The Netflix series of David Nicholls’ worldwide hit novel One Day was Top Ten in 89 countries and he’s been heavily involved in its soundtrack album, a process as enjoyable, he says, as devising the compilation tape the fictional Emma made for Dexter in 1989 featuring the Smiths, Prefab Sprout and Public Enemy. We talk to him here about the glorious pitfalls of using pop music to broadcast your personality. All bases covered, from the Geoff Love Orchestra to Joy Orbison, along with …   … prog...

Old friend of the podcast, Nick Lowe has just released his 15th solo album, Indoor Safari, and he’s about to tour with Los Straitjackets. This absorbing conversation looks back at 60 years onstage and takes in the following …   … the secret of a long career.   … why he resolved “not to get that famous again”.   … touring Germany aged 15 in Brinsley Schwarz’s dad’s Dormobile.   … the Small Faces at the village hall in Hornchurch.   … to the Six Bells for seven pints with “photographer for all...

Louis Armstrong, Wild Man Fischer, Irving Berlin and Lucinda Williams all started out as buskers and Cary Baker’s ‘Down On The Corner’ traces the romance and influence of street players from Ancient Rome via Chicago’s Maxwell Street to Elvis Costello outside the CBS conference and beyond. Cary, David and Mark chuck coins in the conversational hat, among them …   … the turban and rollerblades stagewear of Harry Perry aka “the Skating Sikh”. … Blind Arvella Gray who took up busking because of a...

We applied dynamic pricing to this week’s news and various stories trebled in value, among them …    … further adventures in the Oasis ticket fiasco.   … the greatest band name ever.   … the only rock star born under Adolf Hitler.   … Marianne Faithfull? Ian Anderson? Elvis Costello? Musicians you’d rather hear talk than play.   … rock stars telling jokes.   … “if it isn’t hard to get it’s not worth having.”   … is hype generated from above or below?   ... the return of old-school analogue:...

David’s seventh book in his ‘orange series’ is just out and you’re guaranteed to love it. He and Mark discussed ‘Hope I Get Old Before I Die’ at a sold-out launch event at Waterstones in Piccadilly on the evening of September 3, recorded here. Among the highlights you’ll find …   … the rock career as a three-act play.   … the tour that started the Age Of Spectacle.   … why Live Aid was the dawn of pop nostalgia.   … the rock star who retired from retirement.   … Woodstock – “the Somme with...

David, Mark and our token bucket-hatted parka monkey Alex tackle the return of Oasis, its grip on the public imagination and why they’re the biggest band of the last 30 years, which includes …     … the Gallaghers’ mixed fortunes since 2009.    … who won the battle of the underdogs.   … “Noel has a thousand buttons, Liam has a thousand fingers”.   … why the ‘90s was just like the ‘60s, a golden age of British pop culture.     … no whizz-bangs required, no props, no choreography, no lasers, no...

In a concerted effort to put the world to rights, David and Mark ruminate upon the following … … Kylie and the Wiggles? Canned Heat and the Chipmunks? Real or invented pop star/childrens’ entertainer collaborations. .. the charmed life of Greg Kihn. … will the BBC have any archive left if it keeps cancelling presenters? … why Inside Llewyn Davis works and so many other biopics fail. … the full story of the statement Springsteen made with the Born To Run cover shoot. … Stewart Lee’s...

Rock journalism as an occupation is rapidly heading in the direction of the watch-mender or lamplighter so Chris Charlesworth’s account of life at the Melody Maker in the ‘70s is already starting to feel like an historic document. ‘Just Backdated’ covers a time when the rock press set the agenda, sold over half a million copies a week and was courted by attention-seeking musicians of every rank, a lost world remembered in this conversation with Mark Ellen which includes …   … the unwritten...

With David asleep on a French sun-lounger beneath a copy of Summer Lightning, Alex and Mark pour themselves a cold drink and consider …   … the great ska floor-fillers.   … taking kids to rock concerts.   … the fate of all bands: “as musicianship improves, vocals decline”.   … left-field Beatles songs reworked as nursery rhymes.   … why 2-Tone had pop’s “triple threat” (and the genius of Mike Barson).   … of the five big acts with all original members intact, only one should reform.   … how...

Love’s official biographer John Einarson tells David Hepworth the star-crossed tale of the band who made the least psychedelic album of the psychedelic era. Their conversation takes in: ….Lee’s growing up between Memphis and L.A., dealing with the problems of looking more like Johnny Mathis than Otis Redding. ….how being indulged as a youngster by his family made him a tyrant as a band leader. ….growing up with a prodigious musical talent but without the mastery of a single...

As Mark Ellen goes shrimping at Frinton David Hepworth and Alex Gold links hands across the Atlantic to discuss: ….why a quick turn around Mount Hood in a Cessna should never be confused with pleasure ….why all the highly-rated albums are actually over-rated. ….why Timothee Chalamet has no hope of being able to capture more than one facet of Bob Dylan ….the name of the only music-related location in the whole of Oxford Street which has managed to survive the great hollowing-out ….why there...

A small Pastis, a game of boules and a conversation putting the rock and roll world to rights, which this week includes …   … why Debbie Harry and Mick Jagger worked so well on the small screen.   … Elvin Pelvin on the Bilko Show and how Elvis was modelled on Tony Curtis.   … An American Werewolf In London, The Birds, Invasion of the Bodysnatchers, Don’t Look Now, Nightmare On Elm Street and other old movies being rebooted.   … how Patti Smith based an entire career on looking like Keith...

