Pleasure Gardens, cabaret, nightclubs, rave & 350 years of the Big Night Out

Pleasure Gardens, cabaret, nightclubs, rave & 350 years of the Big Night Out

Author: Mark Ellen, David Hepworth and Alex Gold May 7, 2026 Duration: 30:11

Mass commercial nightlife began in a Japanese Pleasure Garden in 1657 and it’s blossomed ever since – via Victorian Vauxhall, cabaret Paris, jazz-driven New Orleans, flappers, speakeasies, moonshine, Studio 54 and the rave palaces of the 21st Century. Imogen Willetts tracks its riotous evolution in ‘Up All Night: A History of Going Out’ and wonders if the invention of the iPhone has burst the balloon. She talks to us here about …

 

... the Tango, the Can-Can: dances that got you arrested

 

… how bourgeois French ‘slummers’ found a taste of danger

 

… the heady allure in the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens as an escape from Victorian squalor

 

… how Anita Berber’s chloroform ballet shocked and delighted Weimar Berlin

 

… when dancing was a mating ritual and the impact of Dating Apps  

 

… democracy on the dancefloor: the unrepeatable mix of punters and celebrities at Studio 54

 

… and how the invention of the electric light got people going out and the iPhone made them stay home

 

Order ‘Up All Night’ here: https://www.weidenfeldandnicolson.co.uk/titles/imogen-willetts/up-all-night/9781399617093/


Help us to keep The Longest Continuous Conversation In Rock 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
How Glenn Tilbrook transformed the life of Squeeze [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 33:53
Glenn Tilbrook wrote an album with Chris Difford about a futuristic nightclub when they were teenagers and, 52 years later, they’ve recorded it and are performing it on the upcoming tour. He looks back here at the partne…
The Skids, Big Country and the unsettling story of Stuart Adamson [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 46:12
Stuart Adamson co-founded the Skids and Big Country but was profoundly ill-suited to the spoils of his success. Author Scott Rowley unpacks his passage from Dunfermline to Nashville and Hawaii to get a sense of his demon…
There are only three Rock National Treasures – and we name them! [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 49:25
Our ‘big air’ manoeuvres on the rock and roll ski jump this week land the following tricks … … why don’t we re-use old protest songs instead of writing new ones? … “a temple of music and gothic lust:” would YOU buy Jim S…
Boston, Def Leppard, bad hair & the golden age of rock radio [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 35:20
Paul Rees fell in love with AOR when it began with Boston in 1976, the polished, ramped-up hits that were briefly the music of the American heartland. His book ‘Raised On Radio: Power Ballads, Cocaine & Payola – the AOR…
Was Bad Bunny at the Superbowl the greatest show ever staged? [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:03:58
After 40 days of relentless rain, you need our little ray of sunshine. And here we all are! Sitting in the rock’n’roll rainbow this week you’ll find … ... the Wuthering Heights instagram gold-rush … licensing Foreigner a…
Andy Bown remembers the Herd, Judas Jump and 47 years in Status Quo [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 32:20
Andy Bown found the 20 year-old recordings of “a deep-space love story” he’d written with the sci-fi author Russell Hoban and he’s just reworked and released them. He talks to us here about “Out There” and life in the He…
How the album survived and why it satisfies the soul! [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 38:46
The album has had 25 years of being hammered by other formats – Napster, iTunes, Spotify, TikTok – and not only survived but thrived. For Keith Jopling it’s the irreplaceable way to hear music and to measure the people w…
David Bowie and the triumph, mystery and struggle of his third act [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 39:26
Bowie’s early years have been scrutinised repeatedly but people tend to speed through the last act, from the early ‘90s to his death in 2016. Alexander Larman’s ‘Lazarus: The Second Coming Of David Bowie’ looks at his re…