Steve Diggle met Pete Shelley when the Pistols played Manchester in 1976 and the Diggle-fronted Buzzcocks are now on a world tour that began in Mexico and takes in North and South America, Europe and Australasia before winding up at the 100 Club where they played the Punk Festival 48 years ago – “we’ve come full circle”. He looks back here at the first shows he saw and played himself and talks about Silverhead, Status Quo, Leo Sayer dressed as a clown, George Best, the Groundhogs, The History...

This week’s theories, rants, ruminations, recollections, weak gags and free and frank exchanges of view alight upon the following …      … is pop music now all about identity?   …. the recording of the Animals’ House of the Rising Sun and other apocryphal tales.   … has any act been as ubiquitous since Frankie Goes to Hollywood in 1984?   … or has anyone inspired a greater level of personal devotion than Taylor Swift?   … Peter Green, a shotgun and his accountant.   … books bought but never...

File this under ‘right place, right time’. Harold Bronson was a teenager in mid-60’s Los Angeles and saw every act imaginable. Then wrote for the Daily Bruin and Rolling Stone and interviewed everyone that interested him. Then managed a music store and co-founded Rhino Records, pretty much inventing the idea of the top-end reissue – “Sooner or later everyone ends up in a box.” All of this is in his memoir, ‘Time Has Come Today: Rock and Roll Diaries 1967 – 2007’, and many of its cast of...

With Mark Ellen in foreign parts David Hepworth and Alex Gold light cigars, pass the port in the correct direction and discuss….. …..the fact that there is only one way to play a Beatles song and that is the way the Beatles did it. …..the chances that Taylor Swift is reaching her imperial phase and nobody is prepared to tell her what she really needs to hear. ….the very good reason that all contemporary pop records do literally sound the same. …the 50th anniversary of Richard and Linda...

We lobbed the feathered arrows of enquiry at the rock and roll dartboard this week and these got the highest scores …   … rock stars v the new league of the Super-Rich.   … package tours of the mid-‘60s – eight acts, an interval, a compere plus God Save the Queen.   … ‘Hits, Flops and Other Illusions’ by Edward Zwick and the fantastic tale about arrogance, money-squandering and Julia Roberts at the Halcyon Hotel. ... pop music used to be about persuading people to cut loose; now it’s about...

Neil’s an old friend from our days back at Smash Hits in the early ‘80s. The first Pet Shop Boys demos were played on the office tape machine, though he was a bit self-conscious about “the one with the rap on it”. He’s always had a journalistic capacity for story-telling, remembering everything in famously entertaining detail, and we had so much material from this reunion we turned it into a two-part podcast. Here’s a taste of what you’ll find in this second half ...   … “every group has to...

Richard Thompson first appeared onstage aged 14 playing Beatles covers in a school group “so bad we were pelted with pennies”. Sixty years later his range of operations includes touring solo and with his band, occasional reunions with Fairport Convention, residencies on Adriatic cruise ships and running a Guitar Camp in the Catskill Mountains (along with his sons and grandson). Much has he seen and learned about live entertainment along the way and he talks to us here from his home on the...

Neil’s an old friend from our days back at Smash Hits in the early ‘80s. The first Pet Shop Boys demos were played on the office tape machine, though he was a bit self-conscious about “the one with the rap on it”, and he’s one of the few people who’s seen the music press from every angle - as a reader in the ‘70s, as a writer and interviewer and as a musician on its front covers. We had so much great material from this wide-ranging conversation that we’ve turned it into a two-part podcast....

We lobbed the cracked wooden ball of enquiry at the rock and roll coconut shy this week and a few choice items dropped off their perch, among them … … was Kate Bush ‘the Queen of Prog’?   … ELP, Black Sabbath and Deep Purple playing to 350,000 people on a Speedway track.   … the three things that sparked the Abba revival.   … the Further Adventures of Desmond and Molly Jones, Mean Mr Mustard, Polythene Pam, Father McKenzie, Rocky Raccoon, Maxwell Edison, Rose and Valerie, Sweet Loretta...

We’ve applied our celebrated sheep/goats separation technique to the rock and roll pasture and shepherded the following into this week’s pod …   … Beyoncé and why it’s hard to connect with songs written by committee.   … are we too old for biopics?   … Marvel films, the Arctic Monkeys and other things you either love or avoid.     … reviewing Human Touch and Lucky Town in a high-security studio (and how you can only tell if an album’s any good if you’ve lived with it for two months).   … why...

Paul Cook’s post-Pistols band the Professionals were once, rather surprisingly, on the cover of Smash Hits - “the pinnacle of our success!” – and they’re including the 100 Club on their upcoming tour, the location of another career highlight. He talks to us here about how the first time he played live was also the Pistols’ first appearance (Saint Martin’s College of Art - “utter chaos”), how their old Denmark Street rehearsal room is now an AirBnB (Rotten’s cartoons still on the wall), old...

exas are touring in the autumn and she talks to us here about what’s required to make it all look easy, a conversation that includes …    … why working in a Glaswegian hair salon was the perfect preparation for pop stardom.   … the difference between the first second onstage and everything that follows.    … the advantage of being a singer with an instrument.     … seeing Jim Kerr in his mother’s blouse at Tiffany’s in Glasgow when she was 15.   … how Dusty Springfield remembered...

