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.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
- Update frequency
- every 2 days
- Average duration
- 43 minutes
- Episodes
- 857
- Years Active
- 2007 - 2025
Why Oasis were God’s gift to the rock press and the story of two missing teeth
Liam Gallagher calls Ted Kessler and Hamish MacBain “the Peter Cook and Dudley Moore of music journalism”. Both worked at the NME (and Ted at Q), both interviewed the band many times and have just pu…
Elkie Brooks once opened for the Beatles. A lot happened in the next 65 years …
Elkie Brooks was on a package tour aged 15, supported the Beatles and the Animals, made a single when she was 19, joined the jazz-rock Dada, then Vinegar Joe (with Robert Palmer) and has since made 2…
Why they MUST make the Cat Stevens movie + rock feuds, the best video & Beyoncé in a Stetson
Facing down the leg spinners of rock and roll news while trying to wallop the odd shot across the pavilion roof. On the scoreboard this week …
… has there ever been a rock feud as bitter as Trump v M…
Stuart Maconie – every character in the Beatles’ story has a story of their own
Stuart Maconie – broadcaster, prolific author – has a brilliant and original new perspective on the Beatles. His latest book With A Little Help From Their Friends identifies the 100 people who had th…
Inside the world of reissues with producer Rob Caiger
Rob Caiger is one of those special people who turned their teenage obsession with music into a job
… from being the only one in ELO’s office who knew where the old tapes were
… to learning that what …
Genuinely ‘iconic’ rock pictures, words we should ban and how Freddie Mercury still makes headlines
Hoary old tales retold – ideally in an Irish accent - and new ones prized from the giddy carousel of rock and roll news which, this week, features …
… was there a better stage name than Rick Derringe…
Martha Wainwright - ‘never nervous, always ballsy’ and onstage from the age of eight
Martha Wainwright is a key member of the Wainwright/McGarrigle clan, all of them big favourites of ours. She’s currently on her 20th anniversary tour and looks back here at the first shows she ever s…
Budgie of Siouxsie And The Banshees started out in nightclub cabaret acts, aged 13
Small boy begins breeding budgerigars in Liverpool, makes enough to buy a drum kit and becomes the power behind Big In Japan, the Slits, the Creatures and Siouxsie and the Banshees. And one half of p…
Books rock stars want you to read, sacked drummers and how Dylan spent his birthday
The two-man pedalo of enquiry sets out on the Bank Holiday boating lake of news pausing to consider …
… Florence Welch, Dua Lipa and the rise of the rock and roll book club.
… the 92 year-old that …
Dylan Jones bangs the drum for 1975, an explosion of talent and creativity
Dylan Jones – writer, former editor of i-D, Arena and GQ - was 15 in 1975 and dressed like Jimmy McCulloch of Wings (“a lot of denim and silk scarves”), a time he thinks had enormous influence on the…
The great lost Beach Boys SMiLE album – David Leaf unravels rock’s Holy Grail
The Beach Boys’ SMiLE was abandoned by Brian Wilson in 1967 and eventually performed at an emotional gathering of the faithful in London 37 years later. For writer and lecturer David Leaf it became a…
The best songs written in seconds, Lennon’s legs and Springsteen’s chimes of freedom.
Slapping the beanburger of news on the sizzling grill of scrutiny and served with relish by Alex Gold and Mark Ellen (David’s in Spain with his bucket and spade). This week’s specials include …
… Spr…
Dennis Greaves, Nine Below Zero – old-school R&B, police and thieves and the agony of white clogs
Dennis Greaves took a week off from Nine Below Zero in 1980 but otherwise kept his nose firmly applied to the grindstone. They broke up in 1983 when he formed the Truth, who broke up in 1989 when he …
Peter Capaldi’s life in a teenage Glasgow punk band and a public apology to the Cocteau Twins
Peter Capaldi – aka Malcolm Tucker, Dr Who, the universal screen delight and an Oscar-winning film director – was the singer in the punk band the Dreamboys in the late ‘70s who put out a single when …
Alan Parsons – from the rooftop of Savile Row to Pink Floyd, Steve Harley and some singing pigs
The teenage Alan Parsons was hired as a tape op by EMI and worked with the Beatles, Pink Floyd, Steve Harley, orchestras, comedians, Pinky And Perky and countless others in the control room at Abbey …
Mom Rock v Dad Rock, the Oasis rumour mill and Kanye West’s devious dentist.
Perched outside the Vatican Of News awaiting puffs of white smoke, which this week arrive in the following fashion …
… Brandi Carlile’s Mothership Weekend and her genius for publicity.
… Jim Morrison…
Dennis McNally saw the Summer Of Love in London, New York and California
Dennis McNally was the Grateful Dead’s publicist in the mid-‘80s, one of many reasons why he’s supremely qualified to write his new book about the birth of the counterculture in America’s West and Ea…
The greatest duet, rock cameos in Miami Vice and the rebirth of Mississippi John Hurt
Passing the thermometer of conversation over the rock and roll news to see where the mercury rises, which this week includes …
… the new Barbra Streisand duets album. Duets are ‘playlets’, small inte…
Al Murray and James Holland talk the ending of the war in 1945 and the afterlife of The Beatles
In which comedian Al Murray and historian James Holland talk about their new book Victory ’45 and our twin national obsessions, the Second World War and The Beatles. Includes:
….how being emotionally …
Derek Shulman – when Simon Dupree and Gentle Giant were “the darlings of the English Mafia”
Derek Shulman was at the heart of two great transformations – Simon Dupree & the Big Sound switching to psychedelia, and then sensing the prog-rock trade winds and becoming Gentle Giant. One minute h…