Nights In White Satin - 260 million streams on Spotify - is still the central plank in the set Justin Hayward’s touring in October. He talks to us here about the first shows he ever saw and played, the ballroom circuit of the mid-’60s remembered in particularly vivid detail and involving the odd burst of song - “My kind of town, Great Yarmouth is …!”. Along with …

 

… the appeal of “a Moody Blues crowd”.

 

... “Name Singer seeks guitar player”: the Melody Maker ad that got him into the Marty Wilde band, aged 17.

 

… playing a summer season on the same bill as a water feature – aka the Waltzing Waters.

 

… his early band All Things Bright and their Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, Coasters setlist.

 

… the “onerous” publishing deal he signed with Lonnie Donegan that siphoned off the profits of Nights In White Satin.

 

… seeing Tommy Cooper at the Bournemouth Pavilion and the Barron Knights at the Locarno in Swindon.

 

… “Terry the Pill” in Eric Burdon’s office.

 

… toying with the idea of “a rock version of Dvorak”.

 

… the uncertain fate of Nights In White Satin and the plugger who threatened to resign over it.

 

… how Days Of Future Passed was the “Deramic Sound” demo record.

 

… and the highpoint of the Moody Blues story and their Second Coming.

 

Justin Hayward tickets here: https://justinhayward.com/pages/current-tour-dates

 

https://justinhayward.com/

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No musician is more closely associated with London or left more footprints than Bowie, and you can trace its influence on his life and work (and vice versa) through a series of landmarks from the suburbs to the centre. Author and curator Paul Gorman has just published an annotated street-map – David Bowie’s London - listing the places that played a formative role in his world and music, the places he rehearsed, performed, filmed and recorded, the homes of friends and managers, his schools and the addresses where he lived, worked and was photographed, made connections, bought clothes and generally raised the temperature. We talk here about many of those old haunts and the stories attached to them, which include…

 

… mysterious manager Ralph Horton who got him to change his name to Bowie and then vanished from the face of the earth.

 

… the fate of Heddon Street, home of K-West and the Ziggy phone-box. 

 

… Marc Bolan refusing to let him sing at an all-night benefit at Middle Earth.

 

… “the Fairy Godmother of the New Romantics” at the WAG Club.

 

… when Lionel Bart came to Haddon Hall.

 

… Bowie and Steve Marriott auditioning for the Lower Third.

 

… how he levered his way into a Fabulous magazine fashion shoot.

 

… “the end of the age of Showbiz”: performing Chim Chim Cher-ee at the Marquee when at a crossroads between rock and roll and cabaret.

 

… the magical piano at the Trident Studios.

 

… a chance encounter with the otherworldly Vince Taylor whose ‘UFO map’ helped inspire the concept of Ziggy Stardust.

 

… the legend of Mr Fish, creator of the man-dress on the cover of The Man Who Sold The World.

 

… the days when people had a white Rolls Royce and matching Alsatian – and “the Great Sarong Scare of the ‘90s”.

 

… and various fringe figures including his art teacher Owen Frampton, Konrads agents Bob Knight and Eric Easton, muse and heartbreaker Hermione Farthingale, producers Shel Talmy and Tony Hatch (“the original Mr Nasty from Opportunity Knocks”) and slum landlord and racketeer Peter Rackman.

 

Order Paul’s street-map here:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/David-Bowies-London-Paul-Gorman/dp/1068523476

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We first saw Eddi Reader singing with the Gang Of Four on Whistle Test in 1982. This eventful pod traces her story from seven kids in a two-bedroom council flat (“me in the toilet with a guitar singing Your Cheating Heart”), to the Scottish folk clubs, busking with circus acrobats on the Left Bank, to radio jingles, life as a backing singer and the rapid rise of Fairground Attraction who reformed last year, 34 years after they split in 1990. It's highly entertaining from the kick-off, not least ….

 

… snogging the Earl of Moray’s son during Dylan at Blackbushe.

 

… the jingles she sang on ‘80s radio ads.

 

… what she learnt from Annie Lennox when touring with Eurythmics.

 

… backing singer stage-wear etiquette.

 

… performing Love Me Tender aged eight in the school classroom.

 

… singing Three Drunken Maidens and Lord Franklin at the Irvine Folk Club, over the road from Amanda’s Wet T-Shirt Night.

 

… busking in Paris and the songs that pulled the most money (eg Tupelo Honey and All Along the Watchtower).

 

… “men you put on the shoulder-pads for.”

 

… what Billy Bragg called “a civilian”.

 

… Chou Pahrot, Cado Belle, Café Jacques, Stone the Crows and other great lost Scottish bands.

 

… Hamish Imlach’s advice about how to project onstage.

 

… how to use a pencil as a pop-shield.

