Kate Mossman has strong feelings about rock stars past their prime

Kate Mossman has strong feelings about rock stars past their prime

Author: Mark Ellen, David Hepworth and Alex Gold June 16, 2026 Duration: 48:57

Kate’s an old pal of ours from Word magazine who writes scintillating columns and profiles for the New Statesman and Observer. We loved her book ‘Men Of A Certain Age: My Encounters With Rock Royalty’ – just out in paperback! – where she relives her meetings with a variety of legends, eccentrics and old lags whose music she finds particularly compelling and wonders what they all have in common. This typically funny and colourful conversation stops off at …

 

… the attractive fallibility of rock stars past their peak

 

… a lifetime’s devotion to Paul Simon

 

… “Olivia Dean is the Carole King of her generation”

 

… the ridiculous expectations we heap on musicians’ creativity

 

… why Arts Criticism is under threat

 

… when the first record you buy (aged five) is the Chicken Song

 

… “One-Hit Wonders have achieved infinitely more than most of us”

 

… Ray Davies and his “eternal sense of apartness”

 

… why George Michael is under-appreciated and the time he found someone living under his floorboards

 

… the days when Jeff Beck modelled PVC jackets for Rave


 … the genius of Pat Metheny’s Orchestrion

 

… and the new acts who’ll still be huge in ten years’ time.

 

Order copies of ‘Men Of A Certain Age’ here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Men-Certain-Age-Encounters-Royalty/dp/1788705645

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.


There’s a particular kind of conversation about music that happens between friends who’ve spent a lifetime immersed in it-not as distant critics, but as participants in the culture. That’s the atmosphere you’ll find in Word In Your Ear, a podcast from Mark Ellen, David Hepworth, and Alex Gold. With a collective eighty years of writing and broadcasting for titles like Smash Hits and Mojo, and shows from "The Old Grey Whistle Test" to VH-1, they don’t just recount history; they unpack the stories behind it with the ease of a shared laugh. This podcast grew naturally from their work on the late, great magazine The Word, where they began recording over thirteen years ago, building a dedicated following who found something genuinely special in the mix. Each episode weaves together music, commentary, history, and interviews, moving seamlessly from deep-dive analysis of a seminal album to a frank chat with a surprising guest, all delivered with the warmth and wit of a late-night chat. It feels less like a formal show and more like you’ve been invited to pull up a chair in a room where the anecdotes are plentiful and the expertise is worn lightly. The result is a consistently engaging listen that treats music not as a museum piece but as a living, breathing part of our lives.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 50

Word In Your Ear
Podcast Episodes
Georgie Fame, Ben Sidran and the golden age of ‘60s Soho [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 37:16
Ben Sidran was in a teenage band with Steve Miller and Boz Scaggs, a session pianist with the Stones in 1969 and carved a brilliant career as a jazz musician, producer, author and broadcaster. He’s just written ‘Cool Cat…
Steve Hackett remembers batwings, blues clubs and Genesis on £15 a week [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 38:00
Steve Hackett’s seven years in Genesis get re-explored when he tours in October, along with ‘solo gems’ from the records he’s made since, the latest ‘the Roaring Waves’, a collaboration with old pal Steve Rothery. He loo…
Mari Wilson, our favourite girl about town, takes Neasden to Chelsea [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 34:53
Mari Wilson has drunk deep of all that London nightlife has to offer, from a London Transport social club in Wembley to a posh venue in Chelsea via the Cooks Ferry Inn in Edmonton, and she remembers it well. Here she mar…
All music is dance music! – and the best stage name ever [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 52:52
Another over-heated week put through the conversational air-conditioner, which involves … … the man who got rich writing words that could never be sung … Anna Bullock? Stefani Germanotta? People who’d never have made it…