We lobbed the feathered arrows of enquiry at the rock and roll dartboard this week and these got the highest scores …   … rock stars v the new league of the Super-Rich.   … package tours of the mid-‘60s – eight acts, an interval, a compere plus God Save the Queen.   … ‘Hits, Flops and Other Illusions’ by Edward Zwick and the fantastic tale about arrogance, money-squandering and Julia Roberts at the Halcyon Hotel.
... pop music used to be about persuading people to cut loose; now it’s about getting them to tighten up.   … why you can read Ron Wood’s memoir as either comedy or tragedy.   .. Chris Blackwell’s post-production trickery that sold Bob Marley to a rock audience.   … Master Tape Rescue: the arduous task of panning for gold.   ... and why there should be a movie about the making of Shakespeare in Love.   Plus birthday guest Chuck Loncon in Savannah, Georgia – Neil Young v Spotify, Lady Antebellum, the Dixie Chicks and the tangled world of political correctness.
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Hollywood Babylon, the inspired gimmickry of Catch A Fire and the luck of Ron Wood

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&nbsp;Word In Your Ear evenings&nbsp;in which they spoke to musicians and authors in front of an audience.&nbsp;
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. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Music

Music Interviews

Music Commentary

Music History

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.
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The spectacular Dead & Co, songs performed backwards & happy birthday Diamond Dogs!

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
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Why They Might Be Giants now perform an entire song backwards

Guy Chambers was a teenager in Liverpool and at John Lennon’s old school - "same headmaster, Mister Pobjoy". He remembers the Beatles, Queen, Abba and Jesus Christ Superstar sparking his interest in the "perfect song package" and went on to work with Tina Turner, Rufus Wainwright, Kylie, Diana Ross and scores of others. He talks here about early shows he saw, records bought and his own tour in the autumn, "An Evening With Guy Chambers", stopping off at various points on the way, among them ...
... how YOU can write a song with him. 
... Bowie's reaction on discovering he was third on the bill below George Michael and Robbie Williams at Netaid. 
... seeing XTC and Generation X at the teen shows at Eric's. 
... Benny Hill's Ernie, the Scaffold's Lily the Pink and other singles bought at Probe Records.  
... "the great harmony bands" like the Eagles, Byrds and the Mamas & the Papas.
..."A Is For Banana", his song about dyslexia.  
... writing a string quartet aged 11 and the magic of hearing four people bring his sheet music to life. 
... "the wastage": composers who write 50 songs and throw 40 away. 
.. the cinematic internal worlds of the Cocteau Twins and Lana Del Ray. 
... the "subversive harmonies" on Strawberry Fields Forever and what makes Eleanor Rigby so perfect.
... everything that now needs to be in place to get a hit record. 
... mass song-writing teams and how he can't operate with more than three people in the room. 
... and what you can expect from his upcoming tour. 
Tickets for An Evening With Guy Chambers here … https://www.guychambers.co.uk/live
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Guy Chambers - writing with Robbie, a tangle with Bowie & half a bagel with Paul McCartney

We’ve known Alan Edwards since the days when we’d ring him for a quote from Blondie or the Stranglers in the late ‘70s and he’s still one of the key figures in music PR. He’s looked after the Stones, Prince, Michael Jackson, Blondie, Amy Winehouse, the Beckhams and many others. No-one is better positioned to see how that world has changed, from the pre-Google days when you could invent a story and the press would happily buy it to a 21st century where his flat was burgled in pursuit of lucrative celebrity leads. PRs, he believes, "are not messengers but storytellers” and his memoir ‘I Was There: Dispatches From A Life In Rock And Roll’ is full of them. He looks back here at …   … striking a £1m photo deal for the Beckhams’ wedding.   … Midge Ure, Gen X and other prime examples of fake news.   … hotel workers, waiters and airline pilots who sold stories to the press.   … the days when a battery-operated portable phone gave you the edge.    … why he was hired by Blondie.   … the chilly, manipulative and inscrutable Lou Reed.   … Bowie’s disappearance in Berlin in the ‘70s and other things that would be impossible in the age of social media.   … Keith Moon in mid-air.   … and how it feels to be hacked.   Order Alan’s book here … https://www.amazon.co.uk/Was-There-Dispatches-Life-Rock/dp/1398525243   The Outside Organisation … https://outside-org.co.uk/
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Alan Edwards, pop PR – ‘Bowie was like King Arthur and the Spice Girls like the Pistols’

This week’s items slapped on the rock and roll barbecue and lightly grilled include …   … why Eurovision will never avoid political controversy.   … when AI does David Hepworth!   … what’s the secret of NTS radio?   … “there are two types of wedding disco, ones that start with Abba's Dancing Queen and terrible ones.”   … Tony Hall’s prophetic preview of Revolver in May '66 – “they shatter convention and may well have a far-reaching effect on the whole future of music”.   … when listening to the radio was a group activity.   … Daniel Kramer, Dezo Hoffman, Robert Freeman, Anton Corbijn and other photographers who shaped the way music looked.   ... the rogue punctuation of "Paint It, Black".
 … songs that start with the chorus.    … Elvis’s unrepeatable train journey from New York to Memphis in 1956.   … “there’s glass in the back of my head and my toenails don’t fit properly” – Dylan’s ’66 London press conference.   …. and hurry hurry hurry to Lot 71 in Danny Baker’s record auction, a snip at only £70!   Danny Baker’s record auction … https://bid.omegaauctions.co.uk/auction/details/a230a-the-danny-baker-collection/?au=162&g;=1
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 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hollywood Babylon, the inspired gimmickry of Catch A Fire and the luck of Ron Wood

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