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Tales from the world's largest archive of music journalism: entertaining interviews with luminaries such as Neil Tennant, Billy Bragg, Pamela Des Barres, Gary Kemp, Vashti Bunyan, Midge Ure, Nick Hornby and Robyn Hitchcock. Thoughtful and informative conversations about all aspects of popular music history, interspersed with clips from exclusive audio interviews that date back to the mid-'60s. The RBP podcast is hosted by Barney Hoskyns and Mark Pringle and co-hosted & produced by Jasper Murison-Bowie. We're a proud part of Pantheon — the podcast network for music lovers.
Episodes
July 29, 2025 • 84 mins
For this episode we're joined by the excellent Val Mabbs, who talks to us about writing for Record Mirror in the late '60s and early '70s.
We start with our guest's early life as a mod in Hertfordshire – and her memories of seeing the Who/the High Numbers in 1964/5. Val then explains how she got her foot in the door at the Mirror and recalls colleagues such as Norman Jopling, Charlie Gillett and Lon Goddard, not forgetting Peter J...
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July 14, 2025 • 73 mins
In this episode we welcome novelist and screenwriter John Niven to "RBP Towers" to ask him about his career and his acclaimed novels.
We start with the Wishing Stones, the post-C86 combo for whom John played guitar in the late '80s, and progress swiftly to the subject of his caustic 2008 classic Kill Your Friends — the UK's drug-riddled music industry, in which he toiled through the '90s.
After John talks about his uncanny 2005 n...
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June 27, 2025 • 82 mins
In this episode we welcome the great soul scribe Tony Cummings to Hammersmith to discuss the subject of his classic 1975 book The Sound of Philadelphia.
Tony travelled all the way down from his adopted Stoke-on-Trent to answer our questions about his earliest musical passions in his native Plymouth and the launch of his pioneering '60s fanzines Soul, Soul Music and Shout. He goes on to talk about his contributions to (and editorsh...
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June 16, 2025 • 97 mins
For this episode we're joined in our Hammersmith lair by the highly respected Chris Bohn, known better these days by his alias Biba Kopf (cue a nod to Berlin Alexanderplatz author Alfred Döblin...) The veteran NME contributor and sometime editor-in-chief of The Wire talks about his long career as a Europhile connoisseur of extreme and out-there music.
We start by asking our guest about his mother's experience as a teenage refugee ...
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June 2, 2025 • 94 mins
For this episode we're joined – all the way from Brooklyn – by acclaimed author and sometime drummer Jonathan Gould.
The native New Yorker recalls his early musical epiphanies, his introduction to the drums and his studying under famed jazz drummer Alan Dawson in mid-'70s Boston. He also reminisces about his years in Woodstock, N.Y., and his association with The Band's Richard Manuel.
Our very personable guest explains his conver...
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May 19, 2025 • 65 mins
In this episode we welcome the great Paul Gambaccini into RBP's world and ask him about his 50+ years as one of Britain's best-loved broadcasters.
"The Great Gambo" tells us about his early radio days at Dartmouth College's WDCR station and explains how he slipped his foot in the door at Rolling Stone in 1970. He then recounts his first meeting with "underground deejay" John Peel (plus his BBC producer John Walters) while still an...
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May 5, 2025 • 79 mins
For this episode we're joined – all the way from L.A. – by special guest Bob Merlis. The former head of publicity at Warner-Reprise Records in Burbank talks us through his musical odyssey from his Brooklyn childhood to his continuing PR work for the likes of ZZ Top and Carlene Carter.
We hear about Bob's start at Record World in late '60s New York and the early '70s pieces he wrote for that trade publication and for Warners' short...
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April 22, 2025 • 81 mins
In this special episode we celebrate the last four years with clips from twelve of the best 100 shows we've recorded in that time.
Following an intro from Spandau Ballet mainmain Gary Kemp speaking in January 2023, we reflect on what we have (or haven't) learned over those four years, then play and discuss clips from these episodes:
Record Mirror legend Norman Jopling on first seeing the "Rollin' Stones" in 1963 (December 2021...
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April 7, 2025 • 76 mins
For this episode we're joined by veteran music scribe Phil Sutcliffe to discuss his years on Sounds, Q and MOJO.
We start by hearing about our guest's Beatles-obsessed adolescence in the North London suburb of Barnet, then follow him up to Manchester University and his subsequent apprenticeship on the Newcastle Evening Chronicle.
Phil explains how he got his foot in the door at Sounds in 1974, initially reviewing gigs on Tyneside...
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March 24, 2025 • 69 mins
For this episode we're joined all the way from Harlem in New York City by venerable hip hop writer Havelock Nelson.
