Word In Your Ear

Martin Simpson got backstage when he was 15 and met Jimmy Reed and Big Joe Williams and it changed his life forever. He’s been on the folk circuit ever since, still at the top of his game and with the wealth of knowledge and experience reflected in this extremely entertaining podcast. His ‘Some Kind Of Jubilee’ album celebrates 50 years since his first record and he’s on tour in September. And talks to us here about … … his operatic Dad born in the 19th Century … the message carved with a knife on the door of the Bodmin Trad Music Club  … hearing Paul Robeson aged four and thinking “I want to make people cry for a living” … ‘60s folk circuit snobbery and its disdain for “foreign songs” … signing Big Joe Williams’ walking stick in a space between Bob Dylan and Joan Baez … memories of Alex Campbell, Matin Carthy, Dave & Jo Ann Kelly and “that swarthy bunch of lunatics from Hull, the Watersons” … the Nun & Ice Cream Cone, the Frog & Afterbirth: imaginary pub venues cooked up with June Tabor … being managed by Tony Secunda, “an extremely unpleasant human being” … “the only damage you can do to a folk song is to not sing it” … supporting Steeleye Span and the night cash rained from the heavens … Don’t Think Twice It’s All Right, These Days by Jackson Browne, Mississippi John Hurt and other songs that never let you down onstage  … second-lining at a New Orleans jazz funeral: “the slow drag and the racing return” … and how folk songs travel abroad and evolve.   Order copies of ‘Some Kind Of Jubilee’ here: https://martinsimpsonmusic.com/pre-order-the-new-album/ Martin Simpson tickets here: https://martinsimpsonmusic.com/

The Shadows were the strongest brand in British pop, adored and widely imitated. When they went out of fashion, no-one wanted them to change. Bob Stanley salutes their enormous influence and creation of the guitar hero and unravels their rapid post-Beatles decline in his superb new book, ‘The Shadows: the Definitive Story’. And talks to us here about …  … Hank and Bruce arriving in London aged 15 when the 2i’s coffee bar was a labour exchange and a social club … entering a talent contest won by a Malayan opera singer … the magic of cowboy culture transported to British suburbia and their four cartoonish stage names … meeting Jacques Tati at the Paris Olympia and being asked to write a song for his upcoming movie … the rapid post-Beatles crash – bow-ties, panto and Cliff announcing his Christianity … “being thrown through a mangle twice a night by Arthur Askey in Stockton-on-Tees is not why they joined the music business” … getting Hipgnosis to design their album sleeve while stuck playing Batley Variety Club … the return of instrumentals with Albatross and the Good, the Bad and the Ugly … when Hank was asked to join the Move .. the Swedish vogue for “barbed wire groups” … and Neil Young’s ‘From Hank to Hendrix’ – which everyone assumed was about Hank Williams. Order copies of Bob’s book here: https://tr.ee/rSilFTJwfO

Stuff, nonsense, the white heat of debate and yesterday’s news today! Which this week involves … … which of these didn’t host a TV chat show – Ian Botham, Charlotte Church, Lily Allen or Harold Wilson? … if you’d paid £102 to see two-thirds of the Fugees show up an hour late, wouldn’t you SCREAM for a refund? … Britain’s most rock’n’roll hotel and why the idea of “excess” seems purely American … Dave and Stephane Grappelli at the Sunset Marquis … Reversing Into Tomorrow! We Came, We Saw, We Left! The genius of Stiff Records, “the Motown of Bayswater”, and the oddballs and misfits they signed … “there are only two types of record demand: too little and too much” … “Artistic breakthrough, the first double B-side!” The single that started the Indie boom … and why naked ballet doesn’t work.

A sense of melancholy hangs over the music of songwriters whose lives were tragically short – Nick Drake, Jeff Buckley, Eva Cassidy, Judee Sill - and we’re left knowing very little about them. Jamie Fisher, writer and New York Times researcher, discovered Elliott Smith 12 years after he’d died and contacted 40 of his friends and fellow musicians to build a picture of him for her memoir Nobody Broke Your Heart. She looks back here at his background and ascent from the Portland club circuit to the Oscars, and touches on … … the emotional impact of first hearing his music walking round Central Park in Lockdown … “goofy, stubborn, wildly smart, addictively listenable” … early life in Omaha and Texas (and the telling tattoo on his arm) … the shy collegiate kid reading Dostoevsky who thought promotion was “distasteful” … how a singer-writer broke through in Portland during the Grunge boom … rejected stage-names - Johnny Panic, Elliott Stillwater-Rotter - and the pivotal moment when Steven became ‘Elliott’ .. his sense of humour – “a garbage truck passed him and he said, ‘there’s my ride!’” … the archive of unreleased recordings she’d heard … the Oscars appearance and signing to DreamWorks and Nirvana’s PR … the root of his eventual unhappiness … “he would have been more shielded if he’d been in a band” … and his expanding legacy and adoption by Gen-Z. Order ‘Nobody Broke Your Heart’ here: https://www.roughtrade.com/product/jamie-fisher/nobody-broke-your-heart-an-intimate-biography-of-elliott-smith