The all-seeing telescope of truth scanned this week’s rock and roll heavens and noticed a few patterns emerge, among them …   … the real story of the writing of Layla and who nicked what from where. And who didn’t get paid.   … why Sally Grossman was on the cover of Bringing It All Back Home.     … album sleeves with overflowing ashtrays that screamed ‘welcome to my bohemian world!’ – Soft Machine’s Third, Man’s Rhinos, Winos + Lunatics, Back Street Crawler …     … album sleeves that said...

Phil Manzanera – who thought “every day in the band felt like Christmas” – has just published his memoir, Revolución to Roxy, and talked to us about it in front of a rammed and captivated audience at London’s 21Soho, an evening so full of detail, intrigue and revelation we’re putting it out as two podcasts. This is the second. He lifts the bonnet of the Roxy Music “art collective” in its various line-ups and shows you how the engine worked and why the idea of Eno onstage was “frightening”. He...

Phil Manzanera – whose relatives include a Colombian pirate, a spy and an Italian opera musician - has just published his memoir, Revolución to Roxy, and talked to us about it in front of a packed and enthralled house at London’s 21Soho, a life so fascinating, detailed and colourful we’re releasing the conversation as a two-part podcast. Here’s Part One which looks back at an exotic childhood in Hawaii, Caracas and Cuba – with first-hand memories of Castro’s revolution in 1959 – and then his...

Fish has announced a Farewell Tour in 2025. “I’ve been there, done that and sold the t-shirt.” He’s moving to a croft on a remote Scottish island with nesting eagles, a flock of sheep named after the Hibernian FC team of 1972 and part-ownership of what’s just been voted “the best beach in the world”. Getting there is like the journey in Brigadoon. This covers a wide range of bases, among them …   … how the fall of the Berlin Wall changed the tour circuit.     … his first gig as “a big,...

Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me) was a slow-paced, vicious dirge about the band members who forsook and betrayed him which magically evolved into what appeared to be an optimistic love song, a radio staple that never stopped selling. David and Mark remembered its transformation. Subscribe to Word In Your Ear on Patreon for early - and ad-free - access to all of our content, plus a whole load more!: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See...

Various items set off the alarm in the rock and roll bag-check this week and were hauled back for closer inspection, among them …   … when did records first try to sound like the past?   … why Karl Wallinger and Robbie Williams fell out over She’s the One.   ... how Marillion and Chuck D changed the digital landscape.   … the only word for the sound of Free is “lascivious”.   … Blood on the Tracks, Here My Dear, Shoot Out The Lights, Tapestry, Tunnel of Love and other accounts of marital...

Stephen Fall wrote reviews of his records, one a day, to make him a better listener. A decade later he published them in a book so colossal that we drop it on a desk to prove it’s passed the Boff Test. ‘Reviewing My Record Collection: 3,333 Albums from A to Zuma’ is a laudable labour of love, records he bought years ago and revisited, records he found in charity shops and took a punt on, records with reputations, records that deserve “a mauling”, records he wants the world to hear, records...

Arthur Brown – enduring psychedelic godfather – is out on tour again 57 years after first performing Fire in a flaming metal crown. He’s nearly 82. This is the most old-school podcast we’ve ever done, talk of seeing Salvador Dali in his audience in a Paris nightclub, jazz bands on the back of trucks, his grandmother’s hotel being bombed in WW2, the birth of Flower Power, gigs at the UFO club, Palaeolithic art, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, panicked security personnel with fire blankets...

Suzi Ronson was working in a hairdressers in Beckenham in 1970 when a Mrs Jones dropped in for a shampoo and set talking gaily about her son, “an artistic boy who plays guitar and piano”. The same son who’d had a hit with Space Oddity and occasionally drifted down the High Road in a dress. Within weeks she’d become the first rock stylist, transforming Bowie’s hair, image and stage clothes and launching him in the direction of Ziggy Stardust and an international audience. She was a key part of...

Nutritious items on the rock and roll tasting menu this week include …   … the curious life of Tom Verlaine, his grocery cart and his 50,000 books.     … was March 9 1984 the worst week ever for the British album charts?   … what all great records have in common.   … Yesterday’s news today! ‘Soundies’ at the cinema and the Scopitone colour video jukebox.   … why A Hard Day’s Night was the greatest advert for the magical qualities of the Beatles and the scene that was the blueprint for the pop...

Caught in the piercing super-trouper of perusal this week …   ... the BRITS 2024, a howling embarrassment.   … Medieval Beatles! She Came In Through the Privy Window, Everybody’s Got Something To Hide Except Me And My Kestrel, Comely Rita, I’m Happy Just To Joust With You …   … the wisdom of Tony Hancock.   … The Last Dinner Party and other ‘art concepts’.   … the Pattie Boyd/George Harrison/Eric Clapton love triangle.   … the days when “forming a band was a conspiracy against the tedium of...