Word In Your Ear

Tony Fletcher launched Jamming! when he was 13, wrote for the Face at 16, ran a label with Paul Weller at 17 and a year later was presenting the Tube. And was in a band signed to EMI. If anyone did more as a teenager, we want to meet them. It’s all in his coming-of-age memoir ‘Pow! When UK Punk Went Pop 1980-84’ - discussed here - which touches on …

…the speed, the possibilities and the riches of success in the early ‘80s – and how it felt to be at the heart of it

… “I knew nothing about running a label – and then discovered Paul Weller didn’t either”

… Madness being interviewed by “spiky-haired, Harrington-jacketed, Ben-Sherman-shirted me”

… when confidence meets ignorance

… when bands went from selling 2,000 records to 20,000 and, in America, 200,000: “Phil Oakey always carried £500 in cash”

… the research meetings that launched the Tube and his two-minute audition

… the day Leslie Ash called in sick and he covered for her on live TV

… Pete Townshend, 35, convinced the Who were finished

... discovering the inner circle within the inner circle

… “to the Rainbow for the Mod Revival all-dayer!”

… and memories of Wham!, Paula Yates and Pete Wylie and what he learnt from running labels and magazines.

Order copies of ‘Pow! When UK Punk Went Pop 1980-84’ here:
US: https://www.trouserpressbooks.com/pow

UK: https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/pow-when-uk-punk-went-pop-1980-84-tony-fletcher/74b193de4c1dee68
Help us to keep The Longest Continuous Conversation In Rock'n'Roll going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Testing the temperature of this week’s news to see what trips the fire-alarm, which includes …

… does having a Number One still matter?

… Pauline Black’s sliding doors moment

… rock stars you can’t imagine dancing

… heatwaves, fire, rain, dust and thunderstorms: how extreme weather’s changing the festival circuit

… when Jarvis Cocker was a fishmonger and Bryan Ferry taught pottery

… is AI erasing our love of rock history?

… Wuthering Heights Day: the lone fabulous amateur appeal of Kate Bush v the polished mass choreography of the 21st Century

… all bands vividly remember first hearing themselves on the radio … and then rang their mothers

… digital native or digital immigrant?

… and when Mark met the Hells Angels in a Kentucky Fried Chicken.
Help us to keep The Longest Continuous Conversation In Rock'n'Roll going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week’s news in a conversational cocktail-shaker and served with ice and a little paper parasol. Those Happy Hour highlights include …

… six musicians who keep getting better looking

… Plas Johnson RIP, a part of everyone’s life for 60 years

… the Odyssey and how Hollywood thinks the rest of the world has a foreign accent

… why you couldn’t make Bugsy Malone today

… Jonathan Richman’s genuine wide-eyed love of the modern world

… Clare Torry’s Pink Floyd payday

… “Styrofoam ice buckets full of ice”: the greatest song ever written about life on the road

… Mick Jagger, the art of evasion and the exquisite boredom of Stones’ B-sides about America

… the four rock stars who played the Artful Dodger

… and what John Wayne said to ‘Jesus’.
Help us to keep The Longest Continuous Conversation In Rock'n'Roll going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ben Sidran was in a teenage band with Steve Miller and Boz Scaggs, a session pianist with the Stones in 1969 and carved a brilliant career as a jazz musician, producer, author and broadcaster. He’s just written ‘Cool Cat Blues’ about his old friend and collaborator Georgie Fame and the brief, luminous, pre-rock London blues and jazz scene that launched him. This enthralling conversation looks at the “heavy lift” of being a piano player and Georgie’s unique position in the organic, unhyped, pre-youth scene before the arrival of rock. And covers …

… the “coal smoke” London of the late ‘60s and Ben recording with the Stones at Olympic

… the romance and “elephant paths” of the great jazz legends

… why British musicians were more sophisticated than Americans obsessed with authenticity

... the influence of Mose Allison, “a white jazz and blues intellectual with storytelling and social commentary”

… GI’s bringing black American records to the Flamingo Club

… how Georgie Fame was “raised by wolves” and the Larry Parnes and Light Entertainment worlds that helped shape him

… and Yeh Yeh, Get Away and the Ballad Of Bonnie and Clyde, the hits that damaged his reputation.

Order ‘Cool Cat Blues’ here: https://www.equinoxpub.com/projects/cool-cat-blues
Help us to keep The Longest Continuous Conversation In Rock'n'Roll going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Steve Hackett’s seven years in Genesis get re-explored when he tours in October, along with ‘solo gems’ from the records he’s made since, the latest ‘the Roaring Waves’, a collaboration with old pal Steve Rothery. He looks back here at defining moments in the Genesis story such as the stage props, the early American tours and Phil Collins when he met him having just auditioned for Zeffirelli and being “all fur coats and girlfriends”. Along with …

… when bands stood on fishboxes if there wasn’t a stage

… playing harmonica through his nose and “open wounds” from American guitars

.. Cream, John Mayall and the Paul Butterfield Blues Band on Eel Pie Island

... what Lennon said about Genesis “in the days before we could tweet it, sadly”

… Apache, Man Of Mystery and the guitarists Hank Marvin inspired

… how Phil Collins got to be the band’s singer and the days when Phil and Peter Gabriel did Alan Whicker impressions onstage

... Guy Garvey at the Prog Proms

… the last time the five of them were together and the chance of a reunion

… and the new album with Steve Rothery, inspired by Whitby and the legend of Dracula.

Order copies of ‘The Roaring Wave’ here: https://stevehackettsteverothery.lnk.to/TheRoaringWaves-Album

Order Steve Hackett tickets here: https://myticket.co.uk/artists/steve-hackett and https://www.hackettsongs.com/tours
Help us to keep The Longest Continuous Conversation In Rock'n'Roll going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.