Free Daily Podcast Summary
Word In Your Ear: Daily Summaries Delivered
by Mark Ellen, David Hepworth and Alex Gold
Mark Ellen and David Hepworth have been talking about and writing about music together and individually for a collective eighty years in magazines like Smash Hits, Mojo and The Word and on radio and TV programmes like "Rock On", "Whistle Test" and VH-1. Over thirteen years ago, when working on the late magazine The Word, they began producing podcasts. Some listeners have been kind enough to say these have been very special to them. When the magazine folded in 2012 they kept the spirit of those podcasts alive in regular Word In Your Ear evenings in which they spoke to musicians and authors in front of an audience. Over these years they've produced hundreds of hours of material. As of the Current Unpleasantness of 2020, they've produced yet hundreds of hours more with a little help from guests kind enough to digitally show them around their attics such as Danny Baker, Andy Partridge, Sir Tim Rice and Mark Lewisohn. For the full span of the Word In Your Ear world,
Latest Episodes
The most recent episodes — sign up to get AI-powered summaries of each one.
- Yesterday35 min
Richard Jobson on the Skids and the day Steve Jones burgled Francis Bacon
A “feral child” from Fife gets recruited by a punk band who have five long years in the sun and split up. Until rebooted when U2 and Green Day cover one of their singles 25 years later. The Skids are back on tour again, a show “that leaves nothing in the dressing-room” and once disastrously involved a backflip, and Richard Jobson’s stories of those early days here are tremendously funny and engaging. On the menu …… Steve Jones, two members of Legs & Co and a stolen car (and the day Jones burgled Francis Bacon)… “no member of Big Country was actually Scottish”… Hugh Cornwell as his ‘designated teacher’ on the Stranglers/Skids tour, aged 16: “main lesson, biology”… “my two heroes were Iggy Pop and Alex Harvey so I aimed for something in between”… 500 people at the stage door “and none of them women!”… how U2 and Green Day started the Skids revival… “bands of my vintage milking as much as they can of the King’s Pound on their last hurrah”… 1,000 miles on a stolen motorbike, aged 15, to buy a pair of leather trousers… on Top Of the Pops with Diana Ross… and the “natural melancholy and internal sadness” of Stuart AdamsonPlus his Hare Krishna brother and living with Steve Severin while besotted with Siouxsie of the Banshees.Skids tickets here: www.skidsofficial.comHelp 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.
- 2 days ago47 min
Dick Taylor, the Pretty Things and the four months he spent in the Stones
The Pretty Things were dead centre in the mid-‘60s underground and they’ve been mythologised ever since - for the sound of those singles, for their SF Sorrow masterpiece and for their delicious eccentricities and the way they looked. Co-founder and guitarist Dick Taylor relives life in the blues clubs with the Stones and the whole psychedelic adventure that followed, now captured - along with outtakes, rehearsal tapes and unreleased tracks - on the gorgeous 12-CD box-set ‘Pretty Rare’. In the mix here …… the band he formed with Mick and Keith and the night they met Brian and Charlie… what his mother and sister thought of the teenage Jagger… seeing Miles Davis in the ‘50s… Arthur Brown’s plan to arrive at the Isle Of Wight festival by balloon “but the wind was blowing in the wrong direction”… Pete Townshend’s legal threat about SF Sorrow and the party where the demo tape was playing … “pink high-heeled shoes and Viv Prince with a crayfish on a lead”: when New Zealand said ‘never darken out shores again’… driving Hendrix to the Speakeasy… the pioneering sound of Rosalyn and Honey I Need… and Phil May, Derek Boshier, Jimmy Reed, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott and the Dylan and Donovan songs they never recorded.Order copies of ‘Pretty Rare’ here: https://theprettythings.lnk.to/Pretty_RareHelp 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.
- 3 days ago44 min
Dylan Jones, past master of the long lunch, saw the music world from a restaurant table
London restaurants were where musicians, actors, writers and TV stars were seen “and how you knew where they were in the days before social media”. They were a form of theatre with a shifting cast and a way of gauging celebrity status. Dylan Jones – who’s lunched long and hard in the heart of the media – sees that vanishing world as a measure of changing times and fashions in his toothsome new book ‘Table Hopping: the Secret History of London Restaurants’. And pulls up two chairs for us here to look back at …… the birth of pop culture at the Speakeasy, Ad Lib and the Bag O’ Nails… Hockney, Jagger, Lucian Freud, the Sex Pistols and Ian Dury’s public beef with Omar Sharif… “restaurants were about learning how to behave in public”… Jeffrey Archer and Michael Winner fighting over Lady Di’s table… Michael Caine and Peter Langan creating the first internationally known London restaurant… the agony of celebrity hierarchy: “the Beckhams couldn’t get the top table as it was reserved for Harold Pinter”… Alex James, Damien Hirst and Keith Allen’s “bar tab as long as a bog roll”… Malcolm McLaren’s doomed Hammer of the Gods movie with Daniel Day-Lewis as Plant, Gary Oldman as Page and Robbie Coltrane as Peter Grant… “AA Gill could close a restaurant”… Anthony Bourdain, Marco Pierre White and the rise of the rock’n’roll chefs… and how the ‘90s are the new ‘60s “where everyone felt they were in the Green Room”.Order copies of ‘Table Hopping’ here:https://www.waterstones.com/book/table-hopping/dylan-jones/9780349000725https://www.amazon.co.uk/Table-Hopping-Restaurants-Brasserie-Wolseley/dp/0349000727https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/table-hopping-the-secret-history-of-london-restaurants-from-langan-s-brasserie-to-the-wolseley-dylan-jones/2def4f36390c3026?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.
- 4 days ago53 min
What’s at the heart of Indie Rock? – plus Bowie rebooted and Patrick Stewart RIP
‘To explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and civilizations and to boldly go where no podcasters have been before!’ Which this week involves …… the lost 1978 Bowie footage about to tour arenas… why Indie songs have such long intros… Jagger’s great-granddaughter is three years older than one of his sons?!… how Bill Wyman survived Brian Jones and the letter Jones sent Charlie asking him to join the band… when Patrick Stewart worked for the Dewsbury Reporter… what John Steinbeck wrote to Marilyn Monroe... the two covers of Beatles songs that are better than the originals… and the best gag ever printed in Viz.Plus the Cure, Ed Sheeran’s daughter Antarctica and birthday guest Giles Fraser.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.
- 1 weeks ago53 min
Carl Palmer’s 64 years onstage and the ingenious way he’s touring as ELP
Whenever Carl Palmer joined a band, he was head-hunted by a bigger one - the King Bees, Chris Farlowe & the Thunderbirds, the Crazy World of Arthur Brown, Atomic Rooster and, eventually, Emerson Lake & Palmer. We get a vivid whirlwind tour here of six decades onstage – modest, very funny, barely pausing for breath – and a full account of how ‘An Evening with Emerson Lake & Palmer’ will work when he tours the show in 2027 (and the setlist). Tons of highlights, blink and you’ll miss them, these just a few …… “You can’t call the group Emerson Lake & Palmer! What if somebody leaves?”… playing jazz and cabaret from the age of 12 and memories of “formation dancing night”… the King Bees at a Birmingham All-Nighter with Chris Farlowe, Steampacket and “a few black bombers”.. the one-eyed bassist who drove the van… American 10,000-seaters with Arthur Brown… the Who in 1965 – “never seen anything like it!”… who owns the name Emerson Lake & Palmer?… the day he got a job for John Bonham… being choppered to the Isle of Wight in their stage gear... Vincent Crane sawing his Hammond in half… the ELP audition and “Ahmet Ertegun from NY” ringing to twist his arm… playing the Palladium where his grandpa conducted a Palm Court Orchestra… and drumming on a vegan diet.Mentioned in passing: Cozy Powell, Graham Bond, Erroll Garner, Oscar Peterson, Ginger Baker, Roy Orbison and Bruce Forsyth.Order ‘An Evening With ELP’ tickets here: https://crosstownconcerts.gigantic.com/carl-palmer-ticketsHelp 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.
