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Front Row: Don McLean, Yayoi Kusama

Don McLean, Yayoi Kusama

09/02/2012

BBC Radio 4 - Front Row, Don McLean, Yayoi Kusama

Singer-songwriter Don McLean; Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama; Hollywood's star dogs.

Don McLean on winning a Radio 2 Folk Awards Lifetime Achievement; Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama on her Tate Modern exhibition; and the dog-trainer who worked for Scorsese on Hugo.

With John Wilson. 

Don McLean, winner of a lifetime achievement award at the Radio 2 Folk Awards last night, discusses his classic album American Pie 40 years after it topped the British charts.

Yayoi Kusama is perhaps Japan's best known living artist. In the 1960s and 1970s she became an important figure in the New York avant-garde. As a major retrospective of her work opens at the Tate Modern, she reflects on the mental illness that has informed her art and her influence on artists from Andy Warhol to Damien Hirst.

The Golden Collar Awards - the Oscars for dogs - take place on Monday, and Martin Scorsese has been campaigning for Blackie, the canine star of his film Hugo, against stiff opposition from The Artist's Uggie. John and his dog, Jock, meet Blackie and her trainer Julie Tottman, to find out what it takes to be a dog star. 

Producer Rebecca Nicholson.

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