Word In Your Ear

Tony Visconti left Brooklyn for London in 1967, began working with the Move and Marc Bolan and formed a life-long friendship with the teenage David Bowie, playing on his first two albums and producing 10 of ones that followed. And in 2014 he formed Holy Holy with Woody Woodmansey, a live celebration of Bowie’s music from 1970 to Blackstar. They’re touring again in September with Glenn Gregory as lead singer – “you can’t mourn forever.” He talks to us here about … … the gig they played the night Bowie died … life at Bowie’s commune at Haddon Hall – “I kept my door firmly locked!” … Marc Bolan at Middle Earth, “a hundred spellbound kids sitting cross-legged on the floor” … hearing Flowers In The Rain (which he arranged) as the first record on Radio One … “A little chinwag?” How Bowie broke the news about his illness … his dislike of Space Oddity, “I told him it was novelty, a sell-out” … producing The Man Who Sold The World and the emotional Blackstar … the night he met the teenage Bowie and they wound up in a Chelsea cinema … “Why are you doing this?” Bowie’s reaction to the first Holy Holy tour in 2014 … his time as the red-caped Hypeman and Ronson and Woody’s resistance to make-up, “macho boys from Hull” … walking round New York with a cassette of secret The Next Day album in his pocket … and the big emotional moments in the Holy Holy set list Order Holy Holy tickets here: https://www.ticketmaster.co.uk/holy-holy-tickets/artist/2096354Help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Matt Johnson’s life story has been mapped out as one long Q&A conversation from meetings with old friend, fan and BFI director Jason Wood. ‘Cognitive Dissident’ traces his trajectory from the East End to Soho to the beloved albums he made with a series of super-groups and his 2021 comeback. He looks back here at … … his earliest musical memories – Donovan, the Move, the Crazy World of Arthur Brown … the old East End and the Two Puddings pub run by his parents, “full of ghosts”, Bobby Moore, Francis Bacon and the Krays … his Uncle Kenny promoting the Who, the Kinks and Jerry Lee Lewis … “Get yourself on a sunbed!” and other advice from George Michael ... what he learnt at De Wolfe Music, aged 15, in the red-light Soho of the late ‘70s … legendary manager Stevo signing the band’s CBS contract at midnight in Trafalgar Square … “cigarettes, coffee, warm analogue equipment”: the Proustian scent of old studios … his NME ad recruiting The The members via the Residents, the Velvet Underground, Syd Barrett and Throbbing Gristle … being part of “the Long Mack Brigade” with Cabaret Voltaire, This Heat, Wire and the Gang of Four … Leonard Cohen’s premonition of the internet … the Albert Hall: “like a tennis player playing Wimbledon” … the genius of Hank Williams … and his 2018 comeback, “like reunion of old army buddies” Order ‘Cognitive Dissident’ here: https://omnibuspress.com/products/cognitive-dissident?_pos=1&_psq=cognitive+dissi&_ss=e&_v=1.0Help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When he was 19, New Yorker Brian Cullman covered the London music scene for Crawdaddy, landing at the birth of folk-rock and the singer-songwriter boom and watching its leading lights from unimaginably close quarters - Sandy Denny, Nick Drake, John Martyn among them. He even played on the same bill as Drake at Les Cousins club, all this recorded in his book ‘How To Prepare for the Past: Travels in Music and Time’. He talks to us here about that golden age and the American stars he met later, stopping off at … … Ed Sullivan at the shoe-shine: “in six months the Beatles will be lucky to be playing a bowling alley!” … Nick Drake in the same clothes he wore on the cover of Five Leaves Left … Sandy Denny: “She knew she was extraordinary but didn’t know if she was any good” … Jackson Browne, onstage from the age of 12 … being hired by rock encyclopaedist Lillian Roxon, “my fairy godmother” … Tim Hardin making Bird On A Wire, “so wasted they followed him round the room with a microphone” ... and “14 hotdogs”? The cavernous appetite of Big Joe Turner. Order ‘How To Prepare