The first rap editor at industry bible Billboard talks about his early years in his birthplace Guyana and his love of marching bands in the country's capital Georgetown. From there we hear about his family's move to Brooklyn in 1973 and his early exposure to rap and breakbeat tapes in high school.
Havelock recalls t...
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March 10, 2025 • 77 mins
For this episode we're joined in person by the delightful Siân Pattenden, author of the Agatha Bilke and Magical Peppers children's book series.
We start by asking our guest about her early years as a child actor and teenage playwright before she describes the fanzines she published with her pal Nicky Fijalkowska. We hear how these helped to get her foot in the door at Smash Hits, the million-selling pop bi-weekly she joined in 198...
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February 24, 2025 • 75 mins
In this episode we welcome not one but two guests and ask them to talk about their long-time friend and mentor Dave Marsh.
Daniel Wolff and Danny Alexander co-edited 2023's Marsh anthology Kick Out the Jams: on the eve of his 75th birthday they reflect on his powerful writing, his impassioned politics and his career from Creem and Rolling Stone to the Rock & Roll (subsequently Rock & Rap) Confidential newsletter he launched in 1983...
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February 10, 2025 • 78 mins
In this episode we're joined by music-biz legend Danny Goldberg to discuss his dealings with Led Zeppelin and Kurt Cobain — and the school days he spent with the great Gil Scott-Heron.
Danny takes us back to his short-lived stint at Berkeley and his first port of call on returning to his native New York: clerking at trade bible Billboard, a job that led to the publication of his report on 1969's Woodstock festival.
From there we ju...
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January 27, 2025 • 57 mins
In this episode, we invite the excellent Gene Sculatti to talk us through his career from Crawdaddy! magazine to the Atomic Cocktail radio show he still hosts at Luxuria Music.
Commencing in San Francisco in the summer of 1960 — when Gene first heard Dion's 'Lonely Teenager' — we ask our guest about his lifelong love of surf music and the Beach Boys. From there we jump to his mid-'60s radio show "Blues and Such", then on to the fir...
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January 13, 2025 • 72 mins
For the first episode of 2025, former Rolling Stone staffer and Bay Area photographer Michael Goldberg joins us to reminisce about his music journalism and discuss his new book Jukebox.
We start by asking our guest about the influences of San Franciscan "shooters" from Herb Greene to Annie Liebowitz, with special emphasis on Jim Marshall and Baron Wolman. Michael then recounts the story of how — as a 17-year-old living in Mill Vall...
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December 23, 2024 • 74 mins
For the final episode of 2024 we're joined by the formidable Pat Kane, who answers our questions about his dual career as a musician and writer with what co-host Martin Colyer describes as "an almost frightening eloquence".
Commencing with the formative memories of his late father singing Frank Sinatra songs to him at bedtime — and his lifelong fixation with Ol' Blue Eyes — Pat talks about Hue and Cry, the R&B-infused pop group he ...
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December 10, 2024 • 67 mins
For this episode we're joined by Chris Charlesworth, mainstay of Melody Maker in its '70s pomp and subsequently editorial director of music imprint Omnibus Books. Starting out at Skipton's Craven Herald & Pioneer in his native Yorkshire, Chris talks us through key moments in the Maker years he documents in recent memoir Just Backdated.
Paying particular attention to his stints as a '70s correspondent from L.A. and New York, we also...
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November 25, 2024 • 86 mins
In this episode we ask the former Time Out editor and acclaimed author of fascinating studies of fonts, maps and encyclopaedias about his long writing career; we also discuss semi-colons and listen to clips from audio interviews with Cher and Luther Vandross. Our guest reflects on Expensive Habits — his 1986 investigation of the music industry's "dark side" — and revisits two of his many great pieces: a hilarious 1987 encounter wit...
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November 11, 2024 • 75 mins
In this episode — recorded on the somewhat sombre Wednesday after the U.S. elections — we welcome the wonderful Beverley Glick to our Hammersmith lair and ask her about her New Romantic nom de plume Betty Page.
Beverley tells us about her early days on Sounds, where she started out as editor Alan Lewis' secretary, and talks us through her seminal 1980 encounters with Spandau Ballet and Steve Strange. Her subsequent early interview ...
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October 28, 2024 • 72 mins
In this episode we're joined by NME legend Chris Salewicz, author of acclaimed books about Bob Marley, Joe Strummer and others.
We hear about our guest's boyhood in Yorkshire — and about the first gig he ever saw: the Beatles in Leeds in 1963 (followed in rapid succession by the Rolling Stones — plus a young David Bowie — in Huddersfield). Chris then describes how a move to London in the early '70s led to getting his foot in the do...
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