Word In Your Ear

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 Glory Years 1976-1986’ remembers the age when records were launched via car stereos, their eternally appealing sound and the preposterous lives of the people who wrote and played them – Bon Jovi, Pat Benatar, Asia, REO Speedwagon, Don Henley and Toto among them. “It’s happy music,” he points out. “Music that makes you raise a quizzical eyebrow.” In the mix …

… the original AOR sound: “Led Zeppelin hard rock with Eagles harmonies and a stratospheric high-tenor voca|”

… the absolute power of producers like Mutt Lange (a man raised on radio jingles)

… Pat Benatar, the former married bank clerk who wanted to be Robert Plant in a leotard

… “AOR stars were all salesmen who talked in quotes”

... the many reasons Don Henley fired people on a whim

… Def Leppard’s vision of America built on AOR and cowboy movies

… “Chicago and the Tubes never played on their records”

… “he ended up butterball-naked in a cocaine threesome sting with two disguised police women”

… the producer who had his trout pond realigned as he couldn’t work looking at a garden that wasn’t symmetrical

… the story of Toto’s Africa: “tape loops strung round chair-backs and a quick flick through a geography book”

… “if this record’s a hit I’ll run naked down Sunset Boulevard”.

Order a copy of ‘Raised On Radio: Power Ballads, Cocaine & Payola – the AOR Glory Years 1976-1986’ here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Raised-Radio-Paul-Rees/dp/1408721112

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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 and Lynyrd Skynyrd: when is a band not a band?

.. what Michael Jackson asked the Superbowl promoter

… one long video for Charli XCX: “if that film was playing in my back garden I’d draw the curtains”

… Bob Dylan & Kurtis Blow, Kate Winslet & ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic: a brief history of weird duets

… a walk-on forest, 300 extras, 29 hidden messages: how can you top Bad Bunny? (“Disgusting!” – D Trump)

… what a 1969 Rock Encylopedia said about “the poets and minstrels of our time”

… “biopics are designed for people who don’t know the subject”

... Paul Anka did Smells Like Teen Spirit? The Flaming Lips did Kylie Minogue?

… whippets, flat caps, bottles of stout: begone hoary old Yorkshire clichés!

… “that’s the biggest power station in Western Europe – and I know the manager!”: our love for Alan Bennett

… plus Top Gear, M*A*S*H, Twins Peaks, Arena (by Brian Eno) and birthday guest Paul Monaghan on great TV theme tunes.

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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 Herd, Judas Jump and Status Quo, which involves …

… playing the Three Tuns in Beckenham with Bowie

… “Foot gun, gun foot. I always tell the truth.”

… Peter Frampton when he was The Face of ‘68

… “we were earning £225 a night and got £15 a week. Where did the money go?”

… Quo’s Whatever You Want and how co-writing works

… David’s memories of the Herd supporting Chuck Berry in 1968

… opening for Hendrix at Saville Theatre, eight feet from his flaming guitar: “you could feel the heat”

… Judas Jump, Don Arden, the huge advance and the “appalling” album

… sessions with Jerry Lee Lewis who played the solo with his foot

… early days in Status Quo when he played behind a curtain and how they got to be Live Aid’s opening act

… “You’d think John Fogerty would be pleased about Rockin’ All Over The World. Au contraire!”

Order ‘Out There: A Deep-Space Love Story’ here: https://andybown.com/

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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 who make it. His new book Body Of Work celebrates its battle-scarred trajectory from the beating heart of pop culture to 21st Century affordable luxury, and stops off at …

… growing up in the age of cassettes

… his lifelong devotion to a Police album left on his doorstep

… Adele’s battle with Spotify to get records played in sequence

… how albums are how you calibrate a career, from the Beatles to Taylor Swift

… has anyone ever loved a CD the way they love an album?

… how parents used to despair of their kids loafing in bedrooms listening to records but now try and persuade them to do it

… pictures of equipment: rock porn!

… the swingback to Listening Parties and analogue recording

… records as shining examples of the packaged goods business

… “we need to regain control of our attention”

… and the iTunes launch party and why Smashing Pumpkins thought they’d seen the future.

Order Body Of Work in the UK here: https://www.roughtrade.com/product/keith-jopling/body-of-work-how-the-album-outplayed-the-algorithm-and-survived-playlist-culture

And in the USA here: https://repeaterbooks.com/product/body-of-work-how-the-album-outplayed-the-algorithm-and-survived-playlist-culture/

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Unredacted exchanges about the rock and roll underworld this week highlight the following …

… real or made-up stars’ kids’ names: Speck Wildhorse? Blue Ivy? Everly Bear? Motorhead Michelob?

… man plays drum solo with his head!

… Olivia Dean, Lola Young, FKA Twigs: what do today’s ‘professionals’ learn at the BRIT School and what happened to the age of the amateurs?

… why Joni Mitchell’s life was even more extraordinary before she was famous

… Three Dog Night, Kiss, Grand Funk Railroad, Linda Ronstadt: American acts that never broke Britain

… rude, racy, naughty, delightful: our love of old pulp paperbacks

… “Go to your room, young lady, and play a Nick Drake album in its entirety!”

… and when Dandelion became Angela.

Plus birthday guest Paul Higham and why most stars’ stories need a lively biographer.

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