FM (17 page)

But now I faced a fork in the road. I was offered Alison’s old overnight shift. I’d make a few more dollars and work five days live and one on tape instead of seven days a week. But I’d be giving up the chance to stay in management and the opportunity to shape the direction the station went musically. Plus, my life would be turned around and I’d lead a vampiric existence—sleeping by day and working all night.

The choice wasn’t difficult. I enjoyed performing more than directing and here was a chance to perform twenty hours a week. I could hone my talents in the relative obscurity of the overnights and, when someone else left, spring into a more prominent spot. Besides, it was becoming increasingly obvious to me that WNEW-FM was not about to offer the jocks any structured musical direction, so my job in the library would essentially be that of a lackey whom the staff would distrust if I aspired to more control. So I agreed to do the overnight show. I would be surrounded by the two people I liked most at the station, Alison Steele at night and Harrison in the morning.

A young contemporary of ours named Dennis Elsas was hired to do the weekend shows I’d abandoned. Dennis was a friend of Pete Fornatale’s, and like-minded in his taste for accessible music. So when John Zacherle took the shopping bag that he carried in lieu of a briefcase to WPLJ, we lamented the loss of a well-liked and good comrade, but found ourselves a strong new player.

Things were rapidly falling apart at WPLJ. The uneasy alliance between a large corporation and leftist radicals was crumbling and both sides were growing increasingly militant. Compromise seemed out of the question and decisions were coming from ABC that risked throwing the baby out with the bath water. As Muni had forewarned, shortly after Zach signed his deal at WPLJ, the ax fell. He’d done only a few shows when ABC, tired of the lawsuits and political culture that had developed, brought law and order to Sixth Avenue. The entire staff was called into a meeting on August 26, 1971, and sat silently as general manager Lou Severin outlined the new rules. The music would be formatted (it would later be called “rock in stereo”). There would initially be two or three songs an hour that must be played. A card system would be instituted that would restrict choice somewhat but still offer a wide range. All guests had to be cleared with management prior to airing and no politics would be discussed.

The mood was somber. This was the beginning of the end—no one could deal with any of these restrictions and retain their credibility with the political community. The audience at the time may not have been large, but they were fiercely loyal. The jocks felt powerless to object—after all, it was ABC’s candy store. WPLJ was destined to become just another radio station, albeit a far more profitable one.

At a lull in the presentation, Zacherle slowly reached down under the table into his shopping bag and pulled out a vintage machine gun. With a crazed look in his eyes, he aimed it in the direction of Severin and Shaw and screamed, “You’ve betrayed me, you son of a bitches! I’ll get you bastards! You’ll pay for this!”

The two men cowered in fear. This was an era when the staff had openly urged violence against the establishment. Times were not far removed from the political assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy. A bomb factory run by student radicals had recently been discovered in the Village. Severin and Shaw had always felt that Zacherle was a harmless eccentric, and never thought he was given to violence.

Herman and Scelsa watched in horror as Zach’s diatribe continued, cursing the two men and the whole establishment for killing his dreams of WPLJ. He then hoisted the weapon into firing position, locked the clip, and pulled the trigger, as members of the staff dove under the table for shelter.

But instead of a hail of murderous bullets emerging from the barrel, out popped a harmless little flag that simply said, “BANG!!”

The room erupted into relieved laughter as the tension was broken. The meeting ended shortly thereafter, and the staff retreated into little groups to discuss their next move.

For Scelsa, it was simple. He told Severin plainly, “I’m outta here,” and never did another show. Herman said that he was leaving also, but Shaw insisted that Dave had a contract and would not be allowed to quit. He said that if Herman refused to work, he’d sue him and keep him from making a living in radio for as long as he could. Since Herman had a family, he couldn’t risk the banishment, so he reacted like Harrison and I had when Reiger had censured us for using our names too often. He did his show, but he spoke as seldom as he could. When he did open the microphone, his voice was a slow monotone, merely identifying the call letters and never using his name. After several weeks of this, management agreed to release him from the remainder of his contract. One by one, the rest of the staff quit or were fired, with one prominent exception: John Zacherle.

