Podcasts - The Strange Brew

Eric Barrett spent two years, from 1968 to 1970, as Jimi Hendrix’s road manager and one of the few people the guitarist trusted. In this conversation with Jason Barnard, Barrett talks in a rare interview about his new memoir Experienced: On the Road with Jimi Hendrix and Beyond.

Barrett explains how a job roadying for The Koobas led him from the Beatles’ final UK tour to Keith Emerson’s stage antics with The Nice, and eventually to a chaotic gig in Rome that almost saw him walk away from Hendrix. He describes the two sides of the man he worked for: the guitarist who tore up stages, and the quiet, almost shy man backstage who didn’t see himself as a genius.

There’s a lot here that hasn’t been told before. The racism Hendrix faced touring the American South. The night in Denver when tear gas broke up the show and ended the Experience. The split trousers at the Isle of Wight Festival, patched with a safety pin while Barrett vamped on guitar to cover the gap. And the grim job, after Hendrix’s death, of boxing up his belongings in two countries.

Barrett went on to work with James Taylor, David Bowie and Madonna and many other artists. He also describes the moment he told Bowie the sound at a Diamond Dogs rehearsal wasn’t good enough, and ended up later collaborating with Bowie on his all white stage lighting.

Experienced: On the Road with Jimi Hendrix and Beyond by Eric Barrett with Lawrence Robinson is out now

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Podcasts also available: Peter Asher, Carlos Alomar, Fresh Cream Revisited with Malcolm Bruce, Melanie, Leo Lyons – Ten Years After

This podcast is also available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Google apps and all usual platforms

Graham Parker didn’t get a record deal until he was 24, having worked in a rubber glove factory and picked tomatoes in Guernsey before that. Fifty years on, he’s still telling those stories the way he always has, with honesty – straight and funny. Recorded live at The Cat Club on 26 March 2026, Jason Barnard talks with Parker about Nick Lowe producing Howlin’ Wind, the ruined tape that forced a week-long rework of Stick to Me, and Bob Dylan telling him after a set that he loved ‘Don’t Ask Me Questions.’ In this extensive interview, Parker also talks about breaking up the Rumour, the accidental reunion decades later, and being getting cast in Judd Apatow’s This Is 40.

grahamparker.net

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Podcasts also available: Graham Parker on Howlin’ Wind, Brinsley Schwarz, Billy Bragg, Glen Matlock – in conversation, Bruce Thomas

This podcast is also available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Google apps and all usual platforms

George Bunnell, Mark Weitz, Howie Anderson, Gene Gunnels and Randy Seol discuss the history of Strawberry Alarm Clock. They cover the writing and recording of their 1967 number one single Incense and Peppermints, reuniting and making their new album, Where’s One? Sixty years on they continue to release new material that carries the sound and spirit of the psychedelic era.

Strawberry Alarm Clock website

Big Stir Records

Strawberry Alarm Clock podcast tracks

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Podcasts also available: Russ Giguere – The Association, Michelle Phillips – The Mamas & The Papas, Michael Fennelly – The Millennium, Crabby Appleton, Mark Andes – Spirit, Heart

This podcast is also available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Google apps and all usual platforms

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The Iveys came together in Swansea in the early 1960s, with Ron Griffiths on bass alongside guitarist Pete Ham. Bill Collins took over as manager, and it was during their residency at the Marquee that Beatles aide Mal Evans caught their set and carried a demo tape to Apple. Live tapes, and dozens of demos have since been unearthed from the Golders Green house where they wrote and rehearsed.

Ray Davies also took an interest and recorded a handful of their songs. Tony Visconti also produced, including Ron’s ‘Dear Angie.’ For Badfinger’s ‘Come and Get It’ Paul McCartney read an interview where Ron complained the group got nothing from The Beatles, turned up at Golders Green with a demo, and told them to copy it exactly, no changes, this is the hit. At Abbey Road with McCartney producing, it was Ron who broke the rule with a Hendrix style bass run at the end of the take. McCartney kept it in. Not long after, a domestic row over late night noise waking his baby got Ron dropped from the group, right on the cusp of its biggest success. The tapes and demos have kept surfacing, and he’s now back on lead vocals for ‘Take Good Care of My Baby’ on the new album Just Look Inside The Cover – Songs of Pete Ham.

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Ron Griffiths podcast tracks

Podcasts also available: Bob Jackson – Badfinger, Joey Molland – Badfinger, The Beatles and Apple, Tony Waddington, Almost Beatles Songs

This podcast is also available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Google apps and all usual platforms

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Steve Tilston joins Jason Barnard for a tour through six decades of songwriting, picking thirteen tracks from across his career and talking through the stories behind them. Along the way he covers his early days on the London folk circuit, the frustrating experience of his second album on Transatlantic Records, and the decision to put out a record himself in 1976 when very few people were doing it. He also talks about the famous John Lennon letter, written by Lennon in 1971 after Tilston mused in a ZigZag magazine interview that fame and fortune might damage his songwriting, never delivered, and not seen by Tilston until decades later. The story eventually inspired the 2015 Hollywood film Danny Collins, with Al Pacino in the lead role. Plus collaborations with John Renbourn and Maggie Boyle, and his Radio 2 Folk Award for Best Original Song.

stevetilston.com / Bandcamp

Steve Tilston podcast tracks

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Podcasts also available: Ashley Hutchings, Terry Reid, Tom Paxton, Martin Carthy, Peggy Seeger, Nick Drake: The Life

This podcast is also available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Google apps and all usual platforms

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Philip Norman returns to talk about Mr. Moonlight, his first book devoted entirely to Brian Epstein, and what emerges from decades of Beatles research focused through a single lens is a portrait more complex than the one most people think they know. Norman reveals the extraordinary story of how the Kray twins plotted to exploit Brian’s gambling addiction and seize control of The Beatles, the antisemitism and homophobia Brian faced even at the peak of his success, and new evidence around the circumstances of his death that raises serious questions about the official verdict.

