686 episodes
Word In Your Ear Mark Ellen, David Hepworth and Alex Gold
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- Music
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.
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Jon Savage - Dusty’s wig, Bowie’s bombshell and how gay pop culture changed music
“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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“Abba’s success is more about us than them”: Giles Smith looks back at a 50-year love affair
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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the Architect of Mod: how Peter Meaden restyled and launched the Who - by Steve Turner
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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Great album trilogies, suing Madonna and "the pantheon of psychedelic heaviosity"
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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The spectacular Dead & Co, songs performed backwards & happy birthday Diamond Dogs!
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.
Find out how you can support Word In Your Ear and help us keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear
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Why They Might Be Giants now perform an entire song backwards
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
Visit us on Patreon to see how you can help us continue the conversation: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear
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Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.