the influence of the Human League on their later catalogue.

… why manager Stig Anderson “became a burden”.

… “Norway has Grieg, Finland has Sibelius, Sweden has Benny …”

… the first band to write about divorce.

… the Abba song with 57 chords and the only two samples Abba ever approved.

… Elvis Costello, Joe Strummer and Ian Dury backstage at a 1979 London show.

… when Sid Vicious ran into Abba at an airport on the Pistols’ 1977 Swedish tour. 

… the role of the Lionesses football team, Kurt Cobain, Erasure, U2, Madonna and the Sydney gay community in the Abba revival. 

… why the Abbatars are better than Abba. 

… the myth of Agnetha as “the Greta Garbo of Pop”. 

… and why The Day Before You Came is more than the Abba swansong.

Order Melancholy Undercover here:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Book-ABBA-Melancholy-Undercover/dp/0571390986

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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 Internet.

 … memories of lost London: international magazine shops, drinking in offices, Protein Man, roaming Hare Krishnas, “floating a curry”, wasp-covered sarnies in café windows, band flyers on derelict buildings, the romance of old Fleet Street.

… the tangled saga of Bonfire Of The Teenagers.

… “Oasis is the last of the household-name bands”.

… why Toyah is a movie waiting to happen.

… and birthday guest Jelltex on bands he thought had given up now filling stadiums.

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Mike Batt still wrestles with the emotional legacy of the Wombles, the act that simultaneously made him and cast a shadow over the rest of his career, not least his early days as a songwriter at Liberty Records, discussed here, hired after he’d answered the same ad as Elton John and Bernie Taupin, a time when A&R men wore kipper ties and had Picassos on their wall. He forged a path through psychedelia and into TV and films, taking huge financial risks with musicals, orchestral works and big-selling acts like Katie Melua, his Art Garfunkel hit ‘Bright Eyes’ eventually promoting him from the Haves to the Have-Yachts. Life, he says, has been “like running through traffic”. His memoir is just out, ‘The Closest Thing to Crazy: My Life of Musical Adventures’. All sorts discussed here including ...

… his brief satin-jacketed tenure in Hapshash & the Coloured Coat.

… parallels between record producers and traffic cops.

… Happy Jack and songs about outsiders.

… being in Savile Row when the Beatles played the Apple roof.

… life as “a square” during psychedelia.

… a snatch of abandoned teenage composition ‘The Man With The Purple Hand’.

… John D. Laudermilk and the magic of writing credits.

… how Bright Eyes “got me into the Officers’ Mess of Songwriters”.

… his publishers insisting there was a Womble on the book jacket.

… “circumcising” the world in a seven-crew yacht.

... and feeling simultaneously smug and guilty when driving a Roller.

Order ‘The Closest Thing To Crazy: My Life of Musical Adventures’ here:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Closest-Thing-Crazy-Musical-Adventures/dp/1785120840

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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 Rolling Stones.”

… the African roots of Little Richard’s horn section.

… how a Zulu folk tune from 1939 ended up on the Lion King soundtrack.

… “Western musicians are governed by keys, valves and frets but what matters is the notes in between”.

… the evolution of ska as rock and roll was too exhausting in the heat of Jamaican dancehalls.

… Alan Freed, the “Pied Piper” that led white American teenagers into black music.

… Duke Ellington and music “too complicated for white audiences to follow”.

… the bossa nova in Nick Drake’s River Man.

… Paul Simon’s Graceland and the meaning of authenticity.

… world music’s problem with drum machines.

.. the attraction of music whose origin you can hear before the vocal comes in.

Order Joe’s highly recommended book here:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Roots-Rhythm-Remain-Journey-Through/dp/0571360009

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With Mark Ellen rambling in the West Country it’s left to David Hepworth to talk Alex Gold down from the ledge in the light of the Dave Grohl news and discuss:

•⁠ ⁠just how many offers come the way of rich and famous rock stars

•⁠ ⁠whether his recent admission will in any way detract from the most winning smile in rock

•⁠ ⁠is this an opportunity for Jon Bon Jovi to step up?

•⁠ ⁠how a quick word from Taylor Swift is worth all the five star reviews in the world

•⁠ ⁠Nick Lowe’s infallibly entertaining story of Jet Harris and seven pints of Kaliber

•⁠ ⁠When they organised a reunion of all the progeny of Screaming Jay Hawkins

•⁠ ⁠... and the greatest music book ever with Patreon supporter Ed Newman

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The Netflix series of David Nicholls’ worldwide hit novel One Day was Top Ten in 89 countries and he’s been heavily involved in its soundtrack album, a process as enjoyable, he says, as devising the compilation tape the fictional Emma made for Dexter in 1989 featuring the Smiths, Prefab Sprout and Public Enemy. We talk to him here about the glorious pitfalls of using pop music to broadcast your personality. All bases covered, from the Geoff Love Orchestra to Joy Orbison, along with …

… prog rock drummer replacement fantasies.

… when a compilation tape is a Valentine’s card.

… music as a way of telegraphing a time.

… what the 1812 Overture does to a five year-old.

… the eternal impact of Shipbuilding and Running Up That Hill.

… “punk terrified me”.

… classic male musical taste paranoia.

… memories of Live Aid – Bowie onstage, Kiki Dee in the car park.

… buying a knock-off cassette of Sgt Pepper.

… remembering every note of a record you haven’t heard for 50 years.

… and the greatest record of all time!

Order the One Day Netflix soundtrack here:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Jessica-Jones-Morrish-Anne-Nikitin/dp/B0CXJNM4WV

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Old friend of the podcast, Nick Lowe has just released his 15th solo album, Indoor Safari, and he’s about to tour with Los Straitjackets. This absorbing conversation looks back at 60 years onstage and takes in the following …

… the secret of a long career.

… why he resolved “not to get that famous again”.

… touring Germany aged 15 in Brinsley Schwarz’s dad’s Dormobile.

… the Small Faces at the village hall in Hornchurch.

… to the Six Bells for seven pints with “photographer for all occasions” Jet Harris.

… playing Eddie Cochran and Gene Vincent in the school band and wrestling with the chords to Cliff’s Living Doll.

… Kippington Lodge at Ally Pally, New Year’s Eve 1968, supporting Joe Cocker, the Bonzos and Amen Corner - “the Grand Canyon with a roof”.

… 270 dog walks with his son Roy during Covid and the things they discussed.

… the unique magic of working with “America’s premier instrumental surf band”.

… how ‘I Knew The Bride When She Used To Rock And Roll’ is now a wedding staple.

… and the sole mention of ‘freakbeat’ vendors the Fleur De Lys in the history of our podcast.

Nick’s tour starts at the London Palladium on September 24:

https://nicklowe.com/tour-dates/

Order Indoor Safari here:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Indoor-Safari-Nick-Lowe/dp/B0D5TXRLDD

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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 battle.

… the sight of Bongo Joe on his daily commute (a moped loaded with steel drums).  

… what Mick Jagger learnt from Ramblin’ Jack Elliott.

… Ted Hawkins' journey from Venice Beach to Geffen Records.

… the time Cary met Moondog dressed as a Viking and why he was a symbol of old New York.

… how Billy Bragg learnt festival crowd control playing street corners.

… Madeleine Peyroux, aged 15, playing Paris subways.

… Jesse Fuller, father of the one-man band.

… do buskers now make it via Instagram?

… the only gig where you can play the same song repeatedly.

… and when is busking just noise pollution?

Order Cary Baker’s Down On The Corner here:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Down-Corner-Adventures-Busking-Street/dp/1916829104

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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.

… the velvet rope and the repercussions of Clubbing.

… and has anyone seen Lobby Lud?

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

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David’s seventh book in his ‘orange series’ is just out and you’re guaranteed to love it. He and Mark discussed ‘Hope I Get Old Before I Die’ at a sold-out launch event at Waterstones in Piccadilly on the evening of September 3, recorded here. Among the highlights you’ll find …

… the rock career as a three-act play.

… the tour that started the Age Of Spectacle.

… why Live Aid was the dawn of pop nostalgia.

… the rock star who retired from retirement.

… Woodstock – “the Somme with Santana”.

… the terrible fallout in the Byrds.

… why no act is ever forgotten.

… Nick Lowe and the few others who got even better as they got older.

… band reunions are about symbolism not music.

… how the rock generation took power.

… why Ron Wood’s memoir can be read as either comedy or tragedy.

… bands that will achieve immortality.

… why Cameron Crowe’s Almost Famous seems like period drama.

… the worst group ever.

… and the only act that became bigger than the Beatles.  

Order David’s new book here:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hope-Get-Old-Before-Die/dp/1787632784

https://linktr.ee/dhepworth

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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 cheapest stadium gig to stage imaginable.

… what happens to the ticket money between now and the tour.

… Noel, the media and the common touch.  

… “a level of public demand that’s almost a sickness”.

… why “Oasis tickets are like utility bills”.

… the fate of bands that fall out with each other’s wives.

… how Liam was rescued by Debbie Gwyther and Noel’s ruinous divorce.

… the kind of watertight contracts and insurance required to ensure the band won’t fall apart again.

… “Liam, stay away from the fruit bowl!”.

… and Mark’s breakfast with Peggy Gallagher.

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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 Ricky Gervais.

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

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Rock journalism as an occupation is rapidly heading in the direction of the watch-mender or lamplighter so Chris Charlesworth’s account of life at the Melody Maker in the ‘70s is already starting to feel like an historic document. ‘Just Backdated’ covers a time when the rock press set the agenda, sold over half a million copies a week and was courted by attention-seeking musicians of every rank, a lost world remembered in this conversation with Mark Ellen which includes …

… the unwritten rules of ‘70s rock journalism and its limitless access.

… the “homesick and slightly lost” John Lennon when living with May Pang.

… life at Melody Maker’s Fleet Street office and staff writer Max Jones’s fling with Billie Holiday.

… touring with Led Zeppelin alongside the 17 year-old Cameron Crowe (part of the inspiration for Almost Famous).

… “Beatles to reform?” and other coverline staples.

… the night Frank Zappa was thrown off the Rainbow stage – ‘people thought he’d been killed’.

… the first British interview with Steely Dan.

… Debbie Harry when she was still in the Stillettos and the day Blondie asked him to manage them.  

... why the Bay City Rollers at an airport was “the nearest thing to a nightmare while being awake”.

… his time as MM’s West and East Coast correspondent aka “the best job in the world”.

Order ‘Just Backdated’ here:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Just-Backdated-Melody-Maker-Seventies/dp/1915858224

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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.

… the secret life of Chris Ballew, former leader of minimal grunge trio the Presidents Of The United States of America.

… is the Jam a “young man’s concept”?

… the downside of “Cuddly Liam”.  

… Taylor Swift, Ed Sheeran: has normality replaced escapism?

… and Frank Carter as the new Johnny Rotten.

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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 up with the inconvenience of touring and bearing personal grudges which prevented him taking up life-changing offers.

….their competition with The Doors, who would do all the things that Love wouldn’t.

…how Arthur Lee heard Forever Changes in his head and how he transferred that knowledge to an arranger who’d never heard a pop record.

….why Brian Wilson, John Sebastian and Arthur Lee “never got past 1967”.

….the gun charges that put Arthur Lee in jail and the third act he enjoyed when he came out.

You can order the book here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Forever-Changes-Authorized-Biography-Arthur/dp/1916829120/

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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 point corporations spending fortunes on renaming the places which were christened in our hearts

…the likelihood and desirability of Oasis getting back together

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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 making records that sounded like they were produced by someone who looked like Keith Richards in 1972.

… a record separated from its sleeve ceases to exist.

… why doesn’t anyone remake classic albums?

… “Once we had something complete and perfect. And what happened? You spent it!”

… how CDs never have “materiality”.

… further proof that Oasis are the most conservative thing in pop music.

… primitive connections and how the album sleeve is the same size as a native American warrior’s shield.

… sounds that date records precisely - eg the syndrum.

Plus birthday guest Patrick Butler.

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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 of sweet wood and oranges” and was nice to her dog, Julian Cope is “pretty and dressed in a white sheet”. It’s a movie waiting to happen. We loved this highly original and revealing book and our conversation with Tiff which involves …

… the ‘Saffy from Ab Fab’ relationship she had with her mum who began her professional life spying on the Duchess of Argyll from a wardrobe.

… floppy hats, Biba dresses and a purple beach buggy.

… the only woman who recorded at Rockfield in the ‘70s.

… the realisation that the men singing “Galileo” repeatedly in the stables were the same people later on Top Of The Pops.

… her mother’s Book Of Rules for visiting rock stars, “a matron in the body of Julie Christie in Darling”.

… ample proof that rock music allows a life of extended adolescence.

… shelved albums and unpaid bills.

… Tiff’s stepfather and in-house Rockfield producer Fritz Fryer.

… Nick Lowe through the eyes of a 10 year-old – “tall, kind and looked like a bird”.

... Graham Parker’s trout in almonds and how the cook was paid extra “just to get food into Lemmy”.

… and mentioned in despatches – Squeeze, the Tyla Gang, Showaddywaddy, Van Der Graaf Generator and Dr Feelgood.

Order ‘My Family And Other Rock Stars' here:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Family-Other-Rock-Stars-groundbreaking/dp/0349727538

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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 them (including Peter Green). A few highlights here …

… how Stevie Nicks arrived as the spare part of a package deal and rose to become indispensable.

… the fake Fleetwood Mac and the Jeremy Spencer and Peter Green impersonators (which involves an egg and potato farmer from Essex).

… why you should watch the Tusk video repeatedly (and its ruinous cost).

 … Bill Clinton, Daisy Jones & the Six, the dancing pony, Guardians of the Galaxy and other key factors in the return of the Mac.   

… from model to muse to psychotherapist, the story of the real life Black Magic Woman.

… “Oh Lord, she’s writing another song.”

… internal romantic tangles that give their music a poignancy.

… the horrors of Kiln House.

… Lyndsey Buckingham’s Armani/Clash episode.

… Stevie’s love affair with Derek Taylor who then had to promote a slow-selling album containing a secret song about it.

… Mick Fleetwood, “old ham”, drag act, compulsive show-off, unsuitable band manager.  

Order ‘Dreams: the Many Lives of Fleetwood Mac’ here:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dreams-Many-Lives-Fleetwood-Mac/dp/1639367322

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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: they’re back and they bring their kids!

