The tremendous Bill Bailey is staging “a magical, musical mystery tour of the mind, along with other pressing matters” for 42 nights in London from December 28, a celebration of what makes us human in an age threatened by AI. There'll be “a laser harp”. There’ll be electronic drum balls played by audience members. There'll be extracts from Kraftwerk’s lost album of children’s songs. He talks to Mark here about the first live entertainment he ever saw and first shows he played himself, which happily involves …

 … “a lightbulb moment”, James Robertson Justice breaking the fourth wall, the genius of Les Dawson’s deadpan piano playing, OMD, the Cure, the Banshees, how TikTok changed song writing, Jean-Jacques Burnel whacking a skinhead with his bass, A Flock of Seagulls, the Undertones, seeing John Hegley’s mandolin-driven comedy act and thinking “I could do that”, Victor Borge and the invention of the disco bass line by a 17th century German composer.

Order tickets for Bill Bailey’s Thoughtifier show here:

https://www.billbailey.co.uk/live

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The 17 year-old Al Stewart played electric guitar in a dance band in Bournemouth in 1963. When he borrowed an acoustic and sang Masters Of War in the break, he heard the sweet sound of applause. The next night he played three Dylan songs and sensed which way the wind was blowing. He talks here about moving to London, playing at Bunjies and becoming the compere at Les Cousins as his now 60-year career began to lift off. And about his Farewell Tour which kicks off in the UK in October 2025, a combination of songs and story-telling coloured by two great heroes, Peter Ustinov and Alistair Cooke.

This cracking exchange steers by way of Bert Jansch, Bob Dylan, Helen of Troy, Stalin, Hitler and the Battle of Moscow, the Weeley Festival of 1971, the three songs he always plays, the young Cat Stevens and what he told Paul Simon he should do with the just-composed Homeward Bound.

Order Al Stewart tickets here:

https://www.ents24.com/uk/tour-dates/al-stewart

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Gary Kemp has been posting reels of his recent visits to old haunts in Soho where he and his early bands used to rehearse, this in the run-up to releasing a third solo album, ‘This Destination’, in January. We talk to him here about how records were made and promoted in the ‘80s and how radically that’s changed today. Which includes …

… “all media is now about getting and keeping people’s attention”.

… the first time he heard one of his songs on the radio.

… Bowie, Bolan, Queen and Elton John at Trident Studios.

… how bands copy the groove of a track.

… technology and the curse of too much choice.

… why TikTok’s changed the way songs are written.

… how the first Spandau Ballet album was made.

… the phone call from Richard Hawley that kick-started a song.

… the craft of 10cc and Steely Dan and why it doesn’t work on 2024 radio.

… the male attitude to bands who are largely followed by women.

… cunning ways to infiltrate the NME in the early ‘80s.

… plus Robert Elms in jodhpurs and “fly dentists” in the Saucerful Of Secrets audience.  

Pre-order This Destination here:

https://lnk.to/GaryKempThisDestination

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We ran our patent heat-sensing Scrutiniser®️ over the week’s news and here’s what set the bells off …

… are buskers now more expensive live entertainment than Taylor Swift?

… a Dickensian oik in Chapel Market and other riddles of modern etiquette.

… ‘Holiness and horniness’: how Hallelujah rebooted Leonard Cohen and became a one-song industry.

… the teenage self-promotional flair of Robert Plant and Marc Bolan.

… are singles a social experience and albums a solitary one?

… “Would you like a fruit gum?”: the 1950s in a single phrase.

… highly recommended: Wendy Waldman, Brian Blade & The Fellowship Band and ‘The Room’ by Fabiano do Nascimento.

… rock snobs’ alarm about the revelations of their Spotify Wrapped.

… why the Sherman Brothers are as enduring as Lennon-McCartney.

… Hallelujah cover versions - from kd lang and Rufus Wainwright to Johnny Mathis and the Osmonds.

... how King David removed ‘love rival’ Uriah the Hittite.

… reconnecting with records you haven’t heard for 40 years.  

… whatever happened to She Sherriff?!

… Loudon Wainwright’s early inference about the YMCA.

… plus Lindsey Buckingham, Hugh Lloyd, Tony Hancock and fond memories of “stolen cheese guy”.

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Paddling the three-man conversational kayak across the rock and roll rapids this week involved …

… Olive Mess, Candied Yams, Gorilla Biscuits …? Challenging indie act or seasonal vegan recipe?

