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-1-1
Subscribe 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 PatreonHosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Guy Chambers - writing with Robbie, a tangle with Bowie & half a bagel with Paul McCartney
Alan Edwards, pop PR – ‘Bowie was like King Arthur and the Spice Girls like the Pistols’
Rock’s image-makers, men on dancefloors and why bands can’t act like bands anymore
Paul Carrack has seen it all – beat, soul, prog, pub rock, pop & the perfect ‘slow burn’ career.
Nige Tassell was so obsessed with Dexys he’s tracked down all 24 ex-members
Why Nick Mason’s “cottage industry” band plays just early Pink Floyd
Let It Be revisited, the wisdom of Steve Albini and a woeful tale about Steve Marriott
The genius of Little Feat, the Man with the Twang & pop’s greatest scandal in the making
Steve Diggle of the Buzzcocks remembers the day “a terrible beauty was born”
Rock snobbery, the seven wives of Gregg Allman & the greatest solo on a pop record
Harold Bronson of Rhino Records kept a 40-year rock and roll diary…
The “amniotic throb” of modern pop, the eternal life of the Top Gear theme and the Blue Nile’s lucky break
Hollywood Babylon, the inspired gimmickry of Catch A Fire and the luck of Ron Wood
Neil Tennant remembers life “with dyed red Bowie hair and clattering platforms”
Richard Thompson – “you know it’s time to go when the audience starts throwing chairs”
Neil Tennant remembers the pop press and “the last great era of forward-looking songs"
The Stones’ clothes, our love affair with Abba & rock’s most appalling spectacle
Big Characters we have loved and why the Clash wouldn’t last ten minutes in 2024
Sharleen Spiteri saw Joe Strummer onstage and thought “that’s what I want to be”
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
Superfancast
Derringer Discoveries - A Music Adventure Podcast
One Song
R&B Money
Bandsplain