Rockfield is a converted farmhouse in the Welsh countryside where, for over 50 years, bands have lived while recording. In the ‘70s Tiffany Murray’s mum was the in-house cook, filling Motorhead to the brim with boeuf bourguignon and Black Sabbath with salmon en croute. Her touching memoir My Family And Other Rock Stars – hailed as “a rock and roll Cider With Rosie” – sees a succession of visiting bands though the wide eyes of a child and in a wholly new light - Freddie Mercury is the man who...

Mark Blake calls Dreams: the Many Lives of Fleetwood Mac a “mosaic biography”, their almost six-decade saga presented as a series of enthralling short stories with titles like ‘Mick Fleetwood’s Great Epiphany’ and ‘Rumours: A Doomed Romance in Six Acts’. It opens in fact with a “cast of characters”, the 18 one-time members, as if dramatis personae in a play, a play that gets more outlandish and dumbfounding with every new discovery and much of it based on his interviews and meetings with most...

Beloved Canadian singer-songwriter Ron Sexsmith, old pal of the pod, is touring the UK in November, two of the nights at the Palladium, and looks back here at the first shows he saw and played himself. Which delights include …   … what you learn playing Canadian bars aged 16.   … seeing Elton John in a 75,000-seater stadium when he was 12.   … early memories of the Kinks and the Who.   … why every gig is “a mini-battle”.   … Bob Dylan’s courage to do what the crowd don’t expect.   … original...

Passing the baton of discourse on the rock and roll racetrack, our Olympian hosts sprint in the following direction …   … watching Toumani Diabaté play in the pitch-black Malian night.   … Laurel Canyon, the Brain Damage Club and the great fire of ‘79.   … the Kinks in Fortis Green Road, the Beatles in Chiswick House and other alternative London rock landmarks.   … is Cerrone’s Supernature nicked from the Days Of Pearly Spencer?   … lower-level graduates from the John Mayall Academy – Jon...

Once again the ping-pong ball of conversation is batted across the rock and roll net and these are the scores on the doors …    … how to wreck the national anthem.   … cover versions that are better than the original.   … the genius of Bob Newhart - "nutty Walt", Abraham Lincoln and that gag about country music.   … virtue signalling in rock magazines.   … why we connect with pop stars on the slide.   … how Tainted Love went from the Northern Clubs to the top of the American charts via a...

There’s something romantic about glorious failure and Will nails it perfectly in ‘Street Level Superstar: A Year With Lawrence’. Over 40 years plagued by bad luck and self-sabotage with Felt, Denim and Mozart Estate, Lawrence has pursued fame and success while refusing to do what’s required to achieve them. Will spent 12 months wandering the streets of London with him to paint a fond, touching and extremely entertaining portrait of the worst-equipped pop star attempting a comeback, a man on a...

Employing controversial VAR technology, we re-examine various events on the rock and roll pitch and suggest a new perspective. Those key moments include …    … the “bucolic frolic” at Knebworth 50 years ago as seen from 100 yards away just past the burger van and featuring Tim Buckley, Alex Harvey, the Mahavishnu Orchestra, Van Morrison, the Doobie Brothers and the Allman Brothers Band. And a stark naked Jesus.   … when did the Age of Spectacle begin?   … how Two-Way Family Favourites helped...

Broadcaster and music writer Ann Powers lives in Nashville and grew up listening to Kate Bush and Blondie. The siren call of Blue sparked a life-long and deep-rooted devotion and her new book Travelling: On The Path Of Joni Mitchell takes a different tack from the standard biographies, mapping the context of the songs, the forces that drove her, the steel will it took to succeed and the love affairs that shaped her and her music. All discussed here. As is this ...  … the scale of your...

The first EPs appeared in the late ‘40s and ‘50s (Frank Sinatra, Elvis) hitting a magical sweet spot between the album and the single and they’ve cast a spell ever since, an exotic reminder that record labels are part of the packaged goods business. Music writer Corey duBrowa stumbled across one by Oingo Boingo in the original Licorice Pizza store in Long Beach, California, when he was 13 and began a lifelong collection that eventually led to ‘An Ideal For Living: a Celebration of the EP’, a...

The rock and roll ballot-box is stuffed with votes and the exit polls suggest how this week’s debate might play out. Along these lines …   … is there still such a thing as British music?   … John Lennon as a lavatory attendant.   … Pink Floyd’s miming lessons.   .. how Neil Finn cheered up the All Blacks.   … the staggering difference in the UK album charts in the weeks the last two Labour Prime Ministers were elected (1997 and 2024) - male British bands v international female solo acts.   …...

We’ve known Dylan since the days he was editing i-D, Arena and GQ and he’s been a regular on our podcasts talking about his books on Live Aid, the ‘80s, David Bowie and Wichita Lineman. And he’s finally written his memoir, These Foolish Things, full of insights and stories about glam rock, punk, the Blitz, four decades of the magazine world and the people he interviewed and shepherded into awards shows. You’ll hear the delightful clang of the odd dropped name here, along with …   … Shirley...

In which we hoof a few balls round the rock and roll pitch and try to stick some in the net. Extracts from the live match commentary include ….   … “Whipping Post!” “Paint it black, you devil!”: when did the audience become part of the show?   … the special, unrepeatable thing about Bill Evans At The Village Vanguard.   … GambleGate and the most we’ve ever bet on anything.   … why young musicians today are so good. And why most Americans could outplay the British.   … ‘60s Jamaican ska,...