Word In Your Ear

Neil Tennant co-wrote a musical at Primary School and soon decided that “learning other people’s songs was hard work compared with making up your own”. He’s chosen some from the Pet Shop Boys’ 40-year catalogue, hits and obscurities, in ‘One Hundred Lyrics and a Poem’, just out in paperback, and added fascinating notes about their context and composition. This very funny and revealing conversation lands on the following … ... the first song he ever wrote … auditioning for Rocket Records in 1975 … does songwriting have rules? … how Chris Lowe tamed his inner “musical snob” … rap, Brecht-Weill, Betjeman, Noel Coward, My Fair Lady and the art of “speak-singing” … the decades of lyrics stored in our brains … the Songwriting Bootcamp that produced What Have I Done To Deserve This? … the essence of melancholy (and the chord that expresses it) … “the sound of words is often more important than the sense” … whether Dylan deserved the Nobel Prize for Literature … West End Girls and whether to rap in English or American … the writing of King's Cross, Cricket Wife, Odd Man Out and I Made My Excuses And Left … “Robert Maxwell stole my pension!” … and the “geology of my life” in diaries that one day might make a memoir. Order ‘One Hundred Lyrics And a Poem’ here: https://www.faber.co.uk/product/9780571397891-one-hundred-lyrics-and-a-poem/ And ‘Pet Shop Boys: Volume’ here: https://shop.petshopboys.co.uk/gb/pet-shop-boys-volume/9780500027479.html Help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

At the age of four, Steve Nieve drew pictures of piano keys and pretended to play them. He joined Elvis Costello & the Attractions when he was 19, the start of a life that involves having to find a flight case for a Steinway Grand. He talks to us here from his Paris apartment about Stiff package tours, recording remotely, his upcoming shows with the French singer Kessada and … … being a teenager as fond of Stravinsky as Alice Cooper and the Carpenters … playing in a mid-‘70s Top Forty covers band … the ad for a “rockin’ pop combo” that changed his life … touring with Costello and Ian Dury and how he got his stage name … playing the Thunderbirds theme as a chat show bandleader on the Last Resort … a giant Klavins piano “that has stairs leading up the seat” … working on Morrissey’s Kill Uncle … the 40,000 audience that watched his online Lockdown shows … unreliable stage pianos and the story of Keith Jarrett’s Köln Concert. Tickets here: https://www.tickettailor.com/events/westhampsteadartsclub/2059256 The “About Love” album: https://music.apple.com/gb/album/about-love/1834791707 Steve’s new album: https://stevenieve.hearnow.com/piano-night-2026 Steve’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/steveprofessornieve/ Kessada’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamkessada/ www.stevenieve.com www.kessada.com Help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Watering the scented hedgerows of news to see if any green shoots appear. And they do, in the form of … … the most effective protest song ever written … the commendable box-ticking life of Country Joe McDonald … the Timothée Chalamet ding-dong: is it still safe to voice an opinion? … Harry Styles’ 67 dates in just 7 locations: how ‘Destination gigs’ throttle the competition … was Wings a worse name than the Beatles? And McCartney as a shepherd: discuss … what makes a song work as a football chant? ... the most unusual things we've heard sung by crowds …. Stormfront, Gothic Serpent, Midnight Hammer, Rolling Thunder … album title or US military campaign? … why we love improv theatre … when Champion Jack Dupree lived in Halifax and Kid Creole in Rotherham … plus barrelhouse blues piano, ‘inflicting’ music on people and birthday guest Avi Chaudhuri & rock music as community singing. Help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Pointing the scanner of inquiry at the baggage carousel of news to see what gets the lights flashing, which this week includes … … we know what’s making Morrissey miserable … bands that can get a whole stadium singing … the rock star who misses the music press most … “a Likely Lads for the rave generation”, anyone? … the speed at which news now travels … Loudon Wainwright and Richard Thompson, Ben Sidran and Boz Scaggs, Paul Whitehouse and Bob Mortimer, Steve Martin and Martin Short … in praise of inseparable old pals! … Anfield Rap (Red Machine in Full Effect)! Lift it High (All About Belief)! Whatever happened to football singles? … I Started Out with Nothin and I Still Got Most of It