Word In Your Ear

Things run up the flagpole this week in pursuit of entertainment …

… Irish/American punk rock group or 19th Century criminal gang?

… the eternal dependability of the first Stones album.

… does ANYONE not like ska?

…. seven “legends” you can still see for under £30.

... the now-for-sale cache of ‘50s love letters by a besotted Bob Dylan (and would you want anyone reading your teenage correspondence?).

… the story of Bill Wyman trying to leave the Stones 30 years ago and the rest of them refusing to take him seriously.  

… do audio books with a stellar cast really work?

… why Elvis and the Beatles never did encores.

… butt-dialling Boo Hewerdine.

… and if you want to know why rock stars keep in touring read ‘No More Champagne: Winston Churchill And His Money’.

… plus birthday guests Mike Sketch and Peter Petyt.

Subscribe to Word In Your Ear on Patreon to receive every future Word Podcast before the rest of the world... and with full visuals!: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear

Help us to keep The Longest Continuous Conversation In Rock'n'Roll going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On the radar this week in an enquiring, celebratory or goat-getting capacity …

… has the World Cup balloon already been unmendably punctured?

… and is the same thing happening to Twitter?

… “if social media had come along earlier would Sergeant Pepper exist?”

… Richard Osman-created fictional sleuth or rock stars’ real names: you decide.

… a chance meeting with Jaco Pastorius.

… speaker-testing moments of bass guitar brilliance.

… the general public armed with a mouse are infinitely crueller and more aggressive than the very worst journalists: discuss.  

… plus two thousand years of gruesome mortal combat.

Subscribe to Word In Your Ear on Patreon and receive every future Word Podcast before the rest of the world - and with full visuals!: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear

Help us to keep The Longest Continuous Conversation In Rock'n'Roll going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The teenage Trevor Horn could be found playing bass in dance bands on the Top Rank circuit supporting acts like Tommy Cooper (and singing Long-Haired Lover From Liverpool and Hi-Ho Silver Lining). He began writing songs for Tina Charles, had a worldwide hit with Buggles and went on to produce Dollar, ABC, Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Malcolm McLaren, Grace Jones, Pet Shop Boys and countless others. In this terrific exchange he talks about life in covers bands (“big money, £150 a week”), how the Fairlight changed the landscape, the diplomacy all producers require, his “pictorial sense” of how ABC should sound, his regrets about Frankie, bands’ paranoia about their record companies, Rod Stewart and the “farting post”, why he’d like to work with Bob Dylan and the drama of making Owner Of A Lonely Heart. Worth it for his uncanny impersonations of Dylan and Rod Stewart alone, and further stories from his just-out memoir ‘Adventures in Modern Recording: From ABC to ZTT’.

Which you can buy here …

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Adventures-Modern-Recording-ABC-ZTT/dp/178870603X

@Trevor_Horn_

Subscribe to Word In Your Ear on Patreon and receive every future Word Podcast before the rest of the world - and with full visuals!: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear

Help us to keep The Longest Continuous Conversation In Rock'n'Roll going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

… in which we remember the luminous music and diabolical life of the last of the old rock and roll guard standing. And this includes … the weird old America he came from (backwoods country, religious sects with their transporting songs), the career-cancelling British tour in 1958, the electrifying Live at The Star Club album, the Steve Allen Show breakthrough and the Seven Wives of Jerry Lee Lewis. Much to applaud, much to deplore.

… and some of his deathless lyrics eg ‘39 And Holding’ – ‘Dim lights hide the mileage line/ Clairol hides the grey/ And he won't mention anything to give his old age away’.

Stevie Wonder’s ‘Talking Book’ was released 50 years ago this week. How did it change the landscape of electronic music forever?

Jockstrap, First Aid Kit, Dry Cleaning, Small Feet, Thermos and Diarrhea Planet. One of these is not a real band. But which?

The new ‘Revolver’ remix. A technological masterpiece but don’t we prefer music to sound the way we first heard it on the equipment at the time?  

