Word In Your Ear

Matt Johnson’s life story has been mapped out as one long Q&A conversation from meetings with old friend, fan and BFI director Jason Wood. ‘Cognitive Dissident’ traces his trajectory from the East End to Soho to the beloved albums he made with a series of super-groups and his 2021 comeback. He looks back here at … … his earliest musical memories – Donovan, the Move, the Crazy World of Arthur Brown … the old East End and the Two Puddings pub run by his parents, “full of ghosts”, Bobby Moore, Francis Bacon and the Krays … his Uncle Kenny promoting the Who, the Kinks and Jerry Lee Lewis … “Get yourself on a sunbed!” and other advice from George Michael ... what he learnt at De Wolfe Music, aged 15, in the red-light Soho of the late ‘70s … legendary manager Stevo signing the band’s CBS contract at midnight in Trafalgar Square … “cigarettes, coffee, warm analogue equipment”: the Proustian scent of old studios … his NME ad recruiting The The members via the Residents, the Velvet Underground, Syd Barrett and Throbbing Gristle … being part of “the Long Mack Brigade” with Cabaret Voltaire, This Heat, Wire and the Gang of Four … Leonard Cohen’s premonition of the internet … the Albert Hall: “like a tennis player playing Wimbledon” … the genius of Hank Williams … and his 2018 comeback, “like reunion of old army buddies” Order ‘Cognitive Dissident’ here: https://omnibuspress.com/products/cognitive-dissident?_pos=1&_psq=cognitive+dissi&_ss=e&_v=1.0Help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear

When he was 19, New Yorker Brian Cullman covered the London music scene for Crawdaddy, landing at the birth of folk-rock and the singer-songwriter boom and watching its leading lights from unimaginably close quarters - Sandy Denny, Nick Drake, John Martyn among them. He even played on the same bill as Drake at Les Cousins club, all this recorded in his book ‘How To Prepare for the Past: Travels in Music and Time’. He talks to us here about that golden age and the American stars he met later, stopping off at … … Ed Sullivan at the shoe-shine: “in six months the Beatles will be lucky to be playing a bowling alley!” … Nick Drake in the same clothes he wore on the cover of Five Leaves Left … Sandy Denny: “She knew she was extraordinary but didn’t know if she was any good” … Jackson Browne, onstage from the age of 12 … being hired by rock encyclopaedist Lillian Roxon, “my fairy godmother” … Tim Hardin making Bird On A Wire, “so wasted they followed him round the room with a microphone” ... and “14 hotdogs”? The cavernous appetite of Big Joe Turner. Order ‘How To Prepare for the Past’ here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Prepare-Past-Travels-Music/dp/B0FTS8ZPTW Or here: https://www.zebooks.com/books/how-to-prepare-for-the-pastHelp us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear

Whooping, whistling, punching the air, standing on the arm-rests and generally adding our voice to the sound of the crowd this week involves … … the creepy way Google eavesdrops our conversations … the cleverly positioned “secret” on McCartney’s new album … why a knackered piano made Keith Jarrett’s Cologne Concert a success … Daryl Hannah, Mick McCarthy, Ray Manzarek: people who hated the way they were played in biopics … Pectoralz? The Rain? Tony Flow and the Miraculously Majestic Masters of Mayhem? Abandoned band names moratorium … how movies are still revolve around white-hat heroes and black-hat villains … “Festival Seating” and the days when suffering was part of the entertainment … why Zappa thought bands exploited live audiences … “Jackson Browne In Concert”: when going to gigs was like going to the movies … plus Blink 182, Big Audio Dynamite and the days when the Marquee had two front rows of plastic seating.Help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear

Paul Gorman, author and curator, has put together fascinating maps of the London haunts of Bowie and the Stones and just published one about the Clash built around key locations in the network that formed them and helped them to flourish. It’s a beautiful thing: buy one and take the walking tour! He talks to us here about … … how an Agit-Prop alternative West London emerged with links to Oz, IT and San Francisco counter-culture … kindred spirits meeting in Rock On, Compendium Books and the dole office in Lisson Grove … how their artwork and black and white photos linked them to the past .. the days when corrugated iron and fly-posters were part of the London vernacular … Guns On The Roof: how the band and press ramped up an element of danger ... the art school background that gave them control of their visuals … “Big Audio Dynamite was the band the Clash could have been!” … Nick Lowe’ theory that everyone is either funny or not funny: “The Clash? Not funny” … Kosmo Vinyl’s attempt to get their triple album released for the price of a single … their connections to the Slits, Bernie Rhodes, Patti Smith, Pennie Smith, Hawkwind and Heathcote Williams …and the moving story of Joe and Mick’s last meeting. Order the Clash map here: https://www.herblester.com/products/london-calling-the-clash-in-the-capital Paul’s Slits walking tour here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/slits-are-girls-walking-tour-with-paul-gorman-tickets-1985048002010Help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear

