London’s Blitz club in 1980 had a huge impact on the way the decade looked and sounded, the launchpad for Boy George, Spandau Ballet, a new age of electro-pop and many writers, designers and photographers. The author and broadcaster Robert Elms was one of its cornerstones, “a place for people who’d outgrown the 20th Century”. We talk here about his book ‘Blitz: the Club That Created the ‘80s’ with all of this on the dancefloor …

… the Blitz Club rules, “unspoken until Steve Strange spoke them”. And the door policy: “Look at yourself, darling. Would YOU let yourself in?”

… first nights “with a Space Cossack shirt and asymmetric wedge” and the origin of the term New Romantic

… the rise of the “home-made Macaronis” (dictionary definition: “over-dressed popinjays of dubious sexuality”)

… Bowie’s Starman, Roxy, soul, disco, Weimar, Max Ernst, Otto Dix, Edith Piaf, Swinging London, Andy Warhol and other keys strands of Blitz DNA

… its anti-rock stance and impact on the mid-‘80s American charts

… the news-friendly night Mick Jagger was barred entry

… “I was spat at by an old lady at a bus stop for wearing eyeliner and a kilt”

… when Island offered Spandau a deal after just three numbers

… the role of the Face, Smash Hits and the new full-colour media

… the author’s “dilettante” passage through skinhead, suedehead, soul boy and punk

… and the night Bowie appeared, “like Jesus walking into your local church and sitting in a pew”.

Order ‘Blitz: The Club That Created the 80s’ here:

https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/blitz-the-club-that-created-the-eighties-robert-elms/e672041a84e0cde9?ean=9780571394180&next=t&next=t

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Prince’s commercial peak was Purple Rain but John McKie thinks Sign O’ The Times was his creative masterpiece and tracked down over 200 collaborators, girlfriends, “Prince whisperers”, assistants and admirers to piece together the story of its construction (without allowing himself to use the word “genius”). Which leads us up some colourful, spot-lit alleys, among them …

… “a man in suspenders playing funk”: why a disastrous support slot on the ‘81 Stones tour was pivotal moment

… Mozart/Salieri levels of rivalry: he once told a Paisley Park engineer to stop singing Culture Club “as that’s the competition”

... battles with Warners president Lenny Waronker: “he believed he was right and the rest were wrong”

… “creative incontinence”: an autocrat in need of an editor

… bodyguard “Big Chick” Huntsberry, performative stunts and the BRITS moment that immortalised him

… the controlling, manipulative nature of anyone who can play 27 instruments

… “he changed his cars to match the colour of his album campaigns”

… artistic parallels with his hero Joni Mitchell

… why he loved comedians in the way he loved jazz musicians

… what we know about his “secret” wives Mayte Garcia and Manuela Testolini

… and the four acts with eternal mystery – Prince, Bowie, Dylan, Dolly Parton.

Order ‘Prince: A Sign O’ The Times here:

https://www.waterstones.com/book/prince-a-sign-o-the-times/john-mckie/9781785121944

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Paul Gorman, biographer of Malcolm McLaren and friend of the pod, tells the extraordinary story of the three young hipsters behind Granny Takes A Trip, the Kings Road store that was a magnet for rock’s glitterati in the late 60s.

•⁠ ⁠Sheila Cohen, the first queen of cool; she invented the whole idea of vintage

•⁠ ⁠Nigel Waymouth, who never went to art school but changed the face of London with his posters

•⁠ ⁠John Pearse, who could make a jacket out of anything - and did

•⁠ ⁠The days of aatering to the 200 fashionable people in London

•⁠ ⁠Why the Beatles, Stones and Pink Floyd beat a path to Granny’s door

•⁠ ⁠How the three walked away in 1969, the shops were exported to the USA

•⁠ ⁠How GTAT became the outfitter of choice for the rock aristocracy

•⁠ ⁠Some of its clothes are immortal thanks to album covers from Lou Reed, the Isleys and Todd Rundgren

•⁠ ⁠All the rest are in secure storage

Paul’s book, which is lavishly illustrated and contains a pictorial catalogue of the wardrobe of the Rolling Stones, is here:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Granny-Takes-Trip-Fashion-Boutique/dp/1399623613

You can read a preview here: https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Granny_Takes_a_Trip/_SZSEQAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PT6&printsec=frontcover

The Rolling Stones London 1962-71 map can be found at: https://www.herblester.com/products/down-the-road-apiece-the-rolling-stones-london

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News, rants, theories, stories and assorted old hokum which this week stumbles into …

… Kate Bush, Thunderbirds, Tim Buckley, the Blind Boys of Alabama … the magical bass adventures of Danny Thompson (and the time he headlined over the Beatles)

… how Claudia Cardinale wound up on the sleeve of Blonde On Blonde

… would Roxy Music have made it if their albums had been released in brown paper bags?

… how TikTok is destroying the “superfan”

… do late night TV hosts need us more than we need them?

