Dave Pegg joined Fairport Convention 56 years ago and fully deserves some sort of medal. They’re playing their 49th Cropredy in August and touring the UK later in the year. He talks to us here about the first gigs he ever saw and played which, delightfully, involves …

… the night Hank Marvin took him to see Bjork.

… an all-nighter in Birmingham with John Mayall, Eric Clapton, Chris Farlowe and Spencer Davis.

… memories of his “school hero” Denny Laine.

… the fine art of getting it together in the country: life at the Angel pub in Little Hadham – “flea-bitten, enough hot water for one person and a lorry crashed through the wall into Dave Swarbrick’s bedroom”.

… the link between ticket sales and high blood pressure.

… what not to do when you meet McCartney.

… a night on the whisky with Rick Danko that ended in hospital.

… how a band lasts 58 years without falling out.

… the Island albums that made their reputation but never earned them any money.

… unsung Birmingham acts: Denny Laine & the Diplomats (Bev Bevan on drums), Steve Gibbons in the Uglys, Jeff Lynne in the Idle Race.

… narrowboats, pewter ale jugs, outdoor settees, Matty Groves, Meet On The Ledge and other cornerstones of the Cropredy experience.

… Dave Swarbrick’s “small holding” and further assorted knob gags.

Fairport Convention tickets here: https://www.davepegg.co.uk/gigs/fairportgigs/

Cropredy tickets here: https://www.fairportconvention.com/

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Boldly pursuing tariff-free trade in rock and roll news, nostalgia, gossip and old hokum since 2007 and, this week, featuring …

… the romantic allure of life as a critic.

… Sting’s part in the success of ‘Adolescence’.

… Mick Jagger’s long engagement to Melanie Hamrick (born when Steel Wheels came out!)

… "Contained within these grooves are twelve convincing arguments against the capitalist system" and other vicious reviews revisited.

… when Bob Marley recorded ‘Sugar Sugar’ by the Archies.

… Al Bowlly’s menacing ‘Midnight, The Stars And You’ and how film soundtracks change your relationship with music.

… what Mike Chapman had to tell Blondie to make ‘Parallel Lines’ a hit.

… little-known pop fact no 97: Dave Pegg was at the same school as the man who invented the internet!

… "I can lose weight but you will always be the director of Brown Bunny” – cracking film review one-liners from Roger Ebert.

… the Jaws film and the Jeeves musical: both came out 50 years ago, both riddled with catastrophe. One broke box office records, the other died like a louse in a Russian’s beard.

… Gabrielle Drake - “If you’re going to be in a flop, best it be a huge one.”

… why Elvis Costello and Al Stewart should hit the lecture circuit.

… and David Hemmings, inconsolable, in a shower.

Plus birthday guest Chuck Loncon stages a quiz.

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Sparks are touring – playing England in June – and with a new (and 28th) album, Mad!. Russell Mael looks back at the first shows he ever saw and played which entails …

… sitting on the floors of LA clubs watching Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, the Move, the Faces, the Who and Tyrannosaurus Rex.

… his Mum taking him to see the Beatles in the Hollywood Bowl among “10,000 screaming girls”.

… “there was a faux honesty about the Laurel Canyon bands – ‘it’s just me and my guitar’ – whereas the British acts had the clothes and put on a performance. Which is just as honest.”

… what Todd Rundgren saw in the early Sparks.

… Edgar Wright’s “love letter” movie ‘The Sparks Brothers’ and how it’s expanded their audience.

… rehearsing for four months to perform all 21 of their albums in their entirety in 2008 (in Islington) and the people who came every night.

… playing pizza parlours in the ‘60s – “we were paid in pizza”.

… and how the Mael brothers’ creative relationship has worked - indeed thrived – for over 60 years.

Sparks tour dates and tickets: https://allsparks.com/

Order Sparks’ new album Mad! here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/MAD-Sparks/dp/B0DY9JD1TX

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The runners and riders in the rock and roll steeplechase first past the post this week include …

… how Ed Sheeran protects himself against song theft claims.

… ‘lost’ Hendrix, Beach Boys, Amy Winehouse and Jeff Buckley records: is anything unfinished ever any good?

… “The Unauthorised Breakfast Item”: can YOU tell a Bob Newhart sketch title from a Caravan song?

… US Office versus the UK original and the genius of Steve Carrell.

… The West Wing, Frasier, the Good Life and how romance is the root of all great sitcoms.

… rock and roll lighting: “you can do whatever you want now but that doesn’t mean you should”.

… Judge claims busking is “noise pollution”!

. … Pink Floyd: “it’s not going to work without the gong!”

… and a giant poster of David Hepworth and Mark Ellen pinned to a tree outside Wareham.

Plus birthday guest Stephen Lambe on the downside of the age of spectacle.

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Ed Tudor Pole entered punk rock from stage school and always felt he was playing a part. After being hired to act in the Great Rock’N’Roll Swindle, he formed Tenpole Tudor and had a brief and dramatic moment in the sun, all recorded in his rollicking memoir ‘The Pen Is Mightier.’ He talks here about …

… his “quite posh” ancestry and a great-grandfather bankrupted by the Wall Street Crash.

… a “Damascene conversion” to the Rolling Stones and ten hours in the burning sun at their Hyde Park show, aged 14.

… being at RADA with Timothy Spall, Imelda Staunton and Juliet Stevenson.