Philip also covers areas that too often gets overlooked: Brian’s family history, his time in the army and at drama school, his instinct for a hit record, and the way he shielded The Beatles from a fame that might otherwise have consumed them. The question Norman keeps returning to is the one that still stings: why, given everything he did, does Brian Epstein undervalued?

Philip Norman — Mr. Moonlight: Brian Epstein and the Making of the Beatles

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Podcasts also available: Philip Norman on the Beatles, Philip Norman on John Lennon, Ray Ennis – The Swinging Blue Jeans, Mike McCartney’s Early Liverpool

This podcast is also available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Google apps and all usual platforms

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Martin Barre is already playing when the evening begins. Recorded live at The CAT Club in December 2025, this is Barre in conversation with Jason Barnard. Hendrix turns up, and Jimmy Page, and a French chateau that put Jethro Tull in the bathroom for a week. So does a Grammy, won at home because the record label wouldn’t pay for flights. He also talks about his autobiography – wrote it four times. The first version was, by his own description, full of scores to settle. But he took all of it out.

martinbarre.com

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Podcasts also available: Martin Barre – 50 Years of Jethro Tull, Ian Anderson, Greg Spawton – Big Big Train, Dave Pegg – Fairport Convention

This podcast is also available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Google apps and all usual platforms

The post Martin Barre – live in conversation appeared first on The Strange Brew .

Otis Williams discusses over six decades of The Temptations and their upcoming UK tour. Williams talks about moving from Texas to Detroit as a kid, catching Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers at the Fox Theater, and getting spotted by Berry Gordy at a record hop. He remembers the strings going onto ‘My Girl’ in 1964 and knowing straight away it would be a hit, a hunch confirmed by telegrams from The Beatles, The Supremes and Berry Gordy. He looks back on their first UK dates in the mid-60s on the Tamla Motown package tour and how hits were chosen at Motown. There’s also a look at the shift to psychedelic soul with ‘Cloud Nine’ in 1968, plus his thoughts on keeping the group together through nearly thirty line-up changes.

The Temptations

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Podcasts also available: Dion, Bettye LaVette, Steve Cropper, PP Arnold

This podcast is also available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Google apps and all usual platforms

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Anthony Phillips, founding Genesis guitarist, joins Jason Barnard to talk about the formation of Genesis, his departure, and his latest album, Gemini – Pieces For Piano. He traces the Genesis story back to Charterhouse and the summer of 1967, when he first heard a 12-string guitar. Peter Gabriel’s theatrical stage persona came about through necessity, filling dead time while Phillips and Mike Rutherford fought with temperamental instruments. The jump from From Genesis To Revelation to Trespass has always looked abrupt; Phillips explains it simply: he and Rutherford spent the eight months between recording and release writing constantly, with ‘Dusk,’ ‘White Mountain’ and ‘Stagnation’ sketched out before the debut had even flopped.

Then there’s the stage fright. Not ordinary nerves but sudden mid-performance blanks that came on after glandular fever. He was eighteen and never told anyone. There’s also a brief exchange with Nick Drake, playing the same indifferent university crowds. When Drake learned Phillips had written ‘Let Us Now Make Love,’ he said one word back: “Dangerous.” The conversation also covers his classical studies, the troubled release of The Geese and the Ghost, and writing the title track of Gemini.

Anthony Phillips website, Gemini – Pieces For Piano

Podcasts also available: Anthony Phillips (2019), Tony Banks (2024),  Tony Banks (2019), Steve Hackett (2022), Steve Hackett (2020), Bill Bruford, Chester Thompson

This podcast is also available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Google apps and all usual platforms

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John Leckie is one of British rock’s greatest producers, who started out as a tape operator at Abbey Road in 1970, thrown immediately into sessions for George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass and John Lennon’s Plastic Ono Band. This interview, conducted live at The CAT Club in September 2025, focuses on Sunburst Finish, the Be Bop Deluxe album that gave Leckie his first official production credit, and covers both the making of the album and his creative partnership with Bill Nelson. Additionally, Leckie gives a first-hand account of Syd Barrett’s unannounced appearance during the Wish You Were Here sessions, an encounter he stumbled into while raiding Pink Floyd’s beer fridge, only for Roger Waters to stop the tape and ask who the stranger standing next to him was. The Q&A session draws out further stories about working with The La’s, the Stone Roses’ debut, and how XTC – who were influenced by Bill Nelson, led Leckie to leave EMI and go independent.

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Podcasts also available: Bill Nelson – Be Bop Deluxe, Rob Chapman on Syd Barrett, Ken Scott on The Beatles, Bowie, Alan Parsons

This podcast is also available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Google apps and all usual platforms

If you like what I do please support me on Ko-fi

The post John Leckie on Be Bop Deluxe and the Making of Sunburst Finish appeared first on The Strange Brew .