Word In Your Ear

Kevin Armstrong was the guitarist in the band David Bowie asked him to assemble for Live Aid and toured and recorded with him many times. Playing the guitar intro to Rebel Rebel in a stadium, he says…

We dipped the shrimping net of curiosity in the rock and roll rockpool this week and transferred the following items to the podcast bucket …

… who now regrets being the “little tyrant” that broke up …

Ray Padgett lives in Vermont, first discovered Dylan when he was 16 in the 21st Century and was fascinated and besotted, later launching the newsletter ‘Flagging Down the Double E’s’ and now publishi…

Its tyres pumped, its engine tuned, its air-con still on the blink, the rock and roll charabanc trundles off on its circuit which, this week, makes the following stops …

… the singer who sold vials o…

Even podcasts take “annual leave” but we’re back and once again propelling the two-man Pedalo of Enquiry down the rock and roll seafront stopping off at sundry wave-rippled spots, among them …

… what…

The mellifluous melody and soaring counterpoint of this week’s podcast were comprised of the following notes …

… Morrissey’s broadside on the treatment of Sinead O’Connor – and her electrifying mome…

Blips on the rock and roll radar this week include …  

… Things You No Longer See, No 97: the celebrity airport arrival shot.

.. do we, in all honesty, need Roger Waters’ re-interpretation of the Dar…

Pat “PP” Arnold was hired as an Ikette by Ike & Tina’s Revue in 1965 and set off a 2,000 mile tour of America, coming to London a year later to support the Rolling Stones. Offered a record deal by An…

As Mark Ellen had taken his shrimping net to the coast Alex Gold steps into the breach to talk to David Hepworth about

….how solo acts like Bing Crosby and Bruce Springsteen get to play the common man…

In his new biography “Nick Drake: The Life”, Richard Morton Jack set out to correct the misconceptions spread by magazines and former biographies, some ending up on Wikipedia. This involved talking t…

Growing up in remote rural Norfolk, crime writer Cathi Unsworth had a Goth conversion, a condition from which, she happily admits, you never fully recover. And never want to. She discovered Dennis Wh…

Filling the spinnaker of enquiry on the careering, two-mast schooner of rock and roll this week you will find …

… the prog drummer who made a fortune.

... did Brian Wilson bring a horse into a record…

This week we paddle the two-man kayak of curiosity across the rock and roll seafront and make a few stops on the way, among them …

… “the future is always in the past”.

… the pure theatre of the E St…

Sizzling hot topics patted back and forth across the ping-pong net of conversation this week include …

… the republishing of Giles Smith’s Lost In Music, one of the funniest books ever written about o…

Aged 21 in 1963, Harvey Lisberg wanted to be the next Brian Epstein and ended up managing Herman’s Hermits and 10cc, among others, before relaunching the snooker stars Jimmy White and Hurricane Higgi…

This week’s pod veers off the conversational highway to break out its picnic hamper at the following leafy locations ….

… the Stackwaddy game: metal band or clawed demon from Dante’s Inferno?

… when …

The super-trouper of gentle enquiry alights this week upon …

… why bands are at their biggest when they’re over the hill.

… Fats Waller v Morrissey song titles: can YOU tell your Waller from your Wal…

Forty years ago Clare Grogan was on the cover of Smash Hits yet again and was the fourth guest at our garden party on June 3. Here she remembers the key events that have happened since which include …

The first record by the Beatles came out on the same day as the first James Bond film. Over sixty years later they still send their differing forms of Britishness out into the world. John Higgs has w…

Author, DJ, member of St Etienne and a regular on our podcasts, Bob Stanley was the second guest at our sun-baked garden party in the auditorium of Opera Holland Park on June 3 talking about his new …