Word In Your Ear

Tony Visconti left Brooklyn for London in 1967, began working with the Move and Marc Bolan and formed a life-long friendship with the teenage David Bowie, playing on his first two albums and producing 10 of ones that followed. And in 2014 he formed Holy Holy with Woody Woodmansey, a live celebration of Bowie’s music from 1970 to Blackstar. They’re touring again in September with Glenn Gregory as lead singer – “you can’t mourn forever.” He talks to us here about …

… the gig they played the night Bowie died

… life at Bowie’s commune at Haddon Hall – “I kept my door firmly locked!”

… Marc Bolan at Middle Earth, “a hundred spellbound kids sitting cross-legged on the floor”

… hearing Flowers In The Rain (which he arranged) as the first record on Radio One

… “A little chinwag?” How Bowie broke the news about his illness

… his dislike of Space Oddity, “I told him it was novelty, a sell-out”

… producing The Man Who Sold The World and the emotional Blackstar

… the night he met the teenage Bowie and they wound up in a Chelsea cinema

… “Why are you doing this?” Bowie’s reaction to the first Holy Holy tour in 2014

… his time as the red-caped Hypeman and Ronson and Woody’s resistance to make-up, “macho boys from Hull”

… walking round New York with a cassette of secret The Next Day album in his pocket

… and the big emotional moments in the Holy Holy set list

Order Holy Holy tickets here: https://www.ticketmaster.co.uk/holy-holy-tickets/artist/2096354

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Matt Johnson’s life story has been mapped out as one long Q&A conversation from meetings with old friend, fan and BFI director Jason Wood. ‘Cognitive Dissident’ traces his trajectory from the East End to Soho to the beloved albums he made with a series of super-groups and his 2021 comeback. He looks back here at …

… his earliest musical memories – Donovan, the Move, the Crazy World of Arthur Brown

… the old East End and the Two Puddings pub run by his parents, “full of ghosts”, Bobby Moore, Francis Bacon and the Krays

… his Uncle Kenny promoting the Who, the Kinks and Jerry Lee Lewis

… “Get yourself on a sunbed!” and other advice from George Michael

... what he learnt at De Wolfe Music, aged 15, in the red-light Soho of the late ‘70s

… legendary manager Stevo signing the band’s CBS contract at midnight in Trafalgar Square

… “cigarettes, coffee, warm analogue equipment”: the Proustian scent of old studios

… his NME ad recruiting The The members via the Residents, the Velvet Underground, Syd Barrett and Throbbing Gristle

… being part of “the Long Mack Brigade” with Cabaret Voltaire, This Heat, Wire and the Gang of Four

… Leonard Cohen’s premonition of the internet

… the Albert Hall: “like a tennis player playing Wimbledon”

… the genius of Hank Williams

… and his 2018 comeback, “like reunion of old army buddies”

Order ‘Cognitive Dissident’ here: https://omnibuspress.com/products/cognitive-dissident?_pos=1&_psq=cognitive+dissi&_ss=e&_v=1.0

Help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear
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When he was 19, New Yorker Brian Cullman covered the London music scene for Crawdaddy, landing at the birth of folk-rock and the singer-songwriter boom and watching its leading lights from unimaginably close quarters - Sandy Denny, Nick Drake, John Martyn among them. He even played on the same bill as Drake at Les Cousins club, all this recorded in his book ‘How To Prepare for the Past: Travels in Music and Time’. He talks to us here about that golden age and the American stars he met later, stopping off at …

… Ed Sullivan at the shoe-shine: “in six months the Beatles will be lucky to be playing a bowling alley!”

… Nick Drake in the same clothes he wore on the cover of Five Leaves Left

… Sandy Denny: “She knew she was extraordinary but didn’t know if she was any good”

… Jackson Browne, onstage from the age of 12

… being hired by rock encyclopaedist Lillian Roxon, “my fairy godmother”

… Tim Hardin making Bird On A Wire, “so wasted they followed him round the room with a microphone”

... and “14 hotdogs”? The cavernous appetite of Big Joe Turner.

Order ‘How To Prepare for the Past’ here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Prepare-Past-Travels-Music/dp/B0FTS8ZPTW

Or here: https://www.zebooks.com/books/how-to-prepare-for-the-past

Help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear
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Whooping, whistling, punching the air, standing on the arm-rests and generally adding our voice to the sound of the crowd this week involves …

… the creepy way Google eavesdrops our conversations

… the cleverly positioned “secret” on McCartney’s new album

… why a knackered piano made Keith Jarrett’s Cologne Concert a success

… Daryl Hannah, Mick McCarthy, Ray Manzarek: people who hated the way they were played in biopics

… Pectoralz? The Rain? Tony Flow and the Miraculously Majestic Masters of Mayhem? Abandoned band names moratorium

… how movies are still revolve around white-hat heroes and black-hat villains

… “Festival Seating” and the days when suffering was part of the entertainment

… why Zappa thought bands exploited live audiences

… “Jackson Browne In Concert”: when going to gigs was like going to the movies

… plus Blink 182, Big Audio Dynamite and the days when the Marquee had two front rows of plastic seating.

Help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear
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Paul Gorman, author and curator, has put together fascinating maps of the London haunts of Bowie and the Stones and just published one about the Clash built around key locations in the network that formed them and helped them to flourish. It’s a beautiful thing: buy one and take the walking tour! He talks to us here about …

… how an Agit-Prop alternative West London emerged with links to Oz, IT and San Francisco counter-culture

… kindred spirits meeting in Rock On, Compendium Books and the dole office in Lisson Grove

… how their artwork and black and white photos linked them to the past

.. the days when corrugated iron and fly-posters were part of the London vernacular

… Guns On The Roof: how the band and press ramped up an element of danger

... the art school background that gave them control of their visuals

… “Big Audio Dynamite was the band the Clash could have been!”

… Nick Lowe’ theory that everyone is either funny or not funny: “The Clash? Not funny”

… Kosmo Vinyl’s attempt to get their triple album released for the price of a single

… their connections to the Slits, Bernie Rhodes, Patti Smith, Pennie Smith, Hawkwind and Heathcote Williams

…and the moving story of Joe and Mick’s last meeting.

Order the Clash map here: https://www.herblester.com/products/london-calling-the-clash-in-the-capital

Paul’s Slits walking tour here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/slits-are-girls-walking-tour-with-paul-gorman-tickets-1985048002010

Help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear
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