Word In Your Ear Mark Ellen, David Hepworth and Alex Gold

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.
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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.
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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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