Deck the halls with cheese and Bolly! … and a dish of the usual rock and roll distraction which this week throws the following logs on the fire …

… the greatest Xmas single ever?

… Metal Machine Music, Cut the Crap, Two Sides of the Moon … can panned records ever be rehabilitated?

… how Roxy Music invented ‘rock brand-value’ and turned it into pictures

… Joe Ely and the romance of songs about the American landscape

… Rob Reiner and why that scene in When Harry Met Sally is the greatest marriage of people and ideas

… the real-life moment that inspired Spinal Tap

… “most American pop music is about geography”

… "I keep my fingernails long so they click when I play the piano"

… Jordan Carl Wheeler Davis? Michael Holbrook Penniman Jr? Mystery acts playing Wembley Arena

… the British think America is “fabulous and otherworldly”. Americans think Britain is “quaint”

… plus the magnificent McGarrigles’ Christmas Hour, farewell Hofner and we name the Finnegan’s Wake of rock music!

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

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Beloved Australian songwriter Paul Kelly has just turned 70 – “it sounds Biblical, threescore years and ten.” He looks back here at the road he took to get there, from early days in Adelaide to the pub circuit to his catalogue

of stirring and eloquent songs about the big issues of life and love, as Neil Finn says, “with not a trace of pretence or fakery”. You’ll find …

… the moment he felt he’d arrived

… the story of How To Make Gravy – “a Christmas song with no chorus about a man in prison” – and Rita Wrote A Letter, its ghostly sequel

… early records he loved – Tommy Roe, Peter Paul & Mary, Yes, Deep Purple, Frank Zappa, the “chaotic” Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong

… life on the Melbourne pub circuit playing Neil Young, Gram Parsons and Hank Williams

… touring with Leonard Cohen – “a masterclass in performance, like a prayer, a ritual, like a Vaudevillian Rabbi”

.. the storytelling songs of the Stanley Brothers, the Louvin Brothers and Buck Owens

... the great Calypso cricket tradition and the track he wrote about Shane Warne

… “the odd-sock drawer”: the file in his computer where he stores early sketches

… I’m In Love With A Blue Frog, the five chords that underpinned 50 years of songwriting!

… the intricacy of Neil Finn’s impressionistic lyrics

… and the things you hear in your songs when someone else sings them.

Order Paul Kelly’s ‘Seventy’ here: https://paulkelly.lnk.to/seventy

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

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Lucinda Williams was a teenage activist singing We Shall Overcome at protest marches and she’s taken up the cudgels again on her new album World’s Gone Wrong. She talks to us here from her home in Nashville about …

… early inspirations - Dylan, Donovan, Joan Baez, Peter Paul & Mary, Buffy Sainte-Marie – and her love of Sandy Denny, Bert Jansch, Nick Drake and ‘60s British folk

… playing Delta blues for tips at Andy’s in Bourbon Street in 1971

… her sudden favourite Beatle switch – “Paul … then George!”

… her Dad’s Ray Charles and Hank Williams records

… seeing jazz pianist Sweet Emma Barrett in Preservation Hall in the ‘60s and Hendrix at a New Orleans sports arena

… the effect of her stroke in 2020 and having to re-learn the guitar – “I tend to write in G now as it’s the easiest chord to play”

… the allure of medieval murder ballads, “far too dark” for most Americans

... songs she always plays live (one by Neil Young)

… finding her tribe in Nashville – “when I arrived people asked, ‘What church do you go to?’ not ‘Do you go to church’?”

… being “a quarter Welsh”

… and the song she wrote about her president in 2018 – 'We have slow-danced with the devil/ We have swallowed the liquid of his lies’ - and the new version she’s just recorded.

2026 tickets here: https://www.lucindawilliams.com/tour

Order World’s Gone Wrong here: https://30tgrs.ffm.to/worldsgonewrong

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

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Shock, horror, public outcry and moments of moral turpitude plus with the usual news, rants and old hokum, which this week alights upon …

… why Gene Simmons thinks “musicians are treated worse than slaves”

... the high noon of Madonna and her foil-wrapped Sex book

… is Rufus Wainwright pop’s most successful nepo-baby?

… how CMAT forced Bertie Ahern to pull out of the Irish Presidency

… the Stackwaddy Quiz: If I Had Legs I’d Kick You? Getting Killed? Sinister Grift? Pitchfork Album of the Year or an entry in the Berlin Film Festival?

… from Mods & Rockers to illegal raves: pop scandals that hit the headlines

… can we blame Gap for the moment kids started to dress the same?

