Let’s use the analogy of the “auteur” filmmaker, who wants control of every element of his vision. He demands the final say in every aspect of work, even those where he’s not an expert. He makes often interesting but commercially failed pictures. This approach only succeeds financially when you have a rare director like James Cameron, who is able to blend artistic vision with commercial sensibilities.
In film, auteurs are eventually forced to scale back their works for lack of financing. So a Woody Allen can make small gems with a tight budget and remain viable. Highly paid actors are willing to work for scale to participate in one of his films because they believe in the quality of his craftsmanship and want to enhance their own artistic credibility. One understands going in that you’ll never make a fortune doing a Woody Allen film.
Progressive FM jocks started out making Woody Allen films—low-budget, highly personal masterpieces that stretched the creative envelope. Ratings were never huge, but neither were expenditures. But as disc jockeys began to have financial responsibilities of their own, like families and mortgages, their repulsion toward commercialism was tempered by an understanding that they couldn’t build sandcastles without getting their hands dirty. And fortunately for them, America was undergoing a transformation from greedy capitalism to the belief that there were higher values outside financial goals.
Even management drew the line at advertising products they found socially irresponsible. Ads for the armed forces were not even considered, either as a moral stance or because they realized that doing so would alienate the audience and the rest of their sponsors. They had to walk a fine line between risking their credibility by presenting an element that might undermine the image they’d sold to the savvy student community, and limiting their revenues by being “too hip for the room.”
There were borderline decisions to be made. In the early seventies, Bob Guccione was infuriated by Alison Steele’s refusal to read commercials for
Penthouse
magazine on the air. The college-age men Guccione was courting were listening to Steele, perhaps with his magazine in one hand, but the feminist contingent in the audience saw the magazine as exploitive. Mindful of Guccione’s protests, management arranged a meeting with Steele to allow him to plead his case. Although not a bra burner, Steele was offended by much of the content of
Penthouse
and told the publisher flat out. Tempers escalated as he refused to accept her arguments until she brought the dialogue down to his level.
“Look,” she said, “I don’t care about naked women. I hate
hair.
The only hair on my entire body is on top of my head. Even my eyebrows are shaved, and I’ll leave it to your imagination what else. I can’t stand those hairy-looking women, spread-eagled in front of the camera. And until you do something about that, I won’t read your spots.” Guccione retreated, and the day was hers.
The line had to be walked with music as well. Playing too many hits was perceived as being just as dangerous as not playing enough. In 1971 on progressive stations, commercialism and ratings often took a backseat to credibility.
Ratings have been determined in essentially the same manner for decades. Arbitron selects a representative sample of the population and sends them diaries. On these pages, a listener is to mark down what radio station he listens to, and for how long, for which he is paid a token fee. Phone calls are made to follow up to ensure that the diaries are being attended to. At the end of the week (Arbitron weeks go from Thursday to Wednesday), the diaries are mailed in and the results tabulated, weighted against the market’s demographic and ethnic makeup. That’s why most big radio promotions are done on Thursdays, the day the diaries are sent back in—because if someone has been negligent in their recording duties, they hastily fill them out on the day they’re due in. Every three months in major markets, a book comes out, detailing the hourly listening habits of the region. On a monthly basis, “Arbitrends” are released, which are less dependable, mid-course samplings. A common mistake is to overreact to trends and make changes, only to find that statistical errors render the trend’s findings unreliable.
Although ratings are king now, in 1972 credibility was more important to most FM programmers. And the demise of WPLJ, with its highly credible but low-rated jocks, was to soon have a major impact on WNEW-FM, and especially on young Michael Harrison.
Dirty Water
The early world of progressive radio was a small and incestuous one. Even though they were then owned by another company, WBCN in Boston was always regarded as a sister station to WNEW-FM.
WBCN was the first station to broadcast in stereo as engineers at nearby MIT discovered how to multiplex with the “aural exciter” (broadcast in stereo). T. Mitchell Hastings owned the station in its early days, along with WHCN in Hartford and WNCN (later WQIV and WAXQ) in New York. The three comprised the “Concert Network,” and all were respected classical stations until Hastings became seriously ill with a brain aneurysm in 1968. He underwent a partial lobotomy, which required a lengthy rehabilitation. By the time he returned to work, he owned an underground rock station in Boston, which his employees had surreptitiously implemented on WBCN while he had been recuperating. It seems the old man never recovered enough to fully understand what had happened, and the staff had free run of the place. They would explain things to him as if speaking to a child, since despite his corporeal presence around the offices, much of his intellect had been left in the operating theater.