… why a support tour with Robyn Hitchcock took him in a new direction.

… exotic wild ‘critters’ in his yard in Ontario.

… and how the UK launched his international career.

Tickets from: https://ronsexsmith.com/tours/ 

Ron’s ‘Cobblestone Runway’ and ‘Retriever’ albums have just been re-released.

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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, Larry Taylor, Aynsley Dunbar – and how being sacked from the Bluesbreakers was a badge of honour.

… why do songwriters value suffering over joy?

… “the more seriously someone takes musical taste, the more you should disregard them”.

… what connects Bob Dylan and the Life of Brian?

… a blueser from Preston in a Sioux headdress and one from Macclesfield pretending to hop a freight train.  

… and why “song and dance man” Leadbelly had to play “complaining songs”.

Plus Birthday guest Gianluca Tramontana.

The Beatles at Chiswick House:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvvVNaU_qa8

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Once again the ping-pong ball of conversation is batted across the rock and roll net and these are the scores on the doors …

 … how to wreck the national anthem.

… cover versions that are better than the original.

… the genius of Bob Newhart - "nutty Walt", Abraham Lincoln and that gag about country music.

… virtue signalling in rock magazines.

… why we connect with pop stars on the slide.

… how Tainted Love went from the Northern Clubs to the top of the American charts via a cloakroom in Leeds.

… Ingrid Andress and the curse of ‘cursive singing’.

… the comedy album that saved Warners Brothers Records.

… parenthood and Bruce Springsteen: “the world of love and the world of fear – and they’re the same world”.

… who’d rather Elvis Costello played (whisper it) other people’s songs?

… have there been any great album sleeves since the arrival of CDs?

… why Don Rickles and Bob Newhart’s friendship proves all showbiz is just an act.

... musicians, athletes, comedians, politicians and the addiction of adrenaline.

Rolling Stone’s 100 best album covers:

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-lists/best-album-covers-1235035232/#recipient_hashed=228eb87724435002888d7f82108650021cdb318bf64d1067e1ebef25cd1818de&recipient_salt=d0d82b7aaf06cd217ba5546bced15f5c8c98f6e3776c6c1b2145e79711b91e18

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There’s something romantic about glorious failure and Will nails it perfectly in ‘Street Level Superstar: A Year With Lawrence’. Over 40 years plagued by bad luck and self-sabotage with Felt, Denim and Mozart Estate, Lawrence has pursued fame and success while refusing to do what’s required to achieve them. Will spent 12 months wandering the streets of London with him to paint a fond, touching and extremely entertaining portrait of the worst-equipped pop star attempting a comeback, a man on a holy, monastic mission in a book about “sacrifice and the price of a dream”. Among many highlights here, we talk about …

… where Lawrence fits in the pantheon of great underachievers like Syd Barrett, Nick Drake and Arthur Lee.

… and his similarity to Kevin Shields and Kevin Rowland.

… the wisdom of a former girlfriend: “stop trying to be the pop star you don’t want to be and you might get somewhere”.

… is lack of success the central dream of the indie world?  

… why Denim were Britpop before Britpop happened and why EMI melted down all copies of their last single.

… his rules before the book began - “No anecdotes, no interviews with former members of Felt …”

… what his stalker planned to get his attention.

… fantasy girlfriends and “a fear of cheese”.

… why he didn’t go to his mother’s funeral.

… and why Truman Capote’s portrait of Marlon Brando, the Duke and His Domain, was a touchstone for this book.

Order ‘Street Level Superstar: A Year With Lawrence’ here:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Street-Level-Superstar-Lawrence-Will-Hodgkinson/dp/1785120220

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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.

… Waters v Gilmour, a feud way beyond candour and honesty.  

… the moment Van Morrison first became ‘Captain Letdown’.

… memories of Wembley Stadium on July 13 1985 – Status Quo, U2, the non-appearance of Cat Stevens, the planned link with Ian Botham at Trent Bridge and swapping Tony Hancock lines with a man on Concorde.

... the three stages of rock and roll.

… life before mobile phones.

… The Revenant and Zone Of Interest, films that feel like the past without trying to make the past look cool.

… “the older I get, the older I wanna get”.

… Joni Mitchell and why we love an old curmudgeon.

… and birthday guest Andrew Stocks wonders why some bands can’t bury the hatchet.

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Broadcaster and music writer Ann Powers lives in Nashville and grew up listening to Kate Bush and Blondie. The siren call of Blue sparked a life-long and deep-rooted devotion and her new book Travelling: On The Path Of Joni Mitchell takes a different tack from the standard biographies, mapping the context of the songs, the forces that drove her, the steel will it took to succeed and the love affairs that shaped her and her music. All discussed here. As is this ... 

… the scale of your ambition when your heroes are Nietzsche, Beethoven and Picasso.

… how she got her revenge for not being allowed to go to Woodstock.

… “she had to learn to walk three times”.

… the psychological impact of her “dynamic father and homemaker mother”.

… the love affairs with Leonard Cohen, David Crosby and Graham Nash.

… her capacity to turn disaster into triumph.

… the influence of Laurel Canyon neighbour Derek Taylor and the Beatles.

… the many reasons she declared the music business “a corrupt cesspool”.

… the tone of Rolling Stone’s ‘70s coverage and the letters she wrote to Mo Austin about the way she was marketed.

… David Crosby’s regret about not involving her in Crosby Stills & Nash.

… her reaction to the continued success of Tom Petty, Peter Gabriel and Don Henley in a world where mid-career women are “put out to pasture”.

… why the current renaissance seems “all legend, no bite”.

… and Laura Nyro, Tom Rush, Judy Collins, Patti Smith, Aretha Franklin, Maggie Roach, Stevie Wonder, Thomas Dolby.

Order Travelling: On the Path Of Joni Mitchell here:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Travelling-Path-Mitchell-Ann-Powers/dp/0008332967

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The first EPs appeared in the late ‘40s and ‘50s (Frank Sinatra, Elvis) hitting a magical sweet spot between the album and the single and they’ve cast a spell ever since, an exotic reminder that record labels are part of the packaged goods business. Music writer Corey duBrowa stumbled across one by Oingo Boingo in the original Licorice Pizza store in Long Beach, California, when he was 13 and began a lifelong collection that eventually led to ‘An Ideal For Living: a Celebration of the EP’, a book full of fabulous sleeve art and seven decades of 3- and 4-track classics. He talks here about every aspect of EP World and flags up some favourites, among them ones by the Goons, the Beatles, Donovan, Alice In Chains, Buzzcocks, the Clash, the Stones, Ice Cube, ‘A Factory Sample’, the Pogues, the EP that topped the album chart and a Joy Division disc worth $7,000.

Order ‘An Ideal For Living’ here:

https://hozacrecords.com/product/aifl/

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The rock and roll ballot-box is stuffed with votes and the exit polls suggest how this week’s debate might play out. Along these lines …

… is there still such a thing as British music?

… John Lennon as a lavatory attendant.

… Pink Floyd’s miming lessons.

.. how Neil Finn cheered up the All Blacks.

… the staggering difference in the UK album charts in the weeks the last two Labour Prime Ministers were elected (1997 and 2024) - male British bands v international female solo acts.

… ‘Starman’ on Top Of The Pops and the tricks it plays on the memory.

… “current chart acts are either in the spotlight or don’t seem to exist at all.”

… the wit and wisdom of James Blunt.

.. the Herd’s guest spot in the Tom Courtenay caper Otley.

… the Phil Collins syndrome: “when people are tired of duffing up pop stars, they tend to re-embrace them”.

… plus birthday guest Richard Lewis and songs that should be longer – eg Dancing the Night Away by the Motors, I Can Fly by the Herd (cue military bugle and church bell and choir).

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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, Michael Caine and the power of fame when it was harder to achieve.

… seeing Leigh Bowery in daylight.

 … the real story of Kylie’s “bare bum” tennis shoot.

… does every good memoir involve a degree of treachery?

… why Hollywood’s still obsessed with print.

… William Hague’s 14 pints, Nick Clegg’s 30 women and other self-selling GQ scoops.

… Piers Morgan and Alastair Campbell (“the rottweilers”) and other interrogators who’d always come back with a cover line, usually involving a number.

… how politicians make great interviews as they’re used to aggression.

… “not now, I’m filming!”: life in the Arena office.

… i-D, the Face, nightclubs and “intoxicating” London in the early ‘80s.

… magazine covers and the fine art of horse-trading.

Order These Foolish Things here:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/These-Foolish-Things-Dylan-Jones/dp/1408719851

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In which we hoof a few balls round the rock and roll pitch and try to stick some in the net. Extracts from the live match commentary include ….

… “Whipping Post!” “Paint it black, you devil!”: when did the audience become part of the show?

… the special, unrepeatable thing about Bill Evans At The Village Vanguard.

… GambleGate and the most we’ve ever bet on anything.

… why young musicians today are so good. And why most Americans could outplay the British.

… ‘60s Jamaican ska, 2-Tone and other imperfect imitations of the original.

 … does the mainstream exist anymore?

… did the Animals’ House of the Rising Sun invent folk-rock?

… the voice of Word In Your Ear, Kerry Shale: who is that masked man?

… the new Al Murray promotional tactic.

… and does anyone else remember Alice’s Restaurant?

Plus Count Basie, Frank Sinatra, the Beatles playing Motown, Emily Roberts of the Last Dinner Party playing Gershwin and birthday guest Blaine Allan.

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The two-man tandem of curiosity wobbles its way down the rock and roll cyclepath pausing here to admire the view …

… “We’re captive on the carousel of TIME-AH!!”: tuneless Northern club singer Reg “Reg” Snipton performs Ver Greats.

… is going to gigs alone becoming a thing?

... why Phil Oakey was a better musician than any of ELP.

… Seven Nation Army in football stadiums - and does Jack White make any money from it?

… what rock stars spend their fortunes on.

… people who are ‘jewellery-blind’ (eg D Hepworth).

… the scariest intention a musician can announce.  

… Dutch fans dancing.

… the poignancy of all John Lennon’s possessions.

… how to wreck the Great American Songbook (may involve xylophone solo).

… from the Euros to a trip on the tube: how selfies have invaded our space.

… the strange, unfinished story of John Lennon’s Patek, “the El Dorado of lost watches”.

… you’re never alone with an iPhone.

… and does virtuoso musicianship ruin pop music, asks birthday guest Guy Constant? (Answer: yes).

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

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Clare Grogan, a regular on our podcasts and rarely off the cover when we were at Smash Hits, is on tour again with Altered Images and playing festivals in the summer – indeed her fabulous description of the bus ferrying her, Midge Ure, Nik Kershaw, Kim Wilde and Living in A Box to the stage at Rewind sounds like an old Smash Hits cartoon come to life. As she points out, “the ‘80s revival has gone on longer than the decade itself.” We don’t know anyone who enjoys and appreciates being a pop star more and talk here about the first gigs she ever went to and played herself, which involves …

… what she wore (aged 13) to see the Bay City Rollers at the Glasgow Apollo (includes “cork platform clogs”).

… winning the Alternative school beauty pageant dressed as Debbie Harry in a bin bag.

… her sister Margaret’s re-enactments of David Bowie, Leo Sayer and Roxy Music.

… why the furniture at the Middlesbrough Rock Garden was screwed to the floor.

… memories of 2-Tone, the Banshees, Madness, the Stranglers and the Blockheads.

… the riot at a Scottish festival when they ran out of alcohol.

… violence at early ‘80s gigs when your only security was “Ginge the Roadie”.

… Echo & the Bunnymen and the Psychedelic Furs at the Bungalow Bar in Paisley.

… do you focus on the people in the crowd who are enjoying it or the ones that need winning over?

… horizontal rain when wearing a ballet dress and playing to “a sea of cagoules”.

… the best way to tell the audience you’re about to play a new song.

… David Hepworth’s Altered Images album review in Smash Hits: ouch!

… and her daughter watching old Altered Images clips on YouTube.  

----------------

Altered Images autumn tour dates and tickets here: http://alteredimages.band/

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Graeme is an old friend of the podcast. We’ve talked to him in the past about his books on Phil Lynott and John Martyn. ‘Under The Ivy: the Life And Music of Kate Bush’ first appeared in 2010, and was revised in 2015 after her Before the Dawn concerts and it’s now been updated again as, despite no new music or public appearances, her worldwide reputation has rocketed through the roof. We look back here at various key points in the story including ...  

… why the way she made records was ahead of its time.

… the ‘70s footage and recordings that were “supressed”.

… the “reclusive” decade and how the press filled the vacuum.

… divinely daft and humorous TV appearances eg with Delia Smith: “Waldorf Salad – that’s got waldorfs in it!”

… her bohemian childhood and the powerful influence of male counterparts, particularly eldest brother and erotic poet John Carder Bush.

… the unconventional Smash Hits interview of 1981.

… the ‘Before the Dawn’ concerts and the reason she staged them.

… her seven-year stand-off with Top Of The Pops.

… her ‘70s rock group – the KT Bush Band (still going!) – and the songs they played eg The Stealer by Free, Brooklyn by Steely Dan, Shame Shame Shame by Johnny Winter.

… Danny Baker’s NME review – “nothing she writes about matters”.

… Pamela Stephenson’s vicious pastiche and Alan Partridge’s part in her comeback.

... Talk Talk, Blackadder, Monty Python, Powell & Pressburger, Oscar Wilde, Celtic folk, the Pre-Raphaelites and other early influences.

… and the advantage of never being cool.

Order 'Under The Ivy' here …

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Under-Ivy-Music-Omnibus-Remastered/dp/1915841356

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

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Among the logs tossed on the conversational bonfire this week to combat mid-June’s British winter you’ll find …

… ‘I Managed Van Morrison’ and other films screaming to be made.

 … how it feels to watch someone play from the best seat in the house.

… Françoise Hardy, her unsmiling photos and legions of besotted male admirers (ie us and everyone else).

 … the time she met Dylan and Nick Drake.

 … Juliette Greco, Edith Piaf and the handful of French stars who made it across the Channel.

… the joy of small venues: “the bigger the gig, the smaller a component of the experience the actual performance is”.

 … Elvis Costello’s photographic memory.

 … Maria Muldaur with Earl Palmer and Amos Garrett.

