Word In Your Ear

Teenage Fanclub are touring the UK in November. Norman tells us here about some of the first and best shows he’s seen and played and life in the group's early days. Which involves … … the band that made him want to start a band. … the Wombles at a YMCA when he was 12. … selling a fridge and a washing machine to buy recording time. … the bouncing balcony of the Glasgow Apollo when the Clash played in ‘78. … having a wee next to Steve Cropper. … the age at which audiences “appreciate having a seat”. … busking etiquette.   ... his mum taking him to see the Kinks and Tom Jones.   … serving John Martyn at McCormack’s Music Shop – “Thanks, wee man!" … a sweet story about a trombone, Terry Hall and the Specials. … Neil Young with Booker T & the MGs. … the fine art of “sprinkling” new material in a set list. … watching the Smiths play the greatest show he’s ever seen, “the stage strewn with flowers”. Dates and tickets here … https://www.ticketmaster.co.uk/teenage-fanclub-tickets/artist/736268Subscribe to Word In Your Ear on Patreon to receive every Word Podcast early and ad-free!: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Whistling, clicking our heels, swinging round lampposts and lobbing the odd shiny florin to a flaxen-haired child, this week’s free-wheeling navigation of the rock and roll boulevard alights upon the following hot topics … … why Indie music is like student drama. … what the Beatles achieved in “the 585 most productive minutes in the history of recorded music" (aka the recording of Please Please Me) and the albums released the same day every decade after.  … Death & Vanilla, Frightened Rabbit and – to deafening applause – the welcome return of the Stackwaddy game. … albums performed as ‘plays’ (by musicians who didn’t make them). A band featuring Clem Burke and Glen Matlock has just toured playing Lust For Life in its entirety. What others would work as well? The Band’s second album? Liege & Lief? The Ramones? Hot Rats? … unappetising song titles. … what Bob Dylan did so “my mother would finally think I'm somebody”. And how his Mum reacted to his success.   … and why bands end sets with Country Roads, Mustang Sally and Twist And Shout.Subscribe to Word In Your Ear on Patreon for early and ad-free access to every future Word Podcast!: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sauntering in carefree, conversational mode down the rock and roll bridleway this week, pausing briefly to lean against a tree and tootle upon a mouth-organ, we came across the following … … bands with no original members left - Lynyrd Skynyrd, Motorhead, the Crickets, the Ramones, the Jimi Hendrix Experience, the Drifters … any more? … things musicians are obsessed with. … albums by acts we love without a single redeeming feature – Blondie’s The Hunter? Bob Dylan’s Saved? The Dead’s Built To Last? It’s Hard by The Who? … the night – exactly 20 years ago – we saw the Dixie Chicks make their career-capsizing comment about George Bush. … the hilarious left-right shift in Russell Brand’s brand values.   … the main reason some people go to Glastonbury. … can you love an act as much if you don’t own their records or CDs and just stream them? … a Northern Soul DJ’s £250,000 box of singles being stolen from his home after a gig. … and Mr Inbetween, the Australian crime drama that’s like Saxondale meets Reservoir Dogs.Grab your EXCLUSIVE NordVPN Deal by going to https://nordvpn.com/yourear to get up a Huge Discount off your NordVPN Plan + 4 months for free! It’s completely risk free with Nord’s 30 day money-back guarantee!----Subscribe to Word In Your Ear on Patreon and receive every future Word Podcast early, and ad-free!: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Things in the crosshairs this week include … … why it took 34 years to get De La Soul on a streaming service. … Radio 2’s ham-fisted handling of the departure of Ken Bruce – and are R2 and Greatest Hits Radio two bald men fighting over a comb if music radio seems doomed to die? … the new fun-sized Axl Rose. … U2’s stand-in drummer Bram van den Berg is like “Jimmie Nicol on stilts”. … the BBC and Glastonbury re John Peel: never name anything after a celebrity! ... “Jackson Browne would never have been anything without David Lindley”. … what made the Spice Girls successful? … Steely Dan’s Aja, Joni Mitchell’s Paprika Plains and other places to hear Wayne Shorter’s divine embroideries.   … comedy skits on records. … plus David Lindley’s effortless fashion statements – “Jackson Browne could emerge from a plane crash looking like Cary Grant but Lindley could have had stylists working round the clock for three days and still looked like an unmade bed”.Subscribe to Word In Your Ear on Patreon to receive every future Word Podcast early and ad-free!: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Karen Carpenter died 40 years ago at the age of 32, a life mapped out in a new biography by Lucy O’Brien called Lead Sister. It’s a chilling, cautionary tale of how she and her brother became international stars and the devastating personal repercussions that were the consequence. Our conversation with Lucy covers the waterfront and includes … … the perils of “helicopter parents”.  … why Richard was “The Chosen One”. … a disastrous association with Nixon. … destabilising press comments about weight issues and her “milksop presence”. … what Hal Blaine said about her mother.... the night she met Elvis. … what singers need to survive. … the private bebop language she invented. … “Drummers are like hockey goalies. No-one knows how to talk to them apart from another drummer.”… the howling disaster of her solo album. … and what she discovered about her husband three days before she was due to marry him.  Lead Sister by Lucy O’Brien …https://www.amazon.co.uk/Lead-Sister-Story-Karen-Carpenter/dp/1788708245 The Carpenters’ first TV appearance, 1968 …https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Cz60nGaopMSubscribe to Word In Your Ear on Patreon for early and ad-free access to every Word Podcast!: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The teenage Michael Cragg was obsessed with the “glorious shiny ludicrous pop” of the period that began with the Spice Girls, included Hear’Say, Five, Steps, Atomic Kitten, Blue and countless others and ended with the closure of Popworld and Smash Hits ten years later, a tale less about music than the media that covered it and the machinations of the industry. All the key leading players – bands, managers, songwriters, critics – are interviewed in his sparkling and soon-to-be-published account of it all, Reach For the Stars, and our conversation with him includes … ….. why Chris Morris should make a film about it. … why there are no groups anymore. … Russell Brand auditioning for Five. … the secret of the Spice Girls’ success. … which is more cynical, the worlds of TV or music. … why pop stars needed “bullet-proof exteriors”. ... the band that couldn’t go to gigs or football matches without security to protect them. … why Blue would never have survived in the age of social media. … why pop stars were like contract players in 1930s movies. … how TV drained the fun and frivolity. … whether girl groups appeal to 100 per cent of the audience and boybands to only 50? … the extraordinary fall and rise of Whole Again by Atomic Kitten. … and the band mistakenly delivered by private jet to Donatella Versace. @MichaelCragg Reach For The Stars …https://www.waterstones.com/book/reach-for-the-stars/michael-cragg/9781788707244Subscribe to Word In Your Ear on Patreon and receive early access to every future Word Podcast!: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week’s crackling logs on the conversational fire include … … the attractively unchanging sound of Joe Henry’s 15 albums (the man PRs still sell as “Madonna’s brother-in-law”). … the 45th anniversary of David and Mark’s first meeting – at an Earth Quake gig at Salford University on February 10 1978. … Neil Tennant’s letter to Janice Long. … the recommended TV tribulations of Kleo, East German intelligence operative. … “Is it a nut? Is it a boy? Is it a wino? No, just Wreckless Eric!” A flick through an old Record Mirror from 1978. … where live music costs £3 a minute. … did the Beatles and Stones ever sound remotely similar even when playing the same song? … the Beatles on Juke Box Jury (and what they said about Elvis).   … Levon Helm’s drum kit. … plus birthday guest David Messer on why everyone should love Bill Wyman. … and birthday guest Adrian Ainsworth recommends three classical albums – Sean Shibe’s ‘Lost & Found’, ‘A Verlaine Songbook’ by Carolyn Simpson and Joseph Middleton, and John Adams’ ‘Shaker Loops’.Grab your EXCLUSIVE NordVPN Deal by going to nordvpn.com/yourear to get a Huge Discount off your NordVPN Plan + a Bonus Gift! It’s completely risk free with Nord’s 30 day money-back guarantee!Subscribe to Word In Your Ear on Patreon to receive early and ad-free access to every future Word Podcast!: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Of all the figures who built rock and roll back in the 1950s, Chuck Berry was arguably the most influential and certainly the strangest. In a new biography, which could never have been written when he was alive, R.J. Smith tells a story which is still hard to believe. His conversation with David Hepworth includes:* how the nerd Charles Berry discovered the key to impressing women* How a reckless streak a mile wide saw him put away as a teenager* How a comic turn developed into the greatest act in rock and roll* How he never listened to what his daddy told him about white women* How his record company’s landlord ended up co-writing “Maybelline”* His Mann Act conviction and imprisonment* His rebirth in Britain with the help of the Beatles and Stones* Why he needed a copy of the FT every day* Why he never said thank-you* The part played in his life by Lanchester Poly* His last and most tawdry court case* What was going on in his head all that timeChuck Berry: An American Life by R.J. Smith is out now.https://amzn.to/3IE7K7qSubscribe to Word In Your Ear on Patreon and receive every future Word Podcast ad-free and before the rest of the world!: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Eels are touring the UK in March/April and E talks here about what he’s learnt about live performance from being onstage or in the audience. And this includes … … a valuable lesson from watching Leon Russell’s deserted matinee at a racetrack in Maryland. … his mum’s reaction to him singing Plastic Ono Band songs in the car when he was 10.   … seeing George Harrison (aged 11) with his sister. … the fascination of formerly big bands now quietly on the way back down (like Steppenwolf). … playing drums at his son’s school concert.   … the “crazy and theatrical spectacle” of Neil Young’s Rust Never Sleeps tour. … and what fan footage on YouTube can tell you. Eels tour dates …https://www.ents24.com/uk/tour-dates/eelsSubscribe to Word In Your Ear on Patreon for early access to every future Word Podcast!: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Given the once-over this week in vigorous pursuit of edification and amusement … … should a Fawlty Towers sequel be illegal? … over-refreshed audiences wrecking Jukebox Musicals. … our hunt for the elusive album sleeve with the long-haired girl/Afghan hound. … how acts signal their popularity now the charts no longer matter. … critics who attacked people who attacked back. … the Beatles and ‘the genius of personality’. … how the parental credit card fuels the Springsteen ticket price inflation. … U2 about to play the new Las Vegas venue with an LED screen the size of three football pitches. … what’s the best age to be? … when are we in our prime and when are we at our most stupid? Plus birthday guest Nick Foreman and Danny Baker’s rare album hand-out.Subscribe to Word In Your Ear on Patreon to receive every future Word Podcast before the rest of the world!: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.