… the amount YMCA earned through Donald Trump and why the man who wrote it is complaining.

… Tom Hanks’ valuable words of wisdom.

… Neil Tennant’s favourite bridge in a pop song (and it’s not We Can Work It Out or I Will).

… musicians and the modern world of the “one-night stand” circuit.

… Baker Street, Money, Careless Whisper, Giant Steps, Jungleland … and the sax solo that outranks them all.

… the genius of Henry Mancini and the powerful DNA of film music.

… the lost world of small ads – eg this pasted by Roxy Music: “The perfect guitarist for avant rock group: original, creative, adaptable, melodic, fast, slow, elegant, witty, scary, stable, tricky. Quality musicians only.”

… Beatles ’64 - “randomly assembled and directionless”, a listener declares!

Here’s Plas Johnson playing the Pink Panther theme with Henry Mancini:

 https://youtu.be/jBupII3LH_Q?si=brjVwsPlmcnii1Md

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Joni Mitchell called it “stoking the star-maker machinery behind the popular song”. Every record sent out for review used to come with a press release knocked together by an over-excited PR before terms like “psychedelia” or “prog” had been invented. They were scanned once for the odd fact or quote and usually chucked in the bin. Richard Morton Jack has tracked down scores of these handouts from 1962-1972, and the news stories they sparked, and published them in the sumptuous ‘Pressing News’, a fascinating window into how acts were sold in the days when pop stars liked rump steak, sports cars and “sincere people” but disliked “bad music, traffic wardens and people who say I look like a girl”. We leaf through his book here and talk about ….

... the ingenuity of '60s PRs and why Marc Bolan was a turning point.

… Robert Plant and David Bowie’s genius for self-promotion.

… the pop hopeful whose favourite tipple was tooth-rotting, crystal-based ‘Creamola Foam’.  

… how PRs sold rebels and outsiders.  

… a £900 Olivia Newton-John press release.

… Beta Male pin-ups Nick Drake and Scott Walker.

… confected outrage over the Small Faces’ Lord’s Prayer.

… Joe Cocker, eternally a gas-fitter from Sheffield with “a face like the back of a Sheffield Corporation bus”.

… mysterious pop acts that never made it like the Virgin Sleep, the Accent, Bread Love & Dreams, Fresh Maggots and the Tickle whose songs were supposedly chosen by computer.

 .. the Kinks – “four art students who dress like characters from Dickens”.  

… the promotion of pre-psychedelia Pink Floyd – “a lyrical atmosphere whose words express a feeling rather than tell a story.”

… “the Zombies have 50 GCSE passes between them!” and other press release fiction trotted out in the papers.

… the mass 1966 adoption of the kaftan and Charlie Chan moustache.

Order copies of Pressing News here:

https://lansdownebooks.com/products/pressing-news

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Reversing into tomorrow! This week’s news events given a vigorous once-over include …

… what will a Trump guitar be worth in 30 years’ time?

… the average age of a Glastonbury goer and how it sells its TV coverage.  

… “the Beatles in America was like Cortez arriving in South America, the clash of two civilizations. How did this film manage to balls the story up so catastrophically?”

 … Leonard Bernstein’s daughter’s dreams about George Harrison and the Fabs v the all-American alpha male.

… who should be next for a rock and roll blue plaque?

… the Beatles’ Ed Sullivan support act who became almost as famous as they did.

… why Fortunate Son by Creedence Clearwater is the most-streamed ‘60s track.

… Hendrix and the Isley brothers’ night in watching telly.

… and Rod Stewart’s genius for generating publicity.  

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R.E.M. considered themselves missionaries against the prevailing pop culture – no solos, no old-school stagecraft, no printed lyrics, no lip-syncing, no hard-sell videos, no obvious leader – and mapped out a whole new route to international success. Peter Ames Carlin, whose books include biographies of Springsteen, Brian Wilson and Paul Simon, talks to us here about ‘The Name of this Band is R.E.M.’, what they pioneered and how it rearranged the rock and roll furniture. Which involves …

… why their Letterman Show was a statement of intent.

… “rather than bending to the mainstream, they did what they wanted ‘til the mainstream bent to them.”

… where you can see “the R.E.M. model” - from Sleater-Kinney to Taylor Swift.

… when ‘Mike Stipe’ became Michael.

