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Be glad for the pod has no ending! Now in our 20th year and, this week, ruminating fondly on the following …   … the “underhand” selling of Geese   … Morrissey’s absurd whinge about the Salford Lads Club photo   … Jay Leno’s $50 ruse to get comedy gigs   … when bands “didn’t even know what a hotel was”   … radio sessions in Andy Kershaw’s flat   … what’s the point of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame?   … when has any aspect of the entertainment business EVER been “fair”?   … “Four eyes, one vision!” Elvis Costello busking in Park Lane   … the great Supremes records after Diana Ross   … Focus, 10cc, Devo, Zappa, the Shadows and other musical dead-ends   ... Ronnie Wood and … Beverley Knight?   …. “Shove off, Phil Collins! And have you got your Barley Sugars?”   … and birthday guest Stephen Lambe about why Focus are largely forgotten. Help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Take your protein pills and put your helmet on as we voyage to the far side this week to take a picture of …   … the Kanye West & Wireless ding-dong   … Springsteen with Tom Morello, Pet Shop Boys with Johnny Marr: the fine art of the ‘special guest’   … when Time Magazine invented Swinging London   … Gregg Allman and the judge’s wife   … Fake Plastic Trees! Pressure Drop by the Clash! Waka Waka (This Time for Africa)! Politicians trying to be hip   … a primal howl from the Troggs written by the son of a golf professional from Westchester County (Chip Taylor RIP)   … why all bands should have ‘membership’ gigs   ... Back Home! This Time We’ll Get It Right! Are we still making World Cup anthems?   … never drive a car listening to the Mahavishnu Orchestra followed by the Sun Ra Arkestra and Trout Mask Replica   … plus birthday guest Chuck Loncon is listening to every record he owns. Help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Howard Devoto and Pete Shelley read a review of the Sex Pistols in February 1976, borrowed a car, drove to London, asked the NME where they’d find the band and were told ‘try a sex shop in the King’s Road’. The events that followed changed both the culture of Manchester and the course of rock history, a story mapped out in David Nolan’s excellent ‘I Swear I Was There’, a book as much about the audience as the band. His theory: “If the Pistols hadn’t played the Lesser Free Trade Hall … no Buzzcocks, Joy Division, Factory Records, ‘indie’ scene, Smiths, Fall, Nirvana, Blur, Oasis, Radiohead or Prodigy.’ As the 50th anniversary looms, he talks to us here about …   … those who claimed to be there and the ones who actually were   … the contrast between myth and reality   … the letter Morrissey sent the NME: “Maybe the Pistols will be able to afford some clothes which don't look as though they've been slept in”   … punk metaphor: Howard Devoto asking a tailor to narrow his trouser legs and being told, “there’s no going back”   … North/South crowd violence: “a battle with a gig breaking out in the middle”   … the three reels of home-movie and the photos that turned up 36 years later   … Sister Rosetta Tharpe, ‘Judas’ at the Free Trade Hall, Stones In The Park and other landmark Manchester moments   ... the pioneering impact of Granada TV     … “if you look at Manchester now, its media, its skyscrapers, its cultural prosperity, none of that would have been happened without those Pistols gigs”   … “Sheffield would have admired them, Manchester thought: we can do better!”   … and various bit-part players – Tony Wilson, Peter Hook, Paul Morley, Jordan and Jon the Postman.   Order ‘I Swear I Was There’ here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Swear-Was-There-Pistols-Manchester/dp/1786060159   Book promotions at Walthamstow Rock & Roll Book Club, London - 25 May (link below); Nudie, Manchester – 28 May; Central Library, Manchester - 11July: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/david-nolan-i-swear-i-was-there-tickets-1985356197832?utm_experiment=test_share_listing&aff=ebdsshios&sg=0713ff5cbb20ee739ec0a8803927c4228f74fda0c5bac9785b11548a1e5b7c04ba91c0af5267ba677dfafa61163636f97633016b86ba8be02a78ecdb7f234740f0be4f90136c5fd636905d294b Help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The life of Keith Moon can be seen as Animal from the Muppets or as a dark, psychological odyssey. And the two co-exist in Tony Fletcher’s magnificent ‘Dear Boy’, first