Word In Your Ear

Danny Kelly remembered – Q & NME editor, broadcast genius, raiser of the sum of human happiness

n honour this week of an old pal, one of the greatest storytellers we ever met. In pursuit of at least two “genuine ripples”, we alight upon … … his priceless Q coverlin

Mary Gauthier, hardcore troubadour – ‘you got 30 seconds to get their attention!’

Mary Gauthier didn’t appear onstage ‘til a traumatic night in Boston aged 29 and she’s been a songwriter and storyteller ever since, much of the raw material from the rig

Nick Heyward, Haircut 100 and life as a 15 year-old father

Haircut 100’s moment in the sun was brief but dramatic and as vividly remembered as his childhood in Nick Heyward’s memoir Fantastic Days. The boy in marmalade corduroy s

Dylan and the Pope, the drummer on 42 Number 1s & rock stars who were teenage crims

Seeking another landslide victory in our 20-year conversational campaign, this week’s vote-winners include … … did Bob Dylan take the Pope a jigsaw and some Lucozade? …

Richard Jobson on the Skids and the day Steve Jones burgled Francis Bacon

A “feral child” from Fife gets recruited by a punk band who have five long years in the sun and split up. Until rebooted when U2 and Green Day cover one of their singles

Dick Taylor, the Pretty Things and the four months he spent in the Stones

The Pretty Things were dead centre in the mid-‘60s underground and they’ve been mythologised ever since - for the sound of those singles, for their SF Sorrow masterpiece

Dylan Jones, past master of the long lunch, saw the music world from a restaurant table

London restaurants were where musicians, actors, writers and TV stars were seen “and how you knew where they were in the days before social media”. They were a form of th

What’s at the heart of Indie Rock? – plus Bowie rebooted and Patrick Stewart RIP

‘To explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and civilizations and to boldly go where no podcasters have been before!’ Which this week involves … … the lost 1978

Carl Palmer’s 64 years onstage and the ingenious way he’s touring as ELP

Whenever Carl Palmer joined a band, he was head-hunted by a bigger one - the King Bees, Chris Farlowe & the Thunderbirds, the Crazy World of Arthur Brown, Atomic Rooster

Joni Mitchell’s fascinating treasure trove of lost interviews with the BBC

Tom Hagler works at the BBC with access to every TV and radio programme involving Joni Mitchell for 50 years, all full of revelations about her songs and the times she sp

Which bands pass the three-year test? – plus the great live albums & rock stars’ alter egos

Stirring the spice-filled gumbo of news and turning the heat up. This week’s nutritious ingredients include …. … is everything better shorter? … the greatest opening l

Dexys, their hits and flops and how I survived them by Helen O’Hara

Helen’s violin at the start of Come On Eileen has filled a million wedding dancefloors. She was a member of Dexys Midnight Runners, later their musical director, at the b

Nigel Dick shot videos for Band Aid, Guns N’Roses, Britney and Oasis by ‘failing upwards’

We first met Nigel Dick in the late ‘70s when he was the motorbike messenger for Stiff Records and watched him rocket to success in the video boom, directing career-launc

Tall stories about towering and tiny rock stars, ‘50s jazz and Mick Jagger’s gym shoes

Two fearless men journey to the Edge Of News so that you don’t have to. Some highlights of this week’s report … … when a gig’s all about the performer not the audience

Another Word with … Richard Thompson: includes Fairport, Lennon, Schwarzenegger and a cast of thousands!

Richard Thompson has a new album, ‘Hippies, Thugs and Heroes’, and he’s touring again in 2027, the perfect excuse to get another of our favourite guests back in the chair

Rory Gallagher – Ireland’s first rock star remembered by the brother who managed him

You forget how huge and ubiquitous Rory Gallagher was in the ‘70s, just 22 at the Isle of Wight and auditioning for the Stones four years later, an inspiration for Johnny

Q Magazine’s 40th, Ariel Bender and the most unlistenable music ever made

In this week’s extension of The Longest Conversation In Pop History™️ you’ll be happy to find … … the front row audience driving Gillian Anderson mad and why we feel for

Roxy, Traffic, Nick Drake, Mott the Hoople & the magic of Island Records

The third instalment of ‘The Island Book of Records’ is out, another sumptuous, elegantly designed, LP-sized chronicle of every album released on this most fabled of labe

Gary Kemp bought Brian Epstein’s address book and discovered ‘the DNA of the Beatles’

A lifelong Beatles obsessive, Gary Kemp bought Epstein’s black leather address book at auction and (with Simon Halfon) researched its 404 names to construct a picture of

‘Metal Machine Music is a masterpiece!’ David Holzer has played it 1,000 times

David Holzer was a Lou Reed fan from the moment he saw Walk On The Wild Side on Top Of The Pops but avoided Metal Machine Music for 42 years as it was supposedly unlisten