Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Cents Podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today is legendary DJ and program director, the
Speaker 1: one and only Scott Shannon. Scott. Good to have you
Speaker 1: on the podcast. Nick Fan, longtime reader and sometimes a listener.
Speaker 1: It's a pleasure. Okay, you recently left the CBS Morning Show.
Speaker 1: What went on there? I haven't left it yet. I
Speaker 1: announced that I was going to leave it. The company
Speaker 1: that I worked for is having some financial problems. Their
Speaker 1: stock went from six bucks down to thirty cents in
Speaker 1: the past year or two, and uh, it just was
Speaker 1: time to move on, and so I retired from the
Speaker 1: CBSFM Morning Show here in New York. I have other
Speaker 1: projects that I work on with the same people. So
Speaker 1: I have a syndicated radio show it's four hours every weekend,
Speaker 1: and I have a that's a classic hit show. And
Speaker 1: then I have a worldwide oldies network called the True
Speaker 1: Oldies Channel, and it features music from the sixties and seventies.
Speaker 1: I'm a I'm a big fan of oldies. I've collected
Speaker 1: him for years, and uh, I'm pretty knowledgeable and the
Speaker 1: stories of of days gone by, an artists gone by. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: we ever see you in the morning again. That's a possibility.
Speaker 1: It's a good possibility. I probably will do it again.
Speaker 1: I've been doing it for forty eight years. I mean
Speaker 1: it's pretty hard just to walk away. Um. Most baseball players,
Speaker 1: if they could, they would keep playing. Same with Tom Brady.
Speaker 1: If he can play to a you know, a decent level,
Speaker 1: he'll keep playing. So you say, a big expert on
Speaker 1: the sixties and seven DS, do you start with the
Speaker 1: British Invasion de and with disco? What's really your area
Speaker 1: of expertise. My my whale house is fifty nine through
Speaker 1: sixty four. I know the Beatles and uh and, but
Speaker 1: I really concentrate on the early inductees into the Rock
Speaker 1: and Roll Hall of Fame. I'm talking about Buddy Holly,
Speaker 1: who I'm a big fan of and uh. I think
Speaker 1: one of the top ten Buddy Holly uh personalities in
Speaker 1: the world. Maybe because I've got every record he ever recorded,
Speaker 1: every book that was ever written. I found him very
Speaker 1: fascinating because he was the first artist that actually could
Speaker 1: play his own music, sing his own music, and write
Speaker 1: his own music. That was not that was not something
Speaker 1: that happened back then. You had all the songwriters that
Speaker 1: wrote the songs for the stars. Elvis never really wrote
Speaker 1: a song in his entire life. Okay, I'm just a
Speaker 1: little younger than you are. I certainly remember the early sixties,
Speaker 1: but it exploded with the British invasion. Terms of my
Speaker 1: radio listening other than the baseball games, how did you
Speaker 1: first hear Buddy Holly? Um? I was. I was a
Speaker 1: young guy, and uh, I was more into athletics. I
Speaker 1: was played football and at a mediocre level, and baseball
Speaker 1: at at a slightly higher level. But there was just
Speaker 1: something about rock and roll music that attracted me. Um
Speaker 1: I remember, I remember the first time I saw the
Speaker 1: Beatles on television like everybody else, and I certainly have
Speaker 1: recordings of the first time Elvis was ever on television,
Speaker 1: and uh, I remember the day I found out that
Speaker 1: Buddy Holly died. And I had a Schwin bicycle and
Speaker 1: I worked as a I worked as a newspaper boy
Speaker 1: and a caddy at a golf course, and I'd ride
Speaker 1: my Schwinn bicycle down to the local electronics store that
Speaker 1: had a record section, and every week I would buy
Speaker 1: three or four forty fives and take them back. That's
Speaker 1: how I started my collection and at that time, you
Speaker 1: only had Hit Parader magazine and there was no you know,
Speaker 1: an American bandstand, and I would watch that religiously, but
Speaker 1: you really didn't know anything about the artist then. You
Speaker 1: really didn't know anything about how the songs were done.
Speaker 1: And as I got older, you know, I bought albums
Speaker 1: and I would actually read the back of the album
Speaker 1: while I listened to the music. You know, Fabian album,
Speaker 1: Bobby Ryde Dell. I was also into R and B.
Speaker 1: Hank Ballard in the midnighters, and I thought Chubby Checker
Speaker 1: was very talented. I don't know why he's not in
Speaker 1: the Hall of Fame. You know, he revolutionized the world
Speaker 1: at dance, and he also had about fifteen songs that charted,
Speaker 1: and he gives an amazing life performance. But do you
Speaker 1: remember the first time you heard Buddy Holly? Um, I
Speaker 1: guess it. I guess it was Peggy Sue. I mean,
Speaker 1: I kind of went backwards with Buddy Holly the first time.
Speaker 1: I was so into him. At that time, I was
Speaker 1: working in Los Angeles at Casablanca Records, and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: I love Buddy Holly. And I got a call from
Speaker 1: Wolfman Jack, who I knew because he worked over for
Speaker 1: Bob Wilson Radio and Records. He shared an office there
Speaker 1: and the dope would walk through the ceilings all over
Speaker 1: the rest of the Radio and Records. I fit there,
Speaker 1: but he called me, hey, chatting, I'm going to Clear Lake, Ioway,
Speaker 1: don't you like Buddy Holly, don't you I'm MCing the
Speaker 1: Buddy Holly Reunion Joe and uh, I, oh, I'm going
Speaker 1: with you. Let's go. And he gave me his flight
Speaker 1: information and I went with him. And that was the
Speaker 1: very first Buddy Holly reunion celebration. People came from all
Speaker 1: over Europe. I mean, there were so many Europeans in
Speaker 1: there because he was so big then. And we had uh,
Speaker 1: I think Freddie Cannon was there, Jimmy Clant was there,
Speaker 1: some of these older artists and the crickets were there.
Speaker 1: And there was a guy named John gold Rosen and
Speaker 1: John was the first person to write a book about
Speaker 1: Buddy Holly. And I sat with him in the front
Speaker 1: row and and that was, you know, just just one
Speaker 1: of the greatest nights of my life. And it was
Speaker 1: in the in the ballroom there, the clear Le Guowa Ballroom,
Speaker 1: and it was so funny because it's so many of
Speaker 1: these people that I talked to were there the night
Speaker 1: that Buddy Holly played his last show. I actually drove
Speaker 1: from the clearly the Surf ballroom right. I took the
Speaker 1: same route that Buddy Holly took at midnight. There was
Speaker 1: about four ft of snow on the ground, and we
Speaker 1: went right past the airport where he got into that
Speaker 1: plane and flew off in the plane crash and that
Speaker 1: was it. And of course I've been to that crash
Speaker 1: site several times. Now. It sounds like I'm, you know,
Speaker 1: like a music geek, but that just you know, I
Speaker 1: was just such a big Buddy Holly fan on the
Speaker 1: and uh and moved on. I mean, but I think
Speaker 1: he was such a trend setter and such a star
Speaker 1: in the world of rock and roll. He would have
Speaker 1: still been probably active at least recording if he if
Speaker 1: he hadn't have died. What's your favorite, Buddy Holly saul Um,
Speaker 1: I like, oh boy, all of my love and all
Speaker 1: of my kissing. You don't know what you've been missing,
Speaker 1: old boy. But he had. He had so many great songs,
Speaker 1: and I think a great example of his ability is
Speaker 1: if you listen to his music today, it's still brings authentic,
Speaker 1: It's still it's still there, It's still got something. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's an amazing thing that there's so many people around
Speaker 1: the world that's still have discovered Buddy Ali in two
Speaker 1: and you go back and you you study his library
Speaker 1: and you just it's amazing what he could do. The songs,
Speaker 1: well all writes beautiful song. Um he had, he did
Speaker 1: rock and roll, he did country, he did beautiful ballots.
Speaker 1: It is an amazing, amazing person. And if you've seen
Speaker 1: the whole of Graham Show, I have not. I that
Speaker 1: I don't. I'm not fond of that whole. I don't
Speaker 1: think it's gonna last. You don't see it. You don't
Speaker 1: see it sticking. Did you go to one? Yeah? I
Speaker 1: did see it. But tell me why you thought it
Speaker 1: wouldn't stick. Um, I just see, Well they've they've done
Speaker 1: other artists, and you don't. You don't see that. They're
Speaker 1: not hanging a down there still not out there? Are they?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean it was a double feature
Speaker 1: header with Roy Orbison and Buddy and uh Orbison doesn't
Speaker 1: move much, so there's nothing there. They have Buddy bouncing around.
Speaker 1: It's good for about a song after that, it's like
Speaker 1: you have a live band. You're listening to it, you know.
Speaker 1: I remember the first time I went to a rock
Speaker 1: and roll concert. I grew up in the Midwest and
Speaker 1: my father was in the service. But in my embryo,
Speaker 1: my rock and roll embryo years, I was living in
Speaker 1: Indianapolis and they have like a downtown circle and one
Speaker 1: of those big you know those old theaters with the
Speaker 1: with the pillars when you go in and you walk
Speaker 1: up the red carpet stairs. They only got one freaking screen.
Speaker 1: And uh, and I have my mom dropped me off
Speaker 1: and it was a Dick Clark Caravan of stars and
Speaker 1: it was a made buddy was not on the bill,
Speaker 1: but a net foond Cello was. And I'll tell you what,
Speaker 1: she looked pretty good to this nine or ten or
Speaker 1: eleven year old guy. However old I was with, I
Speaker 1: don't however old I was, I don't even remember at
Speaker 1: the time. And Frankie Avalon was on the show, and uh,
Speaker 1: and a guy from England by the name of Cliff
Speaker 1: Richard who went on to fame and fortune, but at
Speaker 1: that time he only had one song out called Living Doll,
Speaker 1: which the flip side is a great song called apron Strings.
Speaker 1: It's a rockabilly song. I'm in the I love the
Speaker 1: field of rockabilly. But it was so cool because he
Speaker 1: had on a white suit and bob when he pulled
Speaker 1: out the handkerchief on the jacket and he laid it
Speaker 1: on the on the floor of the stage and he
Speaker 1: knelt down so he didn't get his his knee uh
Speaker 1: dirty and the white pants of that suit got myself
Speaker 1: a cry and talk and sleeping or living out. He
Speaker 1: only sang one song and then he took off and
Speaker 1: our came Lloyd Price that Lloyd Price's orchestra would back
Speaker 1: them all up. And that was man. I went home
Speaker 1: that night and that's all I thought about, was watching
Speaker 1: that rock and roll show. And remember back then they
Speaker 1: used the sound system in the theater. And then fast
Speaker 1: forward a few years, I went to the Indianapolis fair
Speaker 1: Grounds by myself to see the Beatles and that was
Speaker 1: so cool, man. And I mean it was weird because
Speaker 1: people don't know that back then they didn't have those
Speaker 1: big show cod sound systems. They didn't have the light show,
Speaker 1: they didn't have they didn't have anything. Their guitars into
Speaker 1: their amplifiers. You couldn't hear a damn thing. And plus
Speaker 1: I'm standing on a middle chair was outside that they
Speaker 1: did an indoor show at the Colosseum there. Then they
Speaker 1: did the out or show and the girls are all
Speaker 1: screaming and I'm trying to hear the Beatles sing. And
Speaker 1: they had the Righteous Brothers open up. And I've always
Speaker 1: been a big Righteous Brothers fan. This was long before
Speaker 1: Phil Spector got ahold of them. And they were doing
Speaker 1: Little Latin Loopie Lou and Coco Joe and all those
Speaker 1: great songs that were on the the original label. I
Speaker 1: can still see it going around on my record player. Man,
Speaker 1: and uh it was. It was just a great night
Speaker 1: once again. Went home at trouble going to sleep because
Speaker 1: I saw the Beatles. And later later on I went
Speaker 1: to see here. I went to see Paul McCartney at
Speaker 1: Madison Square Garden and I'm thinking, man, it's been a
Speaker 1: long time, buddy, but welcome back. Okay, let's go back
Speaker 1: to the fifties. In the seventies, the oldiet station played
Speaker 1: the fifties, but as time has gone on, the oldie
Speaker 1: stations have played subsequent decades the sixties, the seventies and
Speaker 1: the eighties. Are the fifties gonna survive or the pre
Speaker 1: Beatles stuff? Is that going to survive? Like people say
Speaker 1: that Elvis's merch sales are going down because his audience
Speaker 1: is dying off, So you gotta take on all that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well the audience, I mean, that's just saying that. The
Speaker 1: better example is Doo Wop. I mean it's very I
Speaker 1: don't go to a Doop concert because it makes me
Speaker 1: feel so terrible looking around to see the people in
Speaker 1: the wheelchairs and the oxygen tanks and all that. I mean,
Speaker 1: God bless him. But and that's some music. A lot
Speaker 1: of New Yorkers and people from New Jersey and that
Speaker 1: surrounding up and down the East coast. That's what they
Speaker 1: grew up with. You can do one of those shows
Speaker 1: down in Florida right now and you get you get,
Speaker 1: you know, a pretty good crowd, and you know, you
Speaker 1: you see in the still of the night and a
Speaker 1: lot of a lot of these performers are just not
Speaker 1: around anymore. They're not with us. But that's that's that's
Speaker 1: a that's a demarcation line, you know that that's a
Speaker 1: borderline there. And then you get into the American Bandstand,
Speaker 1: people like Fabian and Frankie Avalon and Bobby Rydell and
Speaker 1: all those people that all of a sudden came to
Speaker 1: a screeching all the minute Ed Sullivan. But the Beatles on,
Speaker 1: I mean, that was that was it. I can't tell
Speaker 1: you how many people, how many stars that I've interviewed
Speaker 1: over the years on the radio, Bob, and I said, well,
Speaker 1: what was your inspiration? And I tell you what, there's
Speaker 1: only two lines. One when I saw Elvis Presley on
Speaker 1: the Ed Sullivan Show, and I put my damn violin down,
Speaker 1: or I got rid of my piano teacher and I
Speaker 1: got a guitar. Or the rest of them came when
Speaker 1: it started when they saw the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan.