… was the death of Top Of The Pops the end of the pop consensus?

… Fela Kuta, arrested 200 times

… Jackson Browne, “never far from tragedy”

… is ‘70s funk and soul the best driving music?

… 42 year-old hears Hejira and the Stooges’ Metallic KO for the first time

… plus Tetsu Yamauchi RIP, David Sylvian in a converted ashram in New Hampshire and birthday guest Sandra Austin.

CMAT’s Euro-Country (which skewered Bertie Ahern): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nz8_HxITJF0&list=RDnz8_HxITJF0&start_radio=1

Dave Brubeck ‘playing’ Golden Brown: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Qs1J612nZs

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

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What’s the word ‘punk’ come to mean 50 years later? It’s been adopted by the very people it sought to unsettle. Chris Sullivan – DJ, club runner, lecturer, former band-leader – arrived in London just as it kicked off and looks back at a time when everything was a challenge, no-one apologised, outsiders linked up and fought for recognition, and pop culture could change overnight. We talk to him here about ‘Punk: the Last Word’ which traces its roots from Socrates to Soho, touching on…

… does ‘punk’ now mean conformity?

… is pop music still allowed to be outrageous?

… Socrates, Rimbaud, Lee Miller, the Warhol superstars: 2,000 years of people who embody the punk philosophy

… how the clothes often precede the music

… the 1975 pre-Pistols world – “people dressing as teddy boys, Marilyn Monroe, Cary Grant, records by Patti Smith, the Velvets, MC5”

… the days when you were attacked for dressing up, in his case by the Newport Rugby team and a guy with a starting handle at a service station

... new punk equivalents emerging in 2025

… how the spirit of punk gave people a drive and identity – Tracey Emin, Damien Hirst, Jonathan Ross, John Galliano

 … “I threw a policeman through a plate-glass window”

Order ‘Punk: the Last Word’ here: https://www.waterstones.com/book/punk/stephen-colegrave/chris-sullivan/9781915841254

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

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UK Subs formed in 1976 when Charlie Harper was 32. They’ve had over 80 members, some of whom he can’t remember. They never split up and are touring in 2026 to celebrate his 82nd birthday. “I vowed I’d keep playing as long at the Stones - which I’m now starting to regret!” After 50 years on the punk frontline, he’s the first to see the humour in going deaf and “having to have the occasional sit-down”. This fond and honest conversation looks back at …

… seeing the Stones at Ken Colyers’ jazz club and drinking with them in the Porcupine

… making £4 a day – “a fortune” – playing tube stations in 1964: “ex-buskers never get stagefright”

 … “dreadlocks, Afros, convoy cuts” – confessions of a teenage hairdresser

… what he learnt from Joe Strummer and the 101-ers

… his punk epiphany: seeing the Damned at the Roxy in 1976

… playing France’s Hellfest to 30,000 people and why the spirit of ‘77 still burns on the West Coast

… famous fans: Guns N’Roses, Hanoi Rocks, Dinosaur Jnr

… the UK Subs’ run-in with US Immigration

… skiffle, Jesse Fuller, Woody Guthrie, Big Bill Broonzy, Donovan and mid-‘70s R&B

…the onstage rigours of getting old: “I don’t get adrenaline anymore and have to have the occasional sit-down!”

… Where Did I Leave My Glasses? Why Did I Come Upstairs? – our fantasy tracks for the senior citizen!

Order UK Subs tickets here: https://ww.uksubstimeandmatter.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=16899&Itemid=161

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

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The boys of the NYPD choir are still singing Galway Bay, so pour yourself a measure of the Rare Old Mountain Dew and warm your toes on the following …

… Steve Lillywhite (in Bali!) remembers making Fairytale Of New York and how “a fiery redhead” kicked the Chrissie Hynde duet into touch

… the most recent singer-songwriter you could call “a ledge”?

… records we loved in our 20s but now feel a bit embarrassing  

… “discipline and economy, tension and release”: the immortal twangs and tweaks of Steve Cropper and how the MGs redefined the idea of a great record

… Green Onions, I Thank You by Sam & Dave and the white heat of Otis Blue’s 24-hour recording

... Tim Buckley’s Greatest Misses

... performative listening: the exquisite awkwardness of the album playback!

… the link between Imogen Heap and the Hissing of Summer Lawns

… Jon Bon Jovi’s version of Fairytale – “so bad they had to turn the YouTube comments off!”

… plus Gram Parsons, the cult of the Blues Brothers, the Monochrome Set and a quiz from birthday guest Peter Petyt: spot the Hepworth/Ellen reviews of yesteryear!