 … why Twenty Twelve says more about British life than any other TV show.

 ... the terrible jokes of Ronnie Scott.

… “Kate Bush grew up in a world without sarcasm.”

 … Siobhan Sharpe, Bertie Wooster, the Artful Dodger, Basil Fawlty, Edina & Patsy and other deathless British fictional stereotypes.

 … plus birthday guest Paul Thompson and books tracking down people who’ve played with Dexys and Dylan. And who should be next – Hawkwind, Van Morrison?

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Stewart Lee – beloved writer, columnist and stand-up - was on the podcast in 2022 talking about the first records he bought, immensely funny and fascinating, and we’ve been praying for an excuse to get him back since. And it’s here! - he’s on tour again and his ‘Basic Lee’ show is on Sky/Now TV on July 20. This covers his first memories of live entertainment - in the audience and as a performer – and the people who influenced him and stops off at the following stations …

… why the Wombles were just like Crass.

… how he writes and tests new material.

… why Ted Chippington inspired his stand-up career.

… television comedy is now “two-screen TV” as the viewer’s always watching something else at the same time.

… how Lockdown made audiences forget how to behave.

… “Comedian In Bum Phone Fury”: how he stopped people filming his gigs.

… deliberately using negative reaction shots in his TV edits.  

… improvisation in music and comedy and why every night should be unique.

… the tense protocol of comedians at other comedians’ gigs. 

… Mark E Smith doing things “out of necessity irrespective of how they were received” and his reaction to seeing Stewart in his audience.

… why festival crowds are a challenge.

… the Drifters, the Applejacks and Napalm Death and how they are related.

… the music playing when his son was born.

… arriving in full early Dexys rig - donkey jacket, woolly hat - to find they were now the “raggle-taggle gypsies”.

… the sole performance of Peter Richardson’s Mexican bandit act.

… Daniel Kitson, “the world’s greatest living stand-up”.

… plus the Nightingales, Chris Spedding, Clem Cattini, Kirk Brandon, the Bevis Frond, Geddy Lee, Throbbing Gristle and Brighton Psych Fest’s Secluded Bronte – “is it music or are they just moving furniture around?”

------------

All information about Stewart Lee tour dates here …

https://www.stewartlee.co.uk/

‘Basic Lee’ is on Sky/Now TV on July 20.

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You’ll always find us in the kitchen at parties, near the hoppy summer ale and sausage rolls and, and this week discussing …

… he hasn't changed his look or sound for 30 years: is there a more conservative concept than Liam Gallagher? And how he became the one-man Oasis.

… the eye-watering sum Kevin Hart made from Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle.

… Loudermilk, Rob Gordon in High Fidelity and other Rock Snob stereotypes in fiction - “I’m a Rock Snob? It comes with the territory being right!” And how rock critics are always cast as cynical, joyless curmudgeons.  

… why Courteney Cox was chosen for the Dancing In The Dark video and how Springsteen turned live performance into spectacle.

… the diplomatic skills of A&R men in pursuit of hit singles.

… why Born In The USA was a masterclass in branding.

… the Word in Your Ear podcast and Taylor Swift, both up and running since 2006!

… plus Abba, Peter ‘King Mod’ Meaden, Jon Savage’s book on LGBTQ pop culture, Liam Gallagher’s hair and Springsteen’s dancing lessons.

Great clip of Steve Harley on Australian TV sent by listener Brian Nankervis …

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=10154289171249235

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“I thought Dave Davies of the Kinks was a girl. When I discovered he was a boy, that’s when I got interested.” Jon’s an old friend of the podcast and the author of some highly regarded and influential books about pop and its repercussions, ‘England’s Dreaming’ and ‘1966: the Year The Decade Exploded’ among them. His latest is ‘The Secret Public: How LGBTQ Performers Shaped Popular Culture 1955-1979’ which looks at five particular moments and the pivotal people in the mix at the time. We couldn’t recommend it more highly and cover seven decades in this conversation, stopping off at …

… how “homosexuality was a career-killer” until Bowie’s spectacular Melody Maker interview in 1972.

… new male identities - Valentino, Nureyev, Sinatra and the “subversive” stage act of Johnnie Ray.

… does pop drive change or reflect it?

… Andrew Loog Oldham, Kit Lambert, Simon Napier-Bell and the supposed “gay managers mafia” and how Oldham used camp as a weapon.

… Dusty Springfield and the Gateway Club.

… how Brian Epstein invented a new type of manager.

... Andy Warhol at the Factory, pop art, the launch of the Velvet Underground and his jukebox time-capsule of ‘60s gay pop taste.

… was Tom Robinson the first out gay British pop star?

… Mary Whitehouse v the Gay Times.

… the Clash (“hurt, vulnerable boys”), Siouxsie, Poly Styrene, the Slits, Vic Godard and punk’s other new stage identities.

Order ‘the Secret Public’ here …

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Secret-Public-Resistance-Popular-1955-1979/dp/0571358373

… and Jon’s 2-CD soundtrack here …

https://www.roughtrade.com/en-gb/product/various/jon-savages-the-secret-public-how-the-lgbtq-aesthetic-shaped-pop-culture-1955-1979?channable=409d9269640032313931333434ec&gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAjwvIWzBhAlEiwAHHWgvQetjeRXO03PVnpFYq75PMG_pmDd42hKBO8VytbDerJqZw3ycIY7pxoCFxIQAvD_BwE#cd-x2

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Giles was 12 when he watched Abba win Eurovision in 1974 and was instantly besotted – and thus required to spend the next 20 years wrestling with The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name. His thunderingly funny, fond and illuminating book – My My!: Abba Through The Years – traces their story, looks at the snobbery and critical mauling they endured and figures out how they made records so universally popular and which still move him to tears 50 years later. It’s also the best example of any book we’ve read that can explain the mechanics of music to a non-musician. It’s highly recommended, as is this podcast which alights upon …

… a 50 year-old story – “for 42 of which they haven’t existed”.

.. the vicious early press reaction - “calculatingly commercial”, “dispassionate” …

… the divine clunkiness of their early TV appearances.

… the sense of the melancholy we’ve attached to their music - and why.

... the immense value of splitting up early and never reforming or publicly falling out.  

… the immaculate construction of Dancing Queen (which opens with the second half of the chorus) and why “there are two types of wedding disco – ones that start with Dancing Queen and terrible ones.”

… the maturity of Abba’s lyrics – about marriages, relationships, children and other subjects pop music rarely tackles.

 … why Abba Voyage is so affecting that he’s seen it three times.

… and Muriel’s Wedding, Priscilla Queen of the Desert and other key factors in The Comeback.

Order Giles Smith’s My My!: Abba Through The Ages here …

https://www.amazon.co.uk/My-ABBA-Through-Ages-ebook/dp/B0CF73GNN4

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Peter Meaden was a key figure in the Mod movement. He changed the world view of Andrew Loog Oldham, which shaped the early Stones, and he managed the Who, remodelling their look and sound, writing their first single and turning them into Mod figureheads. Steve Turner interviewed him in 1975, an exchange that's now the centrepiece of his new book 'King Mod: the Story of Peter Meaden, the Who and the Birth of a British Subculture', and the NME's published extract in 1978 paved the way for the Mod Revival. It's an extraordinary story that would make a movie, discussed here with Steve and including ... 

... the Scene Club in Windmill Street "when a band was a way of life".

... Angus McGill and the first press mention of 'the Modernists'.

… the tale of Sandra Blackstone, the DJ who vanished into thin air.

... the lifelong values of Mod culture for teenagers like Eric Clapton, Marc Bolan and David Bowie. 

 ... the single Meaden wrote for the Who - Zoot Suit/I'm The Face - and where he stole the music from. 

... police raids in Soho. 

... doing press for Bob Dylan at the time of Madhouse on Castle Street. 

... the Flamingo Club's dress policy, French and Italian film and fashion, boxing boots, cycle jackets and the origins of Mod style. 

 ... Chuck Berry in suburban Edmonton! 

... Meaden's disastrous attempt to bring Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band to London. 

... and a typical weekend in 1964, a sleepless, Drinamyl-powered 48 hours from the Ready Steady Go! green room to the Scene Club via Carnaby Street. 

£5 off copies of ‘King Mod’ here. Just type in the discount code which is:-

Podcast offer

https://redplanetmusicbooks.com/collections/full-catalogue/products/king-mod

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This week the conversational Super-Trouper of Enquiry lights up the following …

... why care when "rock critics get it wrong"? 

... the dreadful death of the Allman brothers' dad. 

... is there any other branch of entertainment where you can be two hours late onstage?

... has any show got worse reviews than Eddie Izzard's one-woman Hamlet?

... the unlikely tale of how Iron Butterfly changed the course of Atlantic Records. 

... three, the magic number: the accidental album trilogies of Scott Walker, Steely Dan, Blur, the Beatles, Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Nick Lowe ...

... the Deadhead who saw them 1,000 times.

... U2, Coldplay, Radiohead, the Kings of Leon ... bands who've never changed their line-up.

... Yes, Thin Lizzy, the Hollies ... bands with no original members. 

... why it's less demanding seeing bands than solo acts. 

... and Madonna being sued for lateness, lip-syncing and a "pornographic stage-act that was emotionally triggering".

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Tuning into this week's rock and roll soundwave to filter signal from noise, we cranked up the volume on the following ...

... 'Zuma Nester Rock' and the eternal curse of rock stars' kids' names. 

... Bowie's spat with Robbie Williams at Netaid. 

... celebrating awkward sods like Kevin Rowland.

... why Paul Carrack has seen it all.

... 'Lewis' Armstrong, 'Hoosker Doo' and others we've been pronouncing wrong. 

... AI does David Hepworth and Mark Ellen!

... the Underground/Overground albums/singles divide of 1974: the Wombles and Paper Lace v Tubular Bells and Journey To The Centre of The Earth.

... Guy Chambers - a string quartet aged 11! - and other early achievers.

... the Stones' and Bowie's race to have a Guy Peeleart record cover and the 50th anniversary of Diamond Dogs. 

... how the Dead & Co turned a stage show into a movie experience and bands - Radiohead, Kraftwerk, Pet Shop Boys? - who should play the Las Vegas Sphere.

 ... and "the wally with the brolly" and other fresh political PR catastrophes.

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They Might Be Giants – old school fiends John Flansburgh and John Linnell – have been making elliptical, funny and adventurous records for over 40 years and writing music for children, advertising and TV comedies. We talk to John Linnell here about songwriting, early shows in art spaces, the way you saw the world when a "wiseacrey teenager" and what you can expect from their autumn tour. Which, incidentally, will include the "pointlessy difficult exercise" of performing Sapphire Bullets Of Love every night in reverse which they'll film and run backwards and then send the clip to audience members so they can gauge its accuracy ("like watching people sing for whom English is a second language"). Some illuminating moments here ...

... the rich vein of '50s music outside of rock and roll. 

... communicating by posting cassettes and how they built a following with an ansaphone.

... working in a record store in Massachussetts. 

... playing on the same bill as Steve Buscemi at New York performance venues in the '80s and gigs involving papier mache hands and masks. 

... why children are "a tough crowd" and the unsettling news that their albums for kids were outselling their usual records. 

... the fine art of survival after a 1990 worldwide hit.

... and Yoko Ono, Pere Ubu, Elvis Costello and the disturbing effect of Frank Zappa's Weasels Ripped My Flesh.

They Might Be Giants tickets here …

https://www.ticketmaster.co.uk/they-might-be-giants-tickets/artist/945181

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Guy Chambers was a teenager in Liverpool and at John Lennon’s old school - "same headmaster, Mister Pobjoy". He remembers the Beatles, Queen, Abba and Jesus Christ Superstar sparking his interest in the "perfect song package" and went on to work with Tina Turner, Rufus Wainwright, Kylie, Diana Ross and scores of others. He talks here about early shows he saw, records bought and his own tour in the autumn, "An Evening With Guy Chambers", stopping off at various points on the way, among them ...

... how YOU can write a song with him. 

... Bowie's reaction on discovering he was third on the bill below George Michael and Robbie Williams at Netaid. 

... seeing XTC and Generation X at the teen shows at Eric's. 

... Benny Hill's Ernie, the Scaffold's Lily the Pink and other singles bought at Probe Records.  

... "the great harmony bands" like the Eagles, Byrds and the Mamas & the Papas.

..."A Is For Banana", his song about dyslexia.  

... writing a string quartet aged 11 and the magic of hearing four people bring his sheet music to life. 

... "the wastage": composers who write 50 songs and throw 40 away. 

.. the cinematic internal worlds of the Cocteau Twins and Lana Del Ray. 

... the "subversive harmonies" on Strawberry Fields Forever and what makes Eleanor Rigby so perfect.

... everything that now needs to be in place to get a hit record. 

... mass song-writing teams and how he can't operate with more than three people in the room. 

... and what you can expect from his upcoming tour. 

Tickets for An Evening With Guy Chambers here …

https://www.guychambers.co.uk/live

We've been podcasting since 2006 and every bit of support we receive helps us keep the conversation going. Find out more about how you can support Word In Your Ear into the future here: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear

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We’ve known Alan Edwards since the days when we’d ring him for a quote from Blondie or the Stranglers in the late ‘70s and he’s still one of the key figures in music PR. He’s looked after the Stones, Prince, Michael Jackson, Blondie, Amy Winehouse, the Beckhams and many others. No-one is better positioned to see how that world has changed, from the pre-Google days when you could invent a story and the press would happily buy it to a 21st century where his flat was burgled in pursuit of lucrative celebrity leads. PRs, he believes, "are not messengers but storytellers” and his memoir ‘I Was There: Dispatches From A Life In Rock And Roll’ is full of them. He looks back here at …

… striking a £1m photo deal for the Beckhams’ wedding.

… Midge Ure, Gen X and other prime examples of fake news.

… hotel workers, waiters and airline pilots who sold stories to the press.

… the days when a battery-operated portable phone gave you the edge. 

… why he was hired by Blondie.

… the chilly, manipulative and inscrutable Lou Reed.

… Bowie’s disappearance in Berlin in the ‘70s and other things that would be impossible in the age of social media.

… Keith Moon in mid-air.

… and how it feels to be hacked.