After a series of programmers tried to restore order, Larry Berger, a Rick Sklar protégé, was brought in to settle the station. Berger had survived the payola era, but only barely. A story circulated that while at another station, he had agreed to play a certain record and had accepted a large sum of money to do so. But when it came time to deliver on his promise, he reneged. Apparently, the promoter he had cheated was connected to the underworld and sent a messenger to Berger’s high-rise office. The burly enforcer then dangled the diminutive Berger out the window by his heels until he relented and agreed to play the record. No one knew if the tale was apocryphal, but legend has it that the experience left Berger scarred for life and that, much like Sklar, he refused to entertain promotion men after that and became absolutely incorruptible.

The noose restricting choice got tighter over time until the jocks had no say in what they played. Berger brought in his own staff, who understood from the beginning that he was the boss and that their opinions on music and politics held little sway with him.

Zacherle remained at WPLJ for another twelve years, obediently toeing the line and playing the hits. He had nowhere else to go, having walked out on WNEW.

Prove It All Night

“Wake up, the record’s over.”

Engineer Pete Johnson was shaking me by the shoulder. Where was I?
Who
was I? I groggily arose from the uncomfortable sofa and stumbled through the darkness toward the light switch.

Oh, God! I’m working. I’m on the air. Before I could organize my thoughts, I rushed to the studio and pushed the remote button for turntable one, and I watched in horror as the other tonearm spun relentlessly into the center groove with a sickening click . . . click . . . click.

It was coming back to me now. This was my first Saturday doing the all-night shift from 2 a.m. until six. After struggling through the first hour, I told Johnson that I needed a quick nap, just twenty minutes or so to refresh me so that I could make it through the rest of the night. Luckily, the cool new group Emerson, Lake and Palmer had just released
Tarkus,
and all of New York was clamoring to hear it. With Keith Emerson of the Nice, Greg Lake of King Crimson, and Carl Palmer from Atomic Rooster, they comprised a typical British supergroup. Like Blind Faith and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young before them and Asia, Foreigner, et cetera, later, they were presold as an all-star lineup before recording a note. With Emerson’s keyboard pyrotechnics, Lake’s sensual vocals, and Palmer’s frenetic drumming, they’d scored big with their first album, which featured the single “Lucky Man.” The hit was a ballad of manageable length with a conventional acoustic guitar. The only progressive element was the ending, with Emerson’s synth swirling from channel to channel like a Hendrix guitar solo. The rest of the album had long, largely instrumental set pieces, which showed the performers’ virtuosity to great advantage. On
Tarkus,
they’d decided to go all out with a concept album about some mutant tank that resembled an armadillo with gun barrels. The first side ran almost twenty minutes and would afford me the nap I needed.

I told Johnson to wake me up with about two minutes left on the side, but when I looked at the studio clock, I calculated that the side had been over for nearly five minutes. I pressed the intercom button to yell at Johnson across the glass.

“Pete, what the hell happened? I thought I told you to wake me up before the record ended.”

“Sorry, man. I fell asleep, too.”

I couldn’t stay mad at him. He was working a split shift and was doubtless having the same problem adjusting to the hours. For months, I’d been arriving at the station at 6 a.m. with Harrison, so I was used to going to bed early and getting up at 4:30 a.m.. Michael would pick me up at 5:15, or we’d take my car to the Vernon-Jackson subway stop in Long Island City where we could park all day for seventy-five cents. We would then grab a train to Grand Central, and ride the long escalator up to street level. There was an all-night deli where we’d pick up orange juice and a doughnut, and then walk across Forty-fifth Street to the studio. We felt like coal miners as we commuted with the early morning shift.

Luckily, my adjustment to the overnights came quickly and soon I’d worked out a routine. I’d usually hang with Harrison until six-thirty, then go home and try to get to sleep by seven-thirty. If I got up by one or two in the afternoon, I still had a good stretch of daylight in the summertime to enjoy the weather. The problems came later, in the winter, when if you didn’t get to sleep right after getting home, you might think you lived in Norway, seeing little or no sunlight from November until March. You acquired what Frank Zappa referred to as a “studio tan,” a ghostly pallor that made Zacherle look healthy by comparison.

It was during one of these nights that I got my real name back. I’d always hated the nickname “Dick” but since it was the only one I used in radio, I figured I was stuck with it. Then while doing my overnight show, I noticed a new album by “Richard” Betts of the Allman Brothers. I said spontaneously, “Well, if old Dickey Betts of the Allman Brothers can change his name to Richard, dammit, so can I. From now on, I’m Richard Neer.”