Left, Musta Notta Gotta Lotta, Trouble Over Bridgewater: albums you bought because you liked the title … “English radio stations won’t play new music!” Really? Plus birthday guest Adrian Ainsworth on the Sensual World, Us, Monster, the Rhythm of the Saints and other great experimental sequels to big-selling albums. Help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A gorgeous and lavish new publication tells the story of the Kinks in the ‘60s via the key events in their unsteady trajectory plus concert bills, letters and ephemera assembled by Andrew Sandoval, the kind of non-digital research that’s filled his archive with yellowing back numbers of Disc & Music Echo. It’s “nirvana for any fan”, the title hinting at the level of detail – ‘The Kinks: All Day and All of the Night, the Day By Day Story Part 1: 1940 – 1971’. He joins us here from Los Angeles to talk frock coats, deathless tunes and own-foot-shooting setbacks, and what he learnt about the band from compiling it. Which involves … … their magical run of 16 hits from 1964–68 (by a sole songwriter) … the five people who ran and managed the band and what they had to put up with … the last chance saloon backstory of You Really Got Me and the Jimmy Page rumours … the Kinks’ alleged black-listing on the American tour circuit … Ray’s “unauthorised autobiography” and perpetual self-sabotage … Granada TV’s record of Alan Bennett and John Betjeman as possible co-writers for Arthur ... the 12,000 miles required to re-record three seconds of “Lola” … the ways Reprise, Pye and Marble Arch sold the Kinks catalogue … and Ray and Dave’s live debut as “the Kelly Brothers”. Order copies of ‘The Kinks: All Day and All of the Night’ here: https://beatlandbooks.myshopify.com/ Help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Author and broadcaster Samira Ahmed used to watch A Hard Day’s Night once a week and she’s just written an enthralling account of the shoot and its impact for the BFI’s Classic Films series. A movie, she points out, that celebrates Britishness and suburbia made largely by immigrants that broke every Hollywood rule, a film made to capture the essence of the Beatles before the bubble burst “which turned out to be the start of something not the end”. She talks to us here about … … the film’s connections with the Goons, the Young Ones, Dr Strangelove, Star Wars, Billy Liar, It’s Trad Dad and the Nouvelle Vague … and its influence - from the Dave Clark Five’s Catch Us If You Can and Paul Jones’ Privilege to Charlie XCX and the Moment … how the train sequence for I Should Have Known Better invented pop video … the play John and Paul wrote (Pilchard!) that was a homage to its scriptwriter Alun Owen … Paul’s two-day solo shoot with Isla Blair and other (mercifully) deleted scenes ... Profumo, pirate radio, the changing Britain of 1964 … Pattie Boyd, Anna Quayle, Alison Seebohm and other stand-out female stars … Wilfred Brambell’s gigantic fee and how badly his part has aged … why George and Ringo emerged as the stars … surely the greatest scene? – “She's a drag, a well-known drag. We turn the sound down on her and say rude things” … “hair that moved!”: the film’s impact in the USA … “beat-up and depraved in the nicest possible way” … and how the dubbed-on dialogue about Ingmar Bergman made the German version “a film for cineastes”. Order Samira’s book here: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/hard-days-night-9781839029394/ Help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Bob Dylan and the Beatles watched each other closely. Jim Windolf is fascinated by the parallels in their stories, the obvious moments they influenced each other and the unconcealable tensions at the times they met, all mapped out in his book ‘Where The Music Had To Go: How Bob Dylan and the Beatles Changed Each Other – and Changed the World’. He talks to us here from New York about what he discovered when writing it, which touches on … … deep-end Dylan and Beatles fans: which can be “crankier”? … the Chaplin-like comic timing of Dylan’s early shows and the humour of the Beatles’ early stage act … the song Lennon and Dylan wrote, recorded and then lost – now possibly in the Dakota archive … the theory that 4th Time Around refers to the four Beatles songs clearly derived from Dylan … first impressions of each other - “Teenybop music!” “Folk crap!” – and how both acts were crowd-pleasers who could feign indifference … when the two superpowers met at the Delmonico, Warwick and Savoy hotels … Dylan in ’66: “girls still scream at me … but in a different way” … the