Order Alan’s book here …

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Was-There-Dispatches-Life-Rock/dp/1398525243

The Outside Organisation …

https://outside-org.co.uk/

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This week’s items slapped on the rock and roll barbecue and lightly grilled include …

… why Eurovision will never avoid political controversy.

… when AI does David Hepworth!

… what’s the secret of NTS radio?

… “there are two types of wedding disco, ones that start with Abba's Dancing Queen and terrible ones.”

… Tony Hall’s prophetic preview of Revolver in May '66 – “they shatter convention and may well have a far-reaching effect on the whole future of music”.

… when listening to the radio was a group activity.

… Daniel Kramer, Dezo Hoffman, Robert Freeman, Anton Corbijn and other photographers who shaped the way music looked.

... the rogue punctuation of "Paint It, Black".

 … songs that start with the chorus.

 … Elvis’s unrepeatable train journey from New York to Memphis in 1956.

… “there’s glass in the back of my head and my toenails don’t fit properly” – Dylan’s ’66 London press conference.

…. and hurry hurry hurry to Lot 71 in Danny Baker’s record auction, a snip at only £70!

Danny Baker’s record auction …

https://bid.omegaauctions.co.uk/auction/details/a230a-the-danny-baker-collection/?au=162&g=1

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We’ve followed Paul Carrack for 50 years, a big hit single – How Long – when he was with Ace, 19 albums, countless sessions (the Smiths, Eagles and Pretenders among them) and a touring band member with Squeeze, Roxy Music, Roger Waters and Nick Lowe. He once put out an album called ‘I Know That Name’ as for so many people he’s still under the radar. His newsagent assumes he’s called “Mike” as he was the singer in Mike & the Mechanics. He's touring the UK in the autumn and looks back here at …

… seeing the Beatles, Chuck Berry, the Stones, Dylan and the Shadows at Sheffield Town Hall. And Geno Washington & the Ram Jam Band at Mojos promoted by Pete Stringfellow.

… playing Cologne, Frankfurt and Hamburg clubs in the early ‘70s.

… his time with earnest prog adventurers Warm Dust – “please don’t look them up”.

… the value of having your own label in the world of streaming.

… when Elvis Costello got him to sing the vocal on Tempted by Squeeze.

… supporting Fleetwood Mac and Free.

… playing Ray Charles, Nat King Cole and Sinatra tunes with a big band.

… how it feels to be “dropped like a stone” by Radio Two when you no longer fit the demographic.

… the real meaning of the song How Long and what he has in common with Troy McClure of the Simpsons.

Paul Carrack tour dates here …

https://paulcarrack.net/

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Nige Tassell used to go to school in full donkey-jacket-and-woolly-hat ensemble to express his boundless devotion to Dexys Midnight Runners. Forty years later he set out to find and interview everyone who’d ever been a member. For some, their time in the ranks was a joyful, career-launching delight. Others felt it was like a slightly chilly and controlling cult. They all took a while to recover and they all had extraordinary stories to tell in his latest book ‘Searching For Dexys Midnight Runners’. Here’s a flavour of what gets discussed …

… ‘No drugs or alcohol! No smiling! No eye contact with the audience!’ and other unsettling Dexys mantras.

… examples of Kevin Rowland ‘snatching defeat from the jaws of victory’.

… the many ways the band made themselves deliberately different’.

… the event supporting Bowie that got their power cut onstage in Paris and had them thrown off the tour.

... the heavy-handed recruitment of Helen O’Hara.

… Geno Washington and other strands of the Dexys DNA.

… the ad they took in the NME that soured their relationship with the music press.

… and how Rowland’s approach today remains resolutely unchanged.  

Order Nige’s book here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Searching-Dexys-Midnight-Runners-Tassell/dp/178512059X

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Missing being on tour and exasperated by internal disputes, Nick Mason set out to tour small-scale venues with his band Saucerful Of Secrets in 2018. They’re mid-way through another world tour (Gary Kemp’s the main singer and one of the guitarists). He doesn’t miss the stadium circuit where “you need a golf cart to get from one side of the stage to the other” and they play only the early psychedelic Floyd material, from their first singles up to (but not including) the Dark Side of the Moon, which audiences are less inclined to want to be note-perfect versions of the records. And he talks mid-set about the origins of the songs and his memories of Syd Barrett and life at the time. This podcast looks back at the first live shows he saw and played himself and how Saucerful of Secrets came about. Which includes …

… Tommy Steele at the Hackney Empire – “I came straight from school in short trousers with my satchel”.

… seeing the Rolling Stones on a ‘63 package tour.  

… performing Beatles songs at parties in Cuban heels and Oliver Goldsmith shades.

… playing the International Times launch party at the Roundhouse in ‘66 on the back of a cart.

…. early gigs at the Countdown Club, Regent Street Poly and the Albert Hall (with Alan Price and Peter & Gordon).

… the difference between Saucerful of Secrets and the stadium circuit – and the time Roger Waters played with them in New York.

… and the ‘60s demos of unreleased Floyd songs they’re hoping to add to the set.

Saucerful of Secrets tour dates here …

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kjkhMKXv4wPaR2XVbZ6h3WVMJ4ivesVn/view?usp=drivesdk 

Buy tickets here …

https://myticket.co.uk/artists/nick-mason-saucerful-of-secrets

Nick’s re-released solo albums here …

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uwB_CYLuszOUNqsfeiWQH3nXd2TxGVf7/view

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We were at the Curzon Mayfair on May 7 for the premier of the rebooted Let It Be in all its burnished finery and came away with a ton of things to unravel, among them …

… what we never knew when the film came out 54 years ago.

.. seeing it in the shadow of Peter Jackson’s Get Back.

… how the edit was overtaken by events and the tangled reasons it turned out the way it did.

… why Lindsay-Hogg’s amphitheatre concept would never have worked.

… the divine symbolism of the Beatles v the police.

… why it’s a perfect social document of late-’60s London.

… the band’s three-film film contract.

… was the world really as distraught about their break-up as the 21st Century assumes?

… herringbone coats, red plastic macs, hairy black jackets: why someone should open a Beatles ‘69 clothes emporium.

Plus … the noble philosophies of the late Steve Albini expressed in a letter to Nirvana in November 1992.

… and what happens when rock stars don’t leave wills: Exhibit A - Steve Marriott.

Read Steve Albini’s letter to Nirvana here: https://news.lettersofnote.com/p/nirvana

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We stuck a few coins in this week’s Wurlitzer and these were the tunes that got played …

… when records became all about sound not songs.

… Fonzworth Bentley, Puff Daddy’s butler, the man who held an umbrella over him on the beach at Cannes.

… what Henry Kissinger, Martha Stewart and Leonardo DiCaprio kept very quiet about.

… Manchester’s Co-Op, a tale of unprecedented hopelessness.

… what’s the definition of a song? And can you steal a record?

… the magical skill of Aston Barrett on I Shot The Sheriff and James Jamerson on You Can’t Hurry Love.

… ‘Duane Eddy Does Bob Dylan’ and its ingenious sleeve.

… does anybody still want pop posters?

… “I'd watch Jeremy Clarkson boil an egg.”

… Moneybagg Yo & DaBaby, Cigarettes After Sex and other acts playing the O2 and Wembley Arena we’ve ever heard of.  

… the ultimate autograph.

… and New Whirl Odor, Road To Rouen, Sax And Violins, Lead Me Not Into Penn Station and other tortuous album titles.

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Steve Diggle met Pete Shelley when the Pistols played Manchester in 1976 and the Diggle-fronted Buzzcocks are now on a world tour that began in Mexico and takes in North and South America, Europe and Australasia before winding up at the 100 Club where they played the Punk Festival 48 years ago – “we’ve come full circle”. He looks back here at the first shows he saw and played himself and talks about Silverhead, Status Quo, Leo Sayer dressed as a clown, George Best, the Groundhogs, The History of Mr Polly by HG Wells, the Buzzcocks as “Lennon and McCartney in a blender”, “Led Zeppelin for Comprehensive schoolkids, Deep Purple for Grammar schoolkids” and a great story about Patrick Moraz of Yes with a bank of keyboards like a telephone exchange and an alpine horn.

Buzzcocks world tour dates here: https://www.buzzcocks.com/events

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This week’s theories, rants, ruminations, recollections, weak gags and free and frank exchanges of view alight upon the following …  

 … is pop music now all about identity?

…. the recording of the Animals’ House of the Rising Sun and other apocryphal tales.

… has any act been as ubiquitous since Frankie Goes to Hollywood in 1984?

… or has anyone inspired a greater level of personal devotion than Taylor Swift?

… Peter Green, a shotgun and his accountant.

… books bought but never read.

.. re-reading Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity and the changing benchmarks for good and bad musical taste.

… intriguing parallels between the book and record industries.

… and Neil Tennant braves the digital lynch-mob.

Plus Adam Clayton’s garden, Konstantin Chernenko, Richard Burton, Rebel Wilson, Dark Academia, creepy weepies and birthday guest John Montagna looks at singles by the same act that are ‘descendants’ – ie pretty much identical – eg the Monkees’ Teardrop City and Last Train To Clarksville, the Kinks’ You Really Got Me and All Day And All of the Night and Mark Knopfler’s Cannibals and Walk Of Life. Or just try the first few seconds of these four by the Inkspots – Maybe, I Don’t Want To Set The World On Fire, If I Didn’t Care and Whispering Grass.

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File this under ‘right place, right time’. Harold Bronson was a teenager in mid-60’s Los Angeles and saw every act imaginable. Then wrote for the Daily Bruin and Rolling Stone and interviewed everyone that interested him. Then managed a music store and co-founded Rhino Records, pretty much inventing the idea of the top-end reissue – “Sooner or later everyone ends up in a box.” All of this is in his memoir, ‘Time Has Come Today: Rock and Roll Diaries 1967 – 2007’, and many of its cast of thousands appear in this podcast, among them Johnny Horton and ‘the Battle of New Orleans’, the Purple People Eaters, the Temple City Kazoo Orchestra, the Doors at the Hollywood Bowl, the Stones supported by Ike & Tina (for $12), Ozzy Osbourne (“I’d never meet anybody with a tattoo before”), Hilton Valentine working at a Henry The Eighth-themed restaurant, Groucho Marx at a Led Zeppelin launch, a ‘Best of Louie Louie’ that sold 100,000 copies and a Ritchie Valens record made on a dictaphone. 

You can order Harold’s book here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Time-Has-Come-Today-Diaries/dp/B0CGTX2YN8

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With Mark Ellen in foreign parts David Hepworth and Alex Gold light cigars, pass the port in the correct direction and discuss…..

…..the fact that there is only one way to play a Beatles song and that is the way the Beatles did it.

…..the chances that Taylor Swift is reaching her imperial phase and nobody is prepared to tell her what she really needs to hear.

….the very good reason that all contemporary pop records do literally sound the same.

…the 50th anniversary of Richard and Linda Thompson’s “I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight”.

….the story of the Allman Brothers’ “Jessica”, a jam that turned into Dickey Betts’ pension.

….how the Blue Nile got a plug which is worth all the bought media in the world.

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We lobbed the feathered arrows of enquiry at the rock and roll dartboard this week and these got the highest scores …

… rock stars v the new league of the Super-Rich.

… package tours of the mid-‘60s – eight acts, an interval, a compere plus God Save the Queen.

… ‘Hits, Flops and Other Illusions’ by Edward Zwick and the fantastic tale about arrogance, money-squandering and Julia Roberts at the Halcyon Hotel.

... pop music used to be about persuading people to cut loose; now it’s about getting them to tighten up.

… why you can read Ron Wood’s memoir as either comedy or tragedy.

.. Chris Blackwell’s post-production trickery that sold Bob Marley to a rock audience.

… Master Tape Rescue: the arduous task of panning for gold.

... and why there should be a movie about the making of Shakespeare in Love.

Plus birthday guest Chuck Loncon in Savannah, Georgia – Neil Young v Spotify, Lady Antebellum, the Dixie Chicks and the tangled world of political correctness.

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Neil’s an old friend from our days back at Smash Hits in the early ‘80s. The first Pet Shop Boys demos were played on the office tape machine, though he was a bit self-conscious about “the one with the rap on it”. He’s always had a journalistic capacity for story-telling, remembering everything in famously entertaining detail, and we had so much material from this reunion we turned it into a two-part podcast. Here’s a taste of what you’ll find in this second half ...

… “every group has to have an angle”.

… pop’s current obsession with identity.

… why Bronski Beat were so significant.

… David Bowie’s scathing one-word reviews of Michael Jackson and Oasis at the Brits.

… “the whole world of pop songs is a giant ever-expanding artwork”.

… meeting Frida from Abba, “a song waiting to happen”.

… the ‘Pits & Perverts’ gay benefit for the miners in 1984.

… London clubs in the early ‘80s - “we had a competition to see who could wear the highest heels”.

… how everyone at Smash Hits thought Michael Jackson’s Thriller was “a damp squib”.

… recording West End Girls. 

… first hearing a 12-inch single.

… appearing on Soul Train with Don Cornelius – “like being on a different planet”.

… why Dusty Springfield gave Jerry Wexler a nervous breakdown.

… seeing the last Ziggy Stardust show.

… meeting Steven Spielberg, Micky Dolenz and Joni Mitchell.

… and Boy George's gag about George Michael.

-----------------------------------

PSB tour dates: https://www.ticketmaster.co.uk/pet-shop-boys-tickets/artist/735852

Order the new Pet Shop Boys album ‘Nonetheless’ here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/nonetheless-Deluxe-2CD-Shop-Boys/dp/B0CTKKBBVF

-----------------------------------

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Richard Thompson first appeared onstage aged 14 playing Beatles covers in a school group “so bad we were pelted with pennies”. Sixty years later his range of operations includes touring solo and with his band, occasional reunions with Fairport Convention, residencies on Adriatic cruise ships and running a Guitar Camp in the Catskill Mountains (along with his sons and grandson). Much has he seen and learned about live entertainment along the way and he talks to us here from his home on the American East Coast on the day of the solar eclipse. Among the highlights …  

… memories of the Marquee in 1965 – the Who, the Yardbirds, the Spencer Davis Group: “if you wanted to see both sets, you’d have to walk ten miles home”.

… seeing Nick Drake and the value of being “a silent, tortured genius”.

… life as a support act and how to “attack an audience”.