Speaker 1: So Ed Sullivan started so many people into the music
Speaker 1: because they got them going. So did you ever pick
Speaker 1: up an instrument? Never have I tried to learn a guitar,
Speaker 1: But I don't have to pay. I'm a d d uh.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna loved him. Been a you know, a performer.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately I can't sing and I can't play, so I
Speaker 1: decided to be a DJ instead, you know. Okay, So
Speaker 1: the fifties acts what are two other acts from the
Speaker 1: fifties that need to be pushed into the public eye
Speaker 1: other than Buddy Holly. Um she um, it's not. It's
Speaker 1: the early sixties, but I was the early sixties. Fine,
Speaker 1: pre Beatles, Yeah, pre Beetles. I don't. I don't. Elm
Speaker 1: is stuck with me, but in a different way. You know.
Speaker 1: You look at Buddy Holly, and Buddy Hollywood was inspired
Speaker 1: by Elvis. There's a great picture of Buddy in the
Speaker 1: dressing room where Elvis had been performing in his little
Speaker 1: town there in Texas. And there's there's not any other
Speaker 1: artists that I really feel. I mean, I gotta with
Speaker 1: Chuck Berry. Uh, Jerry Lee Lewis, but he didn't really
Speaker 1: move me as much as Chuck Berry. I've also got
Speaker 1: just about everything that he recorded, and uh, I thought
Speaker 1: he was phenomenal, and I studied that. You know, you
Speaker 1: look at Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoler. Those two guys
Speaker 1: were also very influential in in that period of time. Okay,
Speaker 1: there are many people The Beatles came along and they
Speaker 1: said no, so you obviously with a Beatles fan, but
Speaker 1: how about all your friends and when the music change
Speaker 1: and the British invasion came in and you said all
Speaker 1: those left all those acts were left behind. Was that
Speaker 1: fine with you? Or were you angry? I wasn't angry
Speaker 1: at all because the Beatles, you know, I actually had
Speaker 1: I remember I had had to buy two copies of
Speaker 1: the Meet the Beatles album because I actually wore the
Speaker 1: first one out. I'm almost like, I hate to say it,
Speaker 1: but like I felt the threatened my masculinity that I
Speaker 1: was like a female. And then love with the Beatles.
Speaker 1: I just thought they were so great. Un listen, I
Speaker 1: loved every every song on the Meat the Beatles album.
Speaker 1: I went out and got that early stuff because they
Speaker 1: did a couple of albums and they had singles out too.
Speaker 1: Before the folks at Capitol Records, the president there screwed
Speaker 1: the whole thing up and didn't want to sign him.
Speaker 1: His wife didn't like him. Right, introducing the Beatles on
Speaker 1: VJ the great album I Love Absolutely Right and the
Speaker 1: Uh Love Me Do p s I Love You single
Speaker 1: but Holly Records absolutely at the Yellow label. Remember exactly, man,
Speaker 1: when you and then you grow up around Hartford, and
Speaker 1: I grew up in fear Field, which is in between
Speaker 1: Bridgeport and Westport. So it's New York radio. But you listen.
Speaker 1: You didn't listen to pop ever. Yeah, I did listen
Speaker 1: to pop ever, but listen to my what are they
Speaker 1: call them salad years. I was more of a w
Speaker 1: ABC guy. The Hipper people were ten ten wins, w
Speaker 1: m C A in and out. Not that you didn't
Speaker 1: rotate the doll on your transistor a little bit, but
Speaker 1: you know, cousin Brucey. You know, listen. I could go
Speaker 1: on and but how about the rest of the British
Speaker 1: Invasion acts? Everybody from Jerry and the pacemakers to the Herman.
Speaker 1: Herman said, were you in or was it just the Beatles?
Speaker 1: And that was a Stones guy too. I remember when
Speaker 1: I first got the first Rolling Stones album and I
Speaker 1: found out was I have. I was also an R
Speaker 1: and B fan. I loved rockabilly and R and B.
Speaker 1: I think those two are they're kind of intertwined. I
Speaker 1: don't know, because of the beat. I loved the beat,
Speaker 1: the rockabilly beat, and the songs like high Heels Sneakers
Speaker 1: by Tommy Tucker. I'm really hard. There's some stuff in there.
Speaker 1: They're just watched me. I would like. I said, I
Speaker 1: was a big, a big fan of you know, I
Speaker 1: mess excuse me, I left Little Richard out of my
Speaker 1: favorite from the fifties. That guy was a monster, what
Speaker 1: a star. You know, his band, the Upsetters, never gets
Speaker 1: enough credit. But he was just a nut about having
Speaker 1: the right artist, the right instrumental players in there. And
Speaker 1: some of those guys were like Fats Domino. He paid
Speaker 1: a lot of attention to his band. When he went
Speaker 1: on the road, he had like eight or nine scorn players.
Speaker 1: Nobody took that many horn players on the road. Those
Speaker 1: are great, Little Richard, that guy was a monster. Now
Speaker 1: did you spend time with Richard and the rest of
Speaker 1: the people from that era, anybody who was alive that
Speaker 1: you didn't meet? I never met Little Richard. Now I'm
Speaker 1: thinking about it. No, I don't think I did. I met.
Speaker 1: I m c a couple uh oldie shows with UH
Speaker 1: with Chuck Berry. One was very funny because he hadn't
Speaker 1: been paid yet. He was playing in the Metal Lands
Speaker 1: arena there and UH then he hadn't been paid yet,
Speaker 1: so he sat down on a metal chair with his
Speaker 1: guitar in front, over to the right part of the stage,
Speaker 1: and the promoter asked me to go on and introduce it.
Speaker 1: So I'm up there and I'm going, ladies and gentlemen,
Speaker 1: this all the thing, Happy birthday that happened to be
Speaker 1: his birthday to Chuck Berry. And I said in after
Speaker 1: we did that, he's smiling at me, watching me, and
Speaker 1: so I go and now, ladies and gentlemen, get ready
Speaker 1: with the man that gave us such great songs as
Speaker 1: Johnny Be Good and the Promised Land and Back in
Speaker 1: the USA in deep feeling rock and roll music. And
Speaker 1: I'm reeling all these off and he's going like, come on, man,
Speaker 1: give me more, give me more. And I go on
Speaker 1: back and any boy, and I start doing the B
Speaker 1: sides of the singles, and he's happened to his knee,
Speaker 1: and I think I went through the thirty titles, and
Speaker 1: the crowd was laughing him because they knew I'm trying
Speaker 1: to get him up on the stage. And finally he
Speaker 1: got up and he brought up a guitar and he
Speaker 1: kind of gave me and he shoved me off the
Speaker 1: stage and he started playing. But what he was famous
Speaker 1: for it was all these kids that he never took
Speaker 1: a band with it. He never brought his own musicians.
Speaker 1: He uh, he would just did the kids and meat.
Speaker 1: They get there about three o'clock in the afternoon, all
Speaker 1: waiting for Juck Barry, and there was no Chuck Mary.
Speaker 1: So they would go back in the dress room and
Speaker 1: wait till he got there, and they only gonna rehearse Chunk. Now,
Speaker 1: you stand behind me and follow what I'd do, and
Speaker 1: he would get up there and he'd start playing, and
Speaker 1: they had they but luckily all these kids played that,
Speaker 1: you know, these garage bands played his music in their gigs.
Speaker 1: So when he got up there, they tried to follow him,
Speaker 1: but nothing. There's a famous scene in that movie about
Speaker 1: him where he's uh the playing and it's kind of
Speaker 1: like some B B footage and Eric Clapton's up there
Speaker 1: and they're doing a song like rock and roll music
Speaker 1: or one of his blue song Deep Feeling maybe, and
Speaker 1: Chuck stops Eric he's playing that song right, and he says, Chuck,
Speaker 1: I'm playing it just like you recorded it. He said,
Speaker 1: I don't do it that way no more. Very just
Speaker 1: Eric throws his hands and says okay, because he hardly
Speaker 1: ever does one of his songs. He hardly ever did
Speaker 1: one of his songs like he recorded it. He would
Speaker 1: just push the envelope and do it different, play it long.
Speaker 1: Sometimes he leaved the great songs out, but he could write.
Speaker 1: That guy was so intelligent and it was just he
Speaker 1: was another monster. Definitely one of that, I would say,
Speaker 1: one of the most important people in rock and roll.
Speaker 1: What do you think of the Stones version and not
Speaker 1: fade Away? All right? It was okay, I like some
Speaker 1: of I like some of you know when they did
Speaker 1: time Is on My Side, which was an old blue
Speaker 1: song that they picked up. That early stuff was really good.
Speaker 1: There was a fellow, It was a fellow that I
Speaker 1: was nuts about, a guy by the name of Arthur Alexander.
Speaker 1: You ever heard of him, of course, and he made
Speaker 1: put out some records on Apple. He uh. He was
Speaker 1: the only guy that ever had his music covered by
Speaker 1: the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan, and yet
Speaker 1: he died broke. He was working as a bellhop in
Speaker 1: a hotel I think it was up in Cleveland, Ohio,
Speaker 1: and he wrote that song Anna you know that by
Speaker 1: the course I introducing the Beatles album yep. And he
Speaker 1: also wrote you Better Move On, which is a just
Speaker 1: a wonderful piece of music. You tell me I'm not
Speaker 1: the man you're worthy of. You better move on. And
Speaker 1: uh as a great song. That was the Stones that
Speaker 1: Jagger does that He's never done it for years, but
Speaker 1: it was on one of his albums. Just a great song.
Speaker 1: So you're living in Indianapolis, what's it like when you're
Speaker 1: growing up? As my father was in the service. So
Speaker 1: I went to I don't know, sixteen to eighteen different
Speaker 1: high schools. I'm not high schools, but schools period. Because
Speaker 1: we moved around. I lived in Tacoma, Washington, lived in
Speaker 1: San Diego, lived in East Saint Louis, Illinois. That was
Speaker 1: a thrilled there here many East St. Louis once just
Speaker 1: a mess. St. Louis. We lived in Detroit. Uh lived
Speaker 1: underneath the Ambassador Bridge. There was a little army post
Speaker 1: there called Fort Wayne. I was there, Uh, Indianapolis, We
Speaker 1: lived in u or else in Georgia. Everywhere. We moved
Speaker 1: around constantly. I was one of the first places that
Speaker 1: I remember was my dad was in the Osaka and Japan.
Speaker 1: We lived there and uh, and then I just it
Speaker 1: wasn't a great childhood. The music that was my that
Speaker 1: was my my pressure, you know, my my safety valve.