published in 1998, never out of print and now ‘remastered’ with new pictures, updates, epilogues and a foreword by Mandy Moon who “has to keep reminding myself this person was my father”. Tony looks back here at events along the way, many of which now seem unimaginable. Among them …   … fact versus fiction: his fudged birthdate, his hidden marriage, the Roller in the swimming-pool   … Tony’s meeting with Moon two months before he died   … the letters to his wife Kim when touring America     … Mel Gibson, Mike Myers, Jason Schwartzman, all once in line to play Keith onscreen   … “I killed a man”: the terrible incident with his chauffeur   … the legs in the bath, the head in the bed, the loudspeaker in the bushes: the punchline of all his pranks was “someone’s going to suffer”   … “working-class rock stars who conquered the world like pirates without a map”   … would things have been different if he’d been hailed as a pioneering drummer?   … the times he met Larry Hagman and Oliver Reed   … do book publishers look down on drummers the way musicians do?   … to Golders Green with Viv Stanshall in German uniforms and an open-topped car: #DifferentTimes   … and a sad and telling moment on the Stardust film shoot.   Order copies of ‘Dear Boy’ here: https://omnibuspress.com/products/dear-boy-the-life-of-keith-moon-omnibus-remastered?_pos=1&_psq=dear+boy&_ss=e&_v=1.0 Help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dominic Mohan saw Britpop on the inside from the showbiz desk of the Sun in the days when it sold 4.5m copies, a series of heated memories recorded in ‘1996: My Backstage Pass to the Wildest Year of Britain’s Wildest Decade’, a lost age of hedonism, stupidity, drunkenness and creativity. He makes a compelling case in this very funny and colourful podcast which stumbles into …   … the advice David Hepworth gave him when he was 16   … Euro 96 and headlines you couldn’t run now   … how the deaths of Kurt Cobain and John Smith changed the picture   … doorstepping Phil Collins’ ex-wife   … the wreath for Noel Gallagher “the fat dancer from Take That” sent to the Sun   … Cool Britannia and that brief love affair between music and politics    … on the dancefloor at the Labour Conference with Mo Mowlam, John Prescott and Chris Evans   … Knebworth 1996, the perfect marriage of alternative music and club culture with a £250,000 bar bill   … the debt Pulp, Oasis and Blur owe Ray Davies - “less the Godfather of Britpop, more a concerned uncle”   … is it hard to identify a new zeitgeist when people don’t congregate as much?   … the ‘reverse-ferret’ from American culture towards bespectacled blokes from Sheffield   … the shameless age before people public apology   … how the post-Spice Girls TV talent shows soaked up the budgets and column inches   … and Madonna dancing with Dennis Hopper.   Order copies of ‘1996’ here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/1996-Backstage-Wildest-Britains-Decade/dp/B0FZBZHPNR   The Barbican Show curated by Dominic: https://www.barbican.org.uk/whats-on/2026/event/1996-a-celebration-of-the-wildest-year-of-britains-wildest Help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A seasonal egg-hunt in the rock and roll backyard finds the following conversational confectionary …   .. Wild Bill Hickok? Valentino? Bob Dylan’s bizarre new media manoeuvre   … Liza Minnelli, Peter Sellers, Harrison Ford, Aaron Paul: people born to play one part   … how to spot writers using AI   … “dried-up old prune”? Trump’s pot-kettle war against Springsteen   … what BBC DJs must think when they see ‘Woo’ Gary Davies in reception   … “Neil Young looks like an unmade bed”   … when invincible ignorance meets invincible confidence: the stupidest thing we’ve ever done   … do most rock stars eventually get ‘work’ done?   … plus the Jungle Brothers, De La Soul, the Roots, Daisy Age hip-hop and our link with the Hatton Garden heist. Help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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/2096354 Help 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=1.0 Help 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-past Help 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-1985048002010 Help 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.html Help 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.com www.kessada.com Help 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.