Word In Your Ear
Mark Ellen and David Hepworth have been talking about and writing about music together and individually for a collective eighty years in magazines like Smash Hits, Mojo and The Word and on radio and TV programmes like "Rock On", "Whistle Test" and VH-1.
Over thirteen years ago, when working on the late magazine The Word, they began producing podcasts. Some listeners have been kind enough to say these have been very special to them. When the magazine folded in 2012 they kept the spirit of those podcasts alive in regular Word In Your Ear evenings in which they spoke to musicians and authors in front of an audience.
Over these years they've produced hundreds of hours of material. As of the Current Unpleasantness of 2020, they've produced yet hundreds of hours more with a little help from guests kind enough to digitally show them around their attics such as Danny Baker, Andy Partridge, Sir Tim Rice and Mark Lewisohn. For the full span of the Word In Your Ear world, visit wiyelondon.com.
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- Update frequency
- every 2 days
- Average duration
- 43 minutes
- Episodes
- 857
- Years Active
- 2007 - 2025
For Ian Broudie & the Lightning Seeds, 'Three Lions' has been a blessing and a curse
There are broadly three Ian Broudies in the public imagination. One is the songwriter with a catalogue of softly psychedelic left-field pop tunes. The second is the record producer behind Echo & the …
Billy Sloan, the man who interviewed Grace Jones in a bath
Billy Sloan, Glaswegian broadcaster and music columnist, has written his memoir, ‘One Love, One Life’, about a career that’s allowed him to point his microphone at an astonishing array of musicians a…
The greatest guitarist & the strange tale of Mike Raven - plus a leaked Radio One memo!
We spin the reels of the rock and roll fruit machine this week and get the following pay-outs …
… the preposterous present they gave Bobby Charlton when he retired.
... “the leaning man from Alabam”.
…
Pin-Ups’ 50th, Morrissey The Eternal Teenager and what the Stones should be writing songs about
Toothsome hors d’ouvres, mains and ‘items from the trolley’ on the rock and roll menu this week include …
… Bowie’s Pin-Ups v Ferry’s These Foolish Things: who won?
… the worst band name in history an…
The “gangsterish” charm of Andrew Loog Oldham and Immediate Records, by Simon Spence
The godfather of British independent labels, Immediate, was started in 1965 by the Stones’ manager Andrew Oldham and Tony Calder, its winning slogan: “happy to be part of the industry of human happin…
Denmark Street, London's Tin Pan Alley, where the Sex Pistols met Pink Floyd and a luverly bunch of coconuts, by Peter Watts
As it emerges from the upheaval of Cross Rail, music historian Peter Watts looks at this densely-packed thoroughfare between Charing Cross Road and Covent Garden, which started off selling sheet musi…
Madonna’s karaoke show, albums that sound their covers and whatever happened to protest music?
Spicy and nutritious items in the rock and roll bouillabaisse this week include …
… Roger Waters at the Palladium: a masterclass in how to insult an audience.
… “without Andrew Loog Oldham, the Stone…
Jarvis v Jacko and why drummers are like goalkeepers. Let Pulp’s Nick Banks be your guide
Nick Banks - nephew of the great Gordon Banks – saw a note pinned by his favourite band to a wall in 1986, his Sliding Doors moment: ‘Pulp Want Drummer. Call Russell or Jarvis’. What happened next he…
Smoking on album sleeves, Smash Hits The Musical and records you own but have never played
Engaging blips on the rock and roll radar this week include:-
… Iron Maiden album title or novel by Jeffrey Archer?
… selling Ringo’s ashtray.
… the Blood Doner: the Hancock script that keeps on givi…
Echo & the Bunnymen, why the rock press were “divs” and the secret of good hair by Will Sergeant
Will Sergeant’s just put out the second volume of his memoirs, both of them Sunday Times best-sellers, Echoes and the first edition, Bunnyman. Here he revisits the Liverpool of the ‘60s and ‘70s in e…
An Insider’s Guide To Goth by Cathi Unsworth (via Cruella De Vil and the Cure)
Crime novelist Cathi Unsworth turned Goth in her teens in rural Norfolk fired by a cocktail of Dennis Wheatley, the Damned on the Peel show and the dark arts of the York Festival “Gothtopia” bill in …
Nick Drake – a whole new perspective by Richard Morton Jack
Richard Morton Jack interviewed over 200 people when assembling what’s unquestionably the best, most colourful, comprehensive, revealing and accurate portrait of Nick Drake ever published. We talked …
Gary Numan, unlikely sex symbols and U2’s £1,000 night in the desert
Spice-filled items tossed into the conversational cooking-pot this week include:-
… our charming encounter with Gary Numan, possibly the world’s most contented man.
… the next step in the age of spec…
Does Gary Numan regret throwing the glo-stick that hit David Bowie?
Gary Numan is about to set out on a UK acoustic tour, some of it in churches and one date in a cathedral. He talks here - from the Scottish estate house he’s just bought – about some of the first sho…
Why a sumptuous new book about the Island label is “like entering the record shop of your dreams”.
Neil Storey is an old pal from our magazine days who worked in the press office at Island. He looked after U2, Bob Marley, Steel Pulse, the B-52’s and many others. About 15 years ago he began the mam…
Mojo’s 30th birthday plus bands whose t-shirts you’d wear even if you didn’t have any of their records
Both of us were involved in the launch of Mojo 30 years ago in the autumn of 1993 and we dug out our copies of the first issue. As editor Paul Du Noyer said on page 3, it was “our confirmed intention…
The “unknown woman” in McCartney’s photos, the Human League and a new U2 game
This week’s pod was recorded just after we saw ‘Paul McCartney Photographs 1963-64: Eyes of the Storm’ at London’s National Portrait Gallery, a warm and winning show that starts with him as a wide-ey…
Pulitzer Prize winner David Remnick takes the long view of Bruce Springsteen, Aretha Franklin, Macca and more
David Remnick got his Pulitzer for his reporting on Russia. These days he edits The New Yorker, in which capacity he has had close encounters with some of music’s legends during their final acts, som…
The Stones return, rock’n’roll marriages and Freddie’s 50 kimonos
Recorded together in Mark Ellen’s attic! Among the conversational footballs booted round the park this week you’ll find:-
… Freddie’s “exquisite clutter”: would YOU buy one of his bonzai plant-holder…
Plaid shirts? Brown ale? A smoke-stained pub rock special with Simon Matthews
Fired by the rock and roll revival of 1970 and a post-Easy Rider taste for American music, a circuit of some 35 London pubs filled with bands playing fizzing, small-scale shows that never sounded qui…