Word In Your Ear

Unredacted exchanges about the rock and roll underworld this week highlight the following …

… real or made-up stars’ kids’ names: Speck Wildhorse? Blue Ivy? Everly Bear? Motorhead Michelob?

… man plays drum solo with his head!

… Olivia Dean, Lola Young, FKA Twigs: what do today’s ‘professionals’ learn at the BRIT School and what happened to the age of the amateurs?

… why Joni Mitchell’s life was even more extraordinary before she was famous

… Three Dog Night, Kiss, Grand Funk Railroad, Linda Ronstadt: American acts that never broke Britain

… rude, racy, naughty, delightful: our love of old pulp paperbacks  

… “Go to your room, young lady, and play a Nick Drake album in its entirety!”

… and when Dandelion became Angela.

Plus birthday guest Paul Higham and why most stars’ stories need a lively biographer.

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Bowie’s early years have been scrutinised repeatedly but people tend to speed through the last act, from the early ‘90s to his death in 2016. Alexander Larman’s ‘Lazarus: The Second Coming Of David Bowie’ looks at his resurrection and the mystery of his final days in Manhattan in attractively honest detail, a book that’s as fondly critical of his artistic decisions as it’s celebratory. Under discussion here …

… ‘David Bowie was a fictional invention and much of his life an act’

… how wrong so many album reviews turned out to be

… “he liked to be liked and he put a lot of effort into being liked”

… Eno, Tony Visconti, Nile Rodgers, Pet Shop Boys and his endless search for collaborators

… the Lucian Freud incident at the Dorchester

… Scott Walker’s taped message: “I see God in the window”

... “he trusted in the idea he was a genius”

… the sharp contrast been his public image and private life

… how his Lord’s Prayer at the Freddie Mercury tribute was a deliberate attempt to steal the show

… the piercing question Tin Machine were asked on ‘Wogan’

… and the struggle to find anything sincere in his interviews.

Order ‘Lazarus’ here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Lazarus-Second-Coming-David-Bowie/dp/1917923449

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David Sinclair was a long-running rock critic for the Times, Rolling Stone and many others and now makes records himself. He looks back here at some of the first bands he saw and the extraordinary people he interviewed, which touches on …

… the day Bowie took him to the Hammersmith Odeon to stand on the spot where he announced his retirement

… Keith Richards’ dark side (and what he said about Lady Di)

… interviewing Prince “who seemed like a shadow”

… seeing Free in 1970: “I still think about it. Some bands are like footprints in fresh snow”

… Hendrix on a bill with Cat Stevens and the Walker Brothers when he was 14

… singles he wore out in the days when you had to change the needle

… his theory about the lyrics of Crossroads

… “the Simon Templar of rock journalism”

… the purgatory of being a serious musician when Spotify adds 100,000 new tracks a day

… and the Shadows, the Scorpions, Sting, ZZ Top, David Coverdale and … Millstone Grit.

David Sinclair’s music here: https://open.spotify.com/artist/4oMczlXHj1pt6M4ZNGR14E?si=_9Dx_G_UQ3GifCFGFra07A

To buy here: https://www.davidsinclairfour.com/shop

Tickets to the 100 Club, May19: https://www.solidentertainments.com/100club/index.html

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A bone-shaking ride on the weekly news cycle, stopping off here to pump up the tyres ….

… Springsteen’s Streets Of Minneapolis: it’s not what he said but the fact that he’s said it  

… “they’re all just Sly & Robbie records but with someone different singing on them”

… the price of stadium tickets: if it’s too high, don’t go – but stop complaining!

… Catherine O’Hara’s wit and humanity in Waiting For Guffman and A Mighty Wind, and why Home Alone wouldn’t work without her

… Melania’s deal with Amazon: the most craven act in the history of entertainment?

… is Mick Jones the first cousin of a Tory Home Secretary?

… the secret art of “four-walling”

… are most fans conservative with a small ‘c’?

… the romance of knackered old ‘70s New York: “the cheap pleasures have gone”

… and the whitest rap of all time!

Plus birthday guest Roger Millington and the agony of a band’s “new direction”.

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Adele Bertei got a Greyhound to New York in 1977 intent on joining a band. James Chance thought she “looked like a pimp” and hired her as the organist in the Contortions, an instrument she couldn’t play. Her memoir No New York captures the most intoxicating times imaginable, the rise of Blondie, Talking Heads, Television, Madonna and her fellow raft of No Wave cheerleaders in pursuit of dismantling music. Highlights include …

… the local priest recommending the Velvet Underground when she was 11

… “imbibe and dream”: her weekend with Lester Bangs

… the rubble-filled New York wasteland of 1977, landlords setting fire to property just to claim the insurance

… the No Wave circuit: crowd violence and singers who either talked or screamed  

.. her rivalry with Madonna: “our labels didn’t want people to know we were white”

… the local Cleveland “Rust Belt” - Pere Ubu, Chrissie Hynde, Devo

… why Warhol, Ginsberg and Burroughs seemed laughably outmoded

… Brian Eno’s shopping list

… the power of Tina Weymouth, Patti Smith and Debbie Harry (“sexy but with a snarl”) and why New York’s venues are internationally mythical.

