Free Daily Podcast Summary
Word In Your Ear: Daily Summaries Delivered
by 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.
Latest Episodes
The most recent episodes — sign up to get AI-powered summaries of each one.
- 4 days ago37 min
Joni Mitchell’s fascinating treasure trove of lost interviews with the BBC
Tom Hagler works at the BBC with access to every TV and radio programme involving Joni Mitchell for 50 years, all full of revelations about her songs and the times she spent in London. So he transcribed the interviews – even the bits off-camera - and talked to the people who’d watched them being recorded, now published as ‘River Of Words: Joni Mitchell At the BBC’. It’s full of fresh angles and good stories, like this podcast which touches on …… Joni living on cigarettes, coffee and chocolate in a Bayswater flat in 1968… early exposure by John Peel and on Stanley Dorfman’s pioneering ‘In Concert’ (she was the first guest!)… her complete transparency in interviews – “I felt like a cellophane wrapper on a pack of cigarettes”… the night she met Graham Nash… the BBC failing to exploit their 1990 ‘scoop’ about her giving away her daughter for adoption, and the moment she thinks she met her (aged 3)… how she held her own in the ‘70s rock Boys’ Club… “save something of yourself”: when Kris Kristofferson heard Blue… the Tracey MacLeod interview where she claims to be a reincarnated Arab rug dealer… and the value of Big Yellow Taxi in the climate crisis.Order copies of ‘River Of Words: Joni Mitchell at the BBC’ here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/River-Words-Joni-Mitchell-interviews/dp/1035435780Help 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.
- 6 days ago1h 3m
Which bands pass the three-year test? – plus the great live albums & rock stars’ alter egos
Stirring the spice-filled gumbo of news and turning the heat up. This week’s nutritious ingredients include …. … is everything better shorter?… the greatest opening line in a book ever written… did Tom Waits, Warren Zevon, Joe Cocker, the Bee Gees, Cheap Trick, Sam Cooke, Talking Heads or Bill Evans make the greatest live album of all time?… the worst beers Buster Poindexter ever had… rock stars’ alter egos – Lady Gaga as Jo Calderone, Andy Partridge as Sir John Johns, George Clinton as Mr Wiggles, Justin Hawkins as Sir Voltage Blackthorn!… Blur, Radiohead, Stones, Doors, Steely Dan, Bowie, Leonard Cohen … they all had a three-year golden streak… “I’m writing a short letter as I don’t have time to write a long one”… why the Matrix was a watershed moment … the three stages of success – getting known, the magnum opus, basking in the glow… and why we love August N'gutu Leibowitz-Clementine.Plus Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, Buckshot La Funke, birthday guest Phil Hopwood and how everyone at the BBC is a gossip.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.
- 1 weeks ago46 min
Dexys, their hits and flops and how I survived them by Helen O’Hara
Helen’s violin at the start of Come On Eileen has filled a million wedding dancefloors. She was a member of Dexys Midnight Runners, later their musical director, at the boom time of Too Rye Ay (and its wobbly sequel) and captures the thrill of it all in her just-updated memoir, What’s She Like: A Violinist’s Tale. You’ll love this conversation - warm, candid, forgiving and touching on all the following …… the day the dungarees arrived… the tribal nature of bands… the social skills required in a group as tangled as Dexys who’d “go to the caff and just … not talk!"… what she learnt from the memorabilia found in her shed… the myth that she met Kevin Rowland at a bus-stop and her reinvention as “the belle from Ballymena” … working with Nicky Hopkins (“my hero”), Tom Dowd, Woody Woodmansey and Tanita Tikaram… Dexys studio method: “focus, discipline, tightness” and trying to record a 12-minute track in one take… hearing hits by Rod Stewart and Slade that featured violins… and her swansong: recording Because Of You for the TV sitcom Brush Strokes.Order copies of ‘What’s She Like’ here: https://www.route-online.com/all-books/whats-she-likeHelp 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.
- 1 weeks ago49 min
Nigel Dick shot videos for Band Aid, Guns N’Roses, Britney and Oasis by ‘failing upwards’
We first met Nigel Dick in the late ‘70s when he was the motorbike messenger for Stiff Records and watched him rocket to success in the video boom, directing career-launching clips for Guns N’Roses, Tears for Fears and Britney Spears and working with Cher, Joni Mitchell and McCartney, all recorded in his memoir ‘Music Video Mischief’. He looks back here on that big-budget golden age and the rise of the amateurs from his home in Colorado and stops off at …… ‘You have to work out where the power lies’… the story of the million dollar video… how he finally found the Axl Rose charisma… New Boots And Panties, ‘the most radical album to have that level of success’… Stiff’s ‘frightening, lovable, devious’ Dave Robinson, characteristics every label boss requires… ‘I’ll make sure you never work in this town again!’… why the 16 year-old (ex-Mickey Mouse Club) Britney Spears was born for video… working with his teenage heroes Yes: ‘the beautiful castles I’d built in my mind just collapsed to sand’… the rise of AI – ‘best to check people haven’t got six fingers and a changing haircut’… and working with McCartney, Cher, Band Aid, Oasis and Claude Van Damme.Order copies of ‘Music Video Mischief’ in the UK from: https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/music-video-mischief-ozzy-to-britney-oasis-to-gn-r-mccartney-to-cher-a-lifetime-of-rock-and-chaos-nigel-dick/619386081ce90352?ean=9798999048783And in the U.S. from: https://www.trouserpressbooks.comHelp 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.