WBCN’s most celebrated jock was a fellow named Charles Laquidara. He’s done mornings in Boston on and off for almost three decades, and his story has some eerie parallels to those of many other early progressive jocks. Charles wanted to be an actor and did radio part-time, playing classical music at Pasadena, California’s KPPC. Like WLIR, the suburban station was located in a basement, this time the cellar of the Pasadena Presbyterian Church. His approach was revolutionary in that he viewed the classics as “the people’s music” and not just serious work for intellectual snobs. He distilled the essence of what he did to this: explaining opera to plumbers. He’d take an aria and break it down—translating the story, noting the technical prowess of the performances, and using his keen sense of humor to make it accessible for the hoi polloi. He continued to pursue an acting career after graduating from the Pasadena Playhouse.
Like Tom Donahue, he hated what Top Forty radio had become. The high-energy disc jockeys who seemed oblivious to the changes the country was going through in the mid-sixties, the inane promotions, the senseless jingles—it all offended him. He and his friends used to smoke grass on the hilltops of Encino and talk about what radio should be: the best of all genres of music, put together intelligently.
His dream came to fruition when Donahue consulted KPPC and transformed it into KMPX South. But like its San Francisco counterpart, KPPC’s ownership couldn’t make it work financially with Donahue over the long term, and they also were struck by the jocks. Metromedia had a station in Los Angeles, KMET, and before long George Duncan had repeated the magic trick that had worked in New York and San Francisco. KMET became a progressive station and hired Raechel Donahue. In 1968, KPPC started over again with a new staff, which included Laquidara doing overnights.
True to his vision, he mixed Orff’s
Carmina Burana
with the Grateful Dead in his sets. Originally, he knew nothing about rock but learned to love it. Within months, aided by his ambition and promotional skills, his legend grew in L.A. Fresh from his West Coast triumph, he returned home to New England for the holidays to visit with family. It was there that he first heard WBCN in Boston, and was so impressed that he called the station and introduced himself, hoping that his reputation had traveled east.
“Oh yeah,” they answered. “You’re the crazy bastard who mixes classical with rock and roll. Come on in.”
As with everything, timing is crucial and Charles happened upon WBCN just as their afternoon jock was preparing to leave for a career with a rock band. Management liked his rap, so in 1969, Charles Laquidara replaced Peter Wolf, who would achieve his own measure of fame and fortune with the J. Geils Band. He was also one of the first rock stars to marry a famous actress when he wed Faye Dunaway.
Besides having a lighthearted approach to radio, Laquidara was extremely active politically, another trait more intrinsic to West Coast commercial radio. He refused to participate in anything remotely related to the war effort. In fact, he and WBCN were once sued for his remarks after reading a camera shop commercial. President Nixon decided to invade Cambodia in an attempt to clear out Vietcong sanctuaries and bring the North Vietnamese to the peace table. But most leftists felt that the incursion only prolonged the war and extended the killing fields to an innocent neutral country, and Laquidara wasn’t shy about saying so on the air. A local sponsor called Underground Camera asked that he read a live ad for Honeywell’s newest 35mm offering. He refused (Honeywell was a major arms manufacturer), but management prevailed upon him to read the spot anyway. He did so professionally, extolling the virtues of the new Honeywell Pentax camera exactly as the copy stated. But at the end, he added his own fillip: “That’s right, run right out and support Honeywell, the company responsible for killing all those Cambodian babies.”
Laquidara wasn’t aware that the chief executives of Honeywell were in Boston, listening intently to hear the great WBCN host praise their new camera. WBCN was not pleased with the $200,000 legal action that followed, but publicly supported Charles and eventually won the lawsuit. On another occasion, after several major universities had gone on strike protesting the war, he lamented the fact that no school in Boston had followed suit. So he read a fabricated news story stating that the students at every school in the country had decided to boycott classes, with the exception of Boston University. The BU students, who were meeting at the time to decide upon a course of action, were thus moved to strike, lest they be out of sync with their peers.
After three years in various time slots, Laquidara accepted the morning show on a dare. WBCN’s female morning host was venting to him in the studio one day, complaining about the treatment that women received in radio, always getting the worst shifts. She ranted on obscenely about her lousy hours until Charles opined that mornings weren’t so bad.
“Oh yeah?” she challenged him. “Why don’t you try it, then?”
“As a matter of fact, I will,” he replied.
In trying to find a memorable handle for the morning show, he envisioned all of New England waking up on a big mattress. So, in 1972,
The Big Mattress
was born. His attitude was typically irreverent: He did a parody of an AM morning show, using all the bells and whistles normally associated with Top Forty, but with a twist. He had a game show called “Mishegas,” a Yiddish expression for craziness. Karlos, his version of HAL, the computer in
2001: A Space Odyssey,
occasionally took over his show without warning. He brought in Tank, a sports guy who reminded everyone of a character who hangs out at a local bar and has an opinion about everything. He did spoofs of commercials using the fictitious company Dutchko (“If it’s Dutchko, it’s so-so”). He invented words like “schloony,” which meant foggy or demented. It was almost as if the Firesign Theatre had come to morning radio. For the first time, FM morning ratings achieved double digits, and Laquidara became a wake-up fixture in Boston until 1976, when he decided that the show got in the way of his cocaine use. He “retired” with much fanfare and spent the next two years in self-imposed radio exile.