night Bob, Paul and Dana Gillespie saw John Lee Hooker at Blaises … how Lennon’s I Want You was a direct response to Dylan’s song of the same title … the 15 Dylan songs played in the Get Back sessions … Bob’s touching low-key visit to Lennon’s childhood home … and the failed attempts by Bob and McCartney to collaborate. Order copies of ‘Where The Music Had To Go: How Bob Dylan and the Beatles Changed Each Other – and Changed the World’ here: https://www.waterstones.com/book/where-the-music-had-to-go/jim-windolf/9781399627849 Help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Mark Lewisohn began his Beatles’ trilogy in 2003, the first volume appearing ten years later. He’s hoping the second, Turn On, which covers 1963 to 1966 and every recording session, might be ready by 2031 and working “nine days a week to achieve it, assembling a framework and then sliding it together”. Further good news – his lecture about their life in 1962, Evolver62, is now available on film! “No matter how deep you dig, there’s gold there”. He talks to us here about … … how you research such an infinite subject and know when to stop … the one-in-a-million coincidence in the story of I Saw Her Standing There … the attractive world of telegrams, postage and showbills from the days “when the Beatles were still like us” ... how AI has muddied the waters and misinformation (like “Woodbine’s Boys”) becomes established fact … “people are reshaping the Beatles’ story as what they want to believe” … those perilous moments when their career seemed in the balance … the Beatles v Shakespeare and which has the greater agency … the Lewisohn work schedule - “6am til bedtime, nine days a week” … the “rank amateurs” Decca signed the year they turned down the Beatles … James Brown’s invented spat with Beatles and the struggle to separate fact from fiction … Paul’s private battle with Nik Cohn … and the US merchandise disaster, “a book in itself” https://www.marklewisohn.net/ Order Evolver:62 on these links: UK https://amzn.to/4bP7bGS US and Canada https://apple.co/46m6L7x https://bit.ly/4qsUXHy https://bit.ly/45SSvTu https://amzn.to/4pXf4gL DVD https://bit.ly/3Zap37F And copies of the Tune In book here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Beatles-All-These-Years-Tune/dp/1408705753/ref=asc_df_1408705753?mcid=3bbe6ad2416f31d59786d0f169b18876&th=1&psc=1&tag=googshopuk-21&linkCode=df0&hvadid=697210774528&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=7934131385361801281&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9072502&hvtargid=pla-525100023999&psc=1&hvocijid=7934131385361801281-1408705753-&hvexpln=0&gad_source=1 Tune In (trade edition): https://www.amazon.co.uk/Beatles-All-These-Years-Tune/dp/1408705753/ref=sr_1_1?crid=Z5U3TCUCHL4Y&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.iARC_o0NanHFRSyWD51V1iwunMv6f4RVXwczxRVhEfk.HhdP2t3MG4xUMoVQHwdVFQUL7a9gWFWI-jjw6pvwhNw&dib_tag=se&keywords=lewisohn+tune+in&qid=1771317358&sprefix=lewisohn+tune+in%2Caps%2C99&sr=8-1&ufe=app_do%3Aamzn1.fos.95fd378e-6299-4723-b1f1-3952ffba15af Tune In (Extended special edition): https://www.amazon.co.uk/Beatles-These-Years-Extended-Special/dp/1408704781/ref=sr_1_2?crid=Z5U3TCUCHL4Y&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.iARC_o0NanHFRSyWD51V1iwunMv6f4RVXwczxRVhEfk.HhdP2t3MG4xUMoVQHwdVFQUL7a9gWFWI-jjw6pvwhNw&dib_tag=se&keywords=lewisohn+tune+in&qid=1771317358&sprefix=lewisohn+tune+in%2Caps%2C99&sr=8-2&ufe=app_do%3Aamzn1.fos.0fa28f01-6fca-4422-af4e-d52d5ad71bfe Help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Spinning sides at the conversational disco to see what fills the dancefloor, which this week includes … … Jerry Garcia had seven fingers! Brian Jones had seven children! Morrissey worked for the Inland Revenue! … the most terrifying villain in the history of cinema ... is pop music becoming inbred? … when Neil Sedaka made records with 10cc (and Abba) … Happy? Get Lucky? Crazy In Love? What was the last hit single the whole world seemed to be singing? … Noddy Holder, Kim Wilde, Robert Wyatt, Gary Numan: what makes you a National Treasure? … rock and roll puns and double-entendres … “drawn from the national conversation”: the divine Englishness of the Pet Shop Boys … the Gilded Palace of Sin, In The Court of the Crimson King and other records we bought because of the title … and acts wiped out by the Beatles “like corn before the sickle”. Help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Glenn Tilbrook wrote an album with Chris Difford about a futuristic nightclub when they were teenagers and, 52 years