The magnificent Sly Stone & Brian Wilson and the curse of our expectations
As the great Warren Zevon said, ‘Enjoy every sandwich’. The two-man canoe navigates this week’s rock and roll rivulet which sadly entails reflections on a pair of towering musical giants ‘whose legend occupied the space where activity should have been’. Things considered include …
…are you born with genius or does a set of circumstances allow it to flourish?
… the impossible task of living up to people’s expectations and the calamitous ways it led Sly and Brian Wilson to behave.
… like Sly’s plane landing at the moment he was meant to be onstage at Madison Square Garden.
… the massive cultural contrast between Woodstock and ‘the Black Woodstock’ a month earlier and how Sly & the Family Stone looked like they’d ‘come from Mars’.
… how Derek Taylor, Tom Nolan and Nick Kent helped fashion the Beach Boys’ myth.
… Sly’s impact on Miles Davis, Prince, Massive Attack and hip-hop and how a record as radical as There’s A Riot Goin’ On was a No 1 Christmas album.
… In My Room, a completely new kind of teenage song.
… David’s five Beach Boys teenage moments …
… and Mark’s three examples of Brian Wilson’s Greatest Bits – eg the overture to California Girls.
… and 'Arise, Sir Roger Daltrey!'
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Word In Your Ear
Mark Ellen and David Hepworth have been talking about and writing about music together and individually for a collective eighty years in magazines like Smash Hits, Mojo and The Word and on radio and TV programmes like "Rock On", "Whistle Test" and VH-1.
Over thirteen years ago, when working on the late magazine The Word, they began producing podcasts. Some listeners have been kind enough to say these have been very special to them. When the magazine folded in 2012 they kept the spirit of those podcasts alive in regular Word In Your Ear evenings in which they spoke to musicians and authors in front of an audience.
Over these years they've produced hundreds of hours of material. As of the Current Unpleasantness of 2020, they've produced yet hundreds of hours more with a little help from guests kind enough to digitally show them around their attics such as Danny Baker, Andy Partridge, Sir Tim Rice and Mark Lewisohn. For the full span of the Word In Your Ear world, visit wiyelondon.com.
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