How Paul Cook broke into Hammersmith Odeon to see the Who, Slade, Queen & Alex Harvey

Paul Cook’s post-Pistols band the Professionals were once, rather surprisingly, on the cover of Smash Hits - “the pinnacle of our success!” – and they’re including the 100 Club on their upcoming tour, the location of another career highlight. He talks to us here about how the first time he played live was also the Pistols’ first appearance (Saint Martin’s College of Art - “utter chaos”), how their old Denmark Street rehearsal room is now an AirBnB (Rotten’s cartoons still on the wall), old punks in the audience, Danny Boyle’s TV series and the very slim chance of a reunion (“never say never”). But much of this is about climbing through back windows to see bands in the early ‘70s, Stevie Wonder, the Four Tops, Queen and Mott the Hoople among them. And seeing Alex Harvey on the day the whole of Scotland descended on London for the match against England at Wembley. The Professionals are playing four UK dates (and often chuck in a couple of Pistols' tunes):https://www.ents24.com/uk/tour-dates/the-professionals-1-1Subscribe to Word In Your Ear on Patreon for early - and ad-free - access to all of our content, plus a whole load more: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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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. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.