for the Past’ here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Prepare-Past-Travels-Music/dp/B0FTS8ZPTW Or here: https://www.zebooks.com/books/how-to-prepare-for-the-pastHelp us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Whooping, whistling, punching the air, standing on the arm-rests and generally adding our voice to the sound of the crowd this week involves … … the creepy way Google eavesdrops our conversations … the cleverly positioned “secret” on McCartney’s new album … why a knackered piano made Keith Jarrett’s Cologne Concert a success … Daryl Hannah, Mick McCarthy, Ray Manzarek: people who hated the way they were played in biopics … Pectoralz? The Rain? Tony Flow and the Miraculously Majestic Masters of Mayhem? Abandoned band names moratorium … how movies are still revolve around white-hat heroes and black-hat villains … “Festival Seating” and the days when suffering was part of the entertainment … why Zappa thought bands exploited live audiences … “Jackson Browne In Concert”: when going to gigs was like going to the movies … plus Blink 182, Big Audio Dynamite and the days when the Marquee had two front rows of plastic seating.Help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Paul Gorman, author and curator, has put together fascinating maps of the London haunts of Bowie and the Stones and just published one about the Clash built around key locations in the network that formed them and helped them to flourish. It’s a beautiful thing: buy one and take the walking tour! He talks to us here about … … how an Agit-Prop alternative West London emerged with links to Oz, IT and San Francisco counter-culture … kindred spirits meeting in Rock On, Compendium Books and the dole office in Lisson Grove … how their artwork and black and white photos linked them to the past .. the days when corrugated iron and fly-posters were part of the London vernacular … Guns On The Roof: how the band and press ramped up an element of danger ... the art school background that gave them control of their visuals … “Big Audio Dynamite was the band the Clash could have been!” … Nick Lowe’ theory that everyone is either funny or not funny: “The Clash? Not funny” … Kosmo Vinyl’s attempt to get their triple album released for the price of a single … their connections to the Slits, Bernie Rhodes, Patti Smith, Pennie Smith, Hawkwind and Heathcote Williams …and the moving story of Joe and Mick’s last meeting. Order the Clash map here: https://www.herblester.com/products/london-calling-the-clash-in-the-capital Paul’s Slits walking tour here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/slits-are-girls-walking-tour-with-paul-gorman-tickets-1985048002010Help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A milky tea, a jam sponge and this week’s news served on a tin tray with a steam train painted on it points our very English conversation towards the following … … what connects the Monkees and a British Prime Minister? … when are you too old for Indie? … A Certain Je Ne Sais Quoi? A Bar on The Piccolo Marina? Noel Coward or Neil Tennant? … the Move, the Streets, the Kinks, ELO, Ian Dury, Anthony Newley, the Jam, Herman’s Hermits, Cat Stevens, Arctic Monkeys and other acts with a sense of Englishness … Girl in the Thunderbolt Suit: when Marc Bolan went science fiction … how London Zoo could have put the tin lid on the Beatles … the daft story of Randy Scouse Git … how Michael Caine cooked up the name Harry Palmer ... the most English pronunciation of a songword ever … Black Crowes, Byrds and the allure of misspelling … Roxy, 10cc, the Hollies, Manfred Mann, Human League and other original line-ups we want to reform … plus Angine de Poitrine, Kaleidoscope rebooted by Jimmy Page and birthday guest Jonny Wren.Help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Neil Tennant co-wrote a musical at Primary School and soon decided that “learning other people’s songs was hard work compared with making up your own”. He’s chosen some from the Pet Shop Boys’ 40-year catalogue, hits and obscurities, in ‘One Hundred Lyrics and a Poem’, just out in paperback, and added fascinating notes about their context and composition. This very funny and revealing conversation lands on the following … ... the first song he ever wrote … auditioning for Rocket Records in 1975 … does songwriting have rules?  … how Chris Lowe tamed his inner “musical snob” … rap, Brecht-Weill, Betjeman, Noel Coward, My Fair Lady and the art of “speak-singing” … the decades of lyrics stored in our brains … the Songwriting Bootcamp that produced What Have I Done To Deserve This? … the essence of melancholy (and the chord that expresses it) … “the sound of words is often more important than the sense” … whether Dylan deserved the Nobel Prize for Literature … West End Girls and whether to rap in English or American … the writing of King's Cross, Cricket Wife, Odd Man Out and I Made My Excuses And Left … “Robert Maxwell stole my pension!” … and the “geology of my life” in diaries that one day might make a memoir. Order ‘One Hundred Lyrics And a Poem’ here: https://www.faber.co.uk/product/9780571397891-one-hundred-lyrics-and-a-poem/ And ‘Pet Shop Boys: Volume’ here: https://shop.petshopboys.co.uk/gb/pet-shop-boys-volume/9780500027479.htmlHelp us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

At the age of four, Steve Nieve drew pictures of piano keys and pretended to play them. He joined Elvis Costello & the Attractions when he was 19, the start of a life that involves having to find a flight case for a Steinway Grand. He talks to us here from his Paris apartment about Stiff package tours, recording remotely, his upcoming shows with the French singer Kessada and … … being a teenager as fond of Stravinsky as Alice Cooper and the Carpenters … playing in a mid-‘70s Top Forty covers band … the ad for a “rockin’ pop combo” that changed his life … touring with Costello and Ian Dury and how he got his stage name … playing the Thunderbirds theme as a chat show bandleader on the Last Resort … a giant Klavins piano “that has stairs leading up the seat” … working on Morrissey’s Kill Uncle … the 40,000 audience that watched his online Lockdown shows … unreliable stage pianos and the story of Keith Jarrett’s Köln Concert. Tickets here: https://www.tickettailor.com/events/westhampsteadartsclub/2059256 The “About Love” album: https://music.apple.com/gb/album/about-love/1834791707 Steve’s new album: https://stevenieve.hearnow.com/piano-night-2026 Steve’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/steveprofessornieve/ Kessada’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamkessada/ www.stevenieve.comwww.kessada.comHelp us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Watering the scented hedgerows of news to see if any green shoots appear. And they do, in the form of … … the most effective protest song ever written … the commendable box-ticking life of Country Joe McDonald … the Timothée Chalamet ding-dong: is it still safe to voice an opinion? … Harry Styles’ 67 dates in just 7 locations: how ‘Destination gigs’ throttle the competition … was Wings a worse name than the Beatles? And McCartney as a shepherd: discuss … what makes a song work as a football chant? ... the most unusual things we've heard sung by crowds …. Stormfront, Gothic Serpent, Midnight Hammer, Rolling Thunder … album title or US military campaign? … why we love improv theatre … when Champion Jack Dupree lived in Halifax and Kid Creole in Rotherham … plus barrelhouse blues piano, ‘inflicting’ music on people and birthday guest Avi Chaudhuri & rock music as community singing.Help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Pointing the scanner of inquiry at the baggage carousel of news to see what gets the lights flashing, which this week includes … … we know what’s making Morrissey miserable … bands that can get a whole stadium singing … the rock star who misses the music press most … “a Likely Lads for the rave generation”, anyone? … the speed at which news now travels … Loudon Wainwright and Richard Thompson, Ben Sidran and Boz Scaggs, Paul Whitehouse and Bob Mortimer, Steve Martin and Martin Short … in praise of inseparable old pals! … Anfield Rap (Red Machine in Full