- 1 weeks ago37 min
Joni Mitchell’s fascinating treasure trove of lost interviews with the BBC
Tom Hagler works at the BBC with access to every TV and radio programme involving Joni Mitchell for 50 years, all full of revelations about her songs and the times she spent in London. So he transcribed the interviews – even the bits off-camera - and talked to the people who’d watched them being recorded, now published as ‘River Of Words: Joni Mitchell At the BBC’. It’s full of fresh angles and good stories, like this podcast which touches on …… Joni living on cigarettes, coffee and chocolate in a Bayswater flat in 1968… early exposure by John Peel and on Stanley Dorfman’s pioneering ‘In Concert’ (she was the first guest!)… her complete transparency in interviews – “I felt like a cellophane wrapper on a pack of cigarettes”… the night she met Graham Nash… the BBC failing to exploit their 1990 ‘scoop’ about her giving away her daughter for adoption, and the moment she thinks she met her (aged 3)… how she held her own in the ‘70s rock Boys’ Club… “save something of yourself”: when Kris Kristofferson heard Blue… the Tracey MacLeod interview where she claims to be a reincarnated Arab rug dealer… and the value of Big Yellow Taxi in the climate crisis.Order copies of ‘River Of Words: Joni Mitchell at the BBC’ here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/River-Words-Joni-Mitchell-interviews/dp/1035435780Help 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.
- 1 weeks ago1h 3m
Which bands pass the three-year test? – plus the great live albums & rock stars’ alter egos
Stirring the spice-filled gumbo of news and turning the heat up. This week’s nutritious ingredients include …. … is everything better shorter?… the greatest opening line in a book ever written… did Tom Waits, Warren Zevon, Joe Cocker, the Bee Gees, Cheap Trick, Sam Cooke, Talking Heads or Bill Evans make the greatest live album of all time?… the worst beers Buster Poindexter ever had… rock stars’ alter egos – Lady Gaga as Jo Calderone, Andy Partridge as Sir John Johns, George Clinton as Mr Wiggles, Justin Hawkins as Sir Voltage Blackthorn!… Blur, Radiohead, Stones, Doors, Steely Dan, Bowie, Leonard Cohen … they all had a three-year golden streak… “I’m writing a short letter as I don’t have time to write a long one”… why the Matrix was a watershed moment … the three stages of success – getting known, the magnum opus, basking in the glow… and why we love August N'gutu Leibowitz-Clementine.Plus Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, Buckshot La Funke, birthday guest Phil Hopwood and how everyone at the BBC is a gossip.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.
- 2 weeks ago46 min
Dexys, their hits and flops and how I survived them by Helen O’Hara
Helen’s violin at the start of Come On Eileen has filled a million wedding dancefloors. She was a member of Dexys Midnight Runners, later their musical director, at the boom time of Too Rye Ay (and its wobbly sequel) and captures the thrill of it all in her just-updated memoir, What’s She Like: A Violinist’s Tale. You’ll love this conversation - warm, candid, forgiving and touching on all the following …… the day the dungarees arrived… the tribal nature of bands… the social skills required in a group as tangled as Dexys who’d “go to the caff and just … not talk!"… what she learnt from the memorabilia found in her shed… the myth that she met Kevin Rowland at a bus-stop and her reinvention as “the belle from Ballymena” … working with Nicky Hopkins (“my hero”), Tom Dowd, Woody Woodmansey and Tanita Tikaram… Dexys studio method: “focus, discipline, tightness” and trying to record a 12-minute track in one take… hearing hits by Rod Stewart and Slade that featured violins… and her swansong: recording Because Of You for the TV sitcom Brush Strokes.Order copies of ‘What’s She Like’ here: https://www.route-online.com/all-books/whats-she-likeHelp 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.