… Carl Perkins and Chuck Berry at the Finsbury Park Astoria in 1963 “when Chuck was at the height of his attention span”.

… Segovia at the Festival Hall.

… the perils of playing on sea cruises in rough weather.

… old and current album sleeves. “Dressed as a fly and now dressed as a fisherman … that’s progress.”

… how Ian Anderson and Captain Beefheart told the audience who’s boss.

… and watching the Band at the Albert Hall from a box with Fairport Convention.

----------------------

Richard Thompson tour dates: https://www.ticketmaster.co.uk/richard-thompson-tickets/artist/736296

Order the new album Ship To Shore here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ship-Shore-Richard-Thompson/dp/B0CVXHMFPB

-----------------------

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Neil’s an old friend from our days back at Smash Hits in the early ‘80s. The first Pet Shop Boys demos were played on the office tape machine, though he was a bit self-conscious about “the one with the rap on it”, and he’s one of the few people who’s seen the music press from every angle - as a reader in the ‘70s, as a writer and interviewer and as a musician on its front covers. We had so much great material from this wide-ranging conversation that we’ve turned it into a two-part podcast. Here’s a taste of what you’ll find in this first half ...

 … the NME article he and his brother pinned to their bedroom wall.

… the event at a Sex Pistols show “which stopped me going to gigs for about three years”.

… the first time he saw his name in print.

… interviewing Marc Bolan in his “fat phase”.

… a barbed chat with Morrissey.

… the pop press shift from “super-showbiz to super-counter-culture”.

… Television, the Clash and other music he discovered through the NME.

… meeting John Taylor 35 years after interviewing him.  

… the pop decade when “something extraordinary happened every day”.

… his mother’s horrified reaction when he left Smash Hits to start the Pet Shop Boys.

… the Human League in their Imperial Phase.

… Phil Collins showing him round Abba’s studio in Stockholm.

… and why ‘80s pop stars were “the most controlling”.

-------------------------------------

PSB tour dates: https://www.ticketmaster.co.uk/pet-shop-boys-tickets/artist/735852

Order the new Pet Shop Boys album ‘Nonetheless’ here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/nonetheless-Deluxe-2CD-Shop-Boys/dp/B0CTKKBBVF

-------------------------------------

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We lobbed the cracked wooden ball of enquiry at the rock and roll coconut shy this week and a few choice items dropped off their perch, among them …

… was Kate Bush ‘the Queen of Prog’?

… ELP, Black Sabbath and Deep Purple playing to 350,000 people on a Speedway track.

… the three things that sparked the Abba revival.

… the Further Adventures of Desmond and Molly Jones, Mean Mr Mustard, Polythene Pam, Father McKenzie, Rocky Raccoon, Maxwell Edison, Rose and Valerie, Sweet Loretta Martin, Vera, Chuck and Dave … Beatles characters awaiting development deals.

… was Britpop the moment the engine went into reverse?

… the two years went rock went ‘fancy dress’.

… why the Stones in 1964 were five walking fashion statements.

… Bookends by Simon & Garfunkel and its Yes connection.

… how the Beatles were in uniform on every album cover.

… David Vine at the 1974 Eurovision: “if all the judges were men, this lot would get a lot of votes and you’ll see why in a moment!”

… plus a birthday guest party - Al Hearton’s life in a Kate Bush tribute band and Stephen Lambe on the complicated birth of 90125 by Yes.

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We’ve applied our celebrated sheep/goats separation technique to the rock and roll pasture and shepherded the following into this week’s pod …

… Beyoncé and why it’s hard to connect with songs written by committee.

… are we too old for biopics?

… Marvel films, the Arctic Monkeys and other things you either love or avoid.  

… reviewing Human Touch and Lucky Town in a high-security studio (and how you can only tell if an album’s any good if you’ve lived with it for two months).

… why Tony Blackburn is the greatest British DJ.

… “Bing was no more Bing than Sinatra was Sinatra”.

… hoary old tales that were the engine of the rock press - the Clash shooting pigeons, Kevin Rowland stealing his own master-tapes, Cliff v Elvis, Beatles v Stones, Hendrix v Clapton, Bowie v Bolan, Clash v the Pistols, Spandau v Duran, Oasis v Blur.

… are Oasis songs mostly about being Oasis?

… “fame is no longer enacted in the public space”.

… indie cliches – escaping the drudgery of the Man and mundanity of Small Town life.

… “the harder I practice, the luckier I get”.

… Scots punk act get movie soundtrack windfall!

… Alex is arranging a woke stag do - “you go to places where ladies put clothes ON”.

… plus birthday guest Andrew Newbury wonders if Country is more than “the three Ds - driving, dogs and divorce”.

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Paul Cook’s post-Pistols band the Professionals were once, rather surprisingly, on the cover of Smash Hits - “the pinnacle of our success!” – and they’re including the 100 Club on their upcoming tour, the location of another career highlight. He talks to us here about how the first time he played live was also the Pistols’ first appearance (Saint Martin’s College of Art - “utter chaos”), how their old Denmark Street rehearsal room is now an AirBnB (Rotten’s cartoons still on the wall), old punks in the audience, Danny Boyle’s TV series and the very slim chance of a reunion (“never say never”). But much of this is about climbing through back windows to see bands in the early ‘70s, Stevie Wonder, the Four Tops, Queen and Mott the Hoople among them. And seeing Alex Harvey on the day the whole of Scotland descended on London for the match against England at Wembley.

The Professionals are playing four UK dates (and often chuck in a couple of Pistols' tunes):

https://www.ents24.com/uk/tour-dates/the-professionals-1-1

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exas are touring in the autumn and she talks to us here about what’s required to make it all look easy, a conversation that includes …

 … why working in a Glaswegian hair salon was the perfect preparation for pop stardom.

… the difference between the first second onstage and everything that follows.

 … the advantage of being a singer with an instrument.  

… seeing Jim Kerr in his mother’s blouse at Tiffany’s in Glasgow when she was 15.

… how Dusty Springfield remembered lyrics.

… Chrissie Hynde, Siouxsie, Depeche Mode, Cameo and the Clash.

… the overpowering spectacle of Prince’s Sign O’ The Times tour in Paris.

… playing racecourses and the unsettling sight of an audience wearing fascinator hats.

… supporting Fleetwood Mac (her second gig) and something useful learnt from Stevie Nicks.

… and the nocturnal sound of lions “going at it full swipe” near her house by Regents Park.

Texas tickets here: https://www.ticketmaster.co.uk/texas-tickets/artist/742180

Texas & Spooner Oldham sessions: https://www.texas.uk.com/

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The all-seeing telescope of truth scanned this week’s rock and roll heavens and noticed a few patterns emerge, among them …

… the real story of the writing of Layla and who nicked what from where. And who didn’t get paid.

… why Sally Grossman was on the cover of Bringing It All Back Home.  

… album sleeves with overflowing ashtrays that screamed ‘welcome to my bohemian world!’ – Soft Machine’s Third, Man’s Rhinos, Winos + Lunatics, Back Street Crawler …  

… album sleeves that said “meet my girlfriend!” – McDonald And Giles, the Madcap Laughs, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, Love Chronicles, the Paul Simon Handbook …  

… album sleeves suggesting the powerful aphrodisiac of music and the allure of ‘the bachelor pad’ …

.. our night out at a Leo Sidran show and what we’ll expect – indeed insist upon - at all gigs in the future.

… when rock stars read 12th Century Persian poetry.

…the time Lucinda Williams toured with Dylan and Van Morrison and never met either of them.

… the glorious squalor of ‘70s flats.

… “comedy is tragedy at a different speed”.

… mentioned in despatches: Sharleen Spiteri, John Mellencamp, James Burton, Bobby Whitlock, Daniel Kramer.  

The Everly Brothers’ Walking The Dog. Is that the original Layla riff at 2.20? …

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=072OpLw-l_s

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Phil Manzanera – who thought “every day in the band felt like Christmas” – has just published his memoir, Revolución to Roxy, and talked to us about it in front of a rammed and captivated audience at London’s 21Soho, an evening so full of detail, intrigue and revelation we’re putting it out as two podcasts. This is the second. He lifts the bonnet of the Roxy Music “art collective” in its various line-ups and shows you how the engine worked and why the idea of Eno onstage was “frightening”. He remembers working with a whole range of people – David Gilmour, Robert Wyatt, Heroes De Silencia, Quiet Sun, 801, David Bowie, Keith Richards, Jack Bruce and Tim Finn among them. He talks about the five seconds of guitar he knocked off in 1975 that’s made him “more money than all my Roxy earnings put together”. He reflects – and very poignantly – that bands never talk to each other and how he hopes the other members read his memoir as they’ll discover things about him they never knew. And he tells the fantastic story of the Guitar Legends festival in Seville and the way he managed Bob Dylan.  

And you can order a copy of ‘Revolución to Roxy’ here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Revoluci%C3%B3n-Roxy-Phil-Manzanera/dp/1783242817

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Phil Manzanera – whose relatives include a Colombian pirate, a spy and an Italian opera musician - has just published his memoir, Revolución to Roxy, and talked to us about it in front of a packed and enthralled house at London’s 21Soho, a life so fascinating, detailed and colourful we’re releasing the conversation as a two-part podcast. Here’s Part One which looks back at an exotic childhood in Hawaii, Caracas and Cuba – with first-hand memories of Castro’s revolution in 1959 – and then his school days, early bands (the Drag Alley Beach Mob, Pooh & the Ostrich Feathers, Quiet Sun), the audition for Roxy Music, how they were styled, supporting David Bowie and their rapid and eventful ascent to the first hit single. When he joined the band, he said, “every day felt like Christmas”. Part Two to follow!

Order a copy here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Revoluci%C3%B3n-Roxy-Phil-Manzanera/dp/1783242817

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Fish has announced a Farewell Tour in 2025. “I’ve been there, done that and sold the t-shirt.” He’s moving to a croft on a remote Scottish island with nesting eagles, a flock of sheep named after the Hibernian FC team of 1972 and part-ownership of what’s just been voted “the best beach in the world”. Getting there is like the journey in Brigadoon. This covers a wide range of bases, among them …

… how the fall of the Berlin Wall changed the tour circuit.  

… his first gig as “a big, gangly, geeky teenager” at the Golden Lion in Galashiels playing Steely Dan and Ry Cooder covers.

… the lies boys tell when trying to get into bands.

… supporting Queen for an audience of 200,000 and how he “over-toured” Europe.

… how it feels to be “the Anti-Christ in the Church of Marillion” and their very public divorce in 1988.

… seeing Yes at the Usher Hall in for £1.25 and Genesis on the Lamb Lies Down On Broadway tour.

… the music press v the New Wave of British Prog.

… girls called Kayleigh whose mothers fancied the singer from Marillion.

… irate fans on social media.

… the fine art of “guerrilla touring”.  

 … plus the Faces, Sven Hassel, Edgar Rice Burroughs and a curious analogy about Sioux Indians.

https://fishmusic.scot/

UK tour dates here …

https://www.ticketmaster.co.uk/fish-tickets/artist/740885

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Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me) was a slow-paced, vicious dirge about the band members who forsook and betrayed him which magically evolved into what appeared to be an optimistic love song, a radio staple that never stopped selling. David and Mark remembered its transformation.

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Various items set off the alarm in the rock and roll bag-check this week and were hauled back for closer inspection, among them …

… when did records first try to sound like the past?

… why Karl Wallinger and Robbie Williams fell out over She’s the One.

... how Marillion and Chuck D changed the digital landscape.

… the only word for the sound of Free is “lascivious”.

… Blood on the Tracks, Here My Dear, Shoot Out The Lights, Tapestry, Tunnel of Love and other accounts of marital fracture.  

… proof the mainstream no longer exists: Glastonbury headliner SZA has had 1.7b streams yet people claim they’ve never heard of her.

… the poignancy commercial failure lends to pop music.

… the Wire’s ‘100 Records That Set the World On Fire (While No-One was Listening)’.

… how Marvin Gaye married a woman 17 years older than him and left her for a 17 year-old.

… Eamonn Forde - in bed! - talking about his new book ‘1999: The Year the Record Industry Lost Control’, the people who knew the digital revolution was coming and the ones who didn’t believe it.

… Big Star, Dwight Twilley, the Raspberries, World Party and why Powerpop appeals to music snobs like us.

… “a Golden Age is when things behaved in such a way that you believed they’d behave that way forever”.

… plus Frank Sinatra, Ava Gardner, Andy Fraser, Steve Winwood and the days when “music down a phoneline” felt like science fiction.

Order Eamonn Forde’s 1999: The Year the Record Industry Lost Control here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/1999-Year-Record-Industry-Control/dp/1913172775

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Stephen Fall wrote reviews of his records, one a day, to make him a better listener. A decade later he published them in a book so colossal that we drop it on a desk to prove it’s passed the Boff Test. ‘Reviewing My Record Collection: 3,333 Albums from A to Zuma’ is a laudable labour of love, records he bought years ago and revisited, records he found in charity shops and took a punt on, records with reputations, records that deserve “a mauling”, records he wants the world to hear, records arranged alphabetically by title from A by Jethro Tull to Zuma by Neil Young & Crazy Horse. He’s evangelical about the album format and never skips a track. It’s an attractively personal view and often mentions when the relationship began – “I found Moon Pix by Cat Power for £1.50 in a Cancer Research in North Finchley”. This fascinating conversation about a love that knows no bounds touches on CDs you always find in charity shops (eg by REM, Dido and Travis), how strange it is that the same records you can pick up for 50p are often being repackaged as “top-end super-deluxe vinyl reissues” and how he felt a sense of bereavement when he finished the book. Which he’s why, oh yes, he’s begun Volume Two.

You can buy the first one for £17.99 from Amazon …

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Reviewing-My-Record-Collection-Albums/dp/B0CV53YD22#:~:text=Book%20overview,collecting%20records%2C%20tapes%20and%20CDs.

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Arthur Brown – enduring psychedelic godfather – is out on tour again 57 years after first performing Fire in a flaming metal crown. He’s nearly 82. This is the most old-school podcast we’ve ever done, talk of seeing Salvador Dali in his audience in a Paris nightclub, jazz bands on the back of trucks, his grandmother’s hotel being bombed in WW2, the birth of Flower Power, gigs at the UFO club, Palaeolithic art, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, panicked security personnel with fire blankets and memories of the key components of his incendiary headgear over the years among them cow gum, Army gaiters and a pie dish full of petrol. As you’ll discover – and this couldn’t be more old-school either – Zoot Money once had to extinguish the flames with two pints of Newcastle Brown.