Effect)! Lift it High (All About Belief)! Whatever happened to football singles? … I Started Out with Nothin and I Still Got Most of It Left, Musta Notta Gotta Lotta, Trouble Over Bridgewater: albums you bought because you liked the title … “English radio stations won’t play new music!” Really? Plus birthday guest Adrian Ainsworth on the Sensual World, Us, Monster, the Rhythm of the Saints and other great experimental sequels to big-selling albums.Help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A gorgeous and lavish new publication tells the story of the Kinks in the ‘60s via the key events in their unsteady trajectory plus concert bills, letters and ephemera assembled by Andrew Sandoval, the kind of non-digital research that’s filled his archive with yellowing back numbers of Disc & Music Echo. It’s “nirvana for any fan”, the title hinting at the level of detail – ‘The Kinks: All Day and All of the Night, the Day By Day Story Part 1: 1940 – 1971’. He joins us here from Los Angeles to talk frock coats, deathless tunes and own-foot-shooting setbacks, and what he learnt about the band from compiling it. Which involves … … their magical run of 16 hits from 1964–68 (by a sole songwriter) … the five people who ran and managed the band and what they had to put up with … the last chance saloon backstory of You Really Got Me and the Jimmy Page rumours … the Kinks’ alleged black-listing on the American tour circuit … Ray’s “unauthorised autobiography” and perpetual self-sabotage … Granada TV’s record of Alan Bennett and John Betjeman as possible co-writers for Arthur ... the 12,000 miles required to re-record three seconds of “Lola” … the ways Reprise, Pye and Marble Arch sold the Kinks catalogue   … and Ray and Dave’s live debut as “the Kelly Brothers”. Order copies of ‘The Kinks: All Day and All of the Night’ here: https://beatlandbooks.myshopify.com/Help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Author and broadcaster Samira Ahmed used to watch A Hard Day’s Night once a week and she’s just written an enthralling account of the shoot and its impact for the BFI’s Classic Films series. A movie, she points out, that celebrates Britishness and suburbia made largely by immigrants that broke every Hollywood rule, a film made to capture the essence of the Beatles before the bubble burst “which turned out to be the start of something not the end”. She talks to us here about … … the film’s connections with the Goons, the Young Ones, Dr Strangelove, Star Wars, Billy Liar, It’s Trad Dad and the Nouvelle Vague … and its influence - from the Dave Clark Five’s Catch Us If You Can and Paul Jones’ Privilege to Charlie XCX and the Moment … how the train sequence for I Should Have Known Better invented pop video … the play John and Paul wrote (Pilchard!) that was a homage to its scriptwriter Alun Owen … Paul’s two-day solo shoot with Isla Blair and other (mercifully) deleted scenes ... Profumo, pirate radio, the changing Britain of 1964 … Pattie Boyd, Anna Quayle, Alison Seebohm and other stand-out female stars … Wilfred Brambell’s gigantic fee and how badly his part has aged … why George and Ringo emerged as the stars … surely the greatest scene? – “She's a drag, a well-known drag. We turn the sound down on her and say rude things” … “hair that moved!”: the film’s impact in the USA … “beat-up and depraved in the nicest possible way” … and how the dubbed-on dialogue about Ingmar Bergman made the German version “a film for cineastes”. Order Samira’s book here: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/hard-days-night-9781839029394/Help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Bob Dylan and the Beatles watched each other closely. Jim Windolf is fascinated by the parallels in their stories, the obvious moments they influenced each other and the unconcealable tensions at the times they met, all mapped out in his book ‘Where The Music Had To Go: How Bob Dylan and the Beatles Changed Each Other – and Changed the World’. He talks to us here from New York about what he discovered when writing it, which touches on … … deep-end Dylan and Beatles