Michael Cragg’s devotion to all things Kylie once led him to Melbourne in search of the actual carousel horse she rode in a pop video. He got a tattoo a day later. Can’t Get You Out Of My Head is a funny and fondly detailed personal account of the risk-taking variety of her records, the mystery of her private life and the irresistible nature of her appeal, a girl who, were there a war on, would be painted on the tail fins of aircraft. He looks back here at … … her ‘90s reinvention by association – with Nick Cave, Michael Hutchence and Bobby Gillespie … how records about joy never get enough credit … wrestling back control after life with Stock Aitken & Waterman … the root of her appeal as a gay icon ... being vilified by the press for any public pronouncement … a capacity to charm her detractors when she meets them  … reciting I Should Be So Lucky at the Poetry Olympics alongside Patti Smith and Allen Ginsberg … a mixture of the ordinary and the exotic and the ‘Carry On’ sexuality of her videos … only Queen Elizabeth 11 has had more waxworks at Madame Tussauds … and Michael’s meeting with her – “I’m six foot eight, she’s five foot one” - and the resulting photo. Order copies of ‘Can’t Get You Out of My Head’ here: https://www.faber.co.uk/product/9780571392766-cant-get-you-out-of-my-head-in-search-of-kylie/

‘Sandy Denny: A People’s History’ has just been published, memories from fellow musicians, old friends, producers, writers, fans and admirers. Linda Thompson met her when they were both 16 and was devoted to her ‘til she died in 1978 – “she’s still with me, I talk to her all the time”. She looks back here at their lives in Soho bars, folk clubs and studios, the world they inhabited and the musicians they both knew. Among the many highlights … … meeting Sandy in 1966, onstage doing Jackson Frank’s You Never Wanted Me. “Eight million cigarettes a day but such breath control!” … why her singing and songwriting were unique … high times at the Colony Club with Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon - “famously grumpy” … “she didn’t put up with bullshit. Cross her and she’d deck you” … memories of Nick Drake – “spectral and gorgeous” … the repercussions of the Fairport car crash … memories of her family home in Wimbledon (on the cover of Unhalfbricking) … recording ad jingles for Ski Yoghurt and ‘flour so fine, it flows and it flows’ - £15 an hour, “a fortune” … making demos of Nick Drake songs with Elton John, “so full of Valium I had to be held up to the mic”   … sharing a flat with Tim Buckley in Holland Park … “anyone who can bear to listen to their own records must be no bloody good” … and the script Nick Hornby started about the life of Richard and Linda Thompson. Order ‘Sandy Denny: A People’s History’ here: https://burningshed.com/georgia-rose-lucas_sandy-denny-a-peoples-history_book

The news slapped on the conversational barbecue and served with a side of old hokum. This week’s mixed grill includes … … our favourite story in the whole of popular music! … Lisa Marie Presley & Michael Jackson, Neil Young & Daryl Hannah and other weird celebrity weddings … how Glen Hansard got hired for the Commitments … “Everybody has a plan ‘til they’re punched in the face” … Linda Thompson and the million reasons singers hate listening to their old albums … the fabulous life and times of Vicki Wickham in the days when 24 year-olds ran the business … Luke Combs, Nate Bargatze and the rising appeal of Mr Nice Guy … how David Bowie recorded … Mick Jagger’s only marriage … “Kingsley Amis Introduces Us To Pop Stars!” and other doomed TV ideas 

Tim Pope caught the video wave in 1981 and made hundreds of promotional clips, often three or four a week, edited at night and on-air days later. You’ll have seen them, singles for the Style Council, The The, Iggy Pop, Hall & Oates and many others. For 15 years he was the man to call – inventive, caffeinated, risk-loving, clubbable – and “nothing was too mad or stupid”. He celebrates that magic age of big budgets and creative freedom in his story-filled memoir ‘I Shoot Rock Stars’, just out, and looks back here at … … the video that made his reputation … MTV showing six of his clips in a row … the thrill of Bowie’s silhouette as he walked across the Rainbow stage in 1977: “there was so little footage back then, you’d rarely seen people move” … his teenage love of Dusty, ELP, King Crimson and Pink Floyd … shooting seven clips a fortnight and the one time a record label tried to interfere … Neil Young’s 2,000-acre Broken Arrow Ranch and the “burning fires of his eyes” … Iggy Pop singing I Wanna Be Your Dog in the John Snow pub in Soho … “German sausages, lumps of lamb, maggots, a whole party”: the Soft Cell clip that caused a walk-out ... “You’re a funny little arsehole!”: breaking the ice with Bowie … what he learnt from Mark Hollis of Talk Talk and spending time with his ashes. Order ‘I Shoot Rock Stars’ here: https://www.waterstones.com/book/i-shoot-rock-stars/tim-pope/9781035426959

Pauline Black was seen singing Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell songs in Coventry folk clubs and recruited by a local reggae band. Then converted to ska and joined the Selecter - back on tour this summer and with a box-set of live recordings, ‘The Selecter at the BBC’. She looks back here at … … their first gig with Madness for 47 years in Brighton – “very red fezzy!” … her Sliding Doors moment supporting Bert Jansch ... discovering the Pioneers, Prince Buster and the Skatalites through white skinheads in Coventry … the famous 2-Tone Brighton Beach photo of 1979 with the Specials and Madness … “there were three looks for a black girl singer back then – Tina Turner, the I-Threes Earth Mother … or invent something new. So I invented the Rude Girl” … seeing Pentangle playing the theme from ‘Take Three Girls’ in 1971 and then the MC5 and Arthur Brown with his “papier-mâché brain” … training as a bio-chemist and radiographer – “there isn’t an orifice I haven’t inspected” … the first Selecter gig – “flares, safari suits and me in pink spandex trousers like the girls from Chic” .. how Jerry Dammers created the cartoon 2-Tone look and the night radio played the first single … and “a black man with a gun and a stage invasion” on the BBC’s Pebble Mill. Order copies of ‘The Selecter At The BBC: The Complete Recordings 1979-1981’ here: https://theselecter.lnk.to/AtTheBBC Tickets here: https://theselecter.net/live-dates/