The Strange Brew - artist stories behind the greatest music ever recorded

Ten years on, Jeremy Clyde is back. Chad Stuart left behind decades of unfinished Chad & Jeremy recordings. Jeremy and guitarist Jo Meacham have now finished them off, and the results are being crowdfunded as When All Is Said and Done. Jeremy calls it the album they always wanted to make and never got round to finishing.

Before any of that, Jeremy takes us back to 1960 and Central School of Speech and Drama, where he met Chad, and to Tina’s Bar in London, where John Barry heard them and took a chance on Yesterday’s Gone. He talk...

Devo co-founder Gerald V. Casale joins us for a career spanning conversation, starting with his new protest single “Just Do It” and moving through nearly every chapter of Devo’s story.

Casale explains his view on the current American administration and discusses the limits of music as a force for political change. From there the conversation moves through his collaboration with Czech act Die alten Maschinen, the songs taking shape for his forthcoming solo album Wetiko, and contributions from Steve Bartek and guitarist Steve Stevens.

Casale traces Devo’s story from the Kent State killings in 1970...

Arthur Brown joins Jason Barnard, alongside his partner and collaborator Claire Waller, to talk through his new album Nature and a life spent chasing fire, water, air and earth through sound and theatre.

Arthur and Claire describe the return to North Yorkshire, eight miles from Arthur’s birthplace in Whitby, after a decade of travelling together. They walk through how Nature took shape: around 100 fires tested to find a usable rhythm, a river thirty yards from the front door recorded for its rush over rock, and small creatures of the earth captured and worked into the mix. Th...

Robin Scott’s career spans from acoustic songs on the 1960s folk circuit to the sequenced synth-pop of ‘Pop Muzik’ – the 1979 hit single that took him to number one under the moniker M.

On this episode, he traces that journey: studying at Croydon Art College, releasing his 1969 debut album Woman from the Warm Grass, managing pub-rock group Roogalator, co-founding Do It Records, and living and working with Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood.

Robin also reflects on his pioneering records including New York · London · Paris · Munich, The Official Secrets Act and Jive Shikisha. Finally, the conversation brings us t...

Over fifty years ago, a teenager from Cleveland got talked into playing “Maggot Brain” at an after party, and soon after he was on stage with Parliament-Funkadelic. Michael Hampton, known as Kidd Funkadelic, joins us to tell that story properly, and to go through everything that’s followed it: five decades inside one of the wildest bands in American music, a run of guitar solos that hip-hop built entire records on, and his new solo project, the King Kong mini album.

We start with King Kong itself: how a nearly hundred year old story about a giant ape en...

Eric Barrett spent two years, from 1968 to 1970, as Jimi Hendrix’s road manager and one of the few people the guitarist trusted. In this conversation with Jason Barnard, Barrett talks in a rare interview about his new memoir Experienced: On the Road with Jimi Hendrix and Beyond.

Barrett explains how a job roadying for The Koobas led him from the Beatles’ final UK tour to Keith Emerson’s stage antics with The Nice, and eventually to a chaotic gig in Rome that almost saw him walk away from Hendrix. He describes the two sides of the man he wor...

Graham Parker didn’t get a record deal until he was 24, having worked in a rubber glove factory and picked tomatoes in Guernsey before that. Fifty years on, he’s still telling those stories the way he always has, with honesty – straight and funny. Recorded live at The Cat Club on 26 March 2026, Jason Barnard talks with Parker about Nick Lowe producing Howlin’ Wind, the ruined tape that forced a week-long rework of Stick to Me, and Bob Dylan telling him after a set that he loved ‘Don’t Ask Me Questions.’ In this extensive interview, Parker also talks about breaking up th...

George Bunnell, Mark Weitz, Howie Anderson, Gene Gunnels and Randy Seol discuss the history of Strawberry Alarm Clock. They cover the writing and recording of their 1967 number one single Incense and Peppermints, reuniting and making their new album, Where’s One? Sixty years on they continue to release new material that carries the sound and spirit of the psychedelic era.

Further information

Strawberry Alarm Clock website

Big Stir Records

Strawberry Alarm Clock podcast tracks

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Podcasts also available: Russ Giguere – The Association, Michelle Phillips – The Mam...

The Iveys came together in Swansea in the early 1960s, with Ron Griffiths on bass alongside guitarist Pete Ham. Bill Collins took over as manager, and it was during their residency at the Marquee that Beatles aide Mal Evans caught their set and carried a demo tape to Apple. Live tapes, and dozens of demos have since been unearthed from the Golders Green house where they wrote and rehearsed.