Speaker 1: I just loved the music, and the rest of the
Speaker 1: stuff was not that great about about the time I
Speaker 1: was for some reason, by the time I was in
Speaker 1: high school, I figured I had enough knowledge and I
Speaker 1: just left und' graduate hit the road. Okay before you
Speaker 1: get there. You know, usually army bratts can a get
Speaker 1: along with everybody and be there good alone. How are you?
Speaker 1: I'm good alone. It was just pretty you know, when
Speaker 1: you go to school. You know, back then, schools weren't
Speaker 1: as as accepting their clicks because you know, they all
Speaker 1: live in the same neighborhood and everybody. You know, I
Speaker 1: didn't really have any friends, and I was pretty shy
Speaker 1: because you mean, you don't know anybody, You don't hang
Speaker 1: out with anybody here and out, you know, an outcast basically.
Speaker 1: And I was always new because my big problem was, uh,
Speaker 1: my parents. We were raised Catholic, and when we moved
Speaker 1: we couldn't always get in a Catholic school, so I
Speaker 1: would be in a public school, and then when the
Speaker 1: semester hit, I could transfer over, so that made it worse.
Speaker 1: I went from one school I didn't know anybody though
Speaker 1: another school where I didn't know anybody. For God's sakes,
Speaker 1: I still I have like one or two friends for
Speaker 1: my childhood. That's it. I don't know anyone, have anybody else. Okay,
Speaker 1: how did you decide to drop out? What your parents say?
Speaker 1: They didn't say anything. I didn't tell them. I left
Speaker 1: in the middle of the night. I had an old
Speaker 1: Chrysler fifty three Chrysler convertible and it was like nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty two sixty three, and I had like forty dollars.
Speaker 1: And uh. The thing about it was back then when
Speaker 1: someone was a missing person, they put out a three
Speaker 1: st three state alerts. I went to the library and
Speaker 1: I took a little compass and I figured out how
Speaker 1: far I could get away in the time before they
Speaker 1: were discovered that I was out of you know, going
Speaker 1: I had. I got up early to go to I
Speaker 1: worked at the Indiana Gun Club. I thought they call
Speaker 1: a trap boy. I would pick that would hold the
Speaker 1: clicker and fire the ducks out there they would shoot anyway,
Speaker 1: let's beyond. I don't know why I got into that,
Speaker 1: but I just took off, and uh I wound up
Speaker 1: in Hot Springs, Arkansas because it was three states away. Okay,
Speaker 1: And then you did what. I got a job at
Speaker 1: Oscar's bakery. Say. I was going to go off and
Speaker 1: be a DJ, but then I figured out that I didn't.
Speaker 1: I didn't stop to think that I had to eat
Speaker 1: and find a place to live. I forgot about that part, Bob.
Speaker 1: So I wound up just doing odd jobs, you know,
Speaker 1: and I got to know people. I would sleep on
Speaker 1: someone's couch or you know, made a girl, and you know,
Speaker 1: I just I just made it. I don't I don't
Speaker 1: know how I did it. But then I found out
Speaker 1: that in Little Rock there was a some of my
Speaker 1: friends would go to Little Rock on Saturday because they
Speaker 1: had a TV show called Steve Show where you could dance.
Speaker 1: Is like a little Arkansas version of American Bandstand. I
Speaker 1: think Bill Clinton used to go there, left I saw it.
Speaker 1: I saw a documentary on this show, and he talked
Speaker 1: about watching it on TV. It was just all over
Speaker 1: Arkansas and this this this jockey would pretend he was
Speaker 1: Dick Clark and we danced there. And I got another
Speaker 1: job at the Dennis Laboratory. I was riding around on
Speaker 1: a on a motor cycle, well, motor scoot. I guess
Speaker 1: I should say it sounds more macho to say motorcycle.
Speaker 1: But basically it was a motor scooter with a big
Speaker 1: box on the back of I have would pick up
Speaker 1: the teeth that were you know, the impressions and the
Speaker 1: teeth and go deliver them. And I would ride by
Speaker 1: the local radio station and look in the window and
Speaker 1: see the DJ working and thinking that's I need to
Speaker 1: be on that side of the glass and not this side,
Speaker 1: looking at him and uh. And I eventually weaseled my
Speaker 1: way in there and started until learn how to be
Speaker 1: a DJ? And how long till you made contact with
Speaker 1: your parents? I waited, will be a year to let
Speaker 1: them for my mother. I didn't give a rat's ass
Speaker 1: that my dad was upset, but we didn't have a
Speaker 1: very good relationship. But my mother I called her and
Speaker 1: told her I was okay. About a year into you
Speaker 1: know when you in those days, a month seemed like
Speaker 1: a year. You know, so much happened to me. I
Speaker 1: got a I could I could write a whole book
Speaker 1: on just three years of my life. You know. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you got inspired to be a DJ when you
Speaker 1: look through the glass in Arkansas? Well, I started in
Speaker 1: Indianapolis because they also had the same thing. There was
Speaker 1: a w I F E radio here. I say that
Speaker 1: you can tell him a professional, W I f e
Speaker 1: Indianapolis And uh, I would stand there and watch, you know.
Speaker 1: So I wasn't getting anywhere in Indianapolis, so I WM
Speaker 1: I hit the road. I read this book called On
Speaker 1: the Road by Jack Carroll Whack, and UH, as a man,
Speaker 1: this is this is great. That's me right there. I
Speaker 1: could do that. And it turned out it warn't is
Speaker 1: romantic because he made it sound in his book. So
Speaker 1: ultimately you go into the service how long after you
Speaker 1: leave home? And how he decided to do that. I
Speaker 1: got drafted. I didn't. I didn't decide to do it.
Speaker 1: They decided to take me. And that was the best
Speaker 1: thing that ever happened to me because I was I
Speaker 1: was developing into a nightclub guy, and I go see
Speaker 1: these bands who were in the nightclubs and hang out
Speaker 1: with people and if I really fell in with some
Speaker 1: bad characters at that time. And I got my draft
Speaker 1: notice and I said, oh my god, this is the
Speaker 1: end of my life. But that basically save me from
Speaker 1: probably a life of decadence. I don't you know, the
Speaker 1: things just I just wasn't where I needed to be
Speaker 1: at that time. But I got in the Army, and
Speaker 1: it taught me discipline and organization. And the problem was,
Speaker 1: in order to make a living when you're on your own,
Speaker 1: you have to be in a big city so you
Speaker 1: can stay lost, no one can track you down and
Speaker 1: all that. When you go in the service. That exposed
Speaker 1: me for the first time to small towns and you
Speaker 1: could walk right up to the radio station and hang
Speaker 1: out in there with the control board guy in the DJ.
Speaker 1: And that's when I started. While I was in service. Okay,
Speaker 1: but you were in the service. Vietnam was starting off
Speaker 1: at the end of it. Chest the end of it,
Speaker 1: it was still going on, but I was at the
Speaker 1: tail in, and uh, somehow I managed to avoid going.
Speaker 1: By that time, we knew it was a bad deal
Speaker 1: to go because I was at Fort Benning, I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: Fort Bragg in North Carolina and uh, and these guys
Speaker 1: were all shipping out because they were running out of
Speaker 1: It was towards the end, and we were losing so
Speaker 1: many young kids. It wasn't even funny. They were just
Speaker 1: shipping them out. A lot of people don't realize this,
Speaker 1: but at that point they were short of people. So
Speaker 1: instead of eight weeks basic training, they gave you four
Speaker 1: or five weeks and a i T, which is advanced
Speaker 1: individual training. You're supposed to get ten weeks or something
Speaker 1: like that, and they cut that in half. So by
Speaker 1: the time you get you learned how to shoot a
Speaker 1: rifle if you're on a rifle range at the army base.
Speaker 1: But when you're out in a monsoon with rain coming
Speaker 1: down and people shooting at you, you're not so good
Speaker 1: at it. And that's what happened. I mean, they were
Speaker 1: just they were shoveling people over there, right and left.
Speaker 1: It weren't coming home. So you're in the army for
Speaker 1: two years, two years, and you don't believe me. By
Speaker 1: the time I got out, though, I had my I
Speaker 1: had experienced in radio. Now this was radio because the
Speaker 1: different towns you were in or in the Armed forces, radio,
Speaker 1: not the enforce, a different towns. I was in two
Speaker 1: different towns. I was a DJ in UH in Fayetteville,
Speaker 1: North Carolina, and then they transferred me to Columbus, Ohio.
Speaker 1: By that time, I was rocking and rolling, I was going,
Speaker 1: I knew what I'm well kind of what I was doing.
Speaker 1: I sound like hell And that's where I started to
Speaker 1: develop my radio personality there and uh in uh Fort
Speaker 1: Benning in Georgia, which is Columbus, but our studio was
Speaker 1: over in Phoenix City, which is not the kind of
Speaker 1: place you want to hang out in too much. You know,
Speaker 1: he's okay, so you get out of the army, and
Speaker 1: then where do you start? I got discharge and when
Speaker 1: I as while I was getting out in processing myself,
Speaker 1: I called a fella because I read I met a
Speaker 1: another guy who was an established radio program director who
Speaker 1: happened to be visiting our station. I said, I'm getting
Speaker 1: ready to get out of service, and uh, do you
Speaker 1: know anybody that might need a DJ? And he said, yeah,
Speaker 1: you should call Bernie Deppman down him. Won't be all Alabama,
Speaker 1: w A B B. I said, he needs a disc jockey.
Speaker 1: He's always looking for a disc jockey. Because it was
Speaker 1: one of those feeder systems. You go there and you
Speaker 1: work for eight or nine months, when you you know,
Speaker 1: when you got a good tape, you'd send it out.
Speaker 1: And he didn't have people who lasted that long. So I, uh,
Speaker 1: I wrapped up a little tape, sent it to him
Speaker 1: and waited two weeks and I called down there, I said,
Speaker 1: Mr Deppman, this is Scott Channon. I'm up here in
Speaker 1: Columbus on Columbus, Georgia. I sent you a tape. I
Speaker 1: listened to your tape. Yeah, I think I could use you.
Speaker 1: I said, you can. He said, yeah, I think I
Speaker 1: got a job for you. I said, okay, Uh, when
Speaker 1: can I start? He said, well, whenever you can get here.
Speaker 1: I said, how far is it? He said, we're about
Speaker 1: twelve hours. I said, I'll be there tomorrow. Is that.
Speaker 1: Aren't you gonna ask me how much you're gonna make?
Speaker 1: I said, you can tell me when I get there.
Speaker 1: And how much? Was it? Hundred and twelve dollars a week?
Speaker 1: And what year are we in? Nineteen sixty eight? In
Speaker 1: the sixty nine Super Shan was on the radio mobile
Speaker 1: Alabama w A B B fourteen eighty. I was rocking man. Now,
Speaker 1: Scott Shannon is the name on your birth certificate or
Speaker 1: radio name? That's a that's for both. Okay, okay, I
Speaker 1: had a different I had a different last name at
Speaker 1: the time, but I switched that I hadn't legally changed
Speaker 1: early on. Last name was M M O O R. E.
Speaker 1: Moore more that I could have been a DJ Michael
Speaker 1: Moore My my uh my maiden name is Michael, Michael Scott.
Speaker 1: I go by the middle of this out in the middle.
Speaker 1: So how did you come up with Shannon? I was
Speaker 1: reading Billboard magazine. There was a guy up in Buffalo
Speaker 1: named Tom Shannon. It was a good disc jockey, and
Speaker 1: I said, well, he's not gonna mind if I borrow
Speaker 1: that name. So that's where I got it. But I
Speaker 1: did that very early in life. I actually found out.
Speaker 1: I asked a guy, how do you how did you
Speaker 1: change your name? And he told me, and it's pretty
Speaker 1: simple to do. They do it in Hollywood all the time.
Speaker 1: So you're in mobile and what's that like? Um, I
Speaker 1: didn't care. I was on the radio I changed. I had.
Speaker 1: My radio name was super Shan. I was the fastest
Speaker 1: mouth in the South, Super Shan on the radio. Yo
Speaker 1: leet a fast mouth in the South. By bla bla
Speaker 1: bla blay and go like that. And I only said
Speaker 1: about I had about I had written down on cards
Speaker 1: things I heard other DJ say and I own I didn't.
Speaker 1: I couldn't come up with any ad libs at the time.
