Word In Your Ear

Updated: 05 Oct 2025 • 1029 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.

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Steering the supercar of enquiry round the rock and roll racetrack with the occasional stop for a tyre change. Foot-to-floor moments this week include…   … why are the British so hung up about posh pop stars?   … the 10-second moment of his stage routine that Springsteen must find addictive   … the flaming bra, the fly

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London’s Blitz club in 1980 had a huge impact on the way the decade looked and sounded, the launchpad for Boy George, Spandau Ballet, a new age of electro-pop and many writers, designers and photographers. The author and broadcaster Robert Elms was one of its cornerstones, “a place for people who’d outgrown the 20th Ce

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Prince’s commercial peak was Purple Rain but John McKie thinks Sign O’ The Times was his creative masterpiece and tracked down over 200 collaborators, girlfriends, “Prince whisperers”, assistants and admirers to piece together the story of its construction (without allowing himself to use the word “genius”). Which lead

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Paul Gorman, biographer of Malcolm McLaren and friend of the pod, tells the extraordinary story of the three young hipsters behind Granny Takes A Trip, the Kings Road store that was a magnet for rock’s glitterati in the late 60s. •⁠ ⁠Sheila Cohen, the first queen of cool; she invented the whole idea of vintage •⁠ ⁠Nige

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News, rants, theories, stories and assorted old hokum which this week stumbles into …   … Kate Bush, Thunderbirds, Tim Buckley, the Blind Boys of Alabama … the magical bass adventures of Danny Thompson (and the time he headlined over the Beatles)   … how Claudia Cardinale wound up on the sleeve of Blonde On Blonde   …

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We’ve always liked Thea Gilmore who once crossed America with Joan Baez in a pre-Election campaign tour and has released 21 albums (“I’ve got musical ADHD!)”. She looks back here at the first shows she ever saw and played which involves …     … a deep dive into Jake Thackray – “Last Will And Testament still makes me cr

26 min
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