Arthur’s keeping the home fires burning on a European tour. Dates here …

https://www.songkick.com/artists/333715-crazy-world-of-arthur-brown/calendar

Website - thegodofhellfire.com

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Suzi Ronson was working in a hairdressers in Beckenham in 1970 when a Mrs Jones dropped in for a shampoo and set talking gaily about her son, “an artistic boy who plays guitar and piano”. The same son who’d had a hit with Space Oddity and occasionally drifted down the High Road in a dress. Within weeks she’d become the first rock stylist, transforming Bowie’s hair, image and stage clothes and launching him in the direction of Ziggy Stardust and an international audience. She was a key part of his entourage that toured the UK, America and Japan and she talks about later life married to Spiders’ guitarist Mick Ronson, the role he played in Bowie’s success and the trials of his solo career in its aftermath. Both this podcast and her memoir (Me And Mr Jones: My Life With David Bowie and the Spiders From Mars) look at Bowie’s early career from a wholly new and original angle - in fact someone should base a film on it. A few highlights ...

… Haddon Hall and its exotic inhabitants.

… Schwarzkopf Red Hair Dye and other trade secrets.

.. how it feels to see an audience with the haircut you invented.

… expeditions to Liberty’s and Mr Fish with Angie Bowie.  

… the Spiders’ northern sensibilities adjusting to the brave new world.

… how Tony Defries made Bowie mysterious and unreachable.

… why Lou Reed was a revelation.

… America’s Southern states reacting to the 1972 tour.

... and the magnetism of Bob Dylan and why Mick Ronson ended the Rolling Thunder tour with an invoice not a wage packet.

Order Suzi’s book here …

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Me-Mr-Jones-Suzi-Ronson/dp/057137185X

Suzi’s the special guest on the Lust For Life tour reading extracts from the book …

https://www.lustforlifetour.com/special-guest-support

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Nutritious items on the rock and roll tasting menu this week include …

… the curious life of Tom Verlaine, his grocery cart and his 50,000 books.  

… was March 9 1984 the worst week ever for the British album charts?

… what all great records have in common.

… Yesterday’s news today! ‘Soundies’ at the cinema and the Scopitone colour video jukebox.

… why A Hard Day’s Night was the greatest advert for the magical qualities of the Beatles and the scene that was the blueprint for the pop promotional clip.

… comforting acts with a narrow range – JJ Cale, the Fabulous Thunderbirds, U2 (“like getting into your parents’ car after a school trip”). And what made JJ Cale’s recordings so mesmerising.   

… did Johnny Marr ever play a guitar solo?

… “I work in advertising but tell my mother I play piano in a brothel”.

… the link between JJ Cale’s Call Me The Breeze and Family Affair by Sly & the Family Stone.

Mentioned in despatches … Cab Calloway and the Hondells, The Hoodoo Gurus, the Style Council, Jimmy Reed and the Inkspots.

Tom Verlaine’s 50,000 books …

https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2024/march/at-the-tom-verlaine-book-sale?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20240306blog&utm_content=20240306blog+CID_6b4a1bd19ed9ca733f5ffca04056ca8b&utm_source=LRB%20email&utm_term=Read%20more

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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!

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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

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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/

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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.

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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

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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\

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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.

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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

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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/

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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.

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We spun the week’s rock and roll roulette wheel and this is where the balls landed … 

… why all rock biopics are worth seeing once.

… ‘demixing’: we spent ages perfecting records. Now we’re unperfecting them.

… the adorable hand-drawn flyer the 15 year-old Robert Plant made for his band Blacksnake Moan 60 years ago – “the weirdest, wildest sound in R&B!”

… are all musicians driven by the urge to please their mums?

… Pyjamarama, Crazy Diamond, Cigarettesnalcohol and other rock and roll racehorses.

… why “The Room” by Fabiano do Nascimento and Sam Gendel is “healing music”.

… has anyone been ‘bigger’ than Taylor Swift? And how can she be so universally popular and yet we can go through life without hearing a note of her music?

… the Pet Shop Boys at the London Palladium: “we don’t do waving”.

… “Something's lost but something's gained in living every day” – Joni Mitchell.

… are any possesions more precious than records?

... and birthday guest Kevin Rose recommends the Brian Wilson biopic Love & Mercy – and we talk about Control (Joy Division), Backbeat (the early Beatles), Rocket Man and Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis.

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Our piercing Hubble Telescope Of Truth scans the rock and roll heavens to see what new patterns emerge, among them …

… running into Rod Stewart at a friend’s funeral.

… the priceless spectacle of rock critics dancing.

... Prefab Sprout and the fine art of bathos – “We were songbirds, we were Greek Gods, we were singled out by fate/We were quoted out of context - it was great!”

… the best songs about being in a band.

… Jackson Browne’s Running On Empty (and its hymn to self-love).

… King Kong, the most famous movie of all time - and why, like Jaws and Jurassic Park, the special effects now seem creaky but the drama still holds.

… our new pop star category: “dancer-singer”.

... how Tom Hibbert invented a whole new whole method of music journalism (and the only song that could get him on a dancefloor).

… “the crack of the backbeat on Vine Street”.

… and birthday guest Roger Millington on Heroes by David Bowie, the Archers theme tune and anything else that might make a new National Anthem.

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 Applying our patent ACME wheat/chaff separator to the rock and roll cornfield, this week’s podcast reaps the following harvest ….

… Stray, Budgie, Fat Mattress, Atomic Rooster … ropey bargain-bin fixtures reborn as costly and collectible vinyl classics.

… Neil Or No Neil: Let’s Impeach the President, The Lone Ranger And Tonto Fistfight in Heaven … spot the fake Shakey song title.

… what they did with the Beatles’ Twist And Shout in the opening sequence of True Detective 4.

… the curious tale of the last line in Casablanca plus Dooley ‘Sam’ Wilson and his off-screen piano double.  

… when the Dave Matthews Band tour bus tipped 800lbs of raw sewage onto a pleasure cruiser.

… why it’s hard to feel nostalgic about online magazines.  

… “deep-end record-shop-haunting bores” (like us).  

… the first three Robert Palmer albums and their old-school sleeves.

… life in the ‘70s without the NME: unimaginable.

… when Neil Young was sued for not sounding like Neil Young and John Fogerty for plagiarising his own material.

... and birthday guests Paul Knox and the biggest musical moments on TV, among them Magical Mystery Tour, John Martyn on Whistle Test, the Pistols on So It Goes ….

Is this the greatest musical moment on TV?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pKpfs5EK_s

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In March Graham Gouldman and 10cc are coming your way and here he talks to David Hepworth about:

- seeing Cliff and the original Shadows at his first live show

- playing live in the sixties, when a band would plug all three guitars into the same amp

- where he keeps his fifty guitars

- what’s going on when it all goes quiet on the 10.c.c. tour bus

- the songs you have to play for the audience

- the ones you play for yourself

- what goes through his head every night when he’s standing in the wings

- the proper place to put 10 cc in an alphabetical record collection

Full tour dates here: https://www.10cc.world/events

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We stuck a coin in this week’s jukebox of news and cranked up the volume and these were the tracks that got played …

… fond memories of Annie Nightingale at Radio One and Whistle Test.

… the delicious melancholy of Sunday night pop radio.

… how David Gilmour writes songs.

… sex, clothes, gangsters: the eternal allure of Bonnie & Clyde.

… how the first Police album (including three hit singles) was recorded by a former doctor in a four-track studio above a dairy in Leatherhead for £1,500, and the band’s touching tribute when he died.

… the British Library hijack hack.

… the fantasy theme of so many ‘60s movies: ‘escape’.

… Ridley Scott’s Hovis ad.

… Blind Willie Johnson, Chuck Berry … Blodwyn Pig? The five tracks you’d send into space to represent life on earth.

… how future wars will be started.

… plus birthday guest Sandra Austin on the best use of choirs on records among them Aretha Franklin’s You’ve Got A Friend, Blur’s Tender, the Stones’ You Can’t Always Get What You Want, Roy Harper’s When An Old Cricketer Leaves The Crease.

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Jim Gordon played the drums on Wichita Lineman, Good Vibrations, the Byrds’ Mr Tambourine Man and hundreds of other recordings we all own and worked with pretty much everyone including Steely Dan, Tom Waits, Tom Petty, Randy Newman, John Lennon, Frank Zappa and the Everlys. He toured with Delaney & Bonnie and Joe Cocker’s Mad Dogs And Englishmen package and was a member of Derek & the Dominos. He played with a “bounce, a lilt, a boiling undercurrent” that added a whole new melodic dimension and he saw two different worlds from the inside, the studio-based pop factories of the ‘60s singles boom and the big ‘70s tours of the heyday of the rock album. West Coast author and music columnist Joel Selvin considers his supreme talent and ultimately catastrophic story in his new book ‘Drums & Demons: the Tragic Journey of Jim Gordon’ alighting here at various points in detail, among them …

… the intersection between “rock and roll and true crime”.

… the secret of “a compositional drummer”.

… how he started at the top, aged 17, touring with the Everlys and the Rolling Stones.

… how Rita Coolidge was robbed of her royalties, twice.

… his appetite for fame and recognition at a time when “being a rock star was the most elevated position in the world”.  

… why he turned down a Dylan tour.  

… the long, tangled evolution of ‘Layla’ and what Jim added to You’re So Vain that transformed it.

… and why he was sentenced to 16 years (for the murder of his mother) and ended up doing 38.

Order Joel’s book here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Drums-Demons-Tragic-Journey-Gordon/dp/1635768993

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Leaping across puddles, walking between the raindrops, its collar turned to the cold and damp, our weekly podcast builds a defence against the rigours of the rock and roll weather and offers shelter from the storm. Remain warm and dry with the following …

… the 11 musicians who turned down a Knighthood, MBE etc.

… why Dylan & the Band’s 1974 tour set the template for all tours to follow.

… Rod Stewart minus the hair: unimaginable.

… the old duffers’ perfect New Year’s Eve.

… happy 50th to Joni Mitchell’s Court and Spark, Van Morrison’s It’s Too Late To Stop Now, Steely Dan’s Pretzel Logic, Gram Parsons’ Grievous Angel, Big Star’s Radio City, Todd Rundgren’s Todd and Frank Zappa’s Apostrophe.

… Mr Bates v the Post Office and why sad films and books get harder to process as you get older.

… the wit and wisdom of our old pal Rod Sopp, the Smash Hits ad man - “a roll of cash big enough to choke a donkey”; “he’s so thin he has to run around in the shower to get wet”.

… Sting, Debbie Harry, Elvis Presley: spot the natural blond.

… how Woody Allen uses music to “make films look better”.

… the story of Everybody’s Talkin’ in Midnight Cowboy.

… why movie dance sequences are often filmed in silence.  

… and birthday guest Andrew Slattery: All Along the Watchtower in Withnail, Sanctus in If, Didn't Leave Nobody But the Baby in O Brother Where Art Thou? and other great movie soundtrack moments.

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Amid the detritus of tangerine peel, half-eaten chocolates, broken toys and jars of home-brewed chutney beneath the rock and roll Christmas tree we found various items still unwrapped and awaiting this week’s podcast, among them …

… how to create the Dylan Blonde On Blonde shuffle in under two minutes.

… “Middlesex Hepworth!” David’s triumph on University Challenge and an inside view of the whole experience.

… Noel Coward revisited through the 21st century lens in the ‘Mad About The Boy’ documentary.

… Liam Gallagher & John Squire’s super-duo: it’s the Mancunian nostalgia jackpot but are the days of pre-release hype now over?

… the most creative thing anyone can do.

… actors from humble backgrounds used to pretend to be posher, now the posher ones affect to be working class.

… how to listen to live albums: new Hepworth research reveals essential ingredient to enhance audio experience!

… ‘a mix is never finished, it’s merely abandoned’, ‘snapping to the grid’ plus the idiosyncrasies of a ‘smart drummer’. 

This is the link to creating the Dylan shuffle: https://youtu.be/BMPoFYAwXQ0?t=78

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We check this week’s luggage on the rock and roll baggage carousel and remove the following items for inspection … 

… The People v OJ Simpson and why it’s worth re-watching.

… the only two convincing films about magazines and journalism.

… bands that look like mini-cab drivers.

… David’s upcoming appearance on University Challenge (cue the voice of Roger Tilling: “Middlesex Hepworth!”)

... the source of the phrase “Bring on the empty horses!”

… why someone called Riley asked John McVie and Nick Mason for his life back.

… who was more prolific, Michael Curtiz, Barbara Cartland or Mozart?

… the eternal destination of all Peter Pan royalties.

… the man who saved Po Powell from a spell in the cooler.

… “Morning, Gentlemen. Nice day for murder!”

… writing bands’ names on school bags.

… ‘I need a sheep, a psychiatrist’s couch, a vet and a ticket to Hawaii!’

... the old Word magazine gang and what they’re doing now.

Mentioned in despatches – the Atom Heart Mother cow, a duff Barry Gibb movie, the Mark Leeman Five and Balaam And the Angel.

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This week’s wheat/chaff separation process sifts the following from the rock and roll cornfield …

… Tony Secunda, his gangsterish suits and the publicity stunt that backfired spectacularly.

… our old Word magazine pal Rob Fitzpatrick talking about the Japanese composer Michiru Aoyama who's released an album a day since December 2021, each 20 minutes 20 seconds long. And the role of streaming in the ambient music boom.

… the life of Denny Laine and the great “chamber pop” hit he wrote.

... why the Move’s Flowers In The Rain has never earned the band a cent.  

… how the death of John Lennon was the dawn of the ‘black border’ magazine tribute.

… Willie Nelson’s way with a middle eight.

… the last men standing in the Band On The Run album shoot.  

… is there anyone still on the road older than “the French Bob Dylan” Hugues Aufray (94) and Marshall Allen 0f the Sun Ra Arkestra (99)?

… and mentioned in dispatches - Harold Wilson, Frank Ifield, Ginger Baker’s Air Force, ‘Ronnie & Clyde’ and birthday guest Rob Collis and the best rock and roll movies.

