Podcasts · Word In Your Ear

Keith & Chuck, Bowie & Tina, Frank & Elvis and what we learnt from rock’s joint ventures

18 Feb 2026 · 42 min · Episode 876

Some shared stages. Some made records and films together. Some had love affairs. Matt Thorne is fascinated by stars’ collaborations and what they reveal about them. He talks here about 14 musicians who collided and the discoveries he made in the six years spent writing ‘Famous: Ego, Envy and Ambition in Pop, Rock and Hip-Hip’, with all this high in the mix …

… Frank Sinatra’s ‘Welcome Home Elvis’ TV Special and how threatened he felt by rock’n’roll

… “Chuck Berry thrived on tension in exactly the way Mark E Smith controlled the Fall”

… what you’ll find in Lou Reed’s archive at New York’s Library for the Performing Arts

… McCartney at “the showbiz event of the year”, January 1968, at a rare low ebb in the Beatles’ fortunes

… the mystifying One Trick Pony where Paul Simon inexplicably chose to play a failure, and his comic turn on Saturday Night Live

… Bowie’s and Tina Turner’s TV ad and love affair

… what Chuck Berry tried to hide about his studio trickery and the “psychological terrorism” of what played on his TV sets

… “all musicians are obsessed with the idea that they’re on the way out”

… why a book like this would have been impossible 30 years ago

… and Dave Stewart’s vision of Lou Reed as a piece of pasta on a motorcycle.

Order copies of ‘Famous: Ego, Envy and Ambition in Pop, Rock and Hip-Hip’ here: https://www.waterstones.com/book/famous/matt-thorne/9781474616386

Help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear

Help us to keep The Longest Continuous Conversation In Rock'n'Roll going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear

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Links in the notes 3

• https://www.waterstones.com/book/famous/matt-thorne/9781474616386
• https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear
• https://acast.com/privacy

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