I never used “Dick” Neer on the air again. It took a little longer to convince my colleagues to make the switch, but within a few months the conversion was complete. I can always judge the age and station loyalties of a listener these days when they approach me by saying, “I knew you when you were Dick Neer.”

But it was while doing overnights that I learned, almost by osmosis, how the business was structured and how lucky we all were to be in the right place at the right time. And how the days of free form were numbered.

The economics of AM radio were changing. The mid-twenty shares that WABC once enjoyed were now sinking rapidly into single digits as FM began to flex its muscles. WNBC, with the spoken emphasis on the
N,
took up the competitive mantle for years, even managing to steal away Bruce Morrow after Sklar decided to attempt to impose what he saw as the new realities. Bruce had been used to the big money of the golden years, averaging close to two hundred thousand a year in salary and perhaps double that in outside activities. As FM stations began making inroads, ratings were slipping from their peak in the late sixties. To protect themselves against falling revenues, management proposed a lower base salary for Morrow, with incentives for ratings increases, coupled with deductions if the station’s popularity fell. Bruce was incensed, feeling betrayed by the very people he felt he had helped make into legends. Everyone could read the writing on the wall: No matter what they did, things would never be as good as they once were.

Always a canny businessman, Bruce knew that rival WNBC had tried an array of talent to combat WABC’s superiority. The one thing they hadn’t tried was pirating their disc jockeys. So while Morrow told Sklar he agreed in principle with the new concept, he was secretly being wooed by WNBC’s Perry Bascom, who had no qualms about guaranteeing Morrow’s contract at a much higher salary. Bruce allowed that he would consider WABC’s new arrangement if they would tear up his existing contract immediately.

What happened next is unclear. Executives at ABC said that they realized that releasing Morrow in this fashion would make him a free agent, but that they were unconcerned. By this time, Sklar considered his jocks to be like “spark plugs.” They give you service for a while, then wear out and are replaced by new ones. Whatever WABC’s attitude was, Morrow didn’t wait to find out, inking a new deal with WNBC the next day. Bruce presented Sklar with a gift-wrapped spark plug as a going-away present. But both stations continued to lose numbers as more listeners flocked to FM.

Even though it was winning over hearts and minds, the progressive era was an anomaly for several reasons. Chief among them was the FCC, who took almost worthless FM stations and by decree gave them profit potential. The duopoly and the AM-FM receiver rulings opened up a wealth of possibilities, through no fault of the broadcasters themselves. It would be as if the FTC had declared tax rebates were available to anyone who bought the Edsel. It was a gift from the gods to radio-station owners, whose main purpose was to make money.

And since owners suddenly had all these frequencies to fill and with all the good formats taken, they had to be creative. The music industry realized they could make more money selling long-playing albums than singles. They in turn pressured artists for more than just a few three-minute songs a year—now they needed forty-minute albums. So recording artists began to experiment. Some got the idea that rather than come up with twelve short tunes, they could write five short ones that might work as singles and four long ones that allowed them space to jam. So now you had a new kind of music on record that wasn’t being played on the radio, and progressive programmers swooped in to give it exposure.

Also, to staff the new stations, there were a bunch of young broadcasters who hadn’t ever held a job and were willing to work for a tenth of what stars like Cousin Brucie were drawing. In addition, there were legions of burnt-out Top Forty jocks who were willing to work for less money to revitalize their sagging careers. So a whole staff of FM disc jockeys might cost less than one Top Forty personality. Plus the AM sales staff could sell FM time on the side, and the AM general manager could mind the cash register. Since production was an artifice scorned by the new medium, money could be saved on jingles, promotions, and contests. A program director merely had to ride herd, since no real direction was given. So no FM station had to pay Rick Sklar–type money for a programming genius. Any profit would be pure gravy.

And new businesses were emerging that could take advantage of FM’s low rates to reach their target audiences. Record companies didn’t need to dish out payola to individual jocks; they could buy inexpensive commercials on the stations that played their records. Boutiques and head shops couldn’t afford WABC and would sound out of place there if they could, so they gravitated to FM. Concert promoters and publications that sought credibility with a young audience could find it with low-key ads read by hip FM jocks.

