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.
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Top 10 Word In Your Ear Episodes
Goodpods has curated a list of the 10 best Word In Your Ear episodes, ranked by the number of listens and likes each episode have garnered from our listeners. If you are listening to Word In Your Ear for the first time, there's no better place to start than with one of these standout episodes. If you are a fan of the show, vote for your favorite Word In Your Ear episode by adding your comments to the episode page.
03/31/24 • 46 min
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”.
Subscribe to Word In Your Ear on Patreon for early - and ad-free - access, plus a whole load more!: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear
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Word Podcast 102
Word In Your Ear
06/16/09 • 48 min
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Word Podcast 221 — Ben Watt
Word In Your Ear
09/24/14 • 61 min
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Guy Garvey remembers the Grumbleweeds in panto, Santana fantasies & a song nicked from Roy Castle
Word In Your Ear
02/14/24 • 27 min
Guy Garvey and Elbow start touring the UK in May and he looks back here at the first shows he saw growing up in Bury in the ’70s - when his five elders introduced him to punk, prog, folk, soul and Elton John - and proudly admits he still doesn’t know the names of the guitar strings. Look out for ...
... the secrets of the “Vanity Thrust” and other 21st Century stagecraft.
... the time they supported the Stones.
... being with the same band members for 34 years and each “wanting to be a different member of Santana”.
... what he’s learnt about live performance - “never announce new material”.
... his 6Music show, Guy Garvey’s Finest hour (“one hour too long” – Mrs Guy Garvey).
... the un-PC death of Roy Castle in the Peter Cushing movie Dr Terry’s House of Horrors.
... good things about Little Simz.
... the time a snowstorm doubled their audience.
... working with the BBC Concert Orchestra – “if it’s Wagner you’ll miss two tea breaks”.
... when Paul McCartney turned “Partridge-esque”.
... and the possible ‘star guests’ on the upcoming tour.
Elbow tour dates ...
https://www.ticketmaster.co.uk/elbow-tickets/artist/886289
Guy Garvey’s Finest hour ...
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0072q60
Elbow are on Radio 2’s Piano Room with the BBC Concert Orchestra on Feb 21...
https://elbow.co.uk/bbc-radio-2-piano-room-month/
Subscribe to Word In Your Ear on Patreon for early - and ad-free - access to all of our content, plus a whole load more!: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear
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Mystery people on album sleeves, Elton dressed as a hornet and Leonard Cohen’s favourite song and why
Word In Your Ear
11/13/23 • 53 min
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
Subscribe to Word In Your Ear on Patreon for early - and ad-free! - access to all of our content!: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear
Get bonus content on PatreonHosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Why Kirsty MacColl was so funny, honest, original and impossible to sell – by Jude Rogers
Word In Your Ear
11/14/23 • 27 min
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
Subscribe to Word In Your Ear on Patreon for early - and ad-free! - access to all of our content: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear
Get bonus content on PatreonHosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Bob Dylan - why he signs autographs left-handed and other mysteries solved by Ray Padgett
Word In Your Ear
09/02/23 • 25 min
Ray Padgett lives in Vermont, first discovered Dylan when he was 16 in the 21st Century and was fascinated and besotted, later launching the newsletter ‘Flagging Down the Double E’s’ and now publishing the enthralling ‘Pledging My Time’, a collection of his interviews with over 40 people who’ve worked, performed and recorded with the inscrutable old rogue. Both the book and this fast-moving, whip-smart and very funny conversation are revelatory and highly recommended, the podcast shedding light on ...
... the daily life of Bob Dylan – eg the piles of gifts he routinely receives and the security men who scour his vacated hotel rooms to remove anything that could be nicked and put on eBay.
... the only friend who seemed to co-exist with him on “an equal footing”.
... an eye-witness account of his first performance (aged 13) at a Jewish summer camp in Minnesota.
... the childhood friend who owned a fish business in Duluth and ended up running the Rolling Thunder Revue - as Dylan enigmatically put it, “if you can sell fish, you can sell tickets”.
