Steering the supercar of enquiry round the rock and roll racetrack with the occasional stop for a tyre change. Foot-to-floor moments this week include…

… why are the British so hung up about posh pop stars?

… the 10-second moment of his stage routine that Springsteen must find addictive

… the flaming bra, the flying dress, the human horse: Lady Gaga’s most OTT entrances

.. would YOU want Madonna as a sister-in-law?

… Fleetwood Mac, the Grateful Dead, the Bee Gees: bands the NME said were finished in 1975

… John Paul Jones in Marks and Sparks

… musicians’ houses we’d most like to live in (actually one’s a lifeboat)

… the goth/fantasy allure of Steve Nicks on TikTok

… and the still-haunting times we died onstage “like a louse in a Russian’s beard”.

Plus Noel Coward, Julie Andrews, Jem Finer, birthday guest Phil Turner and Tony Bennett’s favourite meal.

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

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

London’s Blitz club in 1980 had a huge impact on the way the decade looked and sounded, the launchpad for Boy George, Spandau Ballet, a new age of electro-pop and many writers, designers and photographers. The author and broadcaster Robert Elms was one of its cornerstones, “a place for people who’d outgrown the 20th Century”. We talk here about his book ‘Blitz: the Club That Created the ‘80s’ with all of this on the dancefloor …

… the Blitz Club rules, “unspoken until Steve Strange spoke them”. And the door policy: “Look at yourself, darling. Would YOU let yourself in?”

… first nights “with a Space Cossack shirt and asymmetric wedge” and the origin of the term New Romantic

… the rise of the “home-made Macaronis” (dictionary definition: “over-dressed popinjays of dubious sexuality”)

… Bowie’s Starman, Roxy, soul, disco, Weimar, Max Ernst, Otto Dix, Edith Piaf, Swinging London, Andy Warhol and other keys strands of Blitz DNA

… its anti-rock stance and impact on the mid-‘80s American charts

… the news-friendly night Mick Jagger was barred entry

… “I was spat at by an old lady at a bus stop for wearing eyeliner and a kilt”

… when Island offered Spandau a deal after just three numbers

… the role of the Face, Smash Hits and the new full-colour media

… the author’s “dilettante” passage through skinhead, suedehead, soul boy and punk

… and the night Bowie appeared, “like Jesus walking into your local church and sitting in a pew”.

Order ‘Blitz: The Club That Created the 80s’ here:

https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/blitz-the-club-that-created-the-eighties-robert-elms/e672041a84e0cde9?ean=9780571394180&next=t&next=t

Find out more about how to help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear

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

Prince’s commercial peak was Purple Rain but John McKie thinks Sign O’ The Times was his creative masterpiece and tracked down over 200 collaborators, girlfriends, “Prince whisperers”, assistants and admirers to piece together the story of its construction (without allowing himself to use the word “genius”). Which leads us up some colourful, spot-lit alleys, among them …

… “a man in suspenders playing funk”: why a disastrous support slot on the ‘81 Stones tour was pivotal moment

… Mozart/Salieri levels of rivalry: he once told a Paisley Park engineer to stop singing Culture Club “as that’s the competition”

... battles with Warners president Lenny Waronker: “he believed he was right and the rest were wrong”

… “creative incontinence”: an autocrat in need of an editor

… bodyguard “Big Chick” Huntsberry, performative stunts and the BRITS moment that immortalised him

… the controlling, manipulative nature of anyone who can play 27 instruments

… “he changed his cars to match the colour of his album campaigns”

… artistic parallels with his hero Joni Mitchell

… why he loved comedians in the way he loved jazz musicians

… what we know about his “secret” wives Mayte Garcia and Manuela Testolini

… and the four acts with eternal mystery – Prince, Bowie, Dylan, Dolly Parton.

Order ‘Prince: A Sign O’ The Times here:

https://www.waterstones.com/book/prince-a-sign-o-the-times/john-mckie/9781785121944

Find out more about how to help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear

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