During this time, he was wooed by WNEW-FM. He interviewed with Scott Muni, who was impressed with the fact that someone had finally broken through the FM morning barrier. But Laquidara valued his freedom and needed to be assured that Metromedia wouldn’t attempt to control his content. As a litmus test, he asked Muni if WNEW was playing Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side.” Muni, still executing Duncan’s conservative edict when it came to possibly obscene lyric content, told him that the line “even when she was given head” disqualified it from consideration. Charles decided then and there that WNEW-FM wouldn’t be a cool place to work and removed his hat from the ring. He preferred unemployment.
The End of the Innocence
With the demise of WPLJ as a free-form station in late 1971, Dave Herman and Vin Scelsa were out of work. With nothing in their pocket but the support of a small but loyal following, they pondered their next move.
Scelsa had his wife’s income to fall back on. He also knew that he had writing talent but had never really harnessed it to make money. There was a vague chance that some radio station would come calling, but Vin had been burned twice already, at WFMU and at WPLJ, and wasn’t eager to get fooled again. He’d wait it out until the right opportunity beckoned.
Dave was not so fortunate. He’d accumulated enough to live on for a few months, but he had a wife and children who were dependent on him. He weighed going back to Philadelphia, but his prospects were suddenly enlivened by a call from Scott Muni. Would Herman be interested in having lunch with him and Paulsen? Why not? Scottso had approached Herman once before, years earlier. But at that time Dave was making double what Muni could pay him because his taped show also ran on the ABC-FM network.
At lunch, both sides expressed their reservations. Dave had worked for Metromedia at WMMR, and Muni wanted him back in the fold. His concern was whether Herman could lighten up on the politics. For his part, since Dave had always viewed WNEW as competition, he wondered if he’d be welcomed onto the staff or viewed as an interloper. Knowing the discord already present at the station, Muni had little worry on that account. Some would like him, some wouldn’t—just like any new recruit. Schwartz would feel threatened, as he always did. After all, Dave had been on opposite him at night, and when Jonno had tuned in to PLJ one Monday evening while his own show was on tape, he’d heard Herman say, “It’s a stormy Monday in New York, and it’s good for nothing but the blues.” He then launched into the Allman Brothers’ lengthy rendition of “Stormy Monday,” and Schwartz thought, this guy’s good. It was just the way he said blues. He sounded like he believed it.
Leave it to Jonno to pick up on an inconsequential opening that Herman didn’t even remember the next day. But there was something to what he observed. Dave sounded in tune with his music and, in his short time at WPLJ, had met and become friendly with a number of musicians. PLJ had started a live concert series at a nearby recording studio and the station’s hip reputation attracted a number of top artists. The most famous of these concerts became an album whose title merely noted the date of the performance:
11-17-70.
Muni was particularly incensed that PLJ had scored this broadcast because it involved a musician whom Scott had personally thrown his support behind—Elton John. But Dave’s politics remained the main sticking point.
Herman convinced his two suitors that his days of heavy politicking were over. He still would support the antiwar effort, but it would be in subtler fashion than WPLJ, where they would air a Nixon speech and follow it with “Liar, Liar” by the Castaways, or punctuate the address with rude noises like toilets flushing. Economic reality trumped idealism—Herman realized that if he was to remain in New York, WNEW was his only real choice. He might catch on as a staff announcer at some boring easy-listening outlet, but his three years in progressive radio had made that an unsavory alternative.
Schwartz was scheduled to vacation in Palm Springs for his annual two-week stay that fall, so Paulsen dreamed up an ad campaign to introduce Herman as his substitute. Using his trade space to take out a full-page ad in
The Village Voice
and various college newspapers, he composed a terse note, supposedly in Schwartz’s hand, asking:
Dave Herman, where are you? I’m going on vacation and I’d like you to fill in.
—Jonathan Schwartz
It took a lot of reassurances from Duncan, Muni, and Paulsen to convince the insecure Jonno that he wasn’t being set up to be replaced permanently. Herman passed the test with flying colors, breezing through the two-week stint to glowing reviews. Under the more professional atmosphere at WNEW, his strengths—a mellow delivery and vast musical knowledge—shone through. He filled in for Alison when she vacationed and did some weekend work in the ensuing months.