... the time he went to a business conference and nobody recognised him.
... how he tells musicians to “never play the same thing twice”.
... the chance meeting with Scarlet Rivera – two hours later she was onstage as “my violinist” with Dylan and Muddy Waters.
... multiple examples of his love of spontaneity and the extraordinary way he hires musicians.
... a rare moment when his career seemed to stall.
... and honourable mentions of Richard Thompson, Paul Stookey, Jim Keltner, Stan Lynch and Jeff Bridges.
Pledging My Time ...
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Pledging-My-Time-Conversations-Members/dp/B0C6VRBZQC
Flagging Down the Double E’s newsletter ...
https://dylanlive.substack.com/about
Tickets for Word In Your Ear live at 21Soho on September 25th here: https://www.tickettext.co.uk/1SwIYJWoHK
Subscribe to Word In Your Ear on Patreon for early - and ad-free! - access to all of our content: https://www.patreon.com/woridinyourear
https://www.covermesongs.com/about-ray-padgett
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06/09/24 • 34 min
“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 ...
Find out more about how you can help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear
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Annie Nightingale (“the great goth auntie”), choirs on pop records & the music they sent into space
Word In Your Ear
01/15/24 • 53 min
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.
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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Britpop, its peaks and its spiritual godfather: a Golden Age rebooted by Miranda Sawyer
Word In Your Ear
10/17/24 • 41 min
You’ll know Miranda Sawyer from the Observer and the radio and, possibly, from her days at Smash Hits and Select magazines that form the foundation of her new book, Uncommon People: Britpop and Beyond in 20 Songs, a time spent watching, interviewing and hanging out with the collection of misfits and outsiders fast becoming the last great musical movement this country ever saw. This pans in on the period between April 1993, Select’s ‘Yanks Go Home’ cover, and August 1997 when Oasis released Be Here Now. A ton of highlights, among them ...
... why bands hated the term Britpop – and who invented it.
... when your life in your 20s becomes history and period drama.
... are Oasis conservative or just “classically Northern”?
... why Britpop was the last hurrah of the traditional media.
... the long slow burn of Jarvis Cocker and the rise of the Beta Male.
... the impact of Select’s famous Union Jack ‘Yanks Go Home’ cover.
... why Edwyn Collins was the Godfather of Indie (and Britpop) and the song that never stopped selling.
... Ric Blaxill at Top of the Pops, Matthew Bannister at Radio One and other unsung architects of Britpop.
... lava lamps, swirly rugs, space hoppers and the charity shop tat that replaced the matt black shiny ‘80s.
... Jarvis v Jackson, Blur v Oasis and other great engines of the tabloid press.
... “Manchester had the bands and the mythmakers (Tony Wilson, Paul Morley) ...”
... why the weekly music press was the Twitter of its time.
... comparing Blur in ‘90s clubs to Wembley Stadium in 2023.
... will Oasis be the last ‘household name’ band?
... could Britpop have happened without the press?
Order Miranda’s book here:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Uncommon-People-Britpop-Beyond-Songs/dp/1399816896
Find out more about how to help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear
Get bonus content on PatreonHosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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FAQ
How many episodes does Word In Your Ear have?
Word In Your Ear currently has 757 episodes available.
What topics does Word In Your Ear cover?
The podcast is about Music, Music History, Podcasts and Music Commentary.
What is the most popular episode on Word In Your Ear?
The episode title 'Daniel Rachel hears 100 hours of Beatles audio – “it’s like the DNA in a crime scene”.' is the most popular.
What is the average episode length on Word In Your Ear?
The average episode length on Word In Your Ear is 44 minutes.
How often are episodes of Word In Your Ear released?
Episodes of Word In Your Ear are typically released every 5 days, 19 hours.
When was the first episode of Word In Your Ear?
The first episode of Word In Your Ear was released on Mar 7, 2007.
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