Word In Your Ear

Bob Dylan and the Beatles watched each other closely. Jim Windolf is fascinated by the parallels in their stories, the obvious moments they influenced each other and the unconcealable tensions at the times they met, all mapped out in his book ‘Where The Music Had To Go: How Bob Dylan and the Beatles Changed Each Other – and Changed the World’. He talks to us here from New York about what he discovered when writing it, which touches on …

… deep-end Dylan and Beatles fans: which can be “crankier”?

… the Chaplin-like comic timing of Dylan’s early shows and the humour of the Beatles’ early stage act

… the song Lennon and Dylan wrote, recorded and then lost – now possibly in the Dakota archive

… the theory that 4th Time Around refers to the four Beatles songs clearly derived from Dylan

… first impressions of each other - “Teenybop music!” “Folk crap!” – and how both acts were crowd-pleasers who could feign indifference

… when the two superpowers met at the Delmonico, Warwick and Savoy hotels

… Dylan in ’66: “girls still scream at me … but in a different way”

… the night Bob, Paul and Dana Gillespie saw John Lee Hooker at Blaises

… how Lennon’s I Want You was a direct response to Dylan’s song of the same title

… the 15 Dylan songs played in the Get Back sessions

… Bob’s touching low-key visit to Lennon’s childhood home

… and the failed attempts by Bob and McCartney to collaborate.

Order copies of ‘Where The Music Had To Go: How Bob Dylan and the Beatles Changed Each Other – and Changed the World’ here:
https://www.waterstones.com/book/where-the-music-had-to-go/jim-windolf/9781399627849

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Mark Lewisohn began his Beatles’ trilogy in 2003, the first volume appearing ten years later. He’s hoping the second, Turn On, which covers 1963 to 1966 and every recording session, might be ready by 2031 and working “nine days a week to achieve it, assembling a framework and then sliding it together”. Further good news – his lecture about their life in 1962, Evolver62, is now available on film! “No matter how deep you dig, there’s gold there”. He talks to us here about …

… how you research such an infinite subject and know when to stop

… the one-in-a-million coincidence in the story of I Saw Her Standing There

… the attractive world of telegrams, postage and showbills from the days “when the Beatles were still like us”

... how AI has muddied the waters and misinformation (like “Woodbine’s Boys”) becomes established fact

… “people are reshaping the Beatles’ story as what they want to believe”

… those perilous moments when their career seemed in the balance

… the Beatles v Shakespeare and which has the greater agency

… the Lewisohn work schedule - “6am til bedtime, nine days a week”

… the “rank amateurs” Decca signed the year they turned down the Beatles

… James Brown’s invented spat with Beatles and the struggle to separate fact from fiction

… Paul’s private battle with Nik Cohn

… and the US merchandise disaster, “a book in itself”

https://www.marklewisohn.net/

Order Evolver:62 on these links:
UK
https://amzn.to/4bP7bGS
US and Canada
https://apple.co/46m6L7x
https://bit.ly/4qsUXHy
https://bit.ly/45SSvTu
https://amzn.to/4pXf4gL
DVD
https://bit.ly/3Zap37F

And copies of the Tune In book here:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Beatles-All-These-Years-Tune/dp/1408705753/ref=asc_df_1408705753?mcid=3bbe6ad2416f31d59786d0f169b18876&th=1&psc=1&tag=googshopuk-21&linkCode=df0&hvadid=697210774528&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=7934131385361801281&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9072502&hvtargid=pla-525100023999&psc=1&hvocijid=7934131385361801281-1408705753-&hvexpln=0&gad_source=1

Tune In (trade edition):
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Beatles-All-These-Years-Tune/dp/1408705753/ref=sr_1_1?crid=Z5U3TCUCHL4Y&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.iARC_o0NanHFRSyWD51V1iwunMv6f4RVXwczxRVhEfk.HhdP2t3MG4xUMoVQHwdVFQUL7a9gWFWI-jjw6pvwhNw&dib_tag=se&keywords=lewisohn+tune+in&qid=1771317358&sprefix=lewisohn+tune+in%2Caps%2C99&sr=8-1&ufe=app_do%3Aamzn1.fos.95fd378e-6299-4723-b1f1-3952ffba15af

Tune In (Extended special edition):
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Beatles-These-Years-Extended-Special/dp/1408704781/ref=sr_1_2?crid=Z5U3TCUCHL4Y&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.iARC_o0NanHFRSyWD51V1iwunMv6f4RVXwczxRVhEfk.HhdP2t3MG4xUMoVQHwdVFQUL7a9gWFWI-jjw6pvwhNw&dib_tag=se&keywords=lewisohn+tune+in&qid=1771317358&sprefix=lewisohn+tune+in%2Caps%2C99&sr=8-2&ufe=app_do%3Aamzn1.fos.0fa28f01-6fca-4422-af4e-d52d5ad71bfe

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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/

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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
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