later, they’ve recorded it and are performing it on the upcoming tour. He looks back here at the partnership that once wrote 200 songs in three years, the first gigs he saw, his recent decision to take control of the group and what’s changed the way they sound. Among the highlights … … what he learnt from watching Radiohead and Doechii … when you walk into a teashop and Tír na nÓg are playing … T. Rex and screaming girls at the Lewisham Odeon – “comfortable, confident, thrilling” … Terry Reid, Traffic, Bowie and darker memories of Glastonbury 1971 … “that age when Pickettywitch are as engaging as the Rolling Stones” … the song that came to him in a dream … constructing “a knockout set that’ll slay any audience” … winning a talent contest at Butlins in Clacton, aged 12 – “a week’s free holiday!” … “the breadth and depth of what we can do now outstrips the way we were”. Order the ‘Trixies’ album here: https://squeeze.lnk.to/trixies And Squeeze tickets here: https://www.squeezeofficial.com/ Help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Stuart Adamson co-founded the Skids and Big Country but was profoundly ill-suited to the spoils of his success. Author Scott Rowley unpacks his passage from Dunfermline to Nashville and Hawaii to get a sense of his demons and what drove and inspired him. He talks to us here about his compelling new memoir ‘Stay Alive: the Life and Death of Stuart Adamson’ and touches on … … hints of troubled family life in his early lyrics and the shadows of his father and grandfather … that famous three-word review: “More crusading porridge!” … the guilt of his success when he returned to his Dunfermline roots … why learning to sing is unwise! … how Big Country were saved by Steve Lillywhite and the resentment about their being sold as a pop group … Nick Drake, Sinead O’Connor … “people who should never have been given a record contract” … insurmountable friction with Richard Jobson … how Nevermind made the old rock landscape look outmoded … “guitars that sounded like bagpipes!” and other hoary old clichés … “empty, breast-beating, bombastic!”: the rigours of the rock press consensus … and how Big Country nearly played Live Aid. Order ‘Stay Alive: the Life and Death of Stuart Adamson’ here: https://www.simonandschuster.co.uk/books/Stay-Alive-The-Life-and-Death-of-Stuart-Adamson/Scott-Rowley/9781917923538 Help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Our ‘big air’ manoeuvres on the rock and roll ski jump this week land the following tricks … … why don’t we re-use old protest songs instead of writing new ones? … “a temple of music and gothic lust:” would YOU buy Jim Steinman’s unsellable home? … when Madness played on the Buck House roof … Ptolomaic Terrascope? Aquarium Drunkard? Real and made-up music magazines … “too complicated, not catchy, like a high-minded think-piece”: U2’s Days Of Ash EP … when the Ramones invaded the London library … Rod, Elton, Adele, Noel, Ed … do they cut it as National Treasures? … “the best sport still works with the sound off” … what links Steely Dan to American College Football? … plus the Bishop of Ramsbury, Robyn’s “dream doner” and birthday guest Keith Adsley with a quiz about American college football walk-out music. Help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Some shared stages. Some made records and films together. Some had love affairs. Matt Thorne is fascinated by stars’ collaborations and what they reveal about them. He talks here about 14 musicians who collided and the discoveries he made in the six years spent writing ‘Famous: Ego, Envy and Ambition in Pop, Rock and Hip-Hip’, with all this high in the mix … … Frank Sinatra’s ‘Welcome Home Elvis’ TV Special and how threatened he felt by rock’n’roll … “Chuck Berry thrived on tension in exactly the way Mark E Smith controlled the Fall” … what you’ll find in Lou Reed’s archive at New York’s Library for the Performing Arts … McCartney at “the showbiz event of the year”, January 1968, at a rare low ebb in the Beatles’ fortunes … the mystifying One Trick Pony where Paul Simon inexplicably chose to play a failure, and his comic turn on Saturday Night Live … Bowie’s and Tina Turner’s TV ad and love affair … what Chuck Berry tried to hide about his studio trickery and the “psychological terrorism” of what played on his TV sets … “all musicians are obsessed with the idea that they’re on the way out” … why a book like this would have been impossible 30 years ago … and Dave Stewart’s vision of Lou Reed as a piece of pasta on a motorcycle. Order copies of ‘Famous: Ego, Envy and