Word In Your Ear

The blistering heat of 1976 burnt various things onto the memory – standpipes, strikes, Entebbe, ‘Confessions’ movies, Jeremy Thorpe – but most of all the records that became its soundtrack, some of them revolutionary, others begging for extinction. John L Williams captures the moment in ‘Heatwave: the Summer of 1976, Britain at Boiling Point’ and a paints of picture of a country on the brink of a vast pop-cultural shift. We talk to him here about …

… violence at gigs and football and on Derek & Clive albums

… dumb people pretending to be clever (prog rock) and clever people pretending to be dumb (Ramones)

… the rise of Joan Armatrading in the days before ‘identity’ marketing

… how ‘funny’ t-shirts were the memes of their day

… when Tom Robinson saw the future in Scarborough

… “mainstream culture gave you things to both love and hate”

... how Rock Follies featured an imaginary Blitz Club where people danced in military uniforms

… Andy Summers (with Kevin Ayers) and Stewart Copeland (Curved Air) on the same bill a year before the Police

… why anyone with a Sensational Alex Harvey Band scarf got a wide berth

… Time Out’s headline: "It's the Buzz, Cock!"

… Tom Waits, aged 25, unconvincing hobo-hipster

… and Kate & Anna McGarrigle, Emmanuelle and the lowest point of the Radio One Roadshow.

Order copies of ‘Heatwave’ here: https://tinyurl.com/2kudc6xr
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Nige Tassell fell in love with the literary allusions of Prefab Sprout when at school and his new book ‘Truly Gifted Kids’ tells their unique and inscrutable story – and involves some delightfully off-road “deerstalker” investigation. You’ll find self-sabotage, square pegs in round holes, the eternal pressure to have hits, and a devoted portrait of ringmaster Paddy McAloon that leaves you convinced there’s never been anyone quite like him before or since. This sparks off in a million directions, these among them …

… the lure of bands who'd clearly been to the library and were unlikely to have a huge hit

... Paddy’s stoic defence of their name

… his distaste for “diary songwriting” of Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen

… Jesse James, Elvis, Hey Manhattan: the obsession with the romance of America

… the archive of unrecorded songs (one box labelled ‘For Rod Stewart’)

… how the success of The King Of Rock ‘N’ Roll came to haunt them

… the inconceivable moment they appeared on the National Lottery with Bob Monkhouse and Mystic Meg

… pop tribalism on the school bus

… the dreadful circumstance that lead to I Trawl the Megahertz

… Paddy’s visual transformation from tousled pop star to hermetic semi-reclusive Gandalf

… and the fate of the Steve McQueen motorbike.

Order ‘Truly Gifted Kids’ here …
https://linktr.ee/newmodern_books?lt_utm_source=lt_share_link#566128608.
Help us to keep The Longest Continuous Conversation In Rock'n'Roll going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear
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Tapping the barometer of news to see what’s blistering or stormy, which this week includes …

… “The Man can’t bust our music!”: the crimes and misdemeanours of Clive Davis

… the single biggest change in our lifetimes

... when did musicians become ‘artists’?

… Johnny Marr’s guitar habit

… unlimited cash and what we’d spend it on

… Madonna smoking at Paris Fashion Week hoping someone would try to stop her

… why Dave doesn’t own any Arista records

… which five Paul Simon songs became film titles?

… a Prime Minister who loves ‘Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You’ by Big Thief!

… 56 year-old takes annual Dark Side of the Moon test: “and I still don’t like it!”

… are there more registered songwriters or lorry drivers?

Plus the biopic boom and birthday guest Andrew Stocks has a senior moment.
Help us to keep The Longest Continuous Conversation In Rock'n'Roll going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear
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Seven hundred fans have contributed to ‘Gary Numan: A People’s History’, a lavishly published compendium of memories of discovering, hearing and watching him over the 50 years he’s been making music. As you might imagine, he’s immensely touched, not least because – in this honest and extremely modest conversation – he feels his roller-coaster career was down to “perseverance not God-given talent” and that if he hadn’t come along, that devotional space in his fans’ lives would have been filled by someone else. He talks to us here from his home in Los Angeles and touches on …

… the extent of what music can mean to people

… how careers pan out – “huge highs then you fall off a cliff for a while”

… ‘I made though perseverance more than God-given talent’

… meetings with upstarts and superstars

… why he doesn’t listen to new music

… ‘Don’t call me, the Gothfather!’

… the press he got in the early ‘80s “that made fans hide their Gary Numan albums”

… how hip-hop and Afrika Bambaataa absorbed his music

… ‘I’m not unique, I simply supply a service”

... and having your Gary Numan tattoo sketched for you … by Gary Numan!

Order copies of ‘Gary Numan: A People’s History’ here: https://burningshed.com/richard-bowes_gary-numan-a-peoples-history_book
Help us to keep The Longest Continuous Conversation In Rock'n'Roll going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear
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David Gray went through the roof with his White Ladder album in 2000 and he’s toured and recorded ever since, ending this summer’s loop at Latitude. He talks to us here about the rigours of seeing bands when you lived in rural Wales and the hilarious, hard-won lessons of the first gigs he played himself and every possible shade of crowd reaction. It’s an absolute whirlwind from start to finish and features ...

... playing weddings, clubs, festivals and a Welsh village regatta

… the role of music in the construction of your character

… the turning point: “I arrived onstage to more applause than I’d ever had when leaving”

… the time gave Morrissey his string of beads

… the emotional architecture of live performance and how Elvis programmed his shows

… vivid memories of seeing the Cult (“bloody nose”), the Mission (“headbutted”) and the Stranglers (“we left terrified”)

… running from stage to stage at Glastonbury in ‘86 and the insular genius of the Cure

… his Liverpool punk band in their perishing “Joycean” flat

… the unbeatable sound of a crowd singing one of your songs

… Nick Drake’s frail sensibility and the value of growing a hard skin.

David Gray tickets here: davidgray.com

David Gray’s new album Nightjar, a companion to his 2005 No.1 record Life in Slow Motion, is out now via Bella Figura.
Help us to keep The Longest Continuous Conversation In Rock'n'Roll going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.