Speaker 1: I would just say the same thing over and over,
Speaker 1: you know, but I would shuffle the cards. I wouldn't
Speaker 1: say that. No one would notice it was the same stuff.
Speaker 1: And how long did you last in Mobile? Uh? Year
Speaker 1: a year and a half had a big contest called
Speaker 1: super Shan We'll die for your school. That it was.
Speaker 1: It's like, you know you're right in I want Supershan
Speaker 1: to die from my school. I'll come to your school.
Speaker 1: I'll bring a band and we'll do a concert. And uh,
Speaker 1: I'll come and host the concert at your school. We
Speaker 1: had like ten thousand entries and there was a band
Speaker 1: They're called Wet Willie. They were just getting started and
Speaker 1: later on they became pretty popular. They to keep on
Speaker 1: smiling right on Capricorn Records. You know the lead single,
Speaker 1: correct Capricorn Records. I just heard from the lead singer
Speaker 1: like a month ago. He's got a new album. But
Speaker 1: in any event, you're in Mobile. He's found he's sounded
Speaker 1: like Mick Jagger back then. He's got a great voice.
Speaker 1: The band only needed a little bit of better material
Speaker 1: in my eyes, not that I want to get into
Speaker 1: with his family, but so you know that this is
Speaker 1: a stepping stone. How do you get from Mobile to
Speaker 1: your next gig? I had I bought a briefcase. There
Speaker 1: was a store back then called Wolco. It was Woolworth,
Speaker 1: but it was like a best Buy or something, you know,
Speaker 1: that's not that big, but back then it was pretty big.
Speaker 1: And I bought a plastic suitcase, I mean a plastic briefcase, sorry,
Speaker 1: And I got a copy of UM this magazine called
Speaker 1: Broadcasting Magazine, and I cut out they had a list
Speaker 1: of the top one hundred markets in the country, and
Speaker 1: I taped that inside the lid of the briefcase where
Speaker 1: I kept all my DJ to stuff. You know, I
Speaker 1: have my head bones and I had little notes that
Speaker 1: I had borrowed, and uh and and I circled mobile
Speaker 1: and it was down there like one twelve, and I
Speaker 1: looked all the way up at Number one was New York,
Speaker 1: number two was l A, and number three was Chicago.
Speaker 1: Now I never dreamed I get up in those places,
Speaker 1: but I didn't want to move up to like the fifties.
Speaker 1: You So I got a call from Memphis, Tennessee, and
Speaker 1: they said, we're looking for a nighttime DJ how about you.
Speaker 1: I said that'd be good, that'd be a good idea.
Speaker 1: I might be right up there. W MPs and uh
Speaker 1: and I I left. I gave two weeks notice and
Speaker 1: this time I'm rolling in the cash a hundred and
Speaker 1: sixty a week man. And uh, I loved Memphis because
Speaker 1: I was such a music fan. I used to hang
Speaker 1: out at Stax Records and that's where I met That's
Speaker 1: where I met the drummer from the drummer from Booker
Speaker 1: T and the MG's um the local nightclub and hang
Speaker 1: out where Ronnie Millsap who was a rock and roll
Speaker 1: singer then when later became a country singer, he was
Speaker 1: the nightclub band. I would hang out in that place,
Speaker 1: ran into b J. Thomas. Memphis was I loved it
Speaker 1: because it was all about music. Steve Cropper, I see
Speaker 1: him all the time. Um, I got to know Isaac
Speaker 1: Hayes there. I got to know his partner David Porter,
Speaker 1: who's still with us. And it's just phenomenal, phenomenal. One
Speaker 1: night I was I worked for the people who owned
Speaker 1: the radio station and owned bay Or Aspirin, and it
Speaker 1: was plow and they made uh, you know, I made
Speaker 1: prescription drugs and all that. But they wouldn't they were
Speaker 1: really tight ask they wouldn't let me have, you know,
Speaker 1: person to answered the phone. I had it got to
Speaker 1: answer the phone and be my assistant. When you've got
Speaker 1: two lines, they're all ringing, you can't answer there. So
Speaker 1: one night the front door we're only like on the
Speaker 1: third floor. One night the front doorbelt had a little
Speaker 1: buzzer up there, and uh, this guy said, I said,
Speaker 1: can I help you? Said, yeah, I'm a singer. I'm
Speaker 1: out from the San Francisco. I was over to Sun Records.
Speaker 1: They have a warehouse and he was buying some forty
Speaker 1: five's there. He said, I got a new record out.
Speaker 1: Can I come by and play it for you? And
Speaker 1: he I said, well, I guess yeah, what's your name?
Speaker 1: He said, John Fogerty. I go down and I remember
Speaker 1: they had a big glass. I take the elevator on,
Speaker 1: put on it and got it the beat. I ran
Speaker 1: downstairs and I put the key in the bottom of
Speaker 1: the door and opened it up. And he had a
Speaker 1: girlfriend with him, Eskimo girl, I believe, and uh, and
Speaker 1: they came on up and I liked him, and I
Speaker 1: didn't interview him. I didn't know how to interview people. Then. Uh,
Speaker 1: that's a weak point of my development. Took me a while.
Speaker 1: And uh. He brought this song called susie Q and
Speaker 1: he was staying at the at the Memphis Holiday Day
Speaker 1: in on the Mississippi River, and as I recall, he
Speaker 1: had written this song and it kind of inspired him
Speaker 1: when he was staying in that hotel Proud of Mary.
Speaker 1: I don't think he wrote it there, but he said
Speaker 1: he got the inspiration, and I don't know. A few
Speaker 1: months later, I got a real too reel. I'll still
Speaker 1: I wish I had have saved it. And he recorded
Speaker 1: that song and he sent it to me and asked,
Speaker 1: what do you think about it? I put it on
Speaker 1: the I put it on the recorder there and I
Speaker 1: played it back on the air and where he got
Speaker 1: he said, you can't play it. Yeah, we're not finished
Speaker 1: with it. I thought it was done, but it was
Speaker 1: not done though. That was and just I just had
Speaker 1: a wonderful time there. Sometime I got off at midnight.
Speaker 1: I was on seven to midnight. Sometimes uh Isaac and
Speaker 1: David Porter would come by and pick me up. And
Speaker 1: they're a big Cadillac because they were songwriters, but they
Speaker 1: weren't singers. And one night we were at a night
Speaker 1: club and there's a group called the short Cuts. They
Speaker 1: had they were integrated. They had a black singer and
Speaker 1: a couple other guys that were white and black, which
Speaker 1: is unusual at that time. And we would go there
Speaker 1: and and sometimes Isaac would drink too much or smoked
Speaker 1: too much weed in a car on the way over,
Speaker 1: and he would get up and sit behind him and
Speaker 1: B three and just start singing. He won that good
Speaker 1: of a singer. But what he did one night he
Speaker 1: played this song called by the Time I Get the Phoenix.
Speaker 1: He liked that song by Glenn Campbell, and he started
Speaker 1: playing it, but he didn't sing the lyrics. He started
Speaker 1: telling a story and he played it for about twenty minutes.
Speaker 1: The band finally just got down and left because he
Speaker 1: just got playing. And and when he got done, I said,
Speaker 1: you know, you ought to record that, Isaac, And he
Speaker 1: goes record what I said, that song you did by
Speaker 1: the Time You Get the Phoenix. That's a good song,
Speaker 1: he said. I don't remember one day I did. I'm sorry, man.
Speaker 1: So I never rode home with him. I always got
Speaker 1: a cab because they were they beat two stone to
Speaker 1: get me home. But um, I remember I called the
Speaker 1: guy Jim, who ran Stax Records at the time, and
Speaker 1: I said, you know, Isaac Hayes has got a song
Speaker 1: you ought to record. He said, Isaac doesn't sing. I said,
Speaker 1: he can sing. He's what is it? I said, by
Speaker 1: the time I get the Phoenix. Well he went ahead.
Speaker 1: He recorded him that I think that night, and uh,
Speaker 1: Isaac kind of duplicated what he's sang in the bar.
Speaker 1: There's one. The bar was one of those places up
Speaker 1: on top of the Holiday Inn where it goes around,
Speaker 1: you know, and then you really get dizzy. But it
Speaker 1: turned out to be. The album was called Hot Buttered Soul,
Speaker 1: and uh, one side, one complete side was that long
Speaker 1: with him rambo in the same way he did on
Speaker 1: that stage. And uh, you know, he's one of the
Speaker 1: few people who remembered that I helped him and his
Speaker 1: when he was a songwriter, because Jim Stewart, who you know,
Speaker 1: was the CEO of Stax Records, didn't know he could sing.
Speaker 1: And Uh, Isaac later became a DJ here in New
Speaker 1: York and actually um thanked me on the radio. He
Speaker 1: gave me credit for starting his career, and I went, like,
Speaker 1: no one ever does that. You know, it's never you know,
Speaker 1: they did it themselves most of the time. But that
Speaker 1: was just one of the many crazy stories that has
Speaker 1: happened to me over the years. So how long did
Speaker 1: you last in Memphis? Two years? Man? Maybe m almost
Speaker 1: two years? And then I went to Nashville and that's
Speaker 1: that's where I got to be a program director. Well
Speaker 1: how did you get to Nashville and how did you
Speaker 1: become the program Well? Uh, in that in those days,
Speaker 1: the record guys who promoted you, and I'm sure you
Speaker 1: met a few, and the guys, the guys all knew
Speaker 1: me because I was the music director of the station
Speaker 1: there in Memphis and in in Nashville, I mean in Mobile,
Speaker 1: and I got to know those guys. And they told
Speaker 1: this guy, the guy who ran the number one station
Speaker 1: in Nashville lost his nighttime guy got think he got
Speaker 1: he had He had a teenage modeling agency and uh,
Speaker 1: let's just say things went south on him a couple
Speaker 1: of a couple of photo sessions. He was his own
Speaker 1: photographer and uh and you don't say yeah, so I'll
Speaker 1: leave that one alone. But it didn't work out so well.
Speaker 1: They needed to get somebody in there, and they heard
Speaker 1: super Shan was good. Some of the record guys that
Speaker 1: told this guy about me, and he hired me to
Speaker 1: take me in there. He was also our program director,
Speaker 1: and I said, I'll never forget. He had one of
Speaker 1: those blue metal desks with a kind of fake wood
Speaker 1: top on it. And I'm sitting there and I said,
Speaker 1: how much does this job pay? Mr? Sullivan? He said
Speaker 1: it pays. I don't know, maybe not, I don't know what.
Speaker 1: He said, six hundred dollars a month. I went, how
Speaker 1: much is that a week? But I never I never
Speaker 1: got paid about a month before. That was something new,
Speaker 1: So whatever it was, I forget what it was, but
Speaker 1: it was. I think it was something like a hundred
Speaker 1: eighty dollars a week, whatever it was. And man, I
Speaker 1: was rolling. And Uh. That's and then when he decided
Speaker 1: to go into the concert promotion business, they promoted me
Speaker 1: to be the program director. And that's when I because
Speaker 1: I immersed myself in the world of radio. I just
Speaker 1: I knew. I knew because I loved it and I
Speaker 1: listened to radio. I knew what people liked. In my
Speaker 1: own head. I go by what I liked, and I
Speaker 1: figured everybody liked the same thing I liked. And uh,
Speaker 1: and at that time, Uh, they started this radio station
Speaker 1: out in l A called k h J, and that
Speaker 1: is UH was done. By a guy named Bill Drake, who,
Speaker 1: as I thought, was a genius, and I paid a
Speaker 1: guy I've ran somehow ran into a guy in Nashville
Speaker 1: who was related to one of the engineers out there,
Speaker 1: and I called him and I said, could you send
Speaker 1: me some tapes? And I actually paid him a few
Speaker 1: bucks each month to send me, uh tapes of the
Speaker 1: real Don Steele and Robert W. Morgan and uh and
Speaker 1: that I could you know, listen to and be inspired by.
Speaker 1: And so I've been a program director basically for forty
Speaker 1: years of my career. He and, uh, yeah, okay, you're
Speaker 1: in Nashville, how long? And we're after Nashville. After Nashville,
Speaker 1: I went to Atlanta, Georgia as the program direct From
Speaker 1: then on, I was like, if you ever watched the
Speaker 1: show when you're a kid called Have Gun Will Travel?
