Word In Your Ear

Updated: 03 Sep 2025 • 1015 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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Immortalised by Hendrix, ‘Hey Joe’ had its roots in 18th century murder ballads, ‘60s folk and rock clubs before the world got to hear it. Jason Schneider unravels its twisted genesis in ‘That Gun In Your Hand’, and talks to us here about the miracles that allowed it to happen and the sad fate of Billy Roberts, the man

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Maddy Prior – folk royalty, an absolute hero of ours – is touring with Steeleye Span again this autumn 66 years after they started, a life someone should make into a movie. She talks to us here about her undimmed love of live performance and …     … when the height of your ambition is a £3 ticket to Blackpool Pleasure

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Our pencil-chewing, critical assessment of this week’s news gets mainly * and *** reviews, among them …   …. Sting v Summers & Copeland over Every Breath You Take, the goose that laid the golden egg   … what John Lennon would have thought about the ‘cancelled’ track on Some Time In New York City   … when did “criticall

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Debsey Wykes was in Dolly Mixture, one of the very few all-girl groups in post-punk London, a time when bands with charisma won the battle for attention and you promoted singles on the back of a truck. Her memoir Teenage Daydream perfectly captures a slice of late ‘70s life, the thrill of playing the pub circuit and tr

37 min
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A tub-thumping, snare-cracking, cymbal-simmering, two-way backbeat to this week’s rock and roll news, the on-beats including …   … “Trauma-bonding?” Why being ‘a fan’ is like a love affair   … Ian Brown, Morrissey, Siouxsie, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison … why singers who don’t play an instrument are a different species  

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How can you not love the Divine Comedy whose inspirations include Tom Lehrer and “Landfill Indie”? And Neil Hannon wrote music for Wonka, Father Ted and the IT Crowd. There’s a new album, Rainy Sunday Afternoon, and a tour in October and all bases are covered in this conversation from Kildare, these among them …    … s

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