Keith & Chuck, Bowie & Tina, Frank & Elvis and what we learnt from rock’s joint ventures

Keith & Chuck, Bowie & Tina, Frank & Elvis and what we learnt from rock’s joint ventures

Author: Mark Ellen, David Hepworth and Alex Gold February 18, 2026 Duration: 41:53

Some shared stages. Some made records and films together. Some had love affairs. Matt Thorne is fascinated by stars’ collaborations and what they reveal about them. He talks here about 14 musicians who collided and the discoveries he made in the six years spent writing ‘Famous: Ego, Envy and Ambition in Pop, Rock and Hip-Hip’, with all this high in the mix …

 

… Frank Sinatra’s ‘Welcome Home Elvis’ TV Special and how threatened he felt by rock’n’roll

 

… “Chuck Berry thrived on tension in exactly the way Mark E Smith controlled the Fall”

 

… what you’ll find in Lou Reed’s archive at New York’s Library for the Performing Arts

 

… McCartney at “the showbiz event of the year”, January 1968, at a rare low ebb in the Beatles’ fortunes

 

… the mystifying One Trick Pony where Paul Simon inexplicably chose to play a failure, and his comic turn on Saturday Night Live

 

… Bowie’s and Tina Turner’s TV ad and love affair

 

… what Chuck Berry tried to hide about his studio trickery and the “psychological terrorism” of what played on his TV sets

 

… “all musicians are obsessed with the idea that they’re on the way out”

 

… why a book like this would have been impossible 30 years ago

 

… and Dave Stewart’s vision of Lou Reed as a piece of pasta on a motorcycle.

 

Order copies of ‘Famous: Ego, Envy and Ambition in Pop, Rock and Hip-Hip’ here: https://www.waterstones.com/book/famous/matt-thorne/9781474616386


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

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: 100

Word In Your Ear
Podcast Episodes
The glorious story of Funk from James Brown to Off The Wall [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 42:54
Old friend of the podcast Lloyd Bradley wrote Bass Culture, the defining account of reggae, and he’s now turned his attention to funk, from its deepest roots and via the jazz, arts, TV, radio and pop culture that flavour…
Nick Lowe’s miracle payday, Rock feuds and a giant inflatable Jarvis [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 50:35
Panning for gold in the murky waters of this week’s news, we found the following … … is Sabrina Carpenter’s aunt the voice of Bart Simpson? … is punk now just a small room in the giant apartment block of Goth? … why band…
The Damned at 50 and the memories (and regrets) of Rat Scabies [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 35:42
The Damned are – yes! - 50 years old with three of the originals still onboard. And just starting a world tour. In this immensely funny and touching podcast, Rat Scabies (who’s smoking!) points up the repercussions of li…