Speaker 1: I had readings and yeah, I was pallet in the
Speaker 1: station in Nashville had an incredible reputation. We were number one,
Speaker 1: and when I was in Mobile, I had like a
Speaker 1: seventy two share of listeners at night, which was unheard
Speaker 1: of at that time. And then I went to Nashville,
Speaker 1: and then from there I went to Atlanta Georgia, and
Speaker 1: I had a pretty good reputation as a gun slinger,
Speaker 1: you know, on them. Um, the I got into a
Speaker 1: little I guess a tip with the manager of that station,
Speaker 1: and they went from eight to number one, tied for
Speaker 1: number one with WUS, another big station there, and the
Speaker 1: guy fired me, and I thought that was the end
Speaker 1: of my life, I mean, my career. And I was
Speaker 1: just so bummed out. I actually cried that night the
Speaker 1: guy fired me, and the ratings came out two days
Speaker 1: later and that's when we went to number one. And Uh,
Speaker 1: A friend of I was friends with a guy named
Speaker 1: Bob Wilson who started radio and Records, which was the
Speaker 1: bible of the music business and the radio business at
Speaker 1: that time. How did you know Bob Wilson. Um, he
Speaker 1: would come to town and see me and I would
Speaker 1: give me my ideas. You know this, we're just friends.
Speaker 1: I don't know, because he did interviews with me and
Speaker 1: have ran my picture all the time. That was important
Speaker 1: because you know, other people in the business would see
Speaker 1: your picture and think you're a big shot. No, I
Speaker 1: just knew Bob Wilson. So you're crying. You call Bob
Speaker 1: Wilson in l A and Bob Wilson says, come out
Speaker 1: here right now and work for me. And that's how
Speaker 1: I got to know what man Jack was. He was
Speaker 1: also in that same office, and U I started a
Speaker 1: thing called street Talk, which was like a gossip column
Speaker 1: of people things people were doing, the pictures and all that,
Speaker 1: and uh, I did that for quite some time, and
Speaker 1: I traveled with Kiss, and uh one of my best
Speaker 1: friends was a fellow named Charlie Minor was also in
Speaker 1: the music business. We started together. I knew him from Atlanta,
Speaker 1: and UH, well that's why we hit me. We would
Speaker 1: be at Mr Chiwd's or the Merry Go Round or
Speaker 1: all these places. And I just never really other than
Speaker 1: you know, with the guys and Kiss and Donna Summer
Speaker 1: and got to know her a little bit and her
Speaker 1: manager and other bands there. But I just never felt
Speaker 1: comfortable a in Los Angeles and be outside of radio.
Speaker 1: So I did, like I didn't like two and a
Speaker 1: half years in in the record business, and I enjoyed it.
Speaker 1: I had fun, you know, and uh, but then I
Speaker 1: got a friend of mine called me and said, I'm
Speaker 1: leaving my job in d C. They need a program director.
Speaker 1: Would you like to come? I said, I'll fly in
Speaker 1: there and talk to the guy. So and then I
Speaker 1: went back into radio. Okay, wp g C, Washington, d C. Okay.
Speaker 1: Other than l A, well, maybe you're living in all
Speaker 1: these different places. How is that affecting your personal life?
Speaker 1: M I didn't worry about that. I was in love
Speaker 1: with radio. I had had a girlfriend in Nashville, and uh,
Speaker 1: we decided we should be married. And she decided, I
Speaker 1: think the problem is he's She said, you love radio
Speaker 1: more than you love me. I said, you're right, and
Speaker 1: that was my that was my my wife radio. Everything
Speaker 1: else was it was just scenery. And you know, when
Speaker 1: you're a big shot on the radio, you're famous. Did
Speaker 1: you feel that? I mean, you're working alone inside the dark,
Speaker 1: But everybody liked that, though Bob, I thought that I
Speaker 1: just enjoyed being in that room. That was a great way.
Speaker 1: The reason I got in and that I got attracted
Speaker 1: to radio because I saw a Billboard magazine. I would
Speaker 1: buy it at the record store, and I noticed that
Speaker 1: they had these little rooms when they broadcast from and
Speaker 1: you could talk to all of these people, but you
Speaker 1: didn't have to see him. And I thought I was
Speaker 1: kind of a very I don't know self involved person.
Speaker 1: I didn't didn't have a girlfriend when I was a
Speaker 1: kid because my father was too strict. I didn't really
Speaker 1: I didn't have a girlfriend until I was like sevent
Speaker 1: eighteen years old. Uh, it was all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: girls like it because you're on the radio. They can't
Speaker 1: get a rock star. So I didn't get a DJ.
Speaker 1: So it was just different all of a sudden. I didn't,
Speaker 1: you know, I couldn't. I couldn't fanom it, phantom it.
Speaker 1: I just it was a different world. But it came
Speaker 1: second to radio. That was my whole existence, the music
Speaker 1: and the actual function of being on the radio. I
Speaker 1: loved it, and that to this day, I still love
Speaker 1: doing it. Okay, are you a social guy? If I say, oh,
Speaker 1: we're gonna go hang out, it's gonna be some people.
Speaker 1: You're gonna say yes, You're gonna say no, I'd rather
Speaker 1: stay home. I'd rather stay home. Okay, So you go
Speaker 1: to d C is the p D. Then what happens, Uh?
Speaker 1: I got fired again the the owner that the owner
Speaker 1: didn't think I was a good DJ and wouldn't let
Speaker 1: me on the air, and so the station. The station
Speaker 1: was already number one, but I made it number one
Speaker 1: R and uh, we got in an argument. He didn't
Speaker 1: think the death of John Lennon was a big deal.
Speaker 1: I overreacted by playing all Lennen music in the morning show,
Speaker 1: and he said, and he called the hotline and said,
Speaker 1: you got what are you doing there? Man? You're screwing
Speaker 1: up our station. And said, oh, you haven't heard. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I heard John Lennon's dead, but you're overreacting. And he
Speaker 1: hung up on me. So a few days later, I
Speaker 1: took People Magazine, Newsweek and Time Magazine and I walked
Speaker 1: into his office and I laid him across the disk.
Speaker 1: I said, Mr Potter, you got to call these people.
Speaker 1: They're overreacting. Two weeks later I was unemployed. Were you
Speaker 1: crying this time? No? I didn't cry about that one.
Speaker 1: I wanted away from that asshole. But within two weeks
Speaker 1: I had another job. And Uh, by that time, I had,
Speaker 1: you know, a good enough reputation were as a pro
Speaker 1: Graham and I have gun will travel, I had, I moved.
Speaker 1: I wanted to get a job at that time that
Speaker 1: that let me do the morning show because this guy
Speaker 1: didn't let me on the air. So when he fired me,
Speaker 1: I couldn't stay in d C and I and I
Speaker 1: had a girl that I liked. At that point, I
Speaker 1: didn't want to leave d C. But I chose once
Speaker 1: again shows radio. But I figured, if I was a
Speaker 1: big morning radio star and you fire me, I just
Speaker 1: go across the street and then kick your ass. And
Speaker 1: so I decided I was going to be a morning DJ,
Speaker 1: and I wanted to find a station that would let
Speaker 1: me be a morning DJ, and that was in Tampa, Okay.
Speaker 1: I certainly remember in the mid sixties it was about
Speaker 1: the evening DJ. Right when did it become about the
Speaker 1: morning DJ in the I believe in the seventies. In
Speaker 1: the seventies, the morning radio panel started to come back.
Speaker 1: When I was a kid, my dad would drive me
Speaker 1: around and I used to listen to the Breakfast Club
Speaker 1: out of Chicago, and I always thought that was cool.
Speaker 1: They were just and they would just beat, they just
Speaker 1: talked to people, and they had a band and they
Speaker 1: would band would play and all that. It was on
Speaker 1: w l S in Chicago. I think it was Don
Speaker 1: McNeil's Breakfast Club and it was on a network. I
Speaker 1: thought that was cool, and so I always thought about
Speaker 1: that having a morning show where you could just talk
Speaker 1: about things and have calls and people come in and
Speaker 1: and I kind of built this thing called the Morning Zoo,
Speaker 1: and it was based on the Breakfast Club. And I
Speaker 1: grew up with listen to my dad's in the back
Speaker 1: seat of my dad's station wagon, or in a mix
Speaker 1: of Saturday Night Live, which was already on the air,
Speaker 1: then doing skits and funny things. When you're in Tampa,
Speaker 1: do you go justice the DJ or you the p
Speaker 1: D two both. That's where I found my niche the
Speaker 1: morning show and being a program director best fun. As
Speaker 1: soon as you land in Tampa, you start right away
Speaker 1: with the breakfast club idea, or you work up to it. Well,
Speaker 1: I met with a guy that was already doing the
Speaker 1: morning show, a great personality named Cleveland Wheeler. He thought
Speaker 1: I was going to fire him, and uh Asa, no,
Speaker 1: I want you to know. I want to work with
Speaker 1: you so I can learn how to be a morning DJ.
Speaker 1: And I said, I got some ideas. I will run
Speaker 1: and past you. And I shared my whole thing about
Speaker 1: the personality and the phone calls and the skits and
Speaker 1: the parody songs and all that. He said, I'm in man.
Speaker 1: I mean he did voices and and I had a
Speaker 1: great laugh, and that's very important when you're doing the
Speaker 1: morning show. And uh, and the station had fallen out
Speaker 1: of the top because had come petition come in there
Speaker 1: and they wanted to get back to number one because
Speaker 1: they were a losing money and be you know, like
Speaker 1: number ten in the market. So within sixty days we
Speaker 1: were back to number one and had this was the rage.
Speaker 1: I mean, the Morning Zoo was the biggest thing that
Speaker 1: ever hit Tampa and St. Petersburg and we had a
Speaker 1: big signal, so we had a lot of listeners and
Speaker 1: it was huge, and the word got out of what
Speaker 1: we were doing. And like an idiot, I never I
Speaker 1: never thought about copyrighting or anything like that, trademarket or
Speaker 1: anging like that. I just was radio. And then the
Speaker 1: company that I worked for had me fly to Houston
Speaker 1: and put the same show on in Houston with some
Speaker 1: other people and we did that. So and then I
Speaker 1: was like, I don't know, to three years in Tampa
Speaker 1: and that's okay, before you before you leave Tampa, how
Speaker 1: did you do side to name at the Morning Zoo
Speaker 1: or how did that become the name? Um, I don't
Speaker 1: really know. I didn't want to call it. I wanted
Speaker 1: something different. I wanted to be I wanted to be
Speaker 1: was that an interrupt or whatever they call that, the disruptor?
Speaker 1: And I wanted it to be different from anything else
Speaker 1: on the radio. So we had like a cast of
Speaker 1: five people. We had a guy in the air, traffic
Speaker 1: guy with personality. We had a newsgirl that Pat Brooks
Speaker 1: was over here. She was great. And we had had
Speaker 1: a kid that was our intern, ninety Mike. We called
Speaker 1: him because he listened to the other station, night Rock,
Speaker 1: and nobody ever talked about other radio stations, and they,
Speaker 1: you know, that was forbidden. And we talked about everybody,
Speaker 1: talked about the mayor of the city, and talked about
Speaker 1: the other DJs and that worked over there, and made
Speaker 1: fun of people and it was just just a good
Speaker 1: time time radio show. And it caught on and they
Speaker 1: heard about it. Did you play any records? Oh yes,
Speaker 1: we did. You know, we could have easily not played records,
Speaker 1: but we played three or four records an hour, okay,
Speaker 1: And then New York comes to call it. That's it.
Speaker 1: New York came a calling, and I transferred that same
Speaker 1: show up to New York. A different people who a
Speaker 1: little bit slower. First, there's a documentary which came out
Speaker 1: earlier in the year, and I'm not blowing smoke up
Speaker 1: your grass, but I couldn't turn it off. Usually these
Speaker 1: documentaries run watchable. It was really well done, the story
Speaker 1: of Z one. How did the documentary come to be? Um,
Speaker 1: all my friends, you gotta write a book, you gotta
Speaker 1: write a book, You gotta write a book. And I
Speaker 1: just don't have it in the um. I just don't
Speaker 1: have the everybody that I've ever talked to that I
Speaker 1: decided to write a book, it was a bit you know.
