Spinning sides at the conversational disco to see what fills the dancefloor, which this week includes …

… Jerry Garcia had seven fingers! Brian Jones had seven children! Morrissey worked for the Inland Revenue!

… the most terrifying villain in the history of cinema

... is pop music becoming inbred?

… when Neil Sedaka made records with 10cc (and Abba)

… Happy? Get Lucky? Crazy In Love? What was the last hit single the whole world seemed to be singing?

… Noddy Holder, Kim Wilde, Robert Wyatt, Gary Numan: what makes you a National Treasure?

… rock and roll puns and double-entendres

… “drawn from the national conversation”: the divine Englishness of the Pet Shop Boys

… the Gilded Palace of Sin, In The Court of the Crimson King and other records we bought because of the title

… and acts wiped out by the Beatles “like corn before the sickle”.

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

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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 partnership that once wrote 200 songs in three years, the first gigs he saw, his recent decision to take control of the group and what’s changed the way they sound. Among the highlights …

… what he learnt from watching Radiohead and Doechii

… when you walk into a teashop and Tír na nÓg are playing

… T. Rex and screaming girls at the Lewisham Odeon – “comfortable, confident, thrilling”

… Terry Reid, Traffic, Bowie and darker memories of Glastonbury 1971

… “that age when Pickettywitch are as engaging as the Rolling Stones”

… the song that came to him in a dream

… constructing “a knockout set that’ll slay any audience”

… winning a talent contest at Butlins in Clacton, aged 12 – “a week’s free holiday!”

… “the breadth and depth of what we can do now outstrips the way we were”.

Order the ‘Trixies’ album here: https://squeeze.lnk.to/trixies

And Squeeze tickets here: https://www.squeezeofficial.com/

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

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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 demons and what drove and inspired him. He talks to us here about his compelling new memoir ‘Stay Alive: the Life and Death of Stuart Adamson’ and touches on …

… hints of troubled family life in his early lyrics and the shadows of his father and grandfather

… that famous three-word review: “More crusading porridge!”

… the guilt of his success when he returned to his Dunfermline roots

… why learning to sing is unwise!

… how Big Country were saved by Steve Lillywhite and the resentment about their being sold as a pop group

… Nick Drake, Sinead O’Connor … “people who should never have been given a record contract”

… insurmountable friction with Richard Jobson

… how Nevermind made the old rock landscape look outmoded

… “guitars that sounded like bagpipes!” and other hoary old clichés

… “empty, breast-beating, bombastic!”: the rigours of the rock press consensus

… and how Big Country nearly played Live Aid.

Order ‘Stay Alive: the Life and Death of Stuart Adamson’ here: https://www.simonandschuster.co.uk/books/Stay-Alive-The-Life-and-Death-of-Stuart-Adamson/Scott-Rowley/9781917923538

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

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.