Word In Your Ear

Word In Your Ear


Latest Episodes

Sex In The Sixties - let Peter Doggett be your guide
December 04, 2021

Peter’s been on the pod before talking about the Beatles and Crosby Stills Nash & Young, and he’s just published a fascinating account of the ‘60s sexual revolution, a time when a new and unimaginable freedom collided spectacularly with the hand-wring

John Illsley tells the Dire Straits story
December 02, 2021

Recorded at the West Hampstead Arts Club - we're back in the outside world! - the band’s bassist remembers their label’s hopes of selling 5,000 copies of their first album in the autumn of ’77. His just-published memoir recounts the rollercoaster that fol

Sondheim, the Band Aid recording and the first F-word on record
November 30, 2021

In which we remember being at Sarm Studios 37 years ago as Bob Geldof and Midge Ure marshalled the troops, and look at the reaction to the Get Back movie, Alan Hull, Al Stewart’s energetic love life, Billy Preston and others flown in to keep bands togethe

Lenny Kaye nails some moments “when the universe shifted”
November 26, 2021

Lenny Kaye’s just published ‘Lightning Striking: Ten Transformative Moments In Rock And Roll’, events in particular times and places that changed the landscape, among them (and discussed here) Liverpool in 1962, New York in 1975 and Seattle in 1991. In th

Elvis Costello, aka rock’s “greatest communicator”
November 24, 2021

In which we watch a breathtaking 40-minute piece of oratory by EC that takes in David Hockney, TikTok, Laurel & Hardy, what Pete Thomas did during Lockdown and how to avoid your new album being “just another bucket of herring tossed into the stream”.

Inscrutable album covers and Hunky Dory’s 50th birthday
November 18, 2021

In which we salute the great ‘60s pop writer and Beatles associate Maureen Cleave, find a copy of Melody Maker from the week Hunky Dory was released (the Rainbow opens, Lindisfarne banned from Brighton Dome after fans dance in aisles! etc), talk to Chris

McCartney’s lyrics & the Tom Tom Club plus Lionel Blair and other rhyming slang immortals
November 10, 2021

In which we kick about with music at weddings, spin-off groups, the bracing challenge of Trout Mask Replica, why pop music needs no awards, the Lionel Blair gag on I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue, a 42-disc boxset, skippable album tracks, the Stones still play

Happy 50th to the Pink Moon recording sessions!
November 04, 2021

In which we debunk the eye-watering Adele Hyde Park ticket prices, note the crowd-losing absence of choruses in Nick Drake songs, remember the strangest onstage guests, marvel at McCartney’s childhood memories and applaud Steve Van Zandt’s theory about th

Daniel Rachel hears 100 hours of Beatles audio – “it’s like the DNA in a crime scene”.
November 01, 2021

Daniel Rachel, old pal of the pod, has just published ‘Like Some Forgotten Dream: What If The Beatles Hadn’t Split Up?’, much of it drawn from his access to the Let It Be tapes and full of enthralling details about the highs and lows of the band’s last ye

Tim Burgess: how Tim’s Twitter Listening Party raised the sum of human happiness
October 24, 2021

One of the great Lockdown success stories now has a book attached. This magnificent invention started in March last year and, at one point, Tim was hosting 10 Listening Parties a day. He looks back here at some of the ones he loved the most and how the Fo