Word In Your Ear

Mark Ellen, David Hepworth and Alex Gold

Mark Ellen and David Hepworth have been talking about and writing about music together and individually for a collective eighty years in magazines like Smash Hits, Mojo and The Word and on radio and TV programmes like "Rock On", "Whistle Test" and VH-1. Over thirteen years ago, when working on the late magazine The Word, they began producing podcasts. Some listeners have been kind enough to say these have been very special to them. When the magazine folded in 2012 they kept the spirit of those podcasts alive in regular Word In Your Ear evenings in which they spoke to musicians and authors in front of an audience.  Over these years they've produced hundreds of hours of material. As of the Current Unpleasantness of 2020, they've produced yet hundreds of hours more with a little help from guests kind enough to digitally show them around their attics such as Danny Baker, Andy Partridge, Sir Tim Rice and Mark Lewisohn. For the full span of the Word In Your Ear world, visit wiyelondon.com. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  1. 2 days ago

    Martin Simpson’s 60 years on the folk circuit ‘making people cry for a living’

    Martin Simpson got backstage when he was 15 and met Jimmy Reed and Big Joe Williams and it changed his life forever. He’s been on the folk circuit ever since, still at the top of his game and with the wealth of knowledge and experience reflected in this extremely entertaining podcast. His ‘Some Kind Of Jubilee’ album celebrates 50 years since his first record and he’s on tour in September. And talks to us here about …   … his operatic Dad born in the 19th Century   … the message carved with a knife on the door of the Bodmin Trad Music Club    … hearing Paul Robeson aged four and thinking “I want to make people cry for a living”   … ‘60s folk circuit snobbery and its disdain for “foreign songs”   … signing Big Joe Williams’ walking stick in a space between Bob Dylan and Joan Baez   … memories of Alex Campbell, Matin Carthy, Dave & Jo Ann Kelly and “that swarthy bunch of lunatics from Hull, the Watersons”   … the Nun & Ice Cream Cone, the Frog & Afterbirth: imaginary pub venues cooked up with June Tabor   … being managed by Tony Secunda, “an extremely unpleasant human being”   … “the only damage you can do to a folk song is to not sing it”   … supporting Steeleye Span and the night cash rained from the heavens   … Don’t Think Twice It’s All Right, These Days by Jackson Browne, Mississippi John Hurt and other songs that never let you down onstage    … second-lining at a New Orleans jazz funeral: “the slow drag and the racing return”   … and how folk songs travel abroad and evolve.     Order copies of ‘Some Kind Of Jubilee’ here: https://martinsimpsonmusic.com/pre-order-the-new-album/   Martin Simpson tickets here: https://martinsimpsonmusic.com/ Help us to keep The Longest Continuous Conversation In Rock'n'Roll going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    Martin Simpson’s 60 years on the folk circuit ‘making people cry for a living’
  2. 3 days ago

    The Shadows and the chequered tale of the first British rock’n’roll band

    The Shadows were the strongest brand in British pop, adored and widely imitated. When they went out of fashion, no-one wanted them to change. Bob Stanley salutes their enormous influence and creation of the guitar hero and unravels their rapid post-Beatles decline in his superb new book, ‘The Shadows: the Definitive Story’. And talks to us here about …    … Hank and Bruce arriving in London aged 15 when the 2i’s coffee bar was a labour exchange and a social club   … entering a talent contest won by a Malayan opera singer   … the magic of cowboy culture transported to British suburbia and their four cartoonish stage names   … meeting Jacques Tati at the Paris Olympia and being asked to write a song for his upcoming movie   … the rapid post-Beatles crash – bow-ties, panto and Cliff announcing his Christianity   … “being thrown through a mangle twice a night by Arthur Askey in Stockton-on-Tees is not why they joined the music business”   … getting Hipgnosis to design their album sleeve while stuck playing Batley Variety Club   … the return of instrumentals with Albatross and the Good, the Bad and the Ugly   … when Hank was asked to join the Move   .. the Swedish vogue for “barbed wire groups”   … and Neil Young’s ‘From Hank to Hendrix’ – which everyone assumed was about Hank Williams.   Order copies of Bob’s book here: https://tr.ee/rSilFTJwfO Help us to keep The Longest Continuous Conversation In Rock'n'Roll going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    The Shadows and the chequered tale of the first British rock’n’roll band
  3. 14 Aug