With the combination of low overhead and a ready-made marketplace, FM owners began to see water transformed into wine. So managers didn’t know or care if jocks were playing unfamiliar, noncommercial music. Most of the DJs were making more money than they needed. They got free dope from admiring fans. Sex was there for the asking. They were in hog heaven. Why sell out and play something that some suit ordered you to when you already had everything you needed?

I grew to admire the way Muni ran the station. He was effective in keeping the corporate wolves at bay. I don’t know if it was because he is such a keen judge of human nature or that he is just lazy, but his loose-reined approach was right for the times. As he hired new people, I began to realize that his rambling interview technique was actually pretty cagey. The key to finding good jocks was assessing what kind of people they were, which he was able to do in the long sessions, without their knowledge of his agenda.

He once told me how he approached audition tapes. If he heard something memorable in the generally slick productions he received, he asked the applicant to sit down with a tape recorder and, in six to ten minutes, explain why they thought they were good enough to be on WNEW-FM: “If they started out in a staccato, ‘Mr. Muni . . . I feel . . . that I should be . . .’ I could tell they were just a reader and I threw their tapes out. But if someone could put his feelings on tape in a cogent manner, and showed an all-around knowledge of the music, then we might have a keeper.”

Unlike Top Forty, where what you do on the air is an act, manufactured to fit a style of forced excitement, on progressive radio you couldn’t fool the audience into thinking you were something that you weren’t. One veteran jock told me, “The key to all of this is sincerity. Once you learn to fake that, the rest is easy.” It wasn’t easy to fake it on FM, however, and those who tried were generally found out in short order.

To succeed on progressive radio you had to a) know the music,b) understand and preferably share the listeners’ politics and lifestyles, and c) have a delivery compatible with a and b. Of course, these elements won’t guarantee fame and fortune, but without them there is little chance of success.

Knowing the music was first and foremost. In those days, the slightest slip could undermine your credibility with the audience. While Alison Steele was still learning and making the transition from Frank Sinatra to Frank Zappa, she introduced a cut by saying, “Here’s some new music from a band called Flowers.” She didn’t realize that
Flowers
was the title of the new Rolling Stones record, because
Flowers
was in large letters on the front jacket and the band was merely pictured on the sleeve. This story haunted her for ten years among serious music lovers, well after she had learned the ropes.

In the progressive era, a jock was often attracted to music that wasn’t popular yet. One could get behind an artist and with enough airplay, the public might follow the lead. This advocacy might not be limited to the life of one album. Take Peter Frampton. While performing in the band Humble Pie with Steve Marriott, he released several acclaimed but modestly selling albums. As a solo act, his first two records were good, but didn’t really make a dent in the marketplace. Upon releasing
Frampton Comes Alive!,
basically live performances of his previously issued material, he sold over fifteen million copies and was an instant superstar. WNEW-FM played both Humble Pie and Frampton’s early solo stuff, knowing that he had talent but not knowing how popular he’d become. But for every Peter Frampton, there are ten Warren Zevons, who, despite a long career of quality work, has never achieved much commercial success.

So when choosing music, the (traditionalist) progressive jocks balanced the artists they liked with quality material they knew was selling. The decisions were harder with popular bands that weren’t considered any good. The consensus on Grand Funk Railroad, among music cognoscenti, was that they had very little original talent. They sold a lot of records, though, and a disc jockey had to carefully weigh the perceived lack of quality versus the commercial value.

To Muni, it was no contest. He played the FM hits his audience wanted and if that included Grand Funk, so be it. His oft-repeated quote were the words he lived by: “There are no experts, Fats.” But on the other side of the coin, Jonathan Schwartz didn’t seem to know or care about what was selling. The music he played was for his own entertainment, as a musical scholar. His famous quote was: “There are only two types of music—good music and bad music. I prefer good music.” If the public didn’t like it, so what?

The sixties culture bred a brand of disc jockey who didn’t care about ratings—they were an anathema. These jocks were interested in self-expression, which often translated into self-indulgence. It’s the elitist attitude that “I know better than the marketplace. I know what’s good, the great unwashed public doesn’t.” Most of the jocks with that posture had other means of income and could afford their arrogance. They attracted cult followings who were extremely loyal. But although they opened creative pathways hitherto unheard on commercial radio, in the long run they threatened ruination for the format.