n honour this week of an old pal, one of the greatest storytellers we ever met. In pursuit of at least two “genuine ripples”, we alight upon …

… his priceless Q coverlines - ‘Kate Bush: booze, fags, blokes and me!’ ‘R.E.M.: boffin bongo weirdy and beardy’

… drinking ink while chewing paper

… why he had 17 copies of Marquee Moon

… the Helmet of Destiny in the Room of Shame!

… the magic of old office life

… his Russian hat and his tribute to Moscow

… to Amsterdam with Danny Baker to learn how to smoke dope

… ‘Love working with you, man. Sorry you didn’t get a chance to speak'

… dictating columns in the Total Sport office

… “I’ll be back and we’ll go for a drive in my Bentley’

… and Football365, talkSPORT and the value of finding everything interesting.

And this is the wonderful podcast with him six years ago when he’d just moved back to Ireland with 20,000 records: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPXFThuuIiU

Help us to keep The Longest Continuous Conversation In Rock'n'Roll going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear

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Mary Gauthier didn’t appear onstage ‘til a traumatic night in Boston aged 29 and she’s been a songwriter and storyteller ever since, much of the raw material from the rigours of her early life. She looks back here, in the euphoria of post-election Nashville, at the personal landmarks and what she’s learnt along the way, which includes …

… how to connect with any audience

… how the crowd treated the opening act at a Charlie Rich show she saw aged 10

… memories of Led Zeppelin, Queen, Bad Company and Springsteen’s River tour (“our greatest living storyteller”)

… in praise of troubadours – Dylan, Woody Guthrie, Neil Young, Judy Collins and John Prine (“the Mark Twain of our time”)

… the ordeal of her first night onstage, an open mic in Boston aged 29

… the thrill of Jimmy Buffett and Boy George covering her songs and Dylan playing her on Theme Time Radio Hour

… the event that changed her relationship with her father

… “love, fear, anger, loss, gratification, mortality and other universal themes”

… “it’s lame to tell people what a song’s about before you play it”

… what turns people into performers and the song she always plays.

Order Mary Gauthier tickets here: www.marygauthier.com/tour

And copies of ‘the Reckoning’ album here: https://soundlymusic.ffm.to/mg-reckoningalbum

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.

Haircut 100’s moment in the sun was brief but dramatic and as vividly remembered as his childhood in Nick Heyward’s memoir Fantastic Days. The boy in marmalade corduroy shoes becomes the pop star in the sou’wester and, 45 years later, he’s finally made sense of the peaks and troughs along the way. He’s not bitter but has every right to be. It’s beautifully written, full of moments where time stands still, and this extraordinary and emotional conversation weaves its way through the following …

… early ‘60s life with an old-school father – “beer, pubs, jazz, meat”

… mid- ‘70s discos – “buck teeth, triple denim, imagining you’re Rick Parfitt” - and memories of Monster Mash, Tiger Feet, Monty Python, Stardust and That’ll Be The Day

… the look the bank girl gave him when he paid in his first royalty cheque

… the “hostile takeover” that expelled him from the band and has never been discussed since

… being a father aged 15 and eventually meeting his long-lost daughter

… is it a gift or a burden to have an over-active imagination?

… the band blowing their earnings in some kind of Simon Tamplar fantasy

… familiar tensions in the Beatles’ Get Back movie

… “for me it was leadership, for them resentment”.

Order copies of ‘Fantastic Days’ here: https://tr.ee/ITZXRHj-Ia

Book tour here: https://tr.ee/4r1Kj_oNVj

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.