Ambition in Pop, Rock and Hip-Hip’ here: https://www.waterstones.com/book/famous/matt-thorne/9781474616386 Help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Paul Rees fell in love with AOR when it began with Boston in 1976, the polished, ramped-up hits that were briefly the music of the American heartland. His book ‘Raised On Radio: Power Ballads, Cocaine & Payola – the AOR Glory Years 1976-1986’ remembers the age when records were launched via car stereos, their eternally appealing sound and the preposterous lives of the people who wrote and played them – Bon Jovi, Pat Benatar, Asia, REO Speedwagon, Don Henley and Toto among them. “It’s happy music,” he points out. “Music that makes you raise a quizzical eyebrow.” In the mix … … the original AOR sound: “Led Zeppelin hard rock with Eagles harmonies and a stratospheric high-tenor voca|” … the absolute power of producers like Mutt Lange (a man raised on radio jingles) … Pat Benatar, the former married bank clerk who wanted to be Robert Plant in a leotard … “AOR stars were all salesmen who talked in quotes” ... the many reasons Don Henley fired people on a whim … Def Leppard’s vision of America built on AOR and cowboy movies … “Chicago and the Tubes never played on their records” … “he ended up butterball-naked in a cocaine threesome sting with two disguised police women” … the producer who had his trout pond realigned as he couldn’t work looking at a garden that wasn’t symmetrical … the story of Toto’s Africa: “tape loops strung round chair-backs and a quick flick through a geography book” … “if this record’s a hit I’ll run naked down Sunset Boulevard”. Order a copy of ‘Raised On Radio: Power Ballads, Cocaine & Payola – the AOR Glory Years 1976-1986’ here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Raised-Radio-Paul-Rees/dp/1408721112 Help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

After 40 days of relentless rain, you need our little ray of sunshine. And here we all are! Sitting in the rock’n’roll rainbow this week you’ll find … ... the Wuthering Heights instagram gold-rush … licensing Foreigner and Lynyrd Skynyrd: when is a band not a band? .. what Michael Jackson asked the Superbowl promoter … one long video for Charli XCX: “if that film was playing in my back garden I’d draw the curtains” … Bob Dylan & Kurtis Blow, Kate Winslet & ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic: a brief history of weird duets … a walk-on forest, 300 extras, 29 hidden messages: how can you top Bad Bunny? (“Disgusting!” – D Trump) … what a 1969 Rock Encylopedia said about “the poets and minstrels of our time” … “biopics are designed for people who don’t know the subject” ... Paul Anka did Smells Like Teen Spirit? The Flaming Lips did Kylie Minogue? … whippets, flat caps, bottles of stout: begone hoary old Yorkshire clichés! … “that’s the biggest power station in Western Europe – and I know the manager!”: our love for Alan Bennett … plus Top Gear, M*A*S*H, Twins Peaks, Arena (by Brian Eno) and birthday guest Paul Monaghan on great TV theme tunes. Help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Andy Bown found the 20 year-old recordings of “a deep-space love story” he’d written with the sci-fi author Russell Hoban and he’s just reworked and released them. He talks to us here about “Out There” and life in the Herd, Judas Jump and Status Quo, which involves … … playing the Three Tuns in Beckenham with Bowie … “Foot gun, gun foot. I always tell the truth.” … Peter Frampton when he was The Face of ‘68 … “we were earning £225 a night and got £15 a week. Where did the money go?” … Quo’s Whatever You Want and how co-writing works … David’s memories of the Herd supporting Chuck Berry in 1968 … opening for Hendrix at Saville Theatre, eight feet from his flaming guitar: “you could feel the heat” … Judas Jump, Don Arden, the huge advance and the “appalling” album … sessions with Jerry Lee Lewis who played the solo with his foot … early days in Status Quo when he played behind a curtain and how they got to be Live Aid’s opening act … “You’d think John Fogerty would be pleased about Rockin’ All Over The World. Au contraire!” Order ‘Out There: A Deep-Space Love Story’ here: https://andybown.com/ Help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The album has had 25 years of being hammered by other formats – Napster, iTunes, Spotify, TikTok – and not only survived but thrived. For Keith Jopling it’s the irreplaceable way to hear music and to measure the people who make it. His new book Body Of Work celebrates its battle-scarred trajectory from