Speaker 1: They they got started, it was okay, but then you
Speaker 1: get through the middle of it, and then you put
Speaker 1: it away for a while, and then you never get
Speaker 1: around to finish it, and and and unfortunately already took
Speaker 1: the money. So you gotta put some crap together and
Speaker 1: put it out. You know, my friend Elvis Durant wrote
Speaker 1: a book, and I won't get into detail, but he
Speaker 1: it turned out, you know, he didn't turn out as
Speaker 1: well as he wanted it to. And it was successful,
Speaker 1: but it just you know, he just kind of like
Speaker 1: in the middle of it said, oh boy, which I
Speaker 1: wouldn't have gotten into this, but my wife decided. My wife,
Speaker 1: Trish decided, who I met in Tampa, by the way,
Speaker 1: decided that instead of a book, wonn't you just make
Speaker 1: a documentary? They're getting pretty popular now and so that's
Speaker 1: how it came about. And who paid for it? Uh,
Speaker 1: we did, along with Elvis Durant. He was one of
Speaker 1: our invest There's him and as manager. There's just four people.
Speaker 1: And now that it's done, what do you think about it?
Speaker 1: I was happy we did it, you know, I thought
Speaker 1: it was it's it was all. It's a lot of
Speaker 1: people um use it. It's almost like a instruction manual
Speaker 1: on what to do and in creativity. And I think
Speaker 1: it's also important to note that it's the result of
Speaker 1: someone hiring you and leaving you alone to do what
Speaker 1: you do and and it worked out pretty well. Okay,
Speaker 1: So how did you meet Trician Tampa? And how did
Speaker 1: she end up going to New York whereas before everybody
Speaker 1: was left behind? But she wasn't one of my DJs.
Speaker 1: Bob I met her. She worked at the High and
Speaker 1: she was in um in charge of publicity and hospitality.
Speaker 1: And one morning they brought by a breakfast for the
Speaker 1: morning zoo people would always find out some way to
Speaker 1: get on there. And so that they were opening a
Speaker 1: new hotel and they brought breakfast to us. And she
Speaker 1: was an attractive blonde. She was involved in a relationship
Speaker 1: at that time, and uh, let's just say that I
Speaker 1: didn't I had had nothing to do with the unraveling
Speaker 1: of the relationship, but we were friendly, and uh, when
Speaker 1: it unraveled, I called her and, man, I feel bad.
Speaker 1: I know you're bummed out and everything. How about we
Speaker 1: go to Longboat Key for the weekend? Almost hung up?
Speaker 1: She's not why are you crazy there? She's a conservative
Speaker 1: lady and U And then when I got the call,
Speaker 1: they go to New York. You want to want to
Speaker 1: go with me? Are you nuts? Were not married? I'm
Speaker 1: not moving in with you. That's how that went. So
Speaker 1: we worked at out eventually and we got married. And
Speaker 1: the rock you never had any kids? Right? They had
Speaker 1: one child, one daughter? Okay, And how old is she today?
Speaker 1: You know what it's You know she's on a turney bob. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: at least she's off the payroll, right, Yes, yeah, she's
Speaker 1: a great, good kid. Okay. So the movie depicts in
Speaker 1: case people listening want to check it out, but it
Speaker 1: was really good. I will admit that it kind of
Speaker 1: shocked me. First of all, I met ken Lean when
Speaker 1: he's working for Daniel Glass at Chrysalis. Must be kay,
Speaker 1: I didn't know that he started with you. And the
Speaker 1: other thing is really a different era. I remember that
Speaker 1: era whatever. But just to set the scene, it's basically,
Speaker 1: it's a alright station. It's it's the Caucus, New Jersey,
Speaker 1: it's nowhere, and it's you know, tell us how you
Speaker 1: just what they pitched and how you decided to do it.
Speaker 1: They didn't pitch much. They just said you want to
Speaker 1: come and build a radio station. I said, yeah, if
Speaker 1: it's the top forty station, I'll do it. I said, okay,
Speaker 1: it could be a Top fourt They was still research
Speaker 1: and I said, I only do Top forty and U
Speaker 1: and uh. We came up with the name and they
Speaker 1: basically let me alone. They really did. I mean, as
Speaker 1: you see in the movie, there's a couple of encounters
Speaker 1: in the beginning. And then I was ready to go
Speaker 1: back to Tampa because Mr Maltz, who was the president
Speaker 1: of the company and the owner, promised me I would
Speaker 1: have a Rolls Royce radio station. And during the construction
Speaker 1: of the building and the studios. It turns out I
Speaker 1: getting a Volkswagen and uh we had a uh we
Speaker 1: put a stop on things, but the temporary halt, well
Speaker 1: we got that worked out and he went ahead and
Speaker 1: kept his promise. And nothing to do with money. It
Speaker 1: just was about the quality of the actual studio. And
Speaker 1: uh the engineer had just that was in charge of
Speaker 1: the project just wasn't building it the way it should
Speaker 1: have been built. And it eventually was built the way
Speaker 1: it should have been built. Do you remember how many
Speaker 1: watts that station at enough? Okay, well, how far away
Speaker 1: could it reach at nighttime or whatever? Well, it's not
Speaker 1: a nighttime is is a a product of an A
Speaker 1: M station. FM signals the same all the time. It
Speaker 1: covered the entire tri state area. Once you put the
Speaker 1: we called that the p shooter when we first signed
Speaker 1: on it only you know, basically was heard in New
Speaker 1: Jersey and for about I don't know, three weeks, and
Speaker 1: then we put it up on the top of the
Speaker 1: Empire State Building and blew the roof off. The sucker.
Speaker 1: You had a lot of violent, uh terminology in the
Speaker 1: construction of the station. I wanted it to sound like
Speaker 1: New York. But I didn't want it to sound like
Speaker 1: any New York radio station. The format was easy. We
Speaker 1: played one black record, one white record, one black record,
Speaker 1: one white white record, and uh, and that didn't go
Speaker 1: by the color of the skin. It went to the
Speaker 1: appeal of the sound of the song. If you understand
Speaker 1: what I mean, I think you do. And uh. And
Speaker 1: then then we hired this jockeys who were not from
Speaker 1: New York. We brought in all new people and uh.
Speaker 1: We kept it. That's what I call sledgehammer radio. Just pounded.
Speaker 1: You know, you had to listen. You didn't want to
Speaker 1: miss any thing. The morning show every day had something
Speaker 1: else going on. We talked to people and it didn't
Speaker 1: sound It was not polished or professional. It was meant
Speaker 1: to be like an earworm and wanted to sound like
Speaker 1: nothing that had ever been on the air in New
Speaker 1: York sounded like. We would get called people would say,
Speaker 1: what is this? What do you mean? What? What kind
Speaker 1: of station is if we never heard anything like this before.
Speaker 1: You know, we talked about other radio stations, We talked
Speaker 1: about other personalities and other radio stations, and that was
Speaker 1: taboo back then. People didn't do that the way it's
Speaker 1: portrayed in the movie is the pieces are in place,
Speaker 1: but you don't start climbing the readings until you become aggressive.
Speaker 1: You know, there's putting up stickers, certain other campaigns, you know,
Speaker 1: put up a poster in your window. So how important
Speaker 1: is this from emotional marketing building a station? As one
Speaker 1: of the Gary Fisher, the manager at the time, said
Speaker 1: it was the first viral campaign that he'd ever seen.
Speaker 1: It was viral before there was viral, and uh, it
Speaker 1: just was word of mouth. That's how that's how it
Speaker 1: was built, word of mouth. And uh, like I said,
Speaker 1: like you saw in the movie, everybody else that the critics,
Speaker 1: all who put it the other stations laughed at it
Speaker 1: because it didn't sound like New York. It didn't sound polished.
Speaker 1: It was just a different animal. And uh, you know
Speaker 1: there's some of the terminology, you know, like get out
Speaker 1: of a way, and it was aggressive from the top
Speaker 1: of the Empire State Building. Well that's a point in
Speaker 1: the movie. Everybody broadcasts from the top of the bob.
Speaker 1: Nobody said it. Okay, if you had done no marketing whatsoever,
Speaker 1: which is all depicted in the movie with the station
Speaker 1: still have been as successful. No, no, no, way. It
Speaker 1: was an attitude. They didn't the listeners, didn't the people
Speaker 1: our customers, so to speak, they didn't look at that.
Speaker 1: They didn't regard that as marketing. That was just Z
Speaker 1: one hundred. That was the zoo, That was the people
Speaker 1: that that they loved. They a lot of people grew
Speaker 1: up with that radio station. It was it was. It
Speaker 1: was really like the heartbeat of New York and still
Speaker 1: is to this day. It's still a big, big factor
Speaker 1: in music and marketing. Okay, in some businesses you know
Speaker 1: all your competitors and other businesses, you only know the
Speaker 1: people you work with. You come up, you disrupt, to
Speaker 1: what degreed, you end up knowing the infrastructure of New
Speaker 1: York Radio. No, I hadn't. I had not. I didn't
Speaker 1: know a him about New York or New York Radio.
Speaker 1: It was a radio station. It was almost like I
Speaker 1: described it to our team as this is a pirate station,
Speaker 1: like the pirates station that took Europe in England. We're
Speaker 1: we're off shore, we're out here in the swamp in
Speaker 1: New Jersey, and we're broadcasting to that country right there,
Speaker 1: New York. And that's how it was. We really didn't
Speaker 1: go after as you see in the movie. We didn't
Speaker 1: go after the five boroughs. We went after New Jersey,
Speaker 1: Long Island and Westchester. That was it. Connecticut too. I
Speaker 1: kind of got your baffle there, done it. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: station goes from what number hundred to number one that
Speaker 1: we were probably like night or something like that. Roque
Speaker 1: then just depicted in the movie like all hell breaks,
Speaker 1: lose your celebrity. You're on all these shows, tell us
Speaker 1: about that when I was not ready for that. I've
Speaker 1: never wanted to do television, even though I've done quite
Speaker 1: a bit over the years. It's not my favorite medium.
Speaker 1: I enjoy radio. I enjoy sitting in a room with
Speaker 1: a microphone talking to people. I like that. That's what
Speaker 1: I like to do. And uh, laughing having it's enjoyable
Speaker 1: to me, it's not work and uh and that you know,
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, I'm on Oprah and we're on
Speaker 1: Regius all the time, and you know, in Time magazine
Speaker 1: and all this, and it just wasn't comfortable to me.
Speaker 1: It's not it's not I mean, I did it, but
Speaker 1: it was part of the jobs part, you know, the
Speaker 1: important part to me was communicating a microphone to people. Well,
Speaker 1: at this point, with all that attending publicity. You became
Speaker 1: a celebrity, and how did you like that? Good or bad?
Speaker 1: It is fine. It just comes with the territory. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm not I don't I enjoy it. Maybe you know,
Speaker 1: you get your your flu shot before anybody or something
Speaker 1: like that. I don't know, it doesn't. It's I love
Speaker 1: doing what I do, and then that's it. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm not saying I'm not shirking. I'm not throwing the
Speaker 1: jacket of celebrity hood off. It's not the most important
Speaker 1: thing in my life. Okay, so you're doing the station.
Speaker 1: You're talking about all these poor paying gigs before this,
Speaker 1: When do you start making money? I started making money
Speaker 1: in Tampa, and uh that was that was probably the
Speaker 1: beginning of it. I never really whenever. I'm not like
Speaker 1: a money monger and it's nights. I live in a
Speaker 1: nice house, I drive a nice car. I can do
Speaker 1: what I want, you know, but I still buy a
Speaker 1: lotto tickets. You know. I'm just are you good with
Speaker 1: your money? My wife is I'm not tricius. Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: you're on You're at one. Then you leave for l A.
Speaker 1: How do you decide to leave that was I was
Speaker 1: up for Marina Gos, I was up for the contract signing,
Speaker 1: and they wanted to give me stock, and I wanted
Speaker 1: I really didn't want stock in the company. I don't
Speaker 1: want to be in that area. So along came the
Speaker 1: opportunity to move to California and build. Really was what
Speaker 1: attracted me was to build a news station. Pirate radio,
Speaker 1: well certainly in terms of marketing every but he was
Speaker 1: aware of Pirate Radio in Los Angeles. But the ratings
Speaker 1: did not match the success of Z one. How did
Speaker 1: you feel about that? I didn't feel good, but I
Speaker 1: felt like we did a good job entering the marketplace.