 

… and her Grandad “who loved his wife so much he nearly told her”.

 

Eddi Reader tickets here: https://eddireader.co.uk/gigs/

 

Fairground Attraction’s Beautiful Happening album: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Beautiful-Happening-Fairground-Attraction/dp/B0CZ7NMJYV

 

https://eddireader.co.uk/

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Passing the Dutchie 'pon the left-hand side, we sift through this week’s events, rants and theories which absorbingly include …

 

… that Drake v Kendrick Lamar beef in full!

 

… was Bowie only as good as his collaborators?

 

… Kingmaker, Toploader, Feeder, Slayer, Longdancer, Widowmaker …. has there ever been a good band with a name ending ‘-er’?

 

…… seeing the Jam at the Hope & Anchor.

 

… John Lennon was not a working-class hero. Bob Marley shot no sheriffs. Joe Strummer’s daddy wasn’t a bankrobber. Starship patently never built any cities on rock and roll. Monstrous rock and roll untruths exposed!

 

 … why Film Star Good-Looking is different from Rock Star Good-Looking.

 

… one glove, a swan dress, comedy specs, a snake, a bat …. Pop stars with a cartoonable signature.

 

… Woody Allen, Lisa Kudrow, Scarlett Johansson and the Kanye West clip that was never sanctioned. 

 

… JD Salinger, Scott Joplin, Thomas Pynchon, Banksy – people whose voices we’ve never heard.

 

… the gripes of Taylor Swift.

 

… ‘An Interminable Appetite For Spite’ and other album titles in waiting.

 

… and Buffy Sainte-Marie and the perils of misrepresentation.

 

Plus birthday guest Chris Lintott remembers seeing Bowie as a mime artist.

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Direct from the Government Yard in Trenchtown where, over cornmeal porridge by a log wood fire, the events of the week are gently appraised, among them …

 

… how Bob Marley, the Walker Brothers, the Byrds, Hendrix, Ramones, Blondie and Nirvana “got the dust of England on their boots”.

 

… Chappell Roan’s demands for “a living wage” in a business built on inequity.

 

… why audio books surprise you in ways the print edition can’t.

 

… Beyonce? Best Country album? You sure?

 

… “separate immediately”: Marsha Hunt and the secret of a successful marriage.

 

… Bowie, Queen, the Velvet Underground: how the most streamed songs are rarely what you’d expect.

 

… when London, New York and LA were the centres of the universe.

 

… Bookends, Randy Newman’s Good Old Boys and other albums with a narrative.

 

… when the Police, Pistols and Clash tried to conquer America.

 

… Miles Copeland Senior in Ben Macintyre’s A Spy Among Friends.

 

… “the film world is constructed around 100 actors, eight of whom are celebrated every year”.

 

… plus birthday guest Keith Adsley turns the lights out for Pitchblack Playback – albums you should hear in the dark.

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The teenage Woody Woodmansey was offered the job of under-foreman in the Vertex spectacle factory in Hull but then got a call from Bowie inviting him to move to London and play drums on his new album - “plus food and somewhere to stay”. It took him all weekend to decide. And involved some cultural readjustment when he did. 56 years later he’s a founding member of Holy Holy and touring the UK in May – along with Tony Visconti and Glenn Gregory – performing songs from Bowie’s breakthrough early ‘70s albums. He talks here about …

 

… the life-changing sound behind the silver door of an air-raid shelter in Driffield.

 

… supporting the Kinks in Bridlington and the Herd at Leeds University - and why Peter Frampton told him, “I’ll see you at the top”.

 

... his first paid gig at the local girls’ school.

 

… the Spiders’ instructional group outings to see ballet, mime and theatre.

 

... “never more than three takes”: how Bowie wrote and recorded and the sketches he drew for their stage gear.

 

 … life at Haddon Hall and its “Gone With The Wind staircase”.

 

… Yorkshire to London and the cultural collisions involved.

 

… what Bowie realised was “the missing ingredient”.

 

… Woody’s checklist to assess Bowie’s talents when he met him: “He wasn’t Paul Rodgers or Roger Daltrey. He could write. He could communicate.”

 

… “I’m not wearing that!” The day Mick Ronson packed his bags and left.

 

Order Holy Holy tickets here:

https://www.ticketmaster.co.uk/tony-visconti-tickets/artist/2003254

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In a courageous stand against AI technology, a pair of old lags communing via two cocoa tins and a piece of string attempt to put the rock and roll world to rights. Which this week involves …

 

… what David saw in the HMV record store in Oxford Street “that shook me to the ground”.

 

... music that only works played loud.

 

… Marianne Faithfull - there’s no middle ground between Sacred Figure and Outrageous Diva.

 

… why ‘60s fame is like no other fame.

