Word In Your Ear

Updated: 19 Nov 2025 • 1049 episodes
www.patreon.com/wordinyourear

Mark Ellen and David Hepworth have been talking about and writing about music together and individually for a collective eighty years in magazines like Smash Hits, Mojo and The Word and on radio and TV programmes like "Rock On", "Whistle Test" and VH-1. Over thirteen years ago, when working on the late magazine The Word, they began producing podcasts. Some listeners have been kind enough to say these have been very special to them. When the magazine folded in 2012 they kept the spirit of those podcasts alive in regular Word In Your Ear evenings in which they spoke to musicians and authors in front of an audience.  Over these years they've produced hundreds of hours of material. As of the Current Unpleasantness of 2020, they've produced yet hundreds of hours more with a little help from guests kind enough to digitally show them around their attics such as Danny Baker, Andy Partridge, Sir Tim Rice and Mark Lewisohn. For the full span of the Word In Your Ear world, visit wiyelondon.com. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Show episodes

Crispian Mills knew he’d be onstage as he’s from a “family of professional show-offs” but they begged him not to be an actor. He talks here about his extraordinary showbusiness childhood and the band that emerged from it full of psychedelia, echoes of the East and warm invitations to join the First Congregational Churc

38 min
00:00
38:14
No file found

“All bands are sad stories,” Peter Doggett points out, but is there a more woven, moving and, at times, farcical tale than that of the Beach Boys? It gives the sound of them a greater melancholy and resonance with every passing year. As his fascinating new book Surf’s Up reveals, nothing that happened is straightforwar

36 min
00:00
36:29
No file found

Five decades of rock and roll with none of the names redacted. In the despatches this week …   … Kevin Rowland? Adam Ant? Toyah? Morrissey? Which Smash Hits cover stars are now ‘legends’?   … a classic encounter with Van Morrison down a Bristol alley   … the boy who mailed dead rodents and Boomtown Rats singles to radi

50 min
00:00
50:39
No file found

Musicians have flirted with Nazi imagery since the ‘60s, lampooning its theatre, absorbing its style, exploiting its shock value, even promoting its ideology. Daniel Rachel’s new book ‘This Ain’t Rock ‘N’ Roll’ points up extraordinary examples – “from Tommy Steele to Kanye West” - and how our reaction intensified over

35 min
00:00
35:59
No file found

Dan Jennings’ podcast ‘Desperately Seeking Paul’ is so successful he’s used 250 of the interviews in a best-selling oral history. ‘Dancing Through The Fire’ has voices from right across the spectrum – family members, band members, writers, pluggers, label bosses, collaborators and famous fans. He talks to us here about

34 min
00:00
34:45
No file found

Marking our dance card at the rock and roll hop this week you’ll find …   … And Then He Kissed Me, I Saw Her Standing There, Springsteen’s All The Way Home: songs about the theatre of dancing   … is there a more influential sleeve than Patti Smith’s Horses?   … did Dylan invent the box-set?   … records you wish you lik

39 min
00:00
39:32
No file found

Show participants