Speaker 1: There were some other um there were some other factors
Speaker 1: that were involved that Number one, I was overpaid. Number
Speaker 1: two paid the owner paid too much for the actual facility. Also,
Speaker 1: so they ran into a problem with the banks. And uh,
Speaker 1: we got it. We got almost two years out of it.
Speaker 1: It was the last couple of rating books were fine.
Speaker 1: You know. One of the problems is you got to
Speaker 1: remember too guns and Roses fell apart, and that was
Speaker 1: the crux that was the center of the radio station.
Speaker 1: You know, you can't make a living playing warrant and
Speaker 1: some of these other groups that we had at that time,
Speaker 1: hair bands. But I don't make any excuses for it. It
Speaker 1: It didn't work. And should you know, if you had
Speaker 1: to do it over again, anything you can think of,
Speaker 1: you have done differently. Uh, probably been making I probably
Speaker 1: would have made it more top forty centered with that
Speaker 1: same Pirate image. I mean there's people who still love
Speaker 1: that station, and they had they had a website devoted
Speaker 1: to it, and I still get mailed from people, you know,
Speaker 1: like emails from people who enjoyed the station and remember it. Okay,
Speaker 1: it ends at Pirate how soon? And how do you
Speaker 1: end up back in New York? I came right back
Speaker 1: and started at another station in New York when we're
Speaker 1: it was a little bit more adult than Z one,
Speaker 1: and that did very well. We were like number one
Speaker 1: females and uh, it didn't have the same pizzas, but
Speaker 1: it was a good, solid, successful radio station, a big
Speaker 1: money maker for the company ABC TV Radio and what
Speaker 1: you have in the morning. I'm living in l A,
Speaker 1: so I don't really know. We were very successful in
Speaker 1: the morning. It was like the I think one of
Speaker 1: the top two or three radio morning shows. So it
Speaker 1: was a zoo like concept. At Mellower. You know, it
Speaker 1: was it was. It was more of a US, a
Speaker 1: two man show. It was a comedy and we did
Speaker 1: phone scams where you know, we called people up and
Speaker 1: put them on and all that kind of thing. But
Speaker 1: it was, it was, it was. It was a successful project.
Speaker 1: There's no doubt. We did it for twenty one years.
Speaker 1: So I would say it went pretty well. And how
Speaker 1: did you how did that end? It ended? How did
Speaker 1: it in? Oh? I got stabbed in the back by
Speaker 1: my partner, That's how it ended well? Said, it's all public.
Speaker 1: Who is your partner? His name was Todd petting Gill
Speaker 1: that he wants In his defense, he wanted the show.
Speaker 1: He thought he could do it better by himself, and
Speaker 1: it didn't work out that way. And how soon before
Speaker 1: you ended up at CBS two weeks Okay, let's go back.
Speaker 1: You start Morning Zoo Howard Stern and comes up with
Speaker 1: a show where there's a lot of talking. What do
Speaker 1: you think of Stern show? I always have always been
Speaker 1: a Howard fan. Unfortunately he hasn't always been a Scott
Speaker 1: fan because I happened to be, you know, up against him,
Speaker 1: and he's he didn't he didn't mow me down like
Speaker 1: he's done many many other competitors. And now we're on
Speaker 1: speaking basis friends of sorts. You know, he doesn't, he
Speaker 1: doesn't really, Uh, he's not. He's not a guy who
Speaker 1: runs around with other guys. You know. He pretty much
Speaker 1: stays on his own lane. And would you call yourself
Speaker 1: a guy who runs with other guys? Are just more
Speaker 1: than Howard, A little more than Howard. Yeah, I get
Speaker 1: out a bit more than he does. I think most
Speaker 1: people get out of little a bit more than he does. Right,
Speaker 1: And how do you end up doing syndicated shows? Um?
Speaker 1: They were just offered to me. And I do as
Speaker 1: much radio as I can. I do a lot of
Speaker 1: different things. I have an oldies network called the True
Speaker 1: Oldies Channel, and I told you that that each of
Speaker 1: the sixties, mostly the sixties and some seventies. And I
Speaker 1: do a Classic Hits weekend show that's on k Earth
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles and of course on my station here
Speaker 1: in New York. And then I also do voice over.
Speaker 1: I uh, the voice of Sean Hannity's network six and
Speaker 1: seventies stations. I introduced him and certain little sweepers and
Speaker 1: things like that. Production And how did you meet Sean Unity.
Speaker 1: We were in the same building. He started out with
Speaker 1: ABC and I worked for ABC when we at b LJ,
Speaker 1: And uh, he's one of the uh finest guys that
Speaker 1: I know, is very easy to work with and mental.
Speaker 1: A lot of people don't seem to care for him
Speaker 1: on a political basis, but in him and I get
Speaker 1: along time. Well, he's not tourious, no choices. Right away,
Speaker 1: everybody says he's a great guy from every every spectrum
Speaker 1: of the political sphere. I would do anything for him
Speaker 1: and he's great. Okay, how about the issue that he's
Speaker 1: known for a particular political viewpoint? Is it that you
Speaker 1: align with that or your friends with them or what?
Speaker 1: I'm friends with him, But I mean, we certainly don't.
Speaker 1: Uh you know, we don't discuss you know, I would
Speaker 1: lean more that way than the other way if I
Speaker 1: had to pick a lane. But he doesn't care that
Speaker 1: I'm you know, I'm the announcer, I'm the voice over guy.
Speaker 1: He doesn't he didn't try to uh preach to me.
Speaker 1: Let's put it that way or whatever. We're friends and
Speaker 1: we discuss golf and other things. How good a golfer?
Speaker 1: Are you mediocre? How often you play five days a week. Okay,
Speaker 1: when you were on the radio, we're still on the
Speaker 1: radio on the radio. What's your daily schedule? I get
Speaker 1: up at three fifteen, I'm in the city. At five,
Speaker 1: five am, I do show prep. M go on there
Speaker 1: at six. We're off at nine, and if it's nice out,
Speaker 1: I t off around ten fifteen, ten thirty, and then
Speaker 1: I come back and record in the afternoon and early evening. Okay, Look,
Speaker 1: where do you live. I'm not asking for the street address,
Speaker 1: but generally speaking, no, in Westchester County. I'm not a
Speaker 1: city guy. And you're a member of a club there,
Speaker 1: so you can play golf. You have your regular but
Speaker 1: you have your regular buddies. It's not like. It's not
Speaker 1: like I play with everybody. I play with anybody and everybody,
Speaker 1: you know. I'm just I don't like playing with the
Speaker 1: I play with. I don't play with the same people
Speaker 1: all the time. And do you play for money? Very little? Okay?
Speaker 1: So you come back and record stuff, and then when
Speaker 1: do you leave again the next morning? No? No, no,
Speaker 1: when do you leave the studio after you come back
Speaker 1: to record stuff. I'm in my studio now, in my house. Okay,
Speaker 1: let me ask a question. So, when you're on CBS
Speaker 1: right now, are you broadcasting from the city or from
Speaker 1: your house the city? Okay, after you play golf, you
Speaker 1: go back to your whole studio. And when would you
Speaker 1: be finished with show prep normally in your home studio six?
Speaker 1: And what time do you go to bed? You know,
Speaker 1: there's a whole life in the evening that do you
Speaker 1: ever feel like people might say, let's go to dinner
Speaker 1: or something? He said, when I'm going to bed at
Speaker 1: eight thirty Friday night, Friday night, Saturday night, we go
Speaker 1: out if we have to, well, you know, oftentimes don't.
Speaker 1: And how late would you go to bed on Friday
Speaker 1: and Saturday? Oh man, really late, like ten and getting
Speaker 1: up at three fifteen for all these years, how much
Speaker 1: of a grind does that? Uh? You never get used
Speaker 1: to it, that's it. But I like it because it
Speaker 1: frees up my day. I haven't programmed and uh probably
Speaker 1: ten years my program my own products and my own shows.
Speaker 1: But I don't pro I don't. Radio programming was an
Speaker 1: art and now it's a business. We'll tell me you
Speaker 1: go a little go a little deeper. Um. The trouble
Speaker 1: started with Bill Clinton when he freed radio owners so
Speaker 1: they can have multi stations. When they could have a
Speaker 1: cluster of stations in the market. And that's when companies,
Speaker 1: hedge funds and big big money got involved in radio.
Speaker 1: It was like what three three big major owners. Now
Speaker 1: it's just completely different. I like that when there was
Speaker 1: one station, one boss, and you're the you're the program director,
Speaker 1: your DJs worked there, and all the concentration was on
Speaker 1: that product and we were there to serve the community.
Speaker 1: And you know, that's it. Now you if one station
Speaker 1: gets a contest or a promotion, the other people bitch
Speaker 1: about it, and it's it's a different world. It's a
Speaker 1: different it's not fun, okay. So in the old days
Speaker 1: before the Telecommunications Act of maybe that was part of
Speaker 1: that where they rolled up the stations allowed them to
Speaker 1: what was the key to programming a station? Well, you
Speaker 1: start with the music, and then you go with the personalities,
Speaker 1: and then you go with the production elements around it.
Speaker 1: You try to create a sound of that station. I
Speaker 1: never really built a station that was a copy of
Speaker 1: the other one. The morning show from Tampa was similar
Speaker 1: to the one in New York, but it wasn't a
Speaker 1: carbon copy. There was a different and people, different vibe
Speaker 1: and the same thing. UM Tampa was a completely different
Speaker 1: radio station overall. It was more of an adult top
Speaker 1: forty station, even though we had teens who listen. We're
Speaker 1: number one in teens, number one in plus, number one
Speaker 1: eighteen to twenty four. But in New York we focus
Speaker 1: more on a younger audience and the parents who of
Speaker 1: those kids. And one point in the movie is that
Speaker 1: the stars come to do press in Manhattan that at
Speaker 1: first don't want to come to the caucus. Didn't have
Speaker 1: cabs back then, cabs would not come to New Jersey
Speaker 1: and do it. Madonna got her boyfriend, a disc jobi
Speaker 1: named jelly Bean, to bring her over to the station. Well,
Speaker 1: that is all depicted in the movie about she's banging
Speaker 1: the door to have you played holiday? Were you the
Speaker 1: one interacting with her. She's known as being aggressive, and
Speaker 1: I don't mean that with any connotation to what degrees
Speaker 1: or success based on that aggression. It's a great, great
Speaker 1: deal of her success. It was a major component because
Speaker 1: she never took no for an answer. You have to
Speaker 1: admire her for that. The most important thing was her
Speaker 1: success in the minute she arrived here in New York, city.
Speaker 1: She was driven, he was driven, and you were the
Speaker 1: You were the first to play Holiday at first major
Speaker 1: station to add it, I believe I think Katie, you
Speaker 1: might have been playing it a little bit. It's all
Speaker 1: depicted that she's coming to the door. She's coming to
Speaker 1: the door. Ultimately, I wasn't the primary contact at that time.
Speaker 1: If somebody wasn't happy with the answers they were getting
Speaker 1: from my music director, they could see me, and that
Speaker 1: was her demand. I want to talk who else? Who
Speaker 1: makes up the decisions? But she knew by that time
Speaker 1: when don't know, they knew who I was, and she
Speaker 1: she wanted that record on Z one h it because
Speaker 1: it was the hot station at the time. Did you
Speaker 1: know she was Madonna at that point? In just another
Speaker 1: woman coming to your door? She was you know, she
Speaker 1: was not Madonna yet. I mean she called her name
Speaker 1: was Madonna, but you know she was a nightclub animal.
Speaker 1: And how did people ultimately start coming to the caucus
Speaker 1: when the ratings came out We didn't have to buy
Speaker 1: our own music anymore. They showed up, They showed up big.
Speaker 1: It was But the reason it was so important is
Speaker 1: that we were like the number one music we we
Speaker 1: broke songs when we played a song that the rest
Speaker 1: of the stations, not the rest of them, but a
Speaker 1: lot of stations around the country would be in flu
Speaker 1: wents by our playlist. Okay, and anybody you haven't met
Speaker 1: that you'd like to meet, The ones that I that
Speaker 1: I would like to meet are no longer here. John
Speaker 1: Lennon never interviewed him. I talked to George Ringo, Paul
Speaker 1: several times. Interview Jagger Keith great interview. Not really, I don't.
