Word In Your Ear

Unredacted exchanges about the rock and roll underworld this week highlight the following …

… real or made-up stars’ kids’ names: Speck Wildhorse? Blue Ivy? Everly Bear? Motorhead Michelob?

… man plays drum solo with his head!

… Olivia Dean, Lola Young, FKA Twigs: what do today’s ‘professionals’ learn at the BRIT School and what happened to the age of the amateurs?

… why Joni Mitchell’s life was even more extraordinary before she was famous

… Three Dog Night, Kiss, Grand Funk Railroad, Linda Ronstadt: American acts that never broke Britain

… rude, racy, naughty, delightful: our love of old pulp paperbacks

… “Go to your room, young lady, and play a Nick Drake album in its entirety!”

… and when Dandelion became Angela.

Plus birthday guest Paul Higham and why most stars’ stories need a lively biographer.

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Bowie’s early years have been scrutinised repeatedly but people tend to speed through the last act, from the early ‘90s to his death in 2016. Alexander Larman’s ‘Lazarus: The Second Coming Of David Bowie’ looks at his resurrection and the mystery of his final days in Manhattan in attractively honest detail, a book that’s as fondly critical of his artistic decisions as it’s celebratory. Under discussion here …

… ‘David Bowie was a fictional invention and much of his life an act’

… how wrong so many album reviews turned out to be

… “he liked to be liked and he put a lot of effort into being liked”

… Eno, Tony Visconti, Nile Rodgers, Pet Shop Boys and his endless search for collaborators

… the Lucian Freud incident at the Dorchester

… Scott Walker’s taped message: “I see God in the window”

... “he trusted in the idea he was a genius”

… the sharp contrast been his public image and private life

… how his Lord’s Prayer at the Freddie Mercury tribute was a deliberate attempt to steal the show

… the piercing question Tin Machine were asked on ‘Wogan’

… and the struggle to find anything sincere in his interviews.

Order ‘Lazarus’ here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Lazarus-Second-Coming-David-Bowie/dp/1917923449

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David Sinclair was a long-running rock critic for the Times, Rolling Stone and many others and now makes records himself. He looks back here at some of the first bands he saw and the extraordinary people he interviewed, which touches on …

… the day Bowie took him to the Hammersmith Odeon to stand on the spot where he announced his retirement

… Keith Richards’ dark side (and what he said about Lady Di)

… interviewing Prince “who seemed like a shadow”

… seeing Free in 1970: “I still think about it. Some bands are like footprints in fresh snow”

… Hendrix on a bill with Cat Stevens and the Walker Brothers when he was 14

… singles he wore out in the days when you had to change the needle

… his theory about the lyrics of Crossroads

… “the Simon Templar of rock journalism”

… the purgatory of being a serious musician when Spotify adds 100,000 new tracks a day

… and the Shadows, the Scorpions, Sting, ZZ Top, David Coverdale and … Millstone Grit.

David Sinclair’s music here: https://open.spotify.com/artist/4oMczlXHj1pt6M4ZNGR14E?si=_9Dx_G_UQ3GifCFGFra07A

To buy here: https://www.davidsinclairfour.com/shop

Tickets to the 100 Club, May19: https://www.solidentertainments.com/100club/index.html

Help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear
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A bone-shaking ride on the weekly news cycle, stopping off here to pump up the tyres ….

… Springsteen’s Streets Of Minneapolis: it’s not what he said but the fact that he’s said it

… “they’re all just Sly & Robbie records but with someone different singing on them”

… the price of stadium tickets: if it’s too high, don’t go – but stop complaining!

… Catherine O’Hara’s wit and humanity in Waiting For Guffman and A Mighty Wind, and why Home Alone wouldn’t work without her

… Melania’s deal with Amazon: the most craven act in the history of entertainment?

… is Mick Jones the first cousin of a Tory Home Secretary?

… the secret art of “four-walling”

… are most fans conservative with a small ‘c’?

… the romance of knackered old ‘70s New York: “the cheap pleasures have gone”

… and the whitest rap of all time!

Plus birthday guest Roger Millington and the agony of a band’s “new direction”.

Help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear
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Adele Bertei got a Greyhound to New York in 1977 intent on joining a band. James Chance thought she “looked like a pimp” and hired her as the organist in the Contortions, an instrument she couldn’t play. Her memoir No New York captures the most intoxicating times imaginable, the rise of Blondie, Talking Heads, Television, Madonna and her fellow raft of No Wave cheerleaders in pursuit of dismantling music. Highlights include …

… the local priest recommending the Velvet Underground when she was 11

… “imbibe and dream”: her weekend with Lester Bangs

… the rubble-filled New York wasteland of 1977, landlords setting fire to property just to claim the insurance

… the No Wave circuit: crowd violence and singers who either talked or screamed

.. her rivalry with Madonna: “our labels didn’t want people to know we were white”

… the local Cleveland “Rust Belt” - Pere Ubu, Chrissie Hynde, Devo

… why Warhol, Ginsberg and Burroughs seemed laughably outmoded

… Brian Eno’s shopping list

… the power of Tina Weymouth, Patti Smith and Debbie Harry (“sexy but with a snarl”) and why New York’s venues are internationally mythical.

Order Adele Bertei’s ‘No New York’ here: https://www.faber.co.uk/product/9780571386154-no-new-york/?srsltid=AfmBOor2IKVLRyzzZDisLz_8cTGDYIjDXphZVU9Lw5drAd4CdKR1KVhs

Adele with Thomas Dolby on Whistle Test: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQ3bGioFCXU

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