Word In Your Ear

Howard Devoto and Pete Shelley read a review of the Sex Pistols in February 1976, borrowed a car, drove to London, asked the NME where they’d find the band and were told ‘try a sex shop in the King’s Road’. The events that followed changed both the culture of Manchester and the course of rock history, a story mapped out in David Nolan’s excellent ‘I Swear I Was There’, a book as much about the audience as the band. His theory: “If the Pistols hadn’t played the Lesser Free Trade Hall … no Buzzcocks, Joy Division, Factory Records, ‘indie’ scene, Smiths, Fall, Nirvana, Blur, Oasis, Radiohead or Prodigy.’ As the 50th anniversary looms, he talks to us here about …

… those who claimed to be there and the ones who actually were

… the contrast between myth and reality

… the letter Morrissey sent the NME: “Maybe the Pistols will be able to afford some clothes which don't look as though they've been slept in”

… punk metaphor: Howard Devoto asking a tailor to narrow his trouser legs and being told, “there’s no going back”

… North/South crowd violence: “a battle with a gig breaking out in the middle”

… the three reels of home-movie and the photos that turned up 36 years later

… Sister Rosetta Tharpe, ‘Judas’ at the Free Trade Hall, Stones In The Park and other landmark Manchester moments

... the pioneering impact of Granada TV

… “if you look at Manchester now, its media, its skyscrapers, its cultural prosperity, none of that would have been happened without those Pistols gigs”

… “Sheffield would have admired them, Manchester thought: we can do better!”

… and various bit-part players – Tony Wilson, Peter Hook, Paul Morley, Jordan and Jon the Postman.

Order ‘I Swear I Was There’ here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Swear-Was-There-Pistols-Manchester/dp/1786060159

Book promotions at Walthamstow Rock & Roll Book Club, London - 25 May (link below); Nudie, Manchester – 28 May; Central Library, Manchester - 11July: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/david-nolan-i-swear-i-was-there-tickets-1985356197832?utm_experiment=test_share_listing&aff=ebdsshios&sg=0713ff5cbb20ee739ec0a8803927c4228f74fda0c5bac9785b11548a1e5b7c04ba91c0af5267ba677dfafa61163636f97633016b86ba8be02a78ecdb7f234740f0be4f90136c5fd636905d294b

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The life of Keith Moon can be seen as Animal from the Muppets or as a dark, psychological odyssey. And the two co-exist in Tony Fletcher’s magnificent ‘Dear Boy’, first published in 1998, never out of print and now ‘remastered’ with new pictures, updates, epilogues and a foreword by Mandy Moon who “has to keep reminding myself this person was my father”. Tony looks back here at events along the way, many of which now seem unimaginable. Among them …

… fact versus fiction: his fudged birthdate, his hidden marriage, the Roller in the swimming-pool

… Tony’s meeting with Moon two months before he died

… the letters to his wife Kim when touring America

… Mel Gibson, Mike Myers, Jason Schwartzman, all once in line to play Keith onscreen

… “I killed a man”: the terrible incident with his chauffeur

… the legs in the bath, the head in the bed, the loudspeaker in the bushes: the punchline of all his pranks was “someone’s going to suffer”

… “working-class rock stars who conquered the world like pirates without a map”

… would things have been different if he’d been hailed as a pioneering drummer?

… the times he met Larry Hagman and Oliver Reed

… do book publishers look down on drummers the way musicians do?

… to Golders Green with Viv Stanshall in German uniforms and an open-topped car: #DifferentTimes

… and a sad and telling moment on the Stardust film shoot.

Order copies of ‘Dear Boy’ here: https://omnibuspress.com/products/dear-boy-the-life-of-keith-moon-omnibus-remastered?_pos=1&_psq=dear+boy&_ss=e&_v=1.0

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Dominic Mohan saw Britpop on the inside from the showbiz desk of the Sun in the days when it sold 4.5m copies, a series of heated memories recorded in ‘1996: My Backstage Pass to the Wildest Year of Britain’s Wildest Decade’, a lost age of hedonism, stupidity, drunkenness and creativity. He makes a compelling case in this very funny and colourful podcast which stumbles into …

… the advice David Hepworth gave him when he was 16

… Euro 96 and headlines you couldn’t run now

… how the deaths of Kurt Cobain and John Smith changed the picture

… doorstepping Phil Collins’ ex-wife

… the wreath for Noel Gallagher “the fat dancer from Take That” sent to the Sun

… Cool Britannia and that brief love affair between music and politics

… on the dancefloor at the Labour Conference with Mo Mowlam, John Prescott and Chris Evans

… Knebworth 1996, the perfect marriage of alternative music and club culture with a £250,000 bar bill

… the debt Pulp, Oasis and Blur owe Ray Davies - “less the Godfather of Britpop, more a concerned uncle”

… is it hard to identify a new zeitgeist when people don’t congregate as much?

… the ‘reverse-ferret’ from American culture towards bespectacled blokes from Sheffield

… the shameless age before people public apology

… how the post-Spice Girls TV talent shows soaked up the budgets and column inches

… and Madonna dancing with Dennis Hopper.

Order copies of ‘1996’ here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/1996-Backstage-Wildest-Britains-Decade/dp/B0FZBZHPNR

The Barbican Show curated by Dominic: https://www.barbican.org.uk/whats-on/2026/event/1996-a-celebration-of-the-wildest-year-of-britains-wildest

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A seasonal egg-hunt in the rock and roll backyard finds the following conversational confectionary …

.. Wild Bill Hickok? Valentino? Bob Dylan’s bizarre new media manoeuvre

… Liza Minnelli, Peter Sellers, Harrison Ford, Aaron Paul: people born to play one part

… how to spot writers using AI

… “dried-up old prune”? Trump’s pot-kettle war against Springsteen

… what BBC DJs must think when they see ‘Woo’ Gary Davies in reception

… “Neil Young looks like an unmade bed”

… when invincible ignorance meets invincible confidence: the stupidest thing we’ve ever done

… do most rock stars eventually get ‘work’ done?

… plus the Jungle Brothers, De La Soul, the Roots, Daisy Age hip-hop and our link with the Hatton Garden heist.

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Tony Visconti left Brooklyn for London in 1967, began working with the Move and Marc Bolan and formed a life-long friendship with the teenage David Bowie, playing on his first two albums and producing 10 of ones that followed. And in 2014 he formed Holy Holy with Woody Woodmansey, a live celebration of Bowie’s music from 1970 to Blackstar. They’re touring again in September with Glenn Gregory as lead singer – “you can’t mourn forever.” He talks to us here about …

… the gig they played the night Bowie died

… life at Bowie’s commune at Haddon Hall – “I kept my door firmly locked!”

… Marc Bolan at Middle Earth, “a hundred spellbound kids sitting cross-legged on the floor”

… hearing Flowers In The Rain (which he arranged) as the first record on Radio One

… “A little chinwag?” How Bowie broke the news about his illness

… his dislike of Space Oddity, “I told him it was novelty, a sell-out”

… producing The Man Who Sold The World and the emotional Blackstar

… the night he met the teenage Bowie and they wound up in a Chelsea cinema

… “Why are you doing this?” Bowie’s reaction to the first Holy Holy tour in 2014

… his time as the red-caped Hypeman and Ronson and Woody’s resistance to make-up, “macho boys from Hull”

… walking round New York with a cassette of secret The Next Day album in his pocket

… and the big emotional moments in the Holy Holy set list

Order Holy Holy tickets here: https://www.ticketmaster.co.uk/holy-holy-tickets/artist/2096354

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