 

… is there a more enduring example of bad press than Sting’s tantric sex?

 

… John Mendelssohn’s West Coast adventure with David Bowie.

 

… which is musically more significant: punk or disco?

 

… Tom Waits reading the weather forecast.

 

… which musicians make convincing actors - Sinatra, Lady Gaga, Elvis, Beyonce, Justin Timberlake, Costello, Mick Jagger?

 

… Bowie singing Jacques Brel songs on a waterbed in Hollywood.

 

… why we miss the great press ‘hatchet jobs’.

 

… do slogans last longer than music?

 

… what kind of world plays When The Levee Breaks softly and in a Chelsea café?

 

… why rock music is like the Catholic Church before the Reformation.

 

… plus birthday guest Kevin Rose wonders which musicians made the best actors.

 

Order John Mendelssohn’s ‘Peculiar To Mr Bowie’ here:

https://www.nortonrecords.com/a4-peculiar-to-mr-bowie-by-john-mendelssohn/

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When we get off of this mountain, you know where we want to go? Straight down the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico. While surveying the week’s events as we paddle, which involves …

 

… the genius of Garth Hudson and the magnificent way he looked - “part lumberjack, part Old Testament prophet, part Brahms.”

 

… how Glyn Johns invented the sound of the Eagles.

 

… Carrie Underwood’s Inauguration catastrophe.

 

… only male voice choirs or gospel groups should be allowed to perform National Anthems!

 

… fiery, magnificent, sexy, vaguely threatening – the appeal of the great British rock bands.

 

… does a protest track have to be a good song to be effective?

 

… “screw up your eyes and Guns N’Roses, Aerosmith and Van Halen all look preposterous”.

 

… how the Band hooked up with Dylan.

 

… was there ever a more dramatic drop-off from hit singles to album filler than in the Eagles?

 

… can any song called Visions ever be any good?

 

… why there should be more Band tribute acts.

 

... “any busker within 35 yards is noise pollution!”

 

... plus birthday guest Roger Millington wonders why we love the Band Aid single but not We Are The World.

 

That touching clip of Garth Hudson playing and singing in 2023:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BtfvpS0EyO8

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We put Howard Jones on the cover of Smash Hits in 1983 billed as ‘the Most Promising New Act’ and, 15 albums and 42 years later, he’s about to set out on another tour, a double-bill with ABC. He looks back here at the first shows he ever saw and played which involves …

… rehearsing his Live Aid slot backstage to an audience of one: David Bowie. 

… pioneering the “one-man show” in the early days of Moogs and drum machines. 

… Emerson Lake & Palmer firing cannons onstage at the Isle of Wight in 1970 (his first gig, aged 15). 

… rough treatment from the British “pundits”.

… school band Warrior – sample track title, Squashed Cat’s Intestines.

… being in Ringo’s All-Starr Band and the ELP number he’d play with Sheila E and Greg Lake. 

… “bad spectacles, terrible haircut”: early solo gigs in Oxford pubs. 

… the current tour with ABC: “lifting people’s spirits, the best job in the world”. 

Mentioned in passing: China Crisis, Hendrix, Bill Payne of Little Feat. 

Howard Jones tour dates here:

http://howardjones.com/

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Another great hero on the podcast! We first heard Andy Fairweather Low with Amen Corner on jukeboxes in the late ‘60s and he’s touring the UK from February. Ten albums and countless collaborations later, he looks back here at teenage life on the psychedelic circuit and the first shows he saw and played, stopping off at …

 

… the Stones in Cardiff in ’64 - “they opened with Talkin’ ‘Bout You and it hit me like a virus.”

 

… Amen Corner – “you gauged how good a gig was by how many people fainted.”

 

… being The Face of ’69 when Peter Frampton was the Face of ‘68.

 

… getting Otis Redding’s autograph.

 

… the package tour with Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd, The Move, Eire Apparent and the Nice “all in one charabanc together”.

 

… his first band the Firebrands playing to “literally no audience”.

 

… buying magical soul singles at Spillers in Cardiff.

 

… the days when you had a 26-inch waist and played Knock On Wood eight times a night.

 

… what people loved about Wide-Eyed And Legless.

 

… recording 50 Words For Snow with Kate Bush.

 

… the songs that “make the phones come out”.

 

… the rigours of getting old: “halfway through the set she asked, when’s Andy Fairweather Low coming on?”

 

... and Don Arden, Andrew Loog Oldham, disappearing cash and the significance of the Spider Jiving sleeve.

 

Andy Fairweather Low tour dates:

https://andyfairweatherlow.com/about-us/

 

Order Andy’s The Invisible Bluesman album here:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Invisible-Bluesman-Andy-Fairweather-Low/dp/B0DKSN2CDZ

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