Speaker 1: I'm fine. Would you? Is this all professional or any
Speaker 1: of these people you're regular friends with. I don't have
Speaker 1: any show bid they're not friends. I mean, it's a
Speaker 1: big difference between show biz friends and friends, and these
Speaker 1: leave me. I know so many guys in radio and
Speaker 1: in in in publications and television, they really get confused.
Speaker 1: They think these are their real friends. They lose their
Speaker 1: job and see how often they hang out with you,
Speaker 1: you know, never they know you can't you know what,
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't hang out. Do you do you
Speaker 1: have civilian friends I've got I've got a friend of mine.
Speaker 1: I got a friend of mine who's a musician, but
Speaker 1: we're not friends for that purpose. He played. He's in
Speaker 1: Billy Joel's band and you know, a wonderful guy and
Speaker 1: we do things, have dinner once in a while, and
Speaker 1: he plays gigs whenever he's around if I need him.
Speaker 1: You know, he's plays for a children's hospital every year
Speaker 1: we do a show. But he's a friend, friend, He
Speaker 1: just happens to do that for a living. Is that
Speaker 1: how you met him through Billy's man? Okay, you were
Speaker 1: talking to Doug, our engineer earlier, and you said you
Speaker 1: got your board from Rush Limbaugh. Do I have that right?
Speaker 1: So how did that come to happen? He worked in
Speaker 1: the same building with us in ABC. Also he got
Speaker 1: he was he was before Sean and he would come
Speaker 1: in my office and just talk about music. We didn't
Speaker 1: talk politics. He you know, he was a discjoct he
Speaker 1: but he actually when he built his home, uh down
Speaker 1: in Palm Beach, he had like a radio station with
Speaker 1: turntables and he had it. He loved music. He was
Speaker 1: a big music fan. He would sit and talk seventies
Speaker 1: of late sixties music, beatles music, his favorite songs and
Speaker 1: uh it just he he was a nice guy. I
Speaker 1: had no problem with him whatsoever. He was a very
Speaker 1: shy person. And okay, the radio landscape is radically different
Speaker 1: the way from what it used to be. Certainly AM
Speaker 1: ruled in the sixties seventies FM, Oh, there was still
Speaker 1: pop AM. Then Top forty went to FM in the eighties,
Speaker 1: and then we had the breakthrough of political talk radio.
Speaker 1: You know, first, to what degree to the twenty two
Speaker 1: minutes of commercials eighteen to twenty two minutes of commercials
Speaker 1: hurt terrestrial radio killed him? Yeah, didn't didn't kill them,
Speaker 1: but it fatally injured them. It was trendic. You know.
Speaker 1: If there wouldn't have been that, that complete reversal of
Speaker 1: the radio station is supposed to serve the community and
Speaker 1: you can only have one or two at the very most.
Speaker 1: That that came down from the government, I don't think
Speaker 1: the success of Serious x M would have been what
Speaker 1: it is today. I mean, we just radio just played
Speaker 1: right into the hands of anybody else. They took over
Speaker 1: the music, not just Serious XM, but all the other
Speaker 1: streaming services. Just that's it. We killed ourselves. Okay, So
Speaker 1: when you were running the eight eighties, how many minutes
Speaker 1: of commercials did you have? An hour? Really eight minutes
Speaker 1: ten in the morning? Ate the rest of the day.
Speaker 1: What is the future of music radio commercial terrestrio. I
Speaker 1: can't say it's bright. I think it's I think radio
Speaker 1: is gonna have to become more of a more dependent
Speaker 1: on spoken word and personalities and content. So you think
Speaker 1: that's gonna happen? And what is it gonna look like?
Speaker 1: I don't know what it's gonna look like. I don't
Speaker 1: know when it's going to happen, but it certainly is
Speaker 1: beginning to happen now it's been going on. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know these subscriptions, the Serious x M have gone up.
Speaker 1: Look at the all the streaming services. Were you ever
Speaker 1: approached by Serious XM? No? No, if they approach you,
Speaker 1: would you be interested, I'd be interested. Yeah, i'd be
Speaker 1: I'd be I talked to him. That's radio, okay. And
Speaker 1: what's your view of serious XM? Um, it's not. The
Speaker 1: stations aren't programmed as well as some stations, you know.
Speaker 1: I don't think the stations are programmed as well as
Speaker 1: they could be now. And I certainly grew up and
Speaker 1: you grew up in the air whereas radio was king.
Speaker 1: Is there any way to make radio king anymore? Or
Speaker 1: we live in such an on demand culture can't happen.
Speaker 1: I I think you've got the answer there. It's an
Speaker 1: on demand culture, and I don't you know, it may
Speaker 1: survive for longer, but I don't think it's gonna grow
Speaker 1: unless something comes along this revolutionary and I doubt if
Speaker 1: that's going to happen. And how did you end up
Speaker 1: being part of Neil Young's journey through the past? God's sakes.
Speaker 1: I was working in Nashville and I happen to know
Speaker 1: this guy named Elliott Maser. I don't know where I
Speaker 1: met him or how I knew him, but I knew him,
Speaker 1: and he was helping Neil do a movie. As I
Speaker 1: recalled this a long time ago, and I'm a I'm
Speaker 1: a baby DJ super Shan on the air in Nashville, Tennessee,
Speaker 1: and we get a call on the request line that
Speaker 1: Neil Young wants to come by and do an interview.
Speaker 1: I said, oh, okay, so I got a I had
Speaker 1: an intern and uh he went, and you were on
Speaker 1: the way. We'll be there in a half an hour.
Speaker 1: It's a Friday night, and the kid goes and lets
Speaker 1: him in the front door, but there's a film crew
Speaker 1: with him. They didn't mention that, and this is in
Speaker 1: the This is in the seventies when they had those
Speaker 1: great big cameras. There were two of them, and he's
Speaker 1: got his girlfriend with him at the time. That girl
Speaker 1: that played Oh God, Diary of the Mad Housewife, Now
Speaker 1: that was a movie she was in. She was a
Speaker 1: girl lived in the attic. Right, it was a diagram Madhousewife. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was the movie. Okay, I forget all about it.
Speaker 1: But I didn't know that it was his girlfriend. I
Speaker 1: thought it was his wife. I remember, I screwed that
Speaker 1: up and he left his wife and was carry Terry Snodgress.
Speaker 1: That's it, That's who it was. Man reached back there.
Speaker 1: So they walked into the control room and I had
Speaker 1: no idea what was going on, and he just started
Speaker 1: rolling and I interviewed him and played some contemplates, some
Speaker 1: cuts from his album. Uh that was played some Buffalo
Speaker 1: Springfield that he sang on and uh. The interview wasn't
Speaker 1: very good, but it went out live on a Friday
Speaker 1: night and h Elliott said, could you play that again
Speaker 1: tomorrow night? So we shoot some scenes of them listening
Speaker 1: to it in their hotel room. I said, okay, And
Speaker 1: on Saturday also they picked me up and I took
Speaker 1: him around Nashville for some shooting points. We went out
Speaker 1: to the local drag strip, and I remember being in
Speaker 1: the car with him and I was in the front
Speaker 1: seat him and carrying the back seat, and they were
Speaker 1: smoking a big bat joint and I didn't I didn't partake.
Speaker 1: I had the window down because I was more of
Speaker 1: a juicer then and uh, we went to the drag strip.
Speaker 1: I said, come over here, this would be a good shot.
Speaker 1: We had a one camera shoot going. And they had
Speaker 1: some uh some guys there with a car and there's
Speaker 1: a two black guys that were in the car and
Speaker 1: they were getting ready to drag to run it. But
Speaker 1: he said, yeah, and you know, looked at it. Why
Speaker 1: this car said look at the name on the tail fin.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Mr Soul, which is a song that it
Speaker 1: took him a second to realize why. I was telling
Speaker 1: you need to stand over here. But it is to
Speaker 1: get it, you know. I was trying to suggests a
Speaker 1: scene for the movie, you know. And uh and and
Speaker 1: then uh, that night we we edited the interview down
Speaker 1: and in the film, him and Carrier in their hotel
Speaker 1: room listening to a Mickey Mouse plastic radio interviewing them
Speaker 1: and they're smoking a big joint and that's in the
Speaker 1: movie and flat flash flash forward years later. I was
Speaker 1: at the at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
Speaker 1: at the Waldorf Hotel and I went into the bathroom
Speaker 1: to relieve myself and he walks in. He's at the
Speaker 1: unial next to me. He says, how's it going, Scott.
Speaker 1: I had not seen him since the seventies in Elle,
Speaker 1: and I'm going I'm fine. I couldn't cut out. Hellly
Speaker 1: knew I was that. That was me that remember we
Speaker 1: did them. He's going to a Remember we did that
Speaker 1: movie together in Nashville. I forgot all about it. You're right,
Speaker 1: but they put my picture on the album. It was
Speaker 1: a fold open album. It was a stiff album and
Speaker 1: a stef movie. But that was my first chance to
Speaker 1: be in the movies. It was fun. Now we were
Speaker 1: starting your your big fan of the pre Beatles fifties music,
Speaker 1: and you talk about programming top forty stations after the
Speaker 1: classic rock era. We are you a fan of that
Speaker 1: FM rock? Are you a fan of these new music?
Speaker 1: Are really you're a fan of the oldies. I like
Speaker 1: I like music period. I like there's some great country music.
Speaker 1: I'm nuts about. I like Blake Shelton song and I
Speaker 1: I like a lot of country songs. I like a
Speaker 1: song with a hook. I'm not really good. The first
Speaker 1: time I ever heard the first time I've ever heard
Speaker 1: Benny and the Jets, I didn't understand that it was good.
Speaker 1: But I wouldn't even played it anyway. And then after
Speaker 1: about ten spins, I got it many many many in
Speaker 1: the Jets, but I didn't get it at first. I'm
Speaker 1: more of a pop guy, you know. I like the Beatles.
Speaker 1: My favorite Beatles album is Meet the Beatles. But you know,
Speaker 1: most no one says that Serjian Pepper's Let It Be
Speaker 1: or whatever. Well, my favorite in America's Beatles in England, uh,
Speaker 1: the Beatles for Sale. It's got every little thing and
Speaker 1: no reply whatever. If that's the one I lost. Rubber
Speaker 1: Soul it was pretty hot too. I thought that was
Speaker 1: a good album. I like Rubber Solo a lot. Listen,
Speaker 1: they're all good, and I certainly you know in my
Speaker 1: life as time going on has really penetrated. Any other
Speaker 1: couple of other inside radio stories you want to share
Speaker 1: with us, I'm done. I'm talked out. At six thirty
Speaker 1: I gotta go to bed, so okay, then I'll ask
Speaker 1: you one last question. Will you be remembered? Do you think?
Speaker 1: And do you care? I really don't care. I did
Speaker 1: what I want to do and I'm still doing what
Speaker 1: I love to do. And um, I don't think anything.
Speaker 1: I don't think people get remembered much anymore. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, when someone famous dies, man, they you know,
Speaker 1: they play their records for a couple of weeks and
Speaker 1: kind of fades out. Unfortunately, that's the way the world goes. Everybody.
Speaker 1: You know, there's something new that takes the attention away
Speaker 1: right away. Well, I'm gonna let you go to sleep.
Speaker 1: I was at the end of my time anyway. And Scott,
Speaker 1: I want to thank you so much for taking the
Speaker 1: time to talk to me in my audience. Well, I
Speaker 1: enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would. Well,
Speaker 1: I could analyze why, but I'll just accept that as
Speaker 1: it is. So because you know, you're you're, you're, you're
Speaker 1: dangerously precise in a lot of areas, and that it was.
Speaker 1: You know, I read your stuff. I read you when
Speaker 1: you're upset, I read you when you're not a fan,
Speaker 1: and you know you go up and down, and then
Speaker 1: you're lovable and make me cry thinking about some of
Speaker 1: the when you bring back the memories of the summer
Speaker 1: camps and all that kind of stuff. I enjoy your
Speaker 1: writing and uh you have a marvelous uh sphere of
Speaker 1: experience and thoughts. Now you're gonna make me cry. Now
Speaker 1: you're just you know, I like it, and you're smart
Speaker 1: enough to list the complaint letters when they go, Man,
Speaker 1: it's it's a it's a good world and you're finally
Speaker 1: figuring out a way to monetize it. Absolutely. But on
Speaker 1: that note, we're gonna call it a day. Scott, thanks
Speaker 1: for the time. Until next time, it's Bob left Sex