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Mal Evans was the Beatles’ right-hand man, their bouncer, bodyguard, gofer, chauffeur, drug-runner, roadie, fellow party animal, confidante and friend. Along with Neil Aspinall he was the man who allowed the band to function daily and catered to their every need. He was such a central cog in the machine that Ringo declared, “now Mal’s left, the Beatles are really over.” Mal’s son delivered his archive of photos, manuscripts and memorabilia to the author, lecturer and world-renowned Beatles authority Kenneth Womack and asked him to write his father’s memoir, and the result – ‘Living The Beatles Legend: On the Road with the Fab Four – the Mal Evans Story’ – has just been published. It sees the whole story through a completely different lens. Among the highlights in this illuminating conversation with Ken you’ll find …

... Mal’s delicate relationships with the band and role as a peace-keeper.  

… further proof that Allen Klein “caused despair”.

… why Lennon said life on the road “was like Satyricon”.

… Mal’s brief tenure as Apple’s MD.

… how Cynthia Lennon unknowingly shopped him to his wife.

… the internal world of “the eight outsiders” (the Fabs, Brian, George M, Neil and Mal).

… the reunion with John and Paul at a Harry Nilsson session and the Jesse Ed Davis incident on the Lost Weekend.

… echoes of Mal in John Junkin’s character in A Hard Day’s Night.

… and the tragic and complex circumstances of his death at the hands of the police in 1976.

Order Ken’s book here:

https://www.waterstones.com/book/living-the-beatles-legend/kenneth-womack//9780008551216?awaid=3787&utm_source=redbrain&utm_medium=shopping&utm_campaign=css&sv1=affiliate&sv_campaign_id=176013&awc=3787_1701449123_6949508e18ba11ed742bd07b0529cc8e

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Belfast author and old pal of the pod Stuart Bailie joins us to remember the lost captain of the good ship Pogues and we touch on Shane’s “feral” early life and the character he constructed to keep the world at bay; his place in the Irish literary pantheon, his intelligence worn lightly and Joycean use of language; the night they drank the proceeds from Fairytale Of New York; why the band’s St Patrick’s Day shows were three-day events and a magnet for lost Celtic souls, and how they became good by stealth but were so divisive in Ireland. This alongside other savoury and invigorating ingredients in this week’s rock and roll hot-pot, among them …

… David’s five most-played tracks on Spotify in 2023.

… real or imaginary Xmas singles? De La Soul’s Millie Pulled A Pistol On Santa? Sonic Youth’s Santa Doesn’t Cop Out On Dope? Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s Santa’s In The Clan? ….

… the life and exceptional times of John Mayall, 90, and the people who passed through his blues academy.

… why Spinal Tap might be best left alone.

…and the song Randy Newman wrote about missing his ex-wife plus a tremulous joint recitation of Simon Smith & the Amazing Dancing Bear.

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Pauline Murray kept a diary when she and Penetration were on the punk rock frontline and her vivid and emotional memories appear in a new memoir, Life’s A Gamble, beautifully illustrated with personal photos, press cuttings, late ‘70s gig listings and other lovingly archived memorabilia. It teleports you back to a time when pop music made daily headlines and battles were lost and won in fragrant dancehalls and knackered vans on motorways. As does this podcast, recorded with an audience at London’s 21Soho club in late November. Aged 14 she was travelling to London from County Durham and sleeping in railway stations to see the Pistols and the Clash. She formed Penetration in ‘76 and for two hectic years they were caught up in the whirlwind. This account of it all includes Alan Freeman, Gilbert O’Sullivan, Jonathan Richman, Tim Curry (as Dr Frank-N-Furter), why the deaths of Sid and Nancy has such symbolic significance, the female punk ‘sisterhood’ giving her the cold shoulder, her unwise marriage, and the profit and loss statement of the debt she still owes Virgin (the annual reminders have never stopped). And she talks movingly about the experience every group endures when their first flush of mutual love and enthusiasm turns to bitter inter-personal fall-out. One of her kids was in the audience. As was Gaye Advert!

Order ‘Life’s A Gamble’ here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Lifes-Gamble-Penetration-Invisible-Stories/dp/1913172708

21Soho: https://www.21-soho.com/

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Glen Matlock came to our live podcast recording at London’s 21Soho at the end of November and lit up the audience with tales from his new memoir ‘Triggers’, stories of his early life in the late ‘50s and ‘60s, his brief and riotous shift in the Sex Pistols and his colourful adventures since. The full cast list includes Jeff “Skunk” Baxter, the DJ Mike Raven, Gary Glitter, John Peel, Kenneth Horne, Malcolm McLaren, Nick Kent, Ian McLagan, Ronnie Lane, Midge Ure, Wally Nightingale, Blondie and Bill Grundy.

You get a real sense of the fabric of London around Ted Carroll’s record stall in Ladbroke Grove and around Denmark Street when the Pistols lived and rehearsed there. And look out for the night they played a Conservative Club to a crowd of six, the time McLaren begged him to return as “it wasn’t working out with Sid”, the Filthy Lucre reunion and his luminous account of Johnny Rotten’s audition backed by a jukebox playing Alice Cooper.

Glen Matlock came to our live podcast recording at London’s 21Soho at the end of November and lit up the audience with tales from his new memoir ‘Triggers’, stories of his early life in the late ‘50s and ‘60s, his brief and riotous shift in the Sex Pistols and his colourful adventures since. The full cast list includes Jeff “Skunk” Baxter, the DJ Mike Raven, Gary Glitter, John Peel, Kenneth Horne, Malcolm McLaren, Nick Kent, Ian McLagan, Ronnie Lane, Midge Ure, Wally Nightingale, Blondie and Bill Grundy.

You get a real sense of the fabric of London around Ted Carroll’s record stall in Ladbroke Grove and around Denmark Street when the Pistols lived and rehearsed there. And look out for the night they played a Conservative Club to a crowd of six, the time McLaren begged him to return as “it wasn’t working out with Sid”, the Filthy Lucre reunion and his luminous account of Johnny Rotten’s audition backed by a jukebox playing Alice Cooper.

Recorded in front of a live audience at 21Soho, London, on November 27th 2023.

Glen’s tour dates are here: http://www.glenmatlock.co.uk/

And you can order ‘Triggers’ here: https://www.waterstones.com/book/triggers/glen-matlock/9781788709446

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You wonder why her life hasn’t been made into a movie. Jenny Boyd’s mother had so many children she didn’t realise her daughter had quit school and become a model. The world of London clubs and fashion magazines was the start of 60 years’ close observation of rock stars in every context leading, eventually, to the publication of ‘Icons of Rock’, her interviews with 65 musicians. Among the highlights in this pod she talks about...

… what life’s like when your sister marries a Beatle.

… the day a besotted Donovan played her the song he’d written about her (‘Jennifer Juniper’).

… how the 16 year-old Cheynes’ drummer Mick Fleetwood took one look at her and declared “that’s the girl I’m going to marry”.

… the Crazy Elephant and the Scotch of St James.

… watching the Beatles write songs in Rishikesh.

… her transition from being “a dollybird” to "a searcher".

… modelling in California and the Monterey Pop Festival.

… the characteristics songwriters have in common and the meaning of “the peak experience”.

… being the only mum in the Fleetwood Mac orbit, life at their Kiln House commune and why Mick was “the pot of glue” that held the band together.

… “talent is inherited but stamina often isn’t”.

… and memories of Peter Green, Joni Mitchell, David Crosby, Graham Nash and “Magic” Alex.

Order ‘Icons of Rock’ here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Icons-Rock-Fleetwood-Mitchell-Harrison/dp/1789466717/ref=sr_1_1?qid=1700664733&refinements=p_27%3AJenny+Boyd&s=books&sr=1-1

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We ran our metal detector over this week’s rugged rock and roll terrain and dug deep when it beeped. Among those prime locations …

… the secret of Top Gear’s golden age.

… is Bob Dylan a “cold weather concept”?

… why Holger Czukay’s ‘Movies’ is a pivotal record.

… Daryl Hall’s restraining order on John Oates: inter-band fall-out scales brave new heights.

… the ground-breaking ingredient in ‘He’s Gonna Step On You Again’ by John Kongos.

… why Joni Mitchell, Lee Perry and Pink Floyd were early pioneers of sampling.

… the night some loon climbed the scaffolding above the E Street Band.

… pre-McLaren theft of the Burundi Beat.

… the irksome mob rule of the internet: “all bands are now sacred and anyone who says different is a heretic”.

… when an album cover is a “lifestyle statement”.

… plus birthday guests Kevin Walsh and Simon Poulter and best of this year’s rock books.

Subscribe to Word In Your Ear on Patreon for early - and ad-free! - access to all of our content: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear

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The week’s rock and roll luggage was put through the scanner by our sharp-eyed security chiefs and the following items kept back for scrutiny …

… 82 year-old jazzer in lucrative samples windfall!

… is there a more excruciating ‘mum’ moment than the 12 year-old Elijah Blue Allman’s in the Cher video If I Could Turn Back Time?

…. the staggering sum total of what the Beatles did on 30 July 1963.

… “Mailbox money”: how Phil Manzanera made more from a hip hop record than from 15 years of Roxy Music

… why would anyone be a pop star these days?

… further proof that in the world of the internet nothing is forgotten.

… why the quantity of cash Kanye West pulled from the “athleisure” shoe market makes the music business look like toytown. And are “vintage trainers” the new rare vinyl?

… when was the first sample?

… and Christmas with David’s Uncle Stan.

Tickets for Word In Your Ear live at 21Soho on November 27th: https://www.tickettext.co.uk/ZOthfatjxi

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As if by some magical alignment of the planets, the  Specials, Madness and the Beat were all listening to the same music and developing the same look at precisely the same time, though completely unaware of each other. And when they started releasing records, the 10 year-old Daniel Rachel was transfixed. What happen next is recorded in his hectic and engrossing book, Too Much Too Young: the 2-Tone Records Story, the huge characters, the daily dramas, “the dance sensation that’s sweeping the nation”, a period whose white heat really only lasted 18 months but had a massive cultural impact at the time (indeed its crucible, Coventry, now has a 2-Tone Village!). And the movement’s main architect, Jerry Dammers, was a middle-class, ex-hippie art student raised in the church. All sorts of points come up in this engaging pod, among them …

… the pivotal meeting between Suggs and Dammers at the Hope & Anchor.

… the significance of Walt Jabsco and the 2-Tone merchandise – “when the rag trade gets hold of you, you’re made”.

… the crossover between violence at gigs and football matches in the late ‘70s and the right-wing factions that attached themselves to Madness.

… how the music press adored 2-Tone then brutally turned the tables.

… Rico, Saxa and the revolutionary twin-generational line-ups of the Specials and the Beat.

.… why the Bodysnatchers only lasted 11 months.

… why 2-Tone failed in America until the Dance Craze movie arrived.

… how each member of the Specials thought they were in a different band.

… why there were so many “2-Tone casualties”.

… and the brief window between punk and electronic pop that helped 2-Tone take off.

Order ‘Too Much Too Young: the 2-Tone Records’ story here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Too-Much-Young-Soundtrack-Generation/dp/1399607480

Tickets for Word In Your Ear live at 21Soho on November 27th here: https://www.tickettext.co.uk/ZOthfatjxi

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Jude Rogers – writer, broadcaster, old pal of the pod - first heard Kirsty MacColl when she was nine and felt a connection ever since. She’s just written the sleevenotes for ‘See That Girl’, the best, most diverse and exquisitely packaged compilation of her music ever assembled, an eight CD box-set of singles, rarities, unheard songs, live and Glastonbury appearances, demos, BBC sessions and collaborations, along with an entire unreleased album.

As Jude points out she wasn’t overlooked, but all the things you applauded about her made her very hard to market. She wouldn’t play the game. She refused to be fashionable. She was funny and honest and wrote about an unvarnished, real world which robbed her of a sense of mystery, and a lot of her songs were about fallibility and failure. Among the highlights here …  

… a long-running lyric thread that began with There’s a Guy Works Down The Chip Shop Swears He’s Elvis.  

… why what she wrote about men (and women) was so original.

… her strained relationship with her father.

… what Johnny Marr admired about her and the power of her “Elysian chorus”.

... why you’ll never find another song like ‘Autumnsoupgirl’.

… how she and Dave Robinson’s hairdresser launched Tracey Ullman’s career.

… and David Hepworth’s inspired idea for ‘In These Shoes?’, the West End Kirsty MacColl musical.

Order the 8CD box set ‘See That Girl’ here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/See-That-Girl-1979-2000-8CD/dp/B0C9GCDZST

Tickets for Word In Your Ear live at 21Soho in London on November 27th here: https://www.tickettext.co.uk/ZOthfatjxi

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This week’s winning hand from the rock and roll card deck includes …

… a silver salute to musicians who don’t dye their hair.

… did Al Pacino play Phil Spector? Roger Daltrey as Franz Liszt? Was Gary Oldman Joe Strummer?

… rock stars you’d swap lives with.

… the “theme-park-ification” of pop music.

… the mysteries of rock and roll are slowly evaporating. As Tom Waits said: “before the internet, we used to wonder. I miss the wondering.”

… the immortality of the Florida salesman who appears on the cover of Abbey Road (and had obituaries when he died).

… why Leonard Cohen thought his romance with Joni Mitchell was “like living with Beethoven”.

… how a split-second made and destroyed the lives of two photographers covering Lee Harvey Oswald at the Dallas Police Headquarters.

… musicians who look even better older.  

… how Pink Floyd helped kick-start rock’s love affair with football.  

… the unenviable world of Robbie Williams.  

...and is Abba the only act that works as holograms?

Plus Led Zeppelin’s Victorian Wiltshire thatcher and birthday guests Mike Sketch and Peter Petyt.

Tickets for Word In Your Ear live at 21Soho in London on November 27th: https://www.tickettext.co.uk/ZOthfatjxi

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Slade were as revolutionary as T. Rex or Roxy Music, Daryl Easlea points out. At one stage they were outselling Bowie and Bolan. They were the band that hauled the sedentary early ‘70s audience to its feet. The sound of the Ramones was built around ‘Slade Alive!’ and you can feel them in the bones of the Pistols and Oasis. We talk here to Daryl about his funny, energetic, nostalgic and affectionate new book, ‘Whatever Happened to Slade?: When The Whole World Went Crazee’, stopping off at various stations on the route, among them …

… why there are “two tiers of Slade”.