Get Word In Your Ear summaries in your inbox
Free AI-powered daily recaps. Key takeaways, quotes, and mentions — in a 5-minute read.
Get Free Summaries →Free forever for up to 3 podcasts. No credit card required.
You Might Also Like
Listeners also like.
Professor of Rock
Music historian Adam Reader examines the origins and stories of classic rock songs through interviews and detailed episode explorations.
Fortunately... with Fi and Jane
Broadcasters Jane Garvey and Fi Glover interview media figures who share candid, off-the-record stories from their careers.
Big Lives
Journalists examine cultural icons' lives using BBC archives to reveal their impact on music, film, and comedy.
Word of Mouth
BBC Radio 4
The Louis Theroux Podcast
Long-form conversations with diverse individuals exploring their lives, beliefs, and experiences.
Talk ’90s to me
Podmasters
DISGRACELAND
True crime stories behind legendary musicians, exploring the chaos, drama, and human cost of fame with reverence and depth.
The Price of Music
Music Ally
Behind The Song: Classic Rock Chronicles
Explores the stories and circumstances behind the creation of iconic classic rock songs.
Feedback
A forum for audience feedback, including comments, questions, critiques, and praise.
Sound Opinions
A music review and interview show featuring rock critics discussing new releases, classic records, and artist conversations.
World Cafe Words and Music Podcast
Live performances and interviews with influential musicians from diverse genres.
About Word In Your Ear
Mark Ellen and David Hepworth have been talking about and writing about music together and individually for a collective eighty years in magazines like Smash Hits, Mojo and The Word and on radio and TV programmes like "Rock On", "Whistle Test" and VH-1. Over thirteen years ago, when working on the late magazine The Word, they began producing podcasts. Some listeners have been kind enough to say these have been very special to them. When the magazine folded in 2012 they kept the spirit of those podcasts alive in regular Word In Your Ear evenings in which they spoke to musicians and authors in front of an audience. Over these years they've produced hundreds of hours of material. As of the Current Unpleasantness of 2020, they've produced yet hundreds of hours more with a little help from guests kind enough to digitally show them around their attics such as Danny Baker, Andy Partridge, Sir Tim Rice and Mark Lewisohn. For the full span of the Word In Your Ear world,
Customized Recaps
AI-powered recaps with compact key takeaways, quotes, and insights.
Straight to Your Inbox
Get key takeaways from Word In Your Ear in a 5-minute read.
Save Hours Every Week
Stay current on your favorite podcasts without falling behind.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Podzilla's Word In Your Ear daily summary?
It's a free AI-powered email that summarizes new episodes of Word In Your Ear as soon as they're published. You get the key takeaways, notable quotes, and links & mentions — all in a quick read.
How does the Word In Your Ear podcast summary work?
When a new episode drops, our AI transcribes and analyzes it, then generates a personalized summary tailored to your interests and profession. It's delivered to your inbox every morning.
Is this an official Word In Your Ear product?
No. Podzilla is an independent service that summarizes publicly available podcast content. We're not affiliated with or endorsed by Mark Ellen, David Hepworth and Alex Gold.
Can I get summaries of other podcasts too?
Absolutely! The free plan covers up to 3 podcasts, any in the catalog. Basic raises that to 15, Pro to 40 and Max to 100. Browse our full catalog at /podcasts.
How often does Word In Your Ear release new episodes?
Word In Your Ear publishes every few days. Our AI generates a summary within hours of each new episode.
What topics does Word In Your Ear cover?
Word In Your Ear covers topics including History, Music, Commentary, Comedy Interviews. Our AI identifies the specific themes in each episode and highlights what matters most to you.
Start getting Word In Your Ear summaries tomorrow morning.
Free forever for up to 3 podcasts. No credit card required.
Free forever for up to 3 podcasts. No credit card required.