    Elliott Smith, his life, his afterlife and the friends who believed in him

    A sense of melancholy hangs over the music of songwriters whose lives were tragically short – Nick Drake, Jeff Buckley, Eva Cassidy, Judee Sill - and we’re left knowing very little about them. Jamie Fisher, writer and New York Times researcher, discovered Elliott Smith 12 years after he’d died and contacted 40 of his friends and fellow musicians to build a picture of him for her memoir Nobody Broke Your Heart. She looks back here at his background and ascent from the Portland club circuit to the Oscars, and touches on …   … the emotional impact of first hearing his music walking round Central Park in Lockdown   … “goofy, stubborn, wildly smart, addictively listenable”   … early life in Omaha and Texas (and the telling tattoo on his arm)   … the shy collegiate kid reading Dostoevsky who thought promotion was “distasteful”   … how a singer-writer broke through in Portland during the Grunge boom   … rejected stage-names - Johnny Panic, Elliott Stillwater-Rotter - and the pivotal moment when Steven became ‘Elliott’   .. his sense of humour – “a garbage truck passed him and he said, ‘there’s my ride!’”   … the archive of unreleased recordings she’d heard   … the Oscars appearance and signing to DreamWorks and Nirvana’s PR   … the root of his eventual unhappiness   … “he would have been more shielded if he’d been in a band”   … and his expanding legacy and adoption by Gen-Z.   Order ‘Nobody Broke Your Heart’ here: https://www.roughtrade.com/product/jamie-fisher/nobody-broke-your-heart-an-intimate-biography-of-elliott-smith Help us to keep The Longest Continuous Conversation In Rock'n'Roll going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    Elliott Smith, his life, his afterlife and the friends who believed in him
  4. 12 Aug

    How Kylie became the whole world’s sweetheart

    Michael Cragg’s devotion to all things Kylie once led him to Melbourne in search of the actual carousel horse she rode in a pop video. He got a tattoo a day later. Can’t Get You Out Of My Head is a funny and fondly detailed personal account of the risk-taking variety of her records, the mystery of her private life and the irresistible nature of her appeal, a girl who, were there a war on, would be painted on the tail fins of aircraft. He looks back here at …   … her ‘90s reinvention by association – with Nick Cave, Michael Hutchence and Bobby Gillespie   … how records about joy never get enough credit   … wrestling back control after life with Stock Aitken & Waterman   … the root of her appeal as a gay icon   ... being vilified by the press for any public pronouncement   … a capacity to charm her detractors when she meets them    … reciting I Should Be So Lucky at the Poetry Olympics alongside Patti Smith and Allen Ginsberg   … a mixture of the ordinary and the exotic and the ‘Carry On’ sexuality of her videos   … only Queen Elizabeth 11 has had more waxworks at Madame Tussauds   … and Michael’s meeting with her – “I’m six foot eight, she’s five foot one” - and the resulting photo.   Order copies of ‘Can’t Get You Out of My Head’ here: https://www.faber.co.uk/product/9780571392766-cant-get-you-out-of-my-head-in-search-of-kylie/ Help us to keep The Longest Continuous Conversation In Rock'n'Roll going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    How Kylie became the whole world’s sweetheart
  5. 11 Aug

