Word In Your Ear
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. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Show episodes
Fairport, Nick Drake, Traffic and why Island Records was a sumptuous visual delight
Neil Storey worked in the Island press office in the ‘70s and ‘80s and has set out on mammoth undertaking, to compile a series of gorgeous, album-sleeve-sized books telling the story of virtually every record the label released in its pioneering history and talking to all involved - musicians, producers, designers, pho
Danny Baker - the panjandrum of unstoppable anecdote with a taste of his upcoming tour
Danny Baker, the act you’ve known for all these years, is kicking his legs up again in 2025 on a thundering new theatre tour, ‘Aye Aye! Ahoy Hoy!’ “Dead men tell no tales,” he points out, “so we might might as well get ‘em all told now.” This will be another barnstorming one-man circus - as, naturally, is this barrelli
The Band Aid recording, the birth of the tape loop and the power of the movie theme tune
This week’s events piled into a pipe and enthusiastically smoked include … … our memories of being at the Band Aid recording in Sarm studios, November 25 1984. … why it was the last dance of the mass media and why nothing could have the same impact now. … the “household name” that made all the difference. … t
One of our rays of sunshine in the dark days of Lockdown was Toyah and Robert’s Sunday Lunch, fizzing clips of the two of them in their Dorset kitchen, him playing off-brand rock and roll, her singing in extravagant finery, occasionally on an exercise bike. Their version of Metallica’s Enter Sandman got 8.6m views alon
John Lydon on the genius of Frankie Howerd, Tommy Cooper and the fine art of Spoken Word
John Lydon is among us in 2025 - with Public Image in May and on his Spoken Word tour in September. Entertainment is guaranteed, as it is in this podcast with Mark where he considers … Norman Wisdom, Frankie Howerd, Tommy Cooper and the “sadness in all comedians”, stage fright, the day his dad threw him out of the hous
In which we feed the week’s events through our heat-seeking Fun-Filter®️ to see what makes the bell ring. Which includes … … Richard Ashcroft in the new John Lewis Christmas ad. … U2 v Coldplay, the Beatles v Pink Floyd – rock bands and the “diploma divide”. … why can we still recite entire song lyrics we learnt