fans: which can be “crankier”? … the Chaplin-like comic timing of Dylan’s early shows and the humour of the Beatles’ early stage act … the song Lennon and Dylan wrote, recorded and then lost – now possibly in the Dakota archive   … the theory that 4th Time Around refers to the four Beatles songs clearly derived from Dylan … first impressions of each other - “Teenybop music!” “Folk crap!” – and how both acts were crowd-pleasers who could feign indifference … when the two superpowers met at the Delmonico, Warwick and Savoy hotels … Dylan in ’66: “girls still scream at me … but in a different way” … the night Bob, Paul and Dana Gillespie saw John Lee Hooker at Blaises … how Lennon’s I Want You was a direct response to Dylan’s song of the same title … the 15 Dylan songs played in the Get Back sessions … Bob’s touching low-key visit to Lennon’s childhood home … and the failed attempts by Bob and McCartney to collaborate. Order copies of ‘Where The Music Had To Go: How Bob Dylan and the Beatles Changed Each Other – and Changed the World’ here:https://www.waterstones.com/book/where-the-music-had-to-go/jim-windolf/9781399627849Help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Mark Lewisohn began his Beatles’ trilogy in 2003, the first volume appearing ten years later. He’s hoping the second, Turn On, which covers 1963 to 1966 and every recording session, might be ready by 2031 and working “nine days a week to achieve it, assembling a framework and then sliding it together”. Further good news – his lecture about their life in 1962, Evolver62, is now available on film! “No matter how deep you dig, there’s gold there”. He talks to us here about … … how you research such an infinite subject and know when to stop … the one-in-a-million coincidence in the story of I Saw Her Standing There … the attractive world of telegrams, postage and showbills from the days “when the Beatles were still like us” ... how AI has muddied the waters and misinformation (like “Woodbine’s Boys”) becomes established fact … “people are reshaping the Beatles’ story as what they want to believe” … those perilous moments when their career seemed in the balance … the Beatles v Shakespeare and which has the greater agency … the Lewisohn work schedule - “6am til bedtime, nine days a week” … the “rank amateurs” Decca signed the year they turned down the Beatles … James Brown’s invented spat with Beatles and the struggle to separate fact from fiction … Paul’s private battle with Nik Cohn … and the US merchandise disaster, “a book in itself” https://www.marklewisohn.net/ Order Evolver:62 on these links:UKhttps://amzn.to/4bP7bGSUS and Canadahttps://apple.co/46m6L7xhttps://bit.ly/4qsUXHyhttps://bit.ly/45SSvTuhttps://amzn.to/4pXf4gLDVDhttps://bit.ly/3Zap37FAnd copies of the Tune In book here:https://www.amazon.co.uk/Beatles-All-These-Years-Tune/dp/1408705753/ref=asc_df_1408705753?mcid=3bbe6ad2416f31d59786d0f169b18876&th=1&psc=1&tag=googshopuk-21&linkCode=df0&hvadid=697210774528&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=7934131385361801281&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9072502&hvtargid=pla-525100023999&psc=1&hvocijid=7934131385361801281-1408705753-&hvexpln=0&gad_source=1 Tune In (trade edition):https://www.amazon.co.uk/Beatles-All-These-Years-Tune/dp/1408705753/ref=sr_1_1?crid=Z5U3TCUCHL4Y&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.iARC_o0NanHFRSyWD51V1iwunMv6f4RVXwczxRVhEfk.HhdP2t3MG4xUMoVQHwdVFQUL7a9gWFWI-jjw6pvwhNw&dib_tag=se&keywords=lewisohn+tune+in&qid=1771317358&sprefix=lewisohn+tune+in%2Caps%2C99&sr=8-1&ufe=app_do%3Aamzn1.fos.95fd378e-6299-4723-b1f1-3952ffba15af Tune In (Extended special edition):https://www.amazon.co.uk/Beatles-These-Years-Extended-Special/dp/1408704781/ref=sr_1_2?crid=Z5U3TCUCHL4Y&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.iARC_o0NanHFRSyWD51V1iwunMv6f4RVXwczxRVhEfk.HhdP2t3MG4xUMoVQHwdVFQUL7a9gWFWI-jjw6pvwhNw&dib_tag=se&keywords=lewisohn+tune+in&qid=1771317358&sprefix=lewisohn+tune+in%2Caps%2C99&sr=8-2&ufe=app_do%3Aamzn1.fos.0fa28f01-6fca-4422-af4e-d52d5ad71bfeHelp us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.