This presented management with a problem. They wanted Dave on the air full-time in the worst way. But where would they put him? Nights seemed the logical place, but head to head, Schwartz had scored higher ratings than Dave had while at WPLJ. Alison was settling into a nice groove at 10 p.m. and Herman would be wasted in the overnights. Muni wasn’t about to budge from afternoons, and Fornatale was now a three-year veteran with credibility of his own in middays. Did mornings make sense?
Although Harrison had been doing the show only a year, his numbers increased in every book. He’d helped Muni set up a series of free concerts in the city’s parks the previous summer. Michael had become friendly with important record promoters and gotten to be pals with Lou Reed and David Clayton-Thomas of Blood, Sweat and Tears. He had visited countless area colleges, and had been praised in local newspapers and magazines. He’d done a good job and his reputation was spreading.
His show reflected what we did at WLIR. He had a theme song: “Pick Up in the Morning,” by the New York Rock and Roll Ensemble. He essentially did an FM version of what John Gambling was doing on WOR-AM. He played a lot of three-minute FM hits, did frequent time and temperature, and was a friendly, upbeat presence. Sounds like a perfect morning host, no?
But some didn’t consider him “heavy” enough for the morning. His breezy attitude was intentional, because he felt that most people didn’t need to be pounded over the head with major issues upon waking. They merely wanted to know the time, weather, and key stories of the day, mixed in with their favorite familiar tunes. Michael repeated songs more often than most using this philosophy, and it was getting results with his growing numbers. But free-form purists at the station thought this was too formulaic, and wondered if Harrison had the breadth of music knowledge to range wider.
He was also low man in terms of seniority (other than myself), and was deemed the most expendable after a year’s experience. So one Friday morning after his show, he was called into Paulsen’s office and informed that he was being replaced by Dave Herman, effective May 22, 1972. Paulsen praised his efforts and emphasized that this was not to be taken as a negative reflection on his work, but that Herman represented an upgrade, having been in prime time in New York for two years. Paulsen offered Michael a strong letter of recommendation for future employment within or outside the company.
Harrison was crushed. He’d just gotten married, and thought that his two-year contract provided him with a measure of security. However, like most radio contracts, his money was not guaranteed, so after a small severance was paid out, his income from the station abruptly halted. He had done everything asked of him and boosted morning ratings higher than they’d ever been, and now he was being replaced by someone who had worked at a failed competitor.
It was a huge blow to a twenty-three-year-old who had achieved his dream, thrived on it, and then had it taken away capriciously. When he told me about it, he tried to put a brave face on things, but I could tell he was deeply hurt by the experience. I also knew that with his intellect and ambition he’d land on his feet and achieve even greater success somewhere. But it all seemed unfair. What did he want me to do? Should I quit in sympathy?
He told me that Muni and Paulsen were afraid of that happening but were prepared to deal with it. He didn’t see that my resignation would serve any purpose other than to put both of us out of work. And having a friend on the inside couldn’t hurt if things were to change, as they often did. So when I was called in to the inevitable meeting, I bit my lip and told them that I could continue on with a positive attitude and that I understood their position.
Vin Scelsa was hired a few months later to do weekends and fill-ins. On his Sunday morning show, he created a series of humorous essays entitled “Me and Razoo Kelly,” which found their way into book form years later. The premise was that Vin would find these letters awaiting him upon his arrival at the station, so he’d read them on the air. They were also a clever way for the always rebellious Scelsa to cast his cynical eye on the rock scene and say things that he couldn’t in his role as disc jockey.
One of the most curious stories about his weekend gig was how he got the world premiere of Springsteen’s
Darkness on the Edge of Town
album. A listener had purchased the new Barbra Streisand album and in its sleeve found
Darkness,
the result of an obvious mistake at the pressing plant. He called Scelsa on the air, who offered him an entire box of rock albums if he would meet and slip him the Boss’s latest offering. The listener complied, and WNEW-FM had a week’s jump on the competition, as Columbia scrambled to rush-release it. Nobody believed Scelsa’s story then, thinking that his Jersey connections somehow fed him an early release of the album, but he swears the story is true to this day.
Vin hadn’t changed his act much from the WFMU days. He still had eclectic tastes, and would play anything and everything, except music that he considered “corporate” rock. He hated bands like Foreigner, Journey, and Kansas, and shied away from prefab supergroups like Asia.
He formed an alter ego named “Bayonne Butch” and while in character, he refused to acknowledge anyone who called him Vin. In some ways, the Butch character was more reflective of his real thoughts and attitudes, and might have been created to protect the real Scelsa from retribution when the corporate villains disapproved of his rap. He was self-conscious about appearing onstage at times and, to cover up that fear, invented “The Bayonne Bear,” a boisterous figure in a bear costume who would dance to rock music at concerts while emceeing shows.
At the time, we were all charmed and amused by Vin’s planned schizophrenia, but later it would prove problematic to the station and his own career.