Show Notes
Marco Pirroni’s moment in the sun was big, lucrative but incredibly short. It was under a year from Adam & the Ants’ first hit to their last and immediate break-up. Adam, he remembers, was the perfect writing partner – driven, intensely competitive and with “a pathological fear of only being Number 2”. He’s got no regrets, hasn’t had to do day’s work since, and looks back here at …
… being the first band writing songs for the video age
… “you can’t confuse fans buying records with love, it’s nothing personal”
… Telstar, Fireball XL5, Roxy Music and the “moon-stomping hits of Slade”
… playing covers of songs they didn’t like with Siouxsie at the 100 Club: “punk rock and my part in its downfall”
… Adam’s “Shakespearian tirade” at the legal meeting with Rolf Harris when he sued over Prince Charming and War Canoe
… Malcolm McLaren’s jukebox: the Flamin’ Groovies, Alice Cooper, the Troggs, “songs that weren’t very good”
… “we stopped being a punk band or a pop band or a glam band – or any sort of band at all”
… never tour America when you don’t have a bank account.
Order ‘Your Money Or Your Life’ here: https://tr.ee/P2_qxNZ6jC Help us to keep The Longest Continuous Conversation In Rock'n'Roll going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
More from Word In Your Ear
Helen’s violin at the start of Come On Eileen has filled a million wedding dancefloors. She was a member of Dexys Midnight Runners, later their musical director, at the boom time of Too Rye Ay (and its wobbly sequel) and captures the thrill of it all in her just-updated memoir, What’s She Like: A Violinist’s Tale. You’ll love this conversation - warm, candid, forgiving and touching on all the following …
We first met Nigel Dick in the late ‘70s when he was the motorbike messenger for Stiff Records and watched him rocket to success in the video boom, directing career-launching clips for Guns N’Roses, Tears for Fears and Britney Spears and working with Cher, Joni Mitchell and McCartney, all recorded in his memoir ‘Music Video Mischief’. He looks back here on that big-budget golden age and the rise of the amateurs from his home in Colorado and stops off at …
Two fearless men journey to the Edge Of News so that you don’t have to. Some highlights of this week’s report …
Richard Thompson has a new album, ‘Hippies, Thugs and Heroes’, and he’s touring again in 2027, the perfect excuse to get another of our favourite guests back in the chair again. He joins us here for a brilliant, free-wheeling conversation with a cast list including …
You forget how huge and ubiquitous Rory Gallagher was in the ‘70s, just 22 at the Isle of Wight and auditioning for the Stones four years later, an inspiration for Johnny Marr, Andy Partridge, the Edge, Slash and countless others. And for his brother and manager Dónal - “it was a big wide world I wasn’t going to see unless I hung onto his coattails”. He’s just published a memoir, ‘Edged In Blue, A Rock’n’Roll Odyssey with Rory Gallagher’, and looks back here at some of the highlights, these among them …