… The Great Rock’N’Roll Swindle audition and the “really horrid” Nancy Spungen’s striptease.

… how everyone’s related to Edward 111.

… the secret of a One-Man Show – adopt the voice of Will Hay and “let the audience do the work!”

… why “most actors are awful people and all crippled in some way” and his time in theatre was “like being a cow in a field of sheep”.

… how Stiff’s Dave Robinson hated punk and wanted Tenpole Tudor to be a novelty act.

… three months with five acts in a coach on the Stiff Tour.

… how the success of Swords Of A Thousand Men didn’t affect their ticket sales - “it was bought by 350,000 12 year-old boys who weren’t old enough to go to gigs”.

… why the Tenpole Tudor split broke his heart.

… as Socrates said, “the unexamined life is not worth living.”

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… surprise paydays like the use of Who Killed Bambi? in the Zero Day soundtrack to accompany Robert De Niro’s nervous breakdown.

Order ‘The Pen Is Mightier’ here …

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Pen-Mightier-Autobiography-Punk-Rocker/dp/0857306057

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Scanning the rock and roll ether with our patent heat-seeking Ripple-Detector®️ to see what rings the bell. Which this week includes …

… how reformed ‘90s pop groups all look like Paul Whitehouse characters from the Fast Show.

… the mutual agony of parents taking kids to concerts.

… “Tap! Tap! Tap!”, the “gacked up” sound of the Heartbreakers’ at work in Fort Petty.

… “Two old voices crack through the static/ Vinyl souls dissected so erratic”: AI’s nerve-jangling interpretation of Word In Your Ear – in song!

… the four stages of showbiz … and three stages of hearing music.

… the miracle birth of Don Henley’s ‘The Boys Of Summer’.

… why we tend to run the other way when people insist we’d like something.

… records that make sense 40 years later – and a message from Brian Eno.

… EMF and the graffiti, Carter USM rugby tackling Phillip Schofield, Radiohead playing ‘My Iron Lung’: bands “too cool” for the Smash Hits Poll Winners’ Party.

… how simpler music appeals as you get older.

Plus the new Patreon roll-call and, from Les, the unsettling AI-generated tribute to Word in Your Ear:

https://suno.com/song/ba364f5a-1b39-4d77-8f5b-bcdb9bad6760?sh=N3TMfcz8YUIxPIyl

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The super-trouper of scrutiny scans this week’s events and lands upon …

… the man who’s played on 21,000 records.

… how Joni Mitchell is still stirring it up aged 81 and why we love her for it.

... the impact of the stadium circuit on rock festivals.

… the longest-surviving group in the world – bowing out at Glastonbury after 66 years!

… “fake indignation” on social media.

… the 40th anniversary of Dead Or Alive’s stunning You Spin Me Round (Like A Record).

… the most unlikely looking person to have ever become a rock star.

… the serial winner of the Bass Player Who Most Resembles An Old Testament Prophet contest.

… why a record untouched for four decades – eg Day Of Radiance by electronic zither master Laraaji - seems to have matured like a fine wine.

… how Donna Summer’s I Feel Love was a new kind of music, one that made you one want endless repetition rather than change.

… “Kevin Ayers drank a pint of Pernod then drove me down a mountain”.

Plus birthday guest Avi Chaudhiri on the connection between Buddy Holly, Mike Mills and Paul ‘Bonehead’ Arthurs.

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Kate’s an old pal from our days at Word magazine. She was on the staff for six years before heading off to the New Statesman and has just put out a collection of the sizzling and revelatory profiles she wrote for us, them and the Observer about a particular sector of the musical landscape for whom she’s always carried a torch. As she wonders in ‘Men Of A Certain Age: My Encounters with Rock Royalty’, “how is it that in the presence of wrinkly rock stars twice my age I sometimes think I’m meeting … me?” This tremendous exchange is full of hard-won insight about the mind-set of musicians and stops off at the following …

… the fascinating appeal of rock stars’ vulnerability, giant egos, oddness and obsessions – “they’re often frozen at the emotional age they became famous”.

… growing up with Britpop, the decade when “teenagers weren’t allowed to like anything”.

… things women notice and men often miss: the difference between male and female journalists.

… being driven down a mountain by Kevin Ayers after he’d drunk a pint of Pernod.

… why she’s so drawn to the critically unfashionable acts like Bruce Hornsby, Kiss and Terence Trent D’Arby.

… what she learnt from interviewing Joni Mitchell’s old boyfriend Cary Raditz.

… why the best route to understanding any rock star is via their parents.

… her obsession with “the shamefully unfashionable” Queen, aged 11, and the appeal of these self-styled “fun ambassadors” against the grating irony of the ‘90s.

… the “charming yet awful” Paul O’Neill of the Trans-Siberian Orchestra handing out $50,000 bundles of cash to the homeless.

… why musicians are more interesting when they’ve peaked.

… “the cartoon characters” of Shaun Ryder and John Lydon.

… “the only people at Jeff Beck’s interment were his wife and Johnny Depp”.

… and being refused an interview by Janelle Monae for not being sufficiently “queer or black”.

Order ‘Men Of A Certain Age’ here:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Men-Certain-Age-Encounters-Royalty/dp/1788705645

Tickets for Kate’s launch event on April 3:

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/men-of-a-certain-age-kate-mossman-with-alexis-petridis-tickets-1270535970289

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