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
The greatest singer of all time? (we know the answer)
… in which we amble fearlessly into the New Year in tireless pursuit of amusement, stopping off at various stations along the way, among them …
… can any song be completely original?
… meeting Sun R…
The transformational role of the bus in ‘60s pop: discuss!
Things explored this week in pursuit of entertainment and diversion …
… Neil Tennant interviews Malcolm McLaren and other delights in Smash Hits, January 1983.
… “there’s no such thing as a finished …
The deliciously eccentric life and art of Ivor Cutler by his biographer Bruce Lindsay
The full and extraordinary story of “the Zelig-like” Cutler – poet, performer, broadcaster, playwright, surrealist, humorist – is mapped out in Bruce Lindsay’s exceptional new book, ‘Ivor Cutler: A L…
The things rock made us wear
Army greatcoats, plastic trousers, cowboy boots, scoop-neck t-shirts with bell sleeves … the list of laughable clobber and accessories we briefly thought were acceptable because rock stars wore them …
Strokes producer Gordon Raphael on the serendipitous creation of 'Is This It'
Gordon Raphael was the sonic architect of arguably the two most important and influential albums of the noughties - The Strokes' 'Is This It' and its follow-up 'Room On Fire', and in this special Wor…
Jet Black, exotic Americans and Oscar Hammerstein’s joke
In which we boldly tackle the burning issues des nos jours in our restless forage for entertainment. Nutritious items on the tasting menu this week include …
… albums whose cover was over half the se…
Word Down Your Way: Danny Baker with a taste of his thunderous one-man stand-up circus, back on the road in 2023
Danny’s done two hysterically funny, cartwheeling canters round the UK in the last few years and sets out again in February for 49 nights with ‘At Last …The Sausage Sandwich Tour’, another ‘panjandru…
Stories Christine McVie told us - including “Freddie King fixed my puncture”
In which the piercing searchlight of conversational scrutiny points in the direction of …
… Christine McVie’s early adventures, our burning love for Chicken Shack’s ‘40 Blue Fingers’, her Sliding Doo…
Phil Jump tells the story of the legendary Badlands - and the day he took Steve Van Zandt to Brian Jones’s grave
Phil and his brother Steven started a market stall in Cheltenham in the mid-‘80s and made enough money selling rare records to open the world-famous Badlands (now occupying three floors of an old coa…
A farewell to Wilko – “Dr Feelgood didn’t play the music, the music played them.”
… in which we remember watching and talking to the magnificent Wilko Johnson and look back at extraordinary moments in his life – the hippie trail to India, his appearance on Question Time, the three…
Kenneth Womack – author of 12 Beatles books – dives “back through the looking glass”
Ken’s a world authority and he’s been on the pod twice before, talking about his books about George Martin and the last days of John Lennon. He’s just revised and updated the one he wrote in 2007, ‘L…
If you could only listen to one act all week who would you choose?
Further free-wheeling conversational detours include …
… “like the consequences of mating Patti Smith with a Hoover vacuum cleaner”: barbed reviews in the Rolling Stone Record Guide.
… ‘Bowie and Bing…
Dylan’s love letters and the one album that never lets you down
Things run up the flagpole this week in pursuit of entertainment …
… Irish/American punk rock group or 19th Century criminal gang?
… the eternal dependability of the first Stones album.
… does ANYONE…
Twitter and World Cup chaos, Jaco Pastorius, gruesome 18th C combat and other matters of high import
On the radar this week in an enquiring, celebratory or goat-getting capacity …
… has the World Cup balloon already been unmendably punctured?
… and is the same thing happening to Twitter?
… “if socia…
Trevor Horn’s adventures in modern recording with ABC, Frankie, Yes and Rod Stewart
The teenage Trevor Horn could be found playing bass in dance bands on the Top Rank circuit supporting acts like Tommy Cooper (and singing Long-Haired Lover From Liverpool and Hi-Ho Silver Lining). He…
Farewell Jerry Lee Lewis and is ‘Talking Book’ the most influential record ever made?
… in which we remember the luminous music and diabolical life of the last of the old rock and roll guard standing. And this includes … the weird old America he came from (backwoods country, religious…
Why did Sheila Rock walk out of a New Order shoot?
Sheila’s portraits of ‘80s musicians and the club circuit filled the pages of magazines like the Face and Smash Hits at the time and now feature in her book ‘80s: Sound And Vision’. You’ll know a few…
What’s the connection between Liz Truss, Bruce Springsteen and Revolver?
In the crosshairs this week …
Sampha, Skepta? Mercury Prize winner or Italian sports-shoe brand?
Was Revolver really the Beatles’ most “consequential” album?
James Corden v Balthazar: fame in the age…
Craig Brown - our greatest living satirist – has a theory about Keith Richards
Craig was on the pod last year talking about his glorious Beatles book ‘One Two Three Four’ and he’s just published a collection of his writing called ‘Haywire: the Best of Craig Brown’ – Private Eye…
Simon Sebag Montefiore knows the five best songs about history ever written
One of them is Sympathy For The Devil. The Stranglers are in the Top Five too, as are the Strawbs. The best-selling historian and documentary-maker has spent the last three years working on his monum…