… Stipe’s first TV appearance, dressed as Frank-N-Furter at a Rocky Horror Show screening.

… why rock critics connected with them. 

… the strategies they share with U2, Radiohead and Coldplay. 

… “Springsteen = Elvis + Dylan”.

… what was in the water in Athens, Georgia, that produced such unconventional

acts - R.E.M., the B-52’s, Pylon, Love Tractor.

… their ‘straight’ but supportive parents – Stipe’s dad in the military, Mills’ dad a marine helicopter pilot.

… how R.E.M. “channelled popular culture”.

… their pioneering approach to record deals, royalties, videos, mixing and song-writing.

… and which of them most wants a reunion.

Order ‘The Name Of This Band Is R.E.M.’ here:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Name-This-Band-M-Biography/dp/0385546947

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Neil Storey worked in the Island press office in the ‘70s and ‘80s and has set out on mammoth undertaking, to compile a series of gorgeous, album-sleeve-sized books telling the story of virtually every record the label released in its pioneering history and talking to all involved - musicians, producers, designers, photographers, label staff – and collecting old music press ads and ephemera from the time. This latest edition, ‘the Island Book Of Records 1969-1970’, has transported us back to our teenage selves when albums by Fairport, Nick Drake, Jethro Tull, Free, King Crimson etc were unmissable. We talked to Neil at his home in France which happily involved …  

… the extraordinary story of the Unhalfbricking album shoot.  

… when album sleeves were assembled by hand.

… how Island pioneered the ‘underground’ aesthetic and the cheap sampler album.

… the mystery of Ian Anderson’s 11 fingers.

… the “worst sleeve” in the label’s history (which involved a trip to the butchers).

.. the day the Island roster met in Hyde Park at six in the morning.

... the curious marketing of Nick Drake – “who doesn’t have a telephone and will disappear for four days at a time”.

… and Roxy Music, Sparks, Head Hands & Feet and what else to expect in Volume 3.

Order the Island Book Of Records Volume 2 here:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Island-Book-Records-II-1969-70/dp/1526182246

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Danny Baker, the act you’ve known for all these years, is kicking his legs up again in 2025 on a thundering new theatre tour, ‘Aye Aye! Ahoy Hoy!’ “Dead men tell no tales,” he points out, “so we might might as well get ‘em all told now.” This will be another barnstorming one-man circus - as, naturally, is this barrelling conversation with the two of us which collides with the following …

… being shot, Welsh cake, an olive green Humber, goldfish, when videos were the size of a loaf of bread, why half his Maidstone audience got up and left, stolen gear being hustled over Waterloo Bridge, bad things done by Rod Stewart and Britt Ekland, ELP, the Average White Band, Max Miller, Kenneth Williams’ loathing for Michael Aspel, when records become like furniture, getting £4k for a Ziggy Stardust white label, why he doesn’t miss the 14,000 albums he sold, and the record that came out the same day as Sgt Pepper and Bowie’s first album but is better than both.

The podcast includes an extract from Ronnie Barker’s “A Pint Of Old And Filthy” and Terry Thomas reading PG Wodehouse.

Order tickets for Danny’s 2025 tour here:

https://www.dannybakerstore.com/

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This week’s events piled into a pipe and enthusiastically smoked include …  

… our memories of being at the Band Aid recording in Sarm studios, November 25 1984.

… why it was the last dance of the mass media and why nothing could have the same impact now.

… the “household name” that made all the difference.

… the real reason Bob Geldof could be involved.  

… James Bond, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, the Spaghetti Westerns … how music is the real DNA of film franchises, the fingerprint that connects you with the original.  

… why should a teenager know what a radio is?

… “Live vivid! Delete ordinary! Break moulds! Copy nothing!” The tortuous rebranding of Jaguar.

… what the BBC spends 95 per cent of its time doing.

… how Bee Gees’ drummer Dennis Byron unwittingly invented the tape loop.

… the appeal of inconvenient technology.

… David’s second Deep ‘70s compilation, “a dream fulfilment” – Americana, Skinny Tie music, cover versions, the outer limits of Island Records.

… plus birthday guest Mike Sketch on discovering music late in life (Dylan, Tom Waits etc).

David’s ‘More Deep 70s’ 4-CD compilation is available for pre-order now:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/David-Hepworths-More-Deep-Misunderstood/dp/B0DCGGQDNK

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

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