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 long-running beef with Ricky Gervais.

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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 rules of ‘70s rock journalism and its limitless access.

… the “homesick and slightly lost” John Lennon when living with May Pang.

… life at Melody Maker’s Fleet Street office and staff writer Max Jones’s fling with Billie Holiday.

… touring with Led Zeppelin alongside the 17 year-old Cameron Crowe (part of the inspiration for Almost Famous).

… “Beatles to reform?” and other coverline staples.

… the night Frank Zappa was thrown off the Rainbow stage – ‘people thought he’d been killed’.

… the first British interview with Steely Dan.

… Debbie Harry when she was still in the Stillettos and the day Blondie asked him to manage them.

... why the Bay City Rollers at an airport was “the nearest thing to a nightmare while being awake”.

… his time as MM’s West and East Coast correspondent aka “the best job in the world”.

Order ‘Just Backdated’ here:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Just-Backdated-Melody-Maker-Seventies/dp/1915858224

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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 “Tay-gating” became a thing.

… the secret life of Chris Ballew, former leader of minimal grunge trio the Presidents Of The United States of America.

… is the Jam a “young man’s concept”?

… the downside of “Cuddly Liam”.

… Taylor Swift, Ed Sheeran: has normality replaced escapism?

… and Frank Carter as the new Johnny Rotten.

Find out more about how to help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear

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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 instrument.

….refusing to put up with the inconvenience of touring and bearing personal grudges which prevented him taking up life-changing offers.

….their competition with The Doors, who would do all the things that Love wouldn’t.

…how Arthur Lee heard Forever Changes in his head and how he transferred that knowledge to an arranger who’d never heard a pop record.

….why Brian Wilson, John Sebastian and Arthur Lee “never got past 1967”.

….the gun charges that put Arthur Lee in jail and the third act he enjoyed when he came out.

You can order the book here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Forever-Changes-Authorized-Biography-Arthur/dp/1916829120/

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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 really is no point corporations spending fortunes on renaming the places which were christened in our hearts

…the likelihood and desirability of Oasis getting back together

Find out more about how to help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear

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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 Richards in 1972 and making records that sounded like they were produced by someone who looked like Keith Richards in 1972.

… a record separated from its sleeve ceases to exist.

… why doesn’t anyone remake classic albums?

… “Once we had something complete and perfect. And what happened? You spent it!”

… how CDs never have “materiality”.

… further proof that Oasis are the most conservative thing in pop music.

… primitive connections and how the album sleeve is the same size as a native American warrior’s shield.

… sounds that date records precisely - eg the syndrum.

Plus birthday guest Patrick Butler.

Find out more about how to help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear

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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 “smelt of sweet wood and oranges” and was nice to her dog, Julian Cope is “pretty and dressed in a white sheet”. It’s a movie waiting to happen. We loved this highly original and revealing book and our conversation with Tiff which involves …

… the ‘Saffy from Ab Fab’ relationship she had with her mum who began her professional life spying on the Duchess of Argyll from a wardrobe.

… floppy hats, Biba dresses and a purple beach buggy.

… the only woman who recorded at Rockfield in the ‘70s.

… the realisation that the men singing “Galileo” repeatedly in the stables were the same people later on Top Of The Pops.

… her mother’s Book Of Rules for visiting rock stars, “a matron in the body of Julie Christie in Darling”.

… ample proof that rock music allows a life of extended adolescence.

… shelved albums and unpaid bills.

… Tiff’s stepfather and in-house Rockfield producer Fritz Fryer.

… Nick Lowe through the eyes of a 10 year-old – “tall, kind and looked like a bird”.

... Graham Parker’s trout in almonds and how the cook was paid extra “just to get food into Lemmy”.

… and mentioned in despatches – Squeeze, the Tyla Gang, Showaddywaddy, Van Der Graaf Generator and Dr Feelgood.

Order ‘My Family And Other Rock Stars' here:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Family-Other-Rock-Stars-groundbreaking/dp/0349727538

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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 of them (including Peter Green). A few highlights here …

… how Stevie Nicks arrived as the spare part of a package deal and rose to become indispensable.

… the fake Fleetwood Mac and the Jeremy Spencer and Peter Green impersonators (which involves an egg and potato farmer from Essex).

… why you should watch the Tusk video repeatedly (and its ruinous cost).

… Bill Clinton, Daisy Jones & the Six, the dancing pony, Guardians of the Galaxy and other key factors in the return of the Mac.

… from model to muse to psychotherapist, the story of the real life Black Magic Woman.

… “Oh Lord, she’s writing another song.”

… internal romantic tangles that give their music a poignancy.

… the horrors of Kiln House.

… Lyndsey Buckingham’s Armani/Clash episode.

… Stevie’s love affair with Derek Taylor who then had to promote a slow-selling album containing a secret song about it.

… Mick Fleetwood, “old ham”, drag act, compulsive show-off, unsuitable band manager.

Order ‘Dreams: the Many Lives of Fleetwood Mac’ here:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dreams-Many-Lives-Fleetwood-Mac/dp/1639367322

Find out more about how to help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear

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