    Sandy Denny’s life and luminous talent celebrated by Linda Thompson

    ‘Sandy Denny: A People’s History’ has just been published, memories from fellow musicians, old friends, producers, writers, fans and admirers. Linda Thompson met her when they were both 16 and was devoted to her ‘til she died in 1978 – “she’s still with me, I talk to her all the time”. She looks back here at their lives in Soho bars, folk clubs and studios, the world they inhabited and the musicians they both knew. Among the many highlights …   … meeting Sandy in 1966, onstage doing Jackson Frank’s You Never Wanted Me. “Eight million cigarettes a day but such breath control!”   … why her singing and songwriting were unique   … high times at the Colony Club with Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon - “famously grumpy”   … “she didn’t put up with bullshit. Cross her and she’d deck you”   … memories of Nick Drake – “spectral and gorgeous”   … the repercussions of the Fairport car crash   … memories of her family home in Wimbledon (on the cover of Unhalfbricking)   … recording ad jingles for Ski Yoghurt and ‘flour so fine, it flows and it flows’ - £15 an hour, “a fortune”   … making demos of Nick Drake songs with Elton John, “so full of Valium I had to be held up to the mic”     … sharing a flat with Tim Buckley in Holland Park   … “anyone who can bear to listen to their own records must be no bloody good”   … and the script Nick Hornby started about the life of Richard and Linda Thompson.   Order ‘Sandy Denny: A People’s History’ here: https://burningshed.com/georgia-rose-lucas_sandy-denny-a-peoples-history_book Help us to keep The Longest Continuous Conversation In Rock'n'Roll going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    Sandy Denny’s life and luminous talent celebrated by Linda Thompson
  6. 6 Aug

    Bowie, the Cure, Neil Young and the golden age of the video shoot

    Tim Pope caught the video wave in 1981 and made hundreds of promotional clips, often three or four a week, edited at night and on-air days later. You’ll have seen them, singles for the Style Council, The The, Iggy Pop, Hall & Oates and many others. For 15 years he was the man to call – inventive, caffeinated, risk-loving, clubbable – and “nothing was too mad or stupid”. He celebrates that magic age of big budgets and creative freedom in his story-filled memoir ‘I Shoot Rock Stars’, just out, and looks back here at …   … the video that made his reputation   … MTV showing six of his clips in a row   … the thrill of Bowie’s silhouette as he walked across the Rainbow stage in 1977: “there was so little footage back then, you’d rarely seen people move”   … his teenage love of Dusty, ELP, King Crimson and Pink Floyd   … shooting seven clips a fortnight and the one time a record label tried to interfere   … Neil Young’s 2,000-acre Broken Arrow Ranch and the “burning fires of his eyes”   … Iggy Pop singing I Wanna Be Your Dog in the John Snow pub in Soho   … “German sausages, lumps of lamb, maggots, a whole party”: the Soft Cell clip that caused a walk-out   ... “You’re a funny little arsehole!”: breaking the ice with Bowie   … what he learnt from Mark Hollis of Talk Talk and spending time with his ashes.   Order ‘I Shoot Rock Stars’ here: https://www.waterstones.com/book/i-shoot-rock-stars/tim-pope/9781035426959 Help us to keep The Longest Continuous Conversation In Rock'n'Roll going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    Bowie, the Cure, Neil Young and the golden age of the video shoot

About

Mark Ellen and David Hepworth have been talking about and writing about music together and individually for a collective eighty years in magazines like Smash Hits, Mojo and The Word and on radio and TV programmes like "Rock On", "Whistle Test" and VH-1. Over thirteen years ago, when working on the late magazine The Word, they began producing podcasts. Some listeners have been kind enough to say these have been very special to them. When the magazine folded in 2012 they kept the spirit of those podcasts alive in regular Word In Your Ear evenings in which they spoke to musicians and authors in front of an audience.  Over these years they've produced hundreds of hours of material. As of the Current Unpleasantness of 2020, they've produced yet hundreds of hours more with a little help from guests kind enough to digitally show them around their attics such as Danny Baker, Andy Partridge, Sir Tim Rice and Mark Lewisohn. For the full span of the Word In Your Ear world, visit wiyelondon.com. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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