The new live version of Fairytale of New York: http://pogues.lnk.to/FONYLiveGlasgow1987

Josh Smith demonstrating Steve Cropper’s guitar parts: https://youtu.be/LJEIwggKAsg?si=29weA4tBQE6ccj1-

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

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In 1963, Capitol Records considered the Beatles “a band who looked and sounded weird with an odd name and no leader” and refused to release their records in America, despite being owned by EMI. As author Andrew Cook points out, “the truth is stranger than fiction”. New correspondence unearthed in his fascinating Capitol Gains maps out the tortuous wranglings of the deal-makers and “pantomime bad guys” behind the greatest and most successful marketing hype in history, all jockeying to take credit and manage their reputations. Some highlights here …

… the truth behind Epstein’s mythical phone calls

… “the more successful the Beatles were, the more Capitol were proving themselves wrong”

… why 1966 was the band’s “Last Supper”

… “from the Battle of Hastings to World War 2 to the Beatles ... it’s the winners who rewrite history”

… the American 12-track rule and how they repackaged product “to give it more grab”

… the Beatles’ commercial fate if they’d never been successful in the States

… the pitiful (standard) original EMI deal – “18.75 of a penny per group member for every album”

… the “Butcher sleeve”: how 750,000 were printed and the fortune lost in “Operation Retrieve”. And the Capitol exec whose kids made $1.5m from copies stashed in his garage

… how Epstein was contracted to make 25 per cent of all Beatles monies ‘til 1975

 … Bob Dylan’s tangential role in the signing of the Beatles to Capitol

… and the “cowboy film” that nearly happened.

Order Capitol Gains here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Capitol-Gains-Beatles-Conquered-America/dp/1803997281

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

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Glorious news! The Undertones, dependable symbols of eternal youth, are setting out on a 50th anniversary tour in 2026, still playing Teenage Kicks and Here Comes the Summer in their mid-60s. Damian O’Neill joined when he was 14 and can’t believe it either. He looks back here at …

… their first gig in a scout hall - “Feargal was a Scout leader!” - and their second for 1,000 schoolkids at St Joseph’s in Derry

… the world-wide appeal of their Irish identity and why “America never got us”

… David’s memories of interviewing them for Smash Hits in 1979 the day they thought “we’re finished”

... “We were anti-pretension!”

… seeing Horslips, Rory Gallagher, the Blockheads, Eddie & the Hot Rods and the Lurkers

… joining the band at 14 and playing Beatles, Stones, Them, Cream and Dr Feelgood covers

… parkas, Millets jeans and the Derry boot-boy look. “If you dressed up in those days you ran the risk of getting your head kicked in”

 … being in the band’s HQ the night Peel played Teenage Kicks twice in a row

… songs about “love and lack of love” – and girls and chocolate

… how it feels to be on Top Of The Pops and then watch your single go down the charts

… their first visit to a studio (Wizard in Belfast) and self-producing Teenage Kicks with just an engineer – and still playing it in your mid-60s

… and a heartfelt apology to the people of Blackburn!

Order tickets for the Undertones 50th Anniversary tour here: https://www.ticketmaster.co.uk/the-undertones-tickets/artist/959984

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

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Twenty pounds of headlines plus rants, theories and the odd slice of old hokum: served hot. Which this week involves …

… Jimmy Cliff and how his versatility worked against him

… the Conjuror? Eyeball Tickler? The Concert in the Egg? Hieronymus Bosch painting or late-period Oasis B-side?

… Motown, Jacksons, Beatles, Chili Peppers? What’s the greatest bassline on record?

… what you notice watching the new Beatles’ Anthology 4

... why the leading edge of novelty is the internet

… from Eddie Cochran to the Bonzos, Can, Hawkwind, Costello and Stone Roses: the pioneering life of label-boss Andrew Lauder

… when did it become impossible to date records by their sound? And when did they stop sounding like glorious accidents?

… Joan Armatrading? Carole King? Dido? Which singer-songwriters are legends?

… what’s “stuck culture”?

… is Tomorrow Never Knows the only one-chord wonder?

… the link between Good Times, Another One Bites the Dust and Rapper’s Delight

… whalebone corsets, butchers’ knives: Nick Cave and the art of 18th century lyric-writing

… “Graham Coxon was a trumpet player and plays the guitar like a trumpet!”

Plus birthday guest Kevin Walsh: which musicians are freaks and which cheerleaders?

Hear Wilton Felder’s isolated bass on the Jackson 5’s’ I Want You Back’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z91l_lPz1oc

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

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