- 1 weeks ago49 min
Tall stories about towering and tiny rock stars, ‘50s jazz and Mick Jagger’s gym shoes
Two fearless men journey to the Edge Of News so that you don’t have to. Some highlights of this week’s report …… when a gig’s all about the performer not the audience… the power of singing other people’s songs… can you ever trust a film critic?… what connects Richard Thompson, Neil Tennant, Loudon Wainwright and Randy Newman?… “bands can’t look like gangs if they’re not all the same height”… can you picture ‘50s jazz without cigarette smoke?… who – dear god – is “achingly cool” according to critics? Miles Davis? The Portico Quartet? Annie Lennox?!… should we call time on the ailing Mike Love?… biopics that can’t afford the music… why Robert Evans hated the American Graffiti soundtrack… people who perform sitting down… plus BB King, Jack Bruce, Philip Roth, Woody Guthrie, Woody Allen, James McMurtry and the 15-year old “Michael” Jagger’s gym shoes.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.
- 2 weeks ago35 min
Another Word with … Richard Thompson: includes Fairport, Lennon, Schwarzenegger and a cast of thousands!
Richard Thompson has a new album, ‘Hippies, Thugs and Heroes’, and he’s touring again in 2027, the perfect excuse to get another of our favourite guests back in the chair again. He joins us here for a brilliant, free-wheeling conversation with a cast list including …Arnold Schwarzenegger (and his son Wolfie)William ShakespeareMandy MillerShostakovichFairport ConventionWilliam WaltonFelliniJohn LennonLouis ArmstrongPost-War Brighton gangstersNellie the ElephantLes PaulHarold PinterBooker T & the M.G.’sBix BeiderbeckeStephane GrappelliEnnio MorriconeJohn ColtraneDjango ReinhardtMy Fair Lady‘50s radio show Journey Into SpaceOnce Upon A Time In The West… his dad (a policeman) and his first girlfriend Deirdre.Order copies of ‘HIPPIES, THUGS AND HEROES’ here: http://newwst.com/hippiesAnd tickets here: https://www.richardthompson-music.com/tour-dates/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.
- 2 weeks ago39 min
Rory Gallagher – Ireland’s first rock star remembered by the brother who managed him
You forget how huge and ubiquitous Rory Gallagher was in the ‘70s, just 22 at the Isle of Wight and auditioning for the Stones four years later, an inspiration for Johnny Marr, Andy Partridge, the Edge, Slash and countless others. And for his brother and manager Dónal - “it was a big wide world I wasn’t going to see unless I hung onto his coattails”. He’s just published a memoir, ‘Edged In Blue, A Rock’n’Roll Odyssey with Rory Gallagher’, and looks back here at some of the highlights, these among them …… watching Six-Five Special through a closed TV shop window at night and adding vocals to entertain the crowd… hearing jazz, Lonnie Donegan and Big Bill Broonzy on Forces Radio in Ireland… auditioning for the Stones in 1974… joining the Fontana Showband aged 15 playing ceilidh, Chuck Berry and Georgie Fame… Taste on the chaotic Blind Faith US tour when Ginger Baker attacked the security… when Johnny Marr and Joe Bonamassa asked to borrow his old guitars… and “the BBC’s most recorded artist of the ‘70s” and managing his expanding legacy.Order ‘Edged in Blue: A Rock 'n' Roll Odyssey with Rory Gallagher’ here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Edged-Blue-Rock-Odyssey-Gallagher/dp/1786052539Help 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.
- 2 weeks ago57 min
Q Magazine’s 40th, Ariel Bender and the most unlistenable music ever made
In this week’s extension of The Longest Conversation In Pop History™️ you’ll be happy to find …… the front row audience driving Gillian Anderson mad and why we feel for her... can you still buy anything for £1.10?… when did rock nostalgia begin?… what Andy Partridge paid “the Hermit of Mink Hollow”… the famous playwright who wrote a Beatles film script… Spirit of Eden, Trout Mask Replica, Bitches Brew? Unlistenable?!… whatever happened to the pop instrumental?… My Bloody Valentine and bands who were “a challenge”… Japanese noise pioneer Merzbow’s 53-hour marathon at Colchester Arts Centre… Bricknasty, Tooth, Clutter, Sleepazoid … real or invented new bands?… and memories of first hearing Sister Ray.Plus Widowmaker, Stan Ridgway, the long-suffering hero who’s heard every one of our podcasts and birthday guest Matthew Elliott.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.
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About Word In Your Ear
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.
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