Ray Davies also took an interest and recorded a handful of their songs. Tony Visconti also produced, including Ron’s ‘Dear Angie.’ For Badfinger’s ‘Come and Get It’ Paul M...

Steve Tilston joins Jason Barnard for a tour through six decades of songwriting, picking thirteen tracks from across his career and talking through the stories behind them. Along the way he covers his early days on the London folk circuit, the frustrating experience of his second album on Transatlantic Records, and the decision to put out a record himself in 1976 when very few people were doing it. He also talks about the famous John Lennon letter, written by Lennon in 1971 after Tilston mused in a ZigZag magazine interview that fame and fortune might damage his songwriting, never delivered, and...

Philip Norman returns to talk about Mr. Moonlight, his first book devoted entirely to Brian Epstein, and what

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Martin Barre is already playing when the evening begins. Recorded live at The CAT Club in December 2025,

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Otis Williams discusses over six decades of The Temptations and their upcoming UK tour. Williams talks about moving

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Anthony Phillips, founding Genesis guitarist, joins Jason Barnard to talk about the formation of Genesis, his departure, and

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John Leckie is one of British rock’s greatest producers, who started out as a tape operator at Abbey

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John Helliwell of Supertramp returns to talk about Crime of the Century, the newly restored 1975 concert film

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Boz Boorer talks about his life in music, from his earliest memories of Marc Bolan and T. Rex

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Mark Webber has been with Pulp for so long that his story and the group’s are almost the

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Singer-songwriter Michael Weston King picks tracks from across his career, a conversation bookended by his new solo album Nothing Can Hurt Me Anymore, shaped by the Southport attacks of summer 2024 and the loss of his granddaughter, Bebe. King recalls Fragile Friends, who put out singles through Probe Records in early 80s Liverpool. After their split he found country music and formed The Good Sons, touring and recording with Townes Van Zandt. Solo albums followed, including collaborations with Jackie Leven, and with Chris Hillman and Herb Pederson. With his wife Lou Dalgleish he formed My Darling Clementine, enjoying critical success...

He wrote some of the greatest songs in American music, Dark End of the Street, Do Right Woman,

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Gary Talley was 19 when The Box Tops scored a number one hit with ‘The Letter.’ Alex Chilton

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In a market town seven miles south-east of Manchester, a recording studio opened above a shop in 1968

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Few works of musical theatre receive the recognition they deserve, and The Kibbo Kift is a prime example.

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Duncan Mackay spent the 1970s at the keyboard of British popular and progressive music, often invisibly, yet seldom

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Rat Scabies needs little introduction as the thunderous drummer of The Damned. His collaborator in One Thousand Motels,

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Jason Barnard is joined by music writer and artist Chris Wade to talk about The Kinks Are the

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Andrew Sandoval talks about THE KINKS – ALL DAY AND ALL OF THE NIGHT, The Day-By-Day Story Pt

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Lou Gramm discusses his long-awaited album Released and how it brings unfinished songs back to life. Gramm also

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Tom Doyle digs into the remarkable, and surprisingly chaotic, story of Paul McCartney’s post-Beatles decade. Tom’s book Man

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If you’re a David Bowie fan, the names Earl Slick, Mike Garson, Tim Lefebvre, Gerry Leonard and Mark

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It’s been over a decade since I last spoke to Steve Ellis, and it felt like no time

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Billy Sherwood discusses the upcoming YES UK tour featuring the complete Fragile album. He traces his path from

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The guitar player who helped define pub rock in the 1970s is still making records. Brinsley Schwarz’s latest

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Across Big Big Train’s shifting line-ups, Greg Spawton’s songs connect the earliest records to their latest album, Woodcut.

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Mike Garson traces his extraordinary creative relationship with David Bowie from the Ziggy Stardust era through to his

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Ric Sanders, the fiddle player who has been an integral part of Fairport Convention for 40 years, takes

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Steve Berlin revisits Los Angeles during its most volatile creative period, the late 1970s and early 1980s, when

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Vox, lead vocalist of Chameleons, discusses the group’s successful reformation and their latest album Arctic Moon. The conversation

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Damon Minchella, founding bassist and songwriter of Ocean Colour Scene, and longtime collaborator with Paul Weller and Richard

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In 1968, a group of Luton apprentices started creating a rock opera. Chris Stokes and his band Genesis

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