A milky tea, a jam sponge and this week’s news served on a tin tray with a steam train painted on it points our very English conversation towards the following … … what connects the Monkees and a British Prime Minister? … when are you too old for Indie? … A Certain Je Ne Sais Quoi? A Bar on The Piccolo Marina? Noel Coward or Neil Tennant? … the Move, the Streets, the Kinks, ELO, Ian Dury, Anthony Newley, the Jam, Herman’s Hermits, Cat Stevens, Arctic Monkeys and other acts with a sense of Englishness … Girl in the Thunderbolt Suit: when Marc Bolan went science fiction … how London Zoo could have put the tin lid on the Beatles … the daft story of Randy Scouse Git … how Michael Caine cooked up the name Harry Palmer ... the most English pronunciation of a songword ever … Black Crowes, Byrds and the allure of misspelling … Roxy, 10cc, the Hollies, Manfred Mann, Human League and other original line-ups we want to reform … plus Angine de Poitrine, Kaleidoscope rebooted by Jimmy Page and birthday guest Jonny Wren.Help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear

Neil Tennant co-wrote a musical at Primary School and soon decided that “learning other people’s songs was hard work compared with making up your own”. He’s chosen some from the Pet Shop Boys’ 40-year catalogue, hits and obscurities, in ‘One Hundred Lyrics and a Poem’, just out in paperback, and added fascinating notes about their context and composition. This very funny and revealing conversation lands on the following … ... the first song he ever wrote … auditioning for Rocket Records in 1975 … does songwriting have rules?  … how Chris Lowe tamed his inner “musical snob” … rap, Brecht-Weill, Betjeman, Noel Coward, My Fair Lady and the art of “speak-singing” … the decades of lyrics stored in our brains … the Songwriting Bootcamp that produced What Have I Done To Deserve This? … the essence of melancholy (and the chord that expresses it) … “the sound of words is often more important than the sense” … whether Dylan deserved the Nobel Prize for Literature … West End Girls and whether to rap in English or American … the writing of King's Cross, Cricket Wife, Odd Man Out and I Made My Excuses And Left … “Robert Maxwell stole my pension!” … and the “geology of my life” in diaries that one day might make a memoir. Order ‘One Hundred Lyrics And a Poem’ here: https://www.faber.co.uk/product/9780571397891-one-hundred-lyrics-and-a-poem/ And ‘Pet Shop Boys: Volume’ here: https://shop.petshopboys.co.uk/gb/pet-shop-boys-volume/9780500027479.htmlHelp us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear

At the age of four, Steve Nieve drew pictures of piano keys and pretended to play them. He joined Elvis Costello & the Attractions when he was 19, the start of a life that involves having to find a flight case for a Steinway Grand. He talks to us here from his Paris apartment about Stiff package tours, recording remotely, his upcoming shows with the French singer Kessada and … … being a teenager as fond of Stravinsky as Alice Cooper and the Carpenters … playing in a mid-‘70s Top Forty covers band … the ad for a “rockin’ pop combo” that changed his life … touring with Costello and Ian Dury and how he got his stage name … playing the Thunderbirds theme as a chat show bandleader on the Last Resort … a giant Klavins piano “that has stairs leading up the seat” … working on Morrissey’s Kill Uncle … the 40,000 audience that watched his online Lockdown shows … unreliable stage pianos and the story of Keith Jarrett’s Köln Concert. Tickets here: https://www.tickettailor.com/events/westhampsteadartsclub/2059256 The “About Love” album: https://music.apple.com/gb/album/about-love/1834791707 Steve’s new album: https://stevenieve.hearnow.com/piano-night-2026 Steve’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/steveprofessornieve/ Kessada’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamkessada/ www.stevenieve.comwww.kessada.comHelp us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear

Watering the scented hedgerows of news to see if any green shoots appear. And they do, in the form of … … the most effective protest song ever written … the commendable box-ticking life of Country Joe McDonald … the Timothée Chalamet ding-dong: is it still safe to voice an opinion? … Harry Styles’ 67 dates in just 7 locations: how ‘Destination gigs’ throttle the competition … was Wings a worse name than the Beatles? And McCartney as a shepherd: discuss … what makes a song work as a football chant? ... the most unusual things we've heard sung by crowds …. Stormfront, Gothic Serpent, Midnight Hammer, Rolling Thunder … album title or US military campaign? … why we love improv theatre … when Champion Jack Dupree lived in Halifax and Kid Creole in Rotherham … plus barrelhouse blues piano, ‘inflicting’ music on people and birthday guest Avi Chaudhuri & rock music as community singing.Help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear

Pointing the scanner of inquiry at the baggage carousel of news to see what gets the lights flashing, which this week includes … … we know what’s making Morrissey miserable … bands that can get a whole stadium singing … the rock star who misses the music press most … “a Likely Lads for the rave generation”, anyone? … the speed at which news now travels … Loudon Wainwright and Richard Thompson, Ben Sidran and Boz Scaggs, Paul Whitehouse and Bob Mortimer, Steve Martin and Martin Short … in praise of inseparable old pals! … Anfield Rap (Red Machine in Full Effect)! Lift it High (All About Belief)! Whatever happened to football singles? … I Started Out with Nothin and I Still Got Most of It Left, Musta Notta Gotta Lotta, Trouble Over Bridgewater: albums you bought because you liked the title … “English radio stations won’t play new music!” Really? Plus birthday guest Adrian Ainsworth on the Sensual World, Us, Monster, the Rhythm of the Saints and other great experimental sequels to big-selling albums.Help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear