Word In Your Ear

Andy Bown found the 20 year-old recordings of “a deep-space love story” he’d written with the sci-fi author Russell Hoban and he’s just reworked and released them. He talks to us here about “Out There” and life in the Herd, Judas Jump and Status Quo, which involves …

… playing the Three Tuns in Beckenham with Bowie

… “Foot gun, gun foot. I always tell the truth.”

… Peter Frampton when he was The Face of ‘68

… “we were earning £225 a night and got £15 a week. Where did the money go?”

… Quo’s Whatever You Want and how co-writing works

… David’s memories of the Herd supporting Chuck Berry in 1968

… opening for Hendrix at Saville Theatre, eight feet from his flaming guitar: “you could feel the heat”

… Judas Jump, Don Arden, the huge advance and the “appalling” album

… sessions with Jerry Lee Lewis who played the solo with his foot

… early days in Status Quo when he played behind a curtain and how they got to be Live Aid’s opening act

… “You’d think John Fogerty would be pleased about Rockin’ All Over The World. Au contraire!”

Order ‘Out There: A Deep-Space Love Story’ here: https://andybown.com/

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The album has had 25 years of being hammered by other formats – Napster, iTunes, Spotify, TikTok – and not only survived but thrived. For Keith Jopling it’s the irreplaceable way to hear music and to measure the people who make it. His new book Body Of Work celebrates its battle-scarred trajectory from the beating heart of pop culture to 21st Century affordable luxury, and stops off at …

… growing up in the age of cassettes

… his lifelong devotion to a Police album left on his doorstep

… Adele’s battle with Spotify to get records played in sequence

… how albums are how you calibrate a career, from the Beatles to Taylor Swift

… has anyone ever loved a CD the way they love an album?

… how parents used to despair of their kids loafing in bedrooms listening to records but now try and persuade them to do it

… pictures of equipment: rock porn!

… the swingback to Listening Parties and analogue recording

… records as shining examples of the packaged goods business

… “we need to regain control of our attention”

… and the iTunes launch party and why Smashing Pumpkins thought they’d seen the future.

Order Body Of Work in the UK here: https://www.roughtrade.com/product/keith-jopling/body-of-work-how-the-album-outplayed-the-algorithm-and-survived-playlist-culture

And in the USA here: https://repeaterbooks.com/product/body-of-work-how-the-album-outplayed-the-algorithm-and-survived-playlist-culture/

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Unredacted exchanges about the rock and roll underworld this week highlight the following …

… real or made-up stars’ kids’ names: Speck Wildhorse? Blue Ivy? Everly Bear? Motorhead Michelob?

… man plays drum solo with his head!

… Olivia Dean, Lola Young, FKA Twigs: what do today’s ‘professionals’ learn at the BRIT School and what happened to the age of the amateurs?

… why Joni Mitchell’s life was even more extraordinary before she was famous

… Three Dog Night, Kiss, Grand Funk Railroad, Linda Ronstadt: American acts that never broke Britain

… rude, racy, naughty, delightful: our love of old pulp paperbacks

… “Go to your room, young lady, and play a Nick Drake album in its entirety!”

… and when Dandelion became Angela.

Plus birthday guest Paul Higham and why most stars’ stories need a lively biographer.

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Bowie’s early years have been scrutinised repeatedly but people tend to speed through the last act, from the early ‘90s to his death in 2016. Alexander Larman’s ‘Lazarus: The Second Coming Of David Bowie’ looks at his resurrection and the mystery of his final days in Manhattan in attractively honest detail, a book that’s as fondly critical of his artistic decisions as it’s celebratory. Under discussion here …

… ‘David Bowie was a fictional invention and much of his life an act’

… how wrong so many album reviews turned out to be

… “he liked to be liked and he put a lot of effort into being liked”

… Eno, Tony Visconti, Nile Rodgers, Pet Shop Boys and his endless search for collaborators

… the Lucian Freud incident at the Dorchester

… Scott Walker’s taped message: “I see God in the window”

... “he trusted in the idea he was a genius”

… the sharp contrast been his public image and private life

… how his Lord’s Prayer at the Freddie Mercury tribute was a deliberate attempt to steal the show

… the piercing question Tin Machine were asked on ‘Wogan’

… and the struggle to find anything sincere in his interviews.

Order ‘Lazarus’ here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Lazarus-Second-Coming-David-Bowie/dp/1917923449

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David Sinclair was a long-running rock critic for the Times, Rolling Stone and many others and now makes records himself. He looks back here at some of the first bands he saw and the extraordinary people he interviewed, which touches on …

… the day Bowie took him to the Hammersmith Odeon to stand on the spot where he announced his retirement

… Keith Richards’ dark side (and what he said about Lady Di)

… interviewing Prince “who seemed like a shadow”

… seeing Free in 1970: “I still think about it. Some bands are like footprints in fresh snow”

… Hendrix on a bill with Cat Stevens and the Walker Brothers when he was 14

… singles he wore out in the days when you had to change the needle

… his theory about the lyrics of Crossroads

… “the Simon Templar of rock journalism”

… the purgatory of being a serious musician when Spotify adds 100,000 new tracks a day

… and the Shadows, the Scorpions, Sting, ZZ Top, David Coverdale and … Millstone Grit.

David Sinclair’s music here: https://open.spotify.com/artist/4oMczlXHj1pt6M4ZNGR14E?si=_9Dx_G_UQ3GifCFGFra07A

To buy here: https://www.davidsinclairfour.com/shop

Tickets to the 100 Club, May19: https://www.solidentertainments.com/100club/index.html

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