Order Adele Bertei’s ‘No New York’ here: https://www.faber.co.uk/product/9780571386154-no-new-york/?srsltid=AfmBOor2IKVLRyzzZDisLz_8cTGDYIjDXphZVU9Lw5drAd4CdKR1KVhs

Adele with Thomas Dolby on Whistle Test: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQ3bGioFCXU

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Steve Lillywhite first got a foot in the studio door aged 17 making demos for Ultravox and became a producer with credits on over 500 records. He doesn’t have a copy of any of them but kept his Grammys and his CBE. The job involves being a lightning-rod, cheer-leader, editor, finisher and “as diplomatic as Henry Kissinger”. He looks back here from his ‘Lillypad’ in Bali at the milestones along the way, among them …

… “I’d done my 10,000 hours by the age of 22”

... “If it ain’t broke, break it!”

… when he screwed up as a tape-op: “you only do it once”

… why bands never want to leave the studio

… breakthrough hits with Johnny Thunders, Siouxsie and the Psychedelic Furs

… “there’s been no new technology in the last ten years”

… the radio plugger who heard Sunday Bloody Sunday and said “sounds like a hit but you’ll have to lose the word Bloody”

… “when Mick and Keith weren’t talking they communicated through me”

… why Muff Winwood wanted to fire Larry Mullen

… why producers can’t hear a hit  

… Adam Clayton and Nick Rhodes “aren’t musicians”

… “make the drums less Huntley & Palmers!”

… the Wrecking Crew versus the “One-Man Show" production of today 

… and memories of making Vertigo, Fairytale of New York and Making Plans for Nigel.

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Scanning the baggage carousel of news to see what sets off the alarm, which this week involves … 

 … Springsteen: why is America’s most American American so quiet about his President on home turf?

… the Seven Ages of Nepo: in defence of Julian Lennon, Joe Sumner and Brooklyn Beckham 

… the Robbie Williams story that gets our goat

… why do half the UK music venues make no profit?

… the onstage ‘act’ that did 104 minutes non-stop

… pre-testing EDM singles on the dancefloor

… Four Boys in the Wind! What A Night That Day Was! - foreign editions of A Hard Day’s Night

… in praise of the Latin Playboys

… the mid-‘60s mystery album that outsold the Beatles

… and we name the root of all ills in popular music!

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Fairport tour again in 2026 and are playing their annual Cropredy Convention in August, its 50th year. The rolling Kent landscape behind him, co-founder Simon Nicol looks back at almost six decades in the line-up, the first shows he ever saw and played, why he can’t wait to get back on the tour bus again, and …  

… the intoxication of live music – “lost in a moment that’s never happened before and won’t be repeated”

… Count Basie at the Astoria, aged 7 – “the moulded Turkish ottomans! The massed ranks of brass!”

… December 4 1972, the day he left the band (and why)

… “we’ve been self-governing since we were kicked out in 1979”

… the Ravens in Muswell Hill the night they became the Kinks: “frock coats and hunting boots”

… Professor Bruce Lacey, the mad scientist-inventor celebrated in a Fairport song

… Ashley Hutchings’ Little Black Book where band line-ups were assembled: “like an executive chef who chose the ingredients but didn’t wash up”

… playing Mississippi Fred McDowell and country blues in the Ethnic Shuffle Orchestra

… narrative songs and the “shoulders-down” rhythms on Music From Big Pink and how Fairport found their identity

… finding obscure Phil Ochs, David Ackles and Joni Mitchell songs for early Fairport

… and the first Cropredy in the village hall in 1976: you can still arrive by barge!

Fairport Convention tour tickets here: https://www.fairportconvention.com/gigs-tours/

Cropredy 2026 tickets here: https://www.fairportconvention.com/tickets/

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Miles Hunt is on tour in 2026 – solo, with Vent 414 and the Wonder Stuff - and looks back here at his 40 years on stage, which involves …

… stifling hecklers the John Lydon way: “the exits are clearly marked!”

… what percussion does to your ears

… “when a tout’s selling your £3 ticket for £50 you know you’ve made it!”

… keytars, flat drums, guitars without headstocks: things that are JUST PLAIN WRONG!

… seeing Slade at Birmingham Town Hall when he was 10

… why the Size Of A Cow was “the moment a lot of our audience thought we’d sold out”

… Hunter S Thompson, Charles Bukowski: books that work on a tour bus

… when drummers ‘cramp up’

… and why he won’t perform Dizzy with Vic Reeves.

Order Miles Hunt and Wonder Stuff tickets here: https://thewonderstuff.co.uk/tour/

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Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake is being reissued on Kenney Jones’ Nice Records, along with unheard outtakes discovered when the original master was found in one of his battered old drum cases. He talks to us here – with the compiler Rob Caiger – about the chaotic construction of the Small Faces’ 1968 masterpiece and his mission to “carry on the legacy”. Are you all sitting comftybold two-square on your botty? Then we’ll begin. Among the highlights …

… the Thames boating accident that inspired the album

… booking Stanley Unwin when Spike Milligan turned them down – and the day Stanley invented ‘Unwinese’

… insomniac days in the band’s Westmoreland Terrace

flat

… the value of Marriott’s stage school background: “he could always ham things up”

… hidden treasures on the original tape – “you hear Steve and Ronnie talking”

… the magic of that fragile tobacco-tin artwork

… possession is nine-tenths of the law!

… Marriott’s wall-banging Chiswick neighbours that inspired Lazy Sunday

… “I’m the only one left and want to carry on the legacy”

… other lost Immediate sessions to be released on Nice Records

Order the Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake expanded 3CD set here, direct from Kenney’s Nice Records imprint: https://www.nicerecords.co.uk/collections/ogdens-nut-gone-flake

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