… the drunken conversation that turned them into a skinhead band overnight.

… a key moment involving Crispian St Peters, Kim Fowley and the Tiles Club.

… what made them football terrace heroes.

… how these “smashers and grabbers” tore up the live circuit.

… the very ‘70s way they dealt with Don Powell’s accident.

… why American audiences had their “mellow harshed”.

… the publican’s son who styled them.

… the transformational moment at the '72 Lincoln Festival.

… the story of the ‘Give Us A Goal’ video filmed at Brighton’s Goldstone Ground.

… and why the main salesman in their line-up was the one “with tinsel in his veins”.

Slade were as revolutionary as T. Rex or Roxy Music, Daryl Easlea points out. At one stage they were outselling Bowie and Bolan. They were the band that hauled the sedentary early ‘70s audience to its feet. The sound of the Ramones was built around ‘Slade Alive!’ and you can feel them in the bones of the Pistols and Oasis. We talk here to Daryl about his funny, energetic, nostalgic and affectionate new book, ‘Whatever Happened to Slade?: When The Whole World Went Crazee’, stopping off at various stations on the route, among them …

… why there are “two tiers of Slade”.

… the drunken conversation that turned them into a skinhead band overnight.

… a key moment involving Crispian St Peters, Kim Fowley and the Tiles Club.

… what made them football terrace heroes.

… how these “smashers and grabbers” tore up the live circuit.

… the very ‘70s way they dealt with Don Powell’s accident.

… why American audiences had their “mellow harshed”.

… the publican’s son who styled them.

… the transformational moment at the '72 Lincoln Festival.

… the story of the ‘Give Us A Goal’ video filmed at Brighton’s Goldstone Ground.

… and why the main salesman in their line-up was the one “with tinsel in his veins”.

Order Daryl’s book here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Whatever-Happened-Slade-Whole-Crazee/dp/1783055545

Tickets for Word In Your Ear live at 21Soho on November 27th here: https://www.tickettext.co.uk/ZOthfatjxi

Subscribe to Word in Your Ear on Patreon for early - and ad-free! - access to all of our content: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear

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John Higgs' brilliant and wide-ranging book 'The KLF: Chaos, Magic and the Band Who Burned A Million Pounds' came out ten years ago and just keeps on selling. It sold initially to the fans who bought their records. Then to those absorbed by the fringe figures in their mythology - Ken Campbell, Alan Moore, Robert Anton Wilson, the Discordians. And then to people who just wanted a staggering and barely believable story about the attacks by two free-wheeling cultural terrorists on the worlds of art and music at the end of the 20th century. It sold so well in fact that it's just been republished in a 10th Anniversary edition with additional material.

John Higgs is an exceptional speaker as this pod demonstrates and talks here about the outer reaches of their extravagantly lunatic strategies - the ABBA court case, the dead sheep, the pagan rituals on Jura, the collaboration with Tammy Wynette - and how many backfired on them and why Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty have barely seen each other in almost 30 years. This podcast was recorded in front of an enthralled audience at 21Soho in London on October 30th 2023.

Order the 10th anniversary edition here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/KLF-Chaos-Burned-Million-Pounds/dp/139961035X

Tickets for Word In Your Ear live at 21Soho on November 27th here: https://www.tickettext.co.uk/ZOthfatjxi

Subscribe to Word In Your Ear on Patreon for early - and ad-free! - access to all of our content: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear

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"The Beatles gave us a continuing soundtrack of unparalleled charm and reassurance", Derek Taylor said. "As long as they kept on delivering fresh songs along with the morning milk, everything was right in our optimistic world". It happened again on Thursday. Is the old magic still there?

Also on the menu in this week's podcast...

... Fact or fiction? The extravagant adventures of Bill Drummond and why burning £1m still haunts the KLF.

... does it matter if musicians falsify their past? Paging Buffy St. Marie, Sixto Rodriguez, Seasick Steve...

... why calling the Beatles "the original boy band" is so ridiculous and wrong and how their story fires our desire to believe.

... how Lucinda Williams beat the autocue system.

... Crowded House, the strange tale of 'Woodface' and the track that kept them off American radio for two years.

... why Peter Jackson's 'Now And Then' video is like "fan fiction".

... Giles Martin's theories about producing music the way people remember it sounding (and why he was sacked by Martin Scorsese and then re-hired a few weeks later).

... and - in other piping hot news - the man behind 'Manuel and His Music of the Mountains' and the tax problems of the Singing Nun!

Tickets for Word In Your Ear live at 21 Soho on November 27th here: https://www.tickettext.co.uk/ZOthfatjxi

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There are broadly three Ian Broudies in the public imagination. One is the songwriter with a catalogue of softly psychedelic left-field pop tunes. The second is the record producer behind Echo & the Bunnymen, the Fall, the Coral and Terry Hall. The third is the co-composer of our new national anthem. He talks here about early life in Liverpool and the records that enthralled him (See Emily Play, Autobahn), what he learned from his mentor Roger Eagle (who ran Eric's Club), a life-shifting moment with Steve Wright, what matters most in production, the disastrous time he introduced the Spice Girls on Top of the Pops and why the FA rejected the original version of Three Lions, wanted a new title and asked him to drop Skinner and Baddiel. He's funny, outspoken, candid, modest and affectionate and movingly philosophical on the rigours of composition: "as soon as you finish a song it becomes something - but it loses 90% of what it could have become".

This podcast was recorded in front of a live audience at 21Soho in London on October 30th, 2023 and Ian's new memoir is just out - 'Tomorrow's Here Today: Lightning Seeds, Football and Post-Punk'.

Order Ian's book here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Tomorrows-Here-Today-Lightning-Post-Punk/dp/1788709020

21Soho: https://www.21-soho.com/

Tickets for Word In Your Ear live at 21Soho on November 27th here: https://www.tickettext.co.uk/ZOthfatjxi

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Billy Sloan, Glaswegian broadcaster and music columnist, has written his memoir, ‘One Love, One Life’, about a career that’s allowed him to point his microphone at an astonishing array of musicians and started back in the old analogue world of tight-deadline newspaper journalism where you hammered out your Chuck Berry interview as the rolls of film were biked back to the office to be processed. This covers a lot of ground including …

… the moment that changed his life.

… why the London Press Corps were “a pack of hyenas”.

… Rod Stewart v Michelle Mone – a classic revenge saga that ticked every box.

… interviewing a naked Grace Jones (and how Dame Edna got involved).

… the exquisitely “horrible” Chuck Berry.

… queuing all night for 85p Who tickets, aged 15.

… the Sensational Alex Harvey Band, “boo-ed onstage, roared off”.  

… a trip to the Reeperbahn via Rory Gallagher.

… life at the Sunday Mail and the Daily Record.

… the great Scottish rock boom of the early ‘80s “when if you had a floppy fringe and desert boots you’d expect to be flagged down by an A&R man with a chequebook”.

… and the star that made him feel and “you’re only one duff question away from getting a right hook”.

Order Billy’s book here …

https://www.amazon.co.uk/One-Love-Life-Stories-Stars/dp/178530481X

Tickets for Word In Your Ear live at 21 Soho on November 27th here: https://www.tickettext.co.uk/ZOthfatjxi

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We spin the reels of the rock and roll fruit machine this week and get the following pay-outs …

… the preposterous present they gave Bobby Charlton when he retired.

... “the leaning man from Alabam”.

… ‘Skinny Minnie Shimmy’ by Lattie Moore And The Emperors and other apparently fictitious rock and roll hits.

… a Radio One DJ who was also an actor, erotic sculptor, travel writer, sheep farmer, flamenco guitarist and ballet dancer. Why has no-one made a film of the life of Mike Raven?

… why Born To Run was “a quantum leap”, the record where Springsteen wanted “to sing like Roy Orbison and write like Bob Dylan on an album that sounded like it was produced by Phil Spector”.

… a leaked 1982 Radio One memo of ground rules for DJs! “Don’t resort to ‘common talk’ in a pathetic attempt at humour.” “You can say Cornflakes but not Shredded Wheat …”

… how rock is adopting the Gilbert & Sullivan business model.  

… Richard Thompson, Steve Cropper, John Fahey, Hubert Sumlin … : who’s the greatest guitarist of all time?

… the story-spinning genius of John Prine.

… the afterlife of the Love Affair.

… Ernest ‘Boom’ Carter’s brief but marvellous moment of glory.

… and birthday guest Giles Fraser wonders at what point a band shouldn’t use their original name.

Rolling Stone’s top 250 guitarists …

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-lists/best-guitarists-1234814010/nile-rodgers-5-1234814197/

The amazing story of Mike Raven …

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Raven

Everybody’s in the Mood by Howlin’ Wolf …

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XV0gDlzEnYU

Get your exclusive Nord VPN deal here: https://nordvpn.com/yourear

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Tickets for Word In Your Ear live at 21 Soho on November 27th here: https://www.tickettext.co.uk/ZOthfatjxi

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Toothsome hors d’ouvres, mains and ‘items from the trolley’ on the rock and roll menu this week include …

… Bowie’s Pin-Ups v Ferry’s These Foolish Things: who won?

… the worst band name in history and why.

… the fan who hired a plane to fly a message past Morrissey’s record label.

… the Stones’ Hackney Diamonds: best album since Black And Blue or tedious riff-less dirge?

… why only solo acts can tell stories onstage.  

… why the Dutch love the Byrds.

… things we never imagined 50 years ago.

… Spanky McFarlane, Gloria Salt … country music siren or twinkle-eyed PG Wodehouse dame?

… the two main topics the Stones write songs about.

… how modern fandom is expressed.

… who ever thought they’d hear Dylan say the word ‘Wikipedia’ onstage? 

… and has anyone got a copy of ‘Darker Than Blue: Soul From Jamtown’ on Mick Hucknall’s Blood And Fire label? And who remembers the ‘Hard-Up Heroes’ album?

Plus cycling with an umbrella, Barbra Streisand’s autocue and birthday guest Cathal Chu on the best and worst onstage banter.

Tickets for Word In Your Ear live at 21 Soho on October 30th here: https://www.tickettext.co.uk/ysY3FvyFae

Subscribe to Word In Your Ear on Patreon for early - and ad-free! - access to all of our content!: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear

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The godfather of British independent labels, Immediate, was started in 1965 by the Stones’ manager Andrew Oldham and Tony Calder, its winning slogan: “happy to be part of the industry of human happiness”. As Simon Spence correctly puts it, “it all got very messy”. Oldham tended to fall out with people and then threaten to kill them. Simon’s excellent book, ‘Immediate: the Rise And Fall of the UK’s First Independent Record Label’ has the details (he also co-authored Oldham’s two memoirs, ‘Stoned’ and ‘2Stoned’). Immediate has been a touchstone ever since and their roster included the Small Faces, PP Arnold, the Nice, the Who, Fleetwood Mac, Twinkle, Scott Walker and various others discussed here. Also includes …

… “no Andrew Oldham, no Rolling Stones.”

… the part played by Tony Hancock’s doctor.

… “if you didn’t want to be ripped off, why are you in the music business?”

… the range of Immediate’s catalogue from Nico and Rod Stewart to the Turtles and Jimmy Tarbuck.

… an advert for the Nice involving three assassinated politicians.  

… the time Oldham left his hairdresser in charge of A&R.

… Don Arden, the Small Faces and £25,000 in a paper bag.

… a secretly recorded blues album and why Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page fell out.

… why Oldham wanted to poison the Nice and murder Amen Corner.

… invaluable advice from Phil Spector.

… and why Immediate finally fell apart.

Order Simon’s book here …

https://www.backstage-books.co.uk/

Tickets for Word In Your Ear live at 21 Soho on Oct 30th: https://www.tickettext.co.uk/ysY3FvyFae

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As it emerges from the upheaval of Cross Rail, music historian Peter Watts looks at this densely-packed thoroughfare between Charing Cross Road and Covent Garden, which started off selling sheet music, grew into the place where many writers sold their tunes for a few quid while a wise minority hung on and made fortunes, a street that continues to provide a home for music businesses to this day. Includes....

...the Victorian "rookeries" of St Giles

...how a coal mining accident made the street's first big hit

...the true meaning of the Old Grey Whistle Test

...when every office boy played the piano

...how the Beatles changed music publishing 

...how the Rolling Stones made their first (and best ?) album

...how the Sex Pistols and the Stones made their first music yards from each other

...what exactly are they doing with Denmark Street today?

Buy Denmark Street - London's Street Of Sound here: https://www.paradiseroad.co.uk/denmark-street-londons-street-of-sound

Tickets for Word In Your Ear live at 21 Soho on Oct 30th here: https://www.tickettext.co.uk/ysY3FvyFae

Subscribe to Word In Your Ear on Patreon for early - and ad-free! - access to all of our content here: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear

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Spicy and nutritious items in the rock and roll bouillabaisse this week include …

… Roger Waters at the Palladium: a masterclass in how to insult an audience.

… “without Andrew Loog Oldham, the Stones would have been Manfred Mann.”

… the only rock star who can tell a story onstage.

… Nempnett Thrubwell, Hinton Blewett, Glaister Fagan … Leafy Somerset hamlet or venerable reggae dubmeister?

… the money Dave Grohl made from Nirvana (and it’s less than you’d imagine).

… why Barry McGuire’s Eve Of Destruction was so terrifying.

… please, someone, stage an exhibition of original paintings used on album sleeves!

… the rise and rise of the rock spectacle.

… Hogg, Fat Grapple, Makin’ Bacon? Real or fictitious pork-related acts from the Melody Maker Club Calendar 1971.

… has social media taken the place of protest music? Why has no-one made a statement the Israel/Hamas war?

… more smoking-themed album covers.

… what, in her darkest hour, Madonna must think about Taylor Swift’s movie triumph.

… and In The Court of the Crimson King and other albums that sound like their covers.

Tickets for Word In Your Ear live at 21 Soho on October 30th here: https://www.tickettext.co.uk/ysY3FvyFae

Tickets for Word In Your Ear live at 21 Soho on November 27th here: https://www.tickettext.co.uk/ZOthfatjxi

Subscribe to Word In Your Ear on Patreon for early - and ad-free! - access to all of our content and more!: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear