He then played a set of obscure songs by famous artists. We’d have to correct that. He came on after the set with, “That was Steven Styles. Next some Led Zeppleman, and some Spooks’ Tooth. I hopes you enjoyed the music I gave you. I know I did. Steven Styles is one of my most favorite.” Commercials followed.
Stephen Stills and Led Zeppelin were staples on any rock station. Spooky Tooth never achieved great success, but we liked them because they did a killer version of “I Am the Walrus,” and their lead singer was named Mike Harrison (no relation).
After that break, Harrison and I looked at each other in shocked disbelief. “Richard,” he said, “this guy knows nothing about music.”
I agreed. “I bet he played those tracks only because he doesn’t know the right ones to play. My God, what are we going to do?”
We were two minutes from the studios. We were with our girlfriends, and had promised to take them to a movie later. The women were very understanding when we said we had to go to the station for a few minutes, and they agreed to wait in the car at the Imperial Square Garage. As we took the elevator to the top floor, we both tried to remain calm, hoping we could salvage something from the night. We decided that I’d be the bad guy if needed, and he’d be more conciliatory.
Our man was in the studio, cueing up his next record. “Hey man, how’re you doing?” Harrison greeted him.
“Great. How do I sound?”
I swallowed hard. “Pretty good. But this is the Imperial Square Building, not the garage. And it’s Stