Word In Your Ear

In which Mark Ellen and David Hepworth talk about Joni Mitchell, Krakatoa and the importance of dressing properly while WFH.Since they're spending a proportion of the Current Unpleasantness talking to each other anyway. Mark Ellen and David Hepworth thought they may as well record some of it, explaining what's happening with Word In Your Ear in the light of the current situation, how they're getting by at home, what they're reading, what they've been listening to and what it might all mean for the return of long form listening. Well, it's not as if they've got anything else to do.Joni Mitchell in concert at the BBC in 1970https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAxjPfWOiqIJoni Mitchell doing "Me And My Uncle" i n 1965https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1k6OYIvLLcAHere's a good place to start on the books of Simon Winchester.http://www.simonwinchester.com/And here's an introduction to Anthony Powell.http://anthonypowell.org/David's book "A Fabulous Creation" is out in paperback.https://amzn.to/39gVWmOPlease leave a comment on iTunes or anywhere else that allows you to post. We read all of them and really appreciate it. If you've got any particular favourites among the old Word podcasts please let us know which at wiye.london@gmail.comP.S. Here's Ronnie Lane and Pete Townshend singing "Annie"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYoqT-RJLDo Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Pete Paphides' acclaimed "Broken Greek" is, as David says when introducing him, the best book written by a former Smash Hits reader and looks set to do for unjustly uncelebrated popular music what Nick Hornby did for football in "Fever Pitch". This chat encompasses: Abba, West Brom, the Multi-Coloured Swap Shop, Mind Your Language, shopping for singles at Woolworths, living above a chip shop, hoping to be adopted by the Brotherhood Of Man and making the amazing discovery that John Lennon and Paul McCartney actually used to be in the same band! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dan Franklin's first book "Heavy" chronicles his life-long love affair with heavy music in all its different manifestations, from Meat Loaf to Sunn 0))), and argues that it deserves a lot more respect than it gets as a rule. It's a story that takes us from a cassette copy of a Guns N' Roses album thrust into the hands of a puzzled eight-year-old, via the fields of Donington and the mosh pits of Camden to the lengths a new father will go to free a Type O Negative CD from the mangled remnants of a family car. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

John Mitchinson and Andy Miller do the award-winning Backlisted podcast which, as they like to say on the tin, "brings new life to old books". They're also big music fans so we thought they would be the ideal people to come along and talk in their own inimitable style about what they feel are some of the best and sometimes overlooked examples of the genre. That's how come, in a wide-ranging discussion we came to touch on "Dino: Living High In The Dirty Business Of Dreams" by Nick Tosches, "Black Vinyl, White Powder" by Simon Napier Bell and Levon Helm's "This Wheel's On Fire", "Nico: Songs They Never Play On The Radio" by James Young, Julian Cope's "Krautrock Sampler", Stephen Sondheim's "Look: I Made A Hat" and "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead: The Dirty Life and Times of Warren Zevon" by Crystal Zevon, all of which are in their different ways recommended. Conversation covers: how much a rock star gets for their memoirs, how to tell if an anecdote is made up or not, why Julian Cope doesn't mind you downloading his book for free and how you, yes you, can easily increase the amount of reading you do. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We were delighted to welcome Bethan Roberts to Word In Your Ear to talk about her novel “Graceland”. This is based on the most important relationship in the life of Elvis Presley. His mother Gladys brought him up single-handedly when his father went into prison, she encouraged his singing, she feared for what the girls would do to him and what the managers might take from him, wished he didn’t have to go away so often and would have preferred him to be a furniture salesman married to a nice local girl with some grandchildren on the way. Then, when he was undergoing basic training in the army, she died.People say that Elvis was never the same after he went in the army. In fact he was never the same after his mother died. Bethan tells us about how she got the idea for the book, what fascinates her about the intense relationship between mother and son and while, as she explains, the odd incident may have been embroidered, the basic facts of her narrative are not in dispute. What’s most amazing, when you read “Graceland”, is that nobody’s written this story before. This book is highly recommended, not merely to fans of Elvis, but for anyone who wants to understand what sudden dramatic fame does to the nearest and dearest of the Famous One. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In his new book "A New Day Yesterday", an account of progressive rock in the 1970s, Mike Barnes tells the story of how this peculiarly British musical form was born out of the Small Faces' "Itchycoo Park" and the Graham Bond Organisation and went on to flourish throughout the 70s in the universities of Britain and the arenas of the United States. He talks to Mark and David about all the issues that matter: capes, mellotrons, seated audiences, prolonged soloing, the real names of the members of Quintessence and whatever happened to Egg. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When Sid Smith first finished his definitive biography of King Crimson in 2001 he thought, not unreasonable that would be that. But then Robert Fripp reactivated the band and so Sid had to take up his pen once more. This has resulted in an even more definitive work "In The Court Of King Crimson". He came to Word In Your Ear to run Mark and David through the key facts of their extraordinary rise and their exceptional longevity, what it's like to spend six weeks on the road with a bunch of musical gentlemen of a certain age and why he's not planning to put down his pen just yet. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Alexis Petridis was very lucky Elton John chose him to help tell the story in his best-selling memoir "Me". Elton John's equally lucky Alexis agreed because without him it probably wouldn't be half as good as it is. In fact it's two stories: the first is the story of a musical career that seems to be headed nowhere until a chance meeting with a lyricist began a partnership which operated in an unprecedented way and led to unprecedented success; the other is a personal story of how a very tense little boy from Pinner grew to be able to afford all the addictions on a Pharaonic scale, managed to conquer them and belatedly found contentment in a state that wasn't even invented when he was first a superstar. Every home should have a copy because everyone in that home would find at least some of it jaw-dropping. Alexis told us what it was like to write and what he learned about life in the process. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On December 7th Thomas Alan Waits celebrates his 70th birthday and to mark that occasion we asked Barney Hoskyns, the author of his biography "Lowside Of The Road", to talk about what makes Waits one of the rare examples of a misfit who has prospered on his own terms. It's all here: developing his shtick entertaining the line of customers outside, choosing to dress in a way that had gone out of style twenty years before, living his character twenty four hours a day, being taken in hand both personally and professionally somewhat late in the day and eventually becoming a success on his own terms. Barney thinks he as important an artist as the 20th century has produced. He came along to explain why. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's always good to welcome Andrew Collins back to the pod. Andrew was with us most recently to talk about the new edition of his official biography of Billy Bragg. This time he's got his movie hat on, as befits the man who writes about films for the Radio Times and presents "Saturday Night At The Movies" on Classic FM. Since 2019 has been such a bumper year for music biopics we asked him to remind us what are the best of breed in ten categories ranging from fiction to festivals and everything inbetween. You probably won't agree with it all but it will probably leave you determined to have a look on Netflix and search out some overlooked classic. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.