Word In Your Ear

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

Todd Rundgren’s outbursts, ‘too old to mosh’ & the happiest and saddest songwriters

A long-running conversation that shifts from major to minor, back to major and all notes inbetween, this week’s lyrics including … … can people who write ‘happy’ ever be

Jon Savage loathed the 1976 singles chart so he’s made an album of should-have-been hits

Jon Savage detested the UK’s mid-‘70s hits with a vengeance, “records so bad they made you want to strangle every deejay on Radio One, especially Dave Lee Travis”. Which

Stevie Wonder’s masterpiece and the daft, chequered history of Ties In Rock!

The two-man conversational canoe paddles the rock and roll tideway, stopping off this week at … … Van Morrison’s set-opener is Kidney Stew Blues by Eddie ‘Cleanhead’ Vin

Why can’t brothers in bands ever get along?

While Mark Ellen visits his Scottish estates, David Hepworth and Alex Gold keep the home fires burning with a wide-ranging conversation, taking in: •⁠ ⁠why every band co

Sid Griffin: the Long Ryders leader laughs at the absurdity of teenage life!

A whole new format we’ve invented for people who’ve been guests before and were so entertaining we wanted them back. So we’ve devised some random questions to spark a few

An Indie Sleaze special! – up and down with the Strokes, Libertines and Arctic Monkeys

“Good hair, good shoes, something to say” were the requirements of Indie Sleaze whose vanguard lit up the fading music press in the first decade of the 21st Century – act

Nicky Hopkins’ hidden genius, the Oasis film and the best songs about rain

This week’s news in three separate files - the Good, the Bad and the Befuddling. Which involves …   … have Oasis created their own economy?   … are stadium gigs now l

Clint Boon saw Manchester lift off twice and auditioned the young Noel Gallagher

Clint Boon was at the heart of “the two biggest musical revolutions of my lifetime” – as a teenager for Joy Division and Buzzcocks, and later the Stone Roses, Happy Monda

The Slits, a movie in waiting - “Marvel superheroes with their pants on the outside!”

The Slits burned very brightly – but briefly - and were gone, their bumpy and courageous tale crisply told in Zoë Howe’s updated ‘Typical Girls?’. She looks back here at

Shawn Colvin – songwriter, storyteller, urban cowgirl, singing waitress

Shawn Colvin was in the spotlight from the age of 10 playing her parents’ parties, singing in bars at college, acting off-Broadway and joining country swing bands before

The world’s greatest radio station! & things we loved about Dolly Parton

Passing the conversational Dutchie 'pon the left hand side, we fire up the following …   … “speech, not music, brings people together”   … if music gets ever broader,