the beating heart of pop culture to 21st Century affordable luxury, and stops off at … … growing up in the age of cassettes … his lifelong devotion to a Police album left on his doorstep … Adele’s battle with Spotify to get records played in sequence … how albums are how you calibrate a career, from the Beatles to Taylor Swift … has anyone ever loved a CD the way they love an album? … how parents used to despair of their kids loafing in bedrooms listening to records but now try and persuade them to do it … pictures of equipment: rock porn! … the swingback to Listening Parties and analogue recording … records as shining examples of the packaged goods business … “we need to regain control of our attention” … and the iTunes launch party and why Smashing Pumpkins thought they’d seen the future. Order Body Of Work in the UK here: https://www.roughtrade.com/product/keith-jopling/body-of-work-how-the-album-outplayed-the-algorithm-and-survived-playlist-culture And in the USA here: https://repeaterbooks.com/product/body-of-work-how-the-album-outplayed-the-algorithm-and-survived-playlist-culture/ Help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Unredacted exchanges about the rock and roll underworld this week highlight the following … … real or made-up stars’ kids’ names: Speck Wildhorse? Blue Ivy? Everly Bear? Motorhead Michelob? … man plays drum solo with his head! … Olivia Dean, Lola Young, FKA Twigs: what do today’s ‘professionals’ learn at the BRIT School and what happened to the age of the amateurs? … why Joni Mitchell’s life was even more extraordinary before she was famous … Three Dog Night, Kiss, Grand Funk Railroad, Linda Ronstadt: American acts that never broke Britain … rude, racy, naughty, delightful: our love of old pulp paperbacks … “Go to your room, young lady, and play a Nick Drake album in its entirety!” … and when Dandelion became Angela. Plus birthday guest Paul Higham and why most stars’ stories need a lively biographer. Help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Bowie’s early years have been scrutinised repeatedly but people tend to speed through the last act, from the early ‘90s to his death in 2016. Alexander Larman’s ‘Lazarus: The Second Coming Of David Bowie’ looks at his resurrection and the mystery of his final days in Manhattan in attractively honest detail, a book that’s as fondly critical of his artistic decisions as it’s celebratory. Under discussion here … … ‘David Bowie was a fictional invention and much of his life an act’ … how wrong so many album reviews turned out to be … “he liked to be liked and he put a lot of effort into being liked” … Eno, Tony Visconti, Nile Rodgers, Pet Shop Boys and his endless search for collaborators … the Lucian Freud incident at the Dorchester … Scott Walker’s taped message: “I see God in the window” ... “he trusted in the idea he was a genius” … the sharp contrast been his public image and private life … how his Lord’s Prayer at the Freddie Mercury tribute was a deliberate attempt to steal the show … the piercing question Tin Machine were asked on ‘Wogan’ … and the struggle to find anything sincere in his interviews. Order ‘Lazarus’ here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Lazarus-Second-Coming-David-Bowie/dp/1917923449 Help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

David Sinclair was a long-running rock critic for the Times, Rolling Stone and many others and now makes records himself. He looks back here at some of the first bands he saw and the extraordinary people he interviewed, which touches on … … the day Bowie took him to the Hammersmith Odeon to stand on the spot where he announced his retirement … Keith Richards’ dark side (and what he said about Lady Di) … interviewing Prince “who seemed like a shadow” … seeing Free in 1970: “I still think about it. Some bands are like footprints in fresh snow” … Hendrix on a bill with Cat Stevens and the Walker Brothers when he was 14 … singles he wore out in the days when you had to change the needle … his theory about the lyrics of Crossroads … “the Simon Templar of rock journalism” … the purgatory of being a serious musician when Spotify adds 100,000 new tracks a day … and the Shadows, the Scorpions, Sting, ZZ Top, David Coverdale and … Millstone Grit. David Sinclair’s music here: https://open.spotify.com/artist/4oMczlXHj1pt6M4ZNGR14E?si=_9Dx_G_UQ3GifCFGFra07A To buy here: https://www.davidsinclairfour.com/shop Tickets to the 100 Club, May19: https://www.solidentertainments.com/100club/index.html Help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.