The Giles Fraser parlour game. You have to go back to school and can appoint all the staff yourself but they have to be from the music world. Who’s headmistress (Dolly Parton? Annie Lennox?). Head of Art (Ferry? Eno?). Head of English (Richard Thompson?). Head of Science (Tom Dolby?). Matron (Clare Grogan? Lulu?).

Plus birthday guests Giles Fraser and Ian Martin and new patrons recast as TV presenters.

Jerry Lee Lewis on the Steve Allen Show in 1957: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fw7SBF-35Es

Subscribe to Word In Your Ear on Patreon and receive every future Word Podcast before the rest of the world - with full visuals!: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear

Help us to keep The Longest Continuous Conversation In Rock'n'Roll going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sheila’s portraits of ‘80s musicians and the club circuit filled the pages of magazines like the Face and Smash Hits at the time and now feature in her book ‘80s: Sound And Vision’. You’ll know a few from album sleeves too. She talks here about some favourites – Nick Logan in the Face office, Bryan Ferry, Bowie with Marc Bolan, Martin Fry in the famous gold lamé suit, Siouxsie in ‘Japanese chic’, Steve Strange and the day Frankie Goes To Hollywood turned up dressed as cowboys and swinging a lasso. The description of Leigh Bowery bursting out of a cab, festooned with piercings and painted blue, is worth the price of admission alone.

‘80s: Sound and Vision’ by Sheila Rock …

https://www.amazon.co.uk/80s-Sound-Vision-Nilgin-Yusuf/dp/0711278776

Subscribe to Word In Your Ear on Patreon and receive every future Word Podcast before the rest of the world, alongside a whole host of extra and exclusive content, benefits and rewards!: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear

Help us to keep The Longest Continuous Conversation In Rock'n'Roll going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the crosshairs this week …

Sampha, Skepta? Mercury Prize winner or Italian sports-shoe brand?

Was Revolver really the Beatles’ most “consequential” album?

James Corden v Balthazar: fame in the age of social media.

Liz Truss, Steven Gerrard, Bruce Springsteen and knowing “what it’s like to have failed with the whole world looking on”.

Danny Baker’s selling 12,000 records: unsettling life-stage moments when you put your foot on the ball and look around the pitch.

The joy of old books and finding pencil marks in the margin by other readers.

Noel Coward in ‘In Which We Serve’ and were the Mountbattens “the orginal hot couple”?

… and Simon Sebag Montefiore’s brilliant 213-song playlist of songs to accompany his new book “The World: A Family History” …

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0bXOS1k3hGKmfQCmbg21W4?si=CbdtROxeQie0rZyg_KA-SQ&nd=1

Grab your EXCLUSIVE NordVPN Deal by going to https://nordvpn.com/yourear to get up a Huge Discount off your NordVPN Plan + 4 months for free! It’s completely risk free with Nord’s 30 day money-back guarantee!

Subscribe to Word In Your Ear on Patreon to receive every future Word Podcast before the rest of the world, ad-free, and with full visuals!: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear

Help us to keep The Longest Continuous Conversation In Rock'n'Roll going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Craig was on the pod last year talking about his glorious Beatles book ‘One Two Three Four’ and he’s just published a collection of his writing called ‘Haywire: the Best of Craig Brown’ – Private Eye diaries, columns, reviews, essays and other assorted comic gems. It’s very good indeed. “Satirists,” he reminds you, “are on the side of things going wrong.” Here are just a few of the topics that stumble into view in this very funny and illuminating ramble – John Stonehouse, the strange life of Arthur Lowe, “all entertainers are disturbed”, Bruce Springsteen as dictatorial bandleader, Liz Truss’s speech patterns, meeting people he’s lampooned in print, Kenneth Williams, Bruce Robinson’s preposterous Jack the Ripper book and how Lieutenant Pigeon is anagram (but of what?).