… Boris Johnson chose the Clash? Charles Kennedy chose Toploader? Theresa May chose ‘In These Shoes’ by Kirsty MacColl? MPs on Desert Island Discs

… packaged goods: how CDs removed music’s greatest marketing tool

… the peculiar life of Johnny Carson

… have you ever bought an album solely on the strength of its cover?

… and Carmel, Andrew Ridgeley, Jay Leno’s pay packet and birthday guest Jon Pickles on high-impact sleeve art.

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We’ve always liked Thea Gilmore who once crossed America with Joan Baez in a pre-Election campaign tour and has released 21 albums (“I’ve got musical ADHD!)”. She looks back here at the first shows she ever saw and played which involves …

… a deep dive into Jake Thackray – “Last Will And Testament still makes me cry”

… spotting her dad in the crowd in the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival movie and why “My dad treated Dave Pegg’s dog” jump-started her career…

… what Joan Baez did on their pre-Election American tour the night George W Bush won a second term

… “Thea Gilmore looks Borstal-bound”: her first review, in Mojo in 1998

… two weeks’ life-changing work experience at Fairport’s Wormwood studios

… “there’s no point writing songs if you don’t perform them”

… which are easier, small gigs or big ones?

… Ani DiFranco getting the audience to harmonise on When Doves Cry, “an epiphany”

… intense stage fright versus the “precocious teenage belief that I was interesting”

… the impact of first hearing It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)

… and when someone leaving “reduces your audience by a fifth”

Tickets for Thea Gilmore’s tour here: https://www.theagilmore.net/live

Order ‘Thea Gilmore - My Own Private Riot 2008-2015,' 7CD Box Set here: https://www.cherryred.co.uk/thea-gilmore-my-own-private-riot-2008-2015-7cd-box-set

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

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Roger Armstrong co-founded the legendary Rock On record shop and was running the Chiswick label long before the punk rock explosion of independents, a believer that you could license rare R&B, soul and rockabilly classics while cutting new records with rising stars (Shane MacGowan, Kirsty MacColl and Joe Strummer among them). He then co-founded Ace Records and talks to us here about the thrill of trawling through American label vaults, locating vintage tracks and finding them a whole new audience. Along with …

… seeing Ella Fitzgerald and the Beatles in Belfast in the early ‘60s

... inventing a new Irish rock circuit and turning showbands into soul bands

… how American Graffiti, Gaz’s Rockin’ Blues and the mod revival all chimed with Ace Records’ re-issues

… promoting ‘Tin’ Lizzy (“that’s what it sounded like on the phone”) and being immortalised in one of their lyrics (“I get my records at the Rock On stall”)

… Joe Strummer in the 101-ers – “sensational, full-tilt, as if playing a stadium”

… releasing Dylan’s Theme-Time Radio Hour box-sets and the size of his record collection

… finding a Little Richard demo and making an Elvis Presley speech album a money-spinner

… being a pioneer tape rat and crate-digger and Ace Records quality control – “Stack ‘em low, sell ‘em high!”

… “think of the strapline, then choose the tracks”: making compilations with Jon Savage, Bob Stanley, Bobby Gillespie and Paul Weller

… plus reflections on John Martyn, Carol Grimes, Brinsley Schwarz, Rocky Sharpe, Irma Thomas, Arthur Alexander and the Count Bishops (“like the Stones at 78”).

Order ‘Chiswick Records 1975 - 1982 Seven Years At 45 RPM’ here: https://www.acerecords.co.uk/chiswick-records-1975-1982-seven-years-at-45-rpm

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On the menu at the rock and roll state banquet …

… Into the Mystic, Meet On The Ledge, In My Life, Tom Waits’ Take It With Me and other perfect songs for a last farewell

… the day we joined the world’s best band

… Robert Redford’s blinding handsomeness and the greatest moment – all three seconds of it – in Butch Cassidy And the Sundance Kid

… best-looking rock stars

… were the Shadows really a UK Eurovision entry?

… “very special guests” and the new age of the stadium rock “bring-on”

… how John Prine and Iris DeMent won the big door prize

… “the movie camera is the biggest lie-detector in the world”

… strange double bills of our time - the Foo Fighters and Rick Astley, Bo Diddley and the Clash

Plus Cary Grant smoking, watching Brad Pitt do ordinary things and birthday guest Steven Way on the subtle billing of support acts.

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Novelist and journalist Tom Piazza struck up a friendship with the irreplaceable John Prine in the last years of his life. This relationship, which began as a profile for a magazine, almost blossomed into an autobiography and involved a road trip in an inadvisable vehicle, has resulted in a new book “Living In The Present With John Prine”. Which involves:

•⁠ ⁠setting off in a 1977 Coupe De Ville and driving “until the engine burns up”.

•⁠ ⁠sitting up all night playing old country songs.

•⁠ ⁠remembering how he came to write some of the greatest songs of the last fifty years

•⁠ ⁠an evening’s swapping stories with Elvis Costello which ends with the alarming word “the jukebox is on fire!”

•⁠ ⁠what Prine’s last album “The Tree Of Forgiveness” has in common with Beethoven’s late quartets

Buy Living In The Present With John Prine: https://amzn.eu/d/9vWv9rg

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