Buy ‘Haywire: the Best Of Craig Brown’ and his other wonderful books here … https://www.amazon.co.uk/Craig-Brown/e/B001HCVLIU%3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share

Subscribe to Word In Your Ear on Patreon and receive every future Word Podcast before the rest of the world, alongside a whole host of extra and exclusive content, benefits and rewards!: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear

Help us to keep The Longest Continuous Conversation In Rock'n'Roll going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

One of them is Sympathy For The Devil. The Stranglers are in the Top Five too, as are the Strawbs. The best-selling historian and documentary-maker has spent the last three years working on his monumental, all-encompassing new book, ‘The World: A Family History’, much of it hammered out to the sound of very loud music. And he’s made a playlist to accompany it that connects with this vast human drama – Billie Holiday, Billy Bragg, Ava Max and Elvis Costello all in the mix.

He talks here about songwriters who are obsessed with history (Mick Jagger, Leonard Cohen, Dylan, Elton John), global events immortalised in song (“he got an ice pick that made his ears burn”) and about hangmen and papists, murderous 15th Century Moroccan pirate-queens, the “underrated” Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark and the mystery of “the great Elmyra”. It’s well worth a listen. And do send suggestions for any other great pop songs about history he could include.

Simon’s playlist for ‘The World’ …

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0bXOS1k3hGKmfQCmbg21W4?si=CbdtROxeQie0rZyg_KA-SQ&nd=1

Order ‘The World’ here …

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Books-Simon-Sebag-Montefiore/s?rh=n%3A266239%2Cp_27%3ASimon+Sebag+Montefiore

http://www.simonsebagmontefiore.com/

@simonmontefiore

Subscribe to Word In Your Ear on Patreon and receive every future Word Podcast before the rest of the world, alongside a whole host of extra and exclusive content, benefits and rewards!: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear

Help us to keep The Longest Continuous Conversation In Rock'n'Roll going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In which we waspishly suggest the odd nip and tuck is now standard practice - and name a few obvious suspects. And alight upon …

… Nick Hornby’s new book and the connections he’s found between Dickens and Prince.  

… support acts we’ve seen who became household names.

… David’s dinner with Jess Phillips MP and what happened the day JK Rowling got a tour of the House of Commons.

… the former hospital orderly who walked into Muscle Shoals studios and had a worldwide hit with his first recording.

… the real identities of S. Flavius Mercurius and Bijou Drains.

… the all-round wonderfulness of the London Palladium.

… extracts from Bob Dylan’s new book and some of the songs he’ll be exploring.

… and a query from birthday guest Cathal Chu.

Grab your EXCLUSIVE NordVPN Deal by going to https://nordvpn.com/yourear to get up a Huge Discount off your NordVPN Plan + 4 months for free! It’s completely risk free with Nord’s 30 day money-back guarantee!

Subscribe to Word In Your Ear on Patreon to receive every future Word Podcast early, ad-free and with full visuals... alongside a whole load more!: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear

Help us to keep The Longest Continuous Conversation In Rock'n'Roll going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Things picked up by the ankles this week and given a light shaking to see what falls out of their pockets …

… why King Crimson is like no other band on God’s green earth. 

... a sweet story about a Let It Rock writer David's just met at a book event.

… a McCartney Stackwaddy game.

… when did rock souvenir posters become a thing?

... why Robert Crumb didn’t apologise.

... how we scored on the new life Questionnaire.

… “the longer I practice, the luckier I get”.

… Burke Shelley, poet laureate.

… and an almost encounter with Colin Firth.

Plus birthday guests Paul Cook and Steve Cadman.

These are Paul Cook’s excellent Furlough Fashion posts and videos …  

https://furloughfashion.co.uk/

And a trailer for the new King Crimson doc ...

https://www.imdb.com/video/vi4222272025/?playlistId=tt10148150&ref_=vp_rv_2

Subscribe to Word In Your Ear on Patreon and receive every future Word Podcast before the rest of the world!: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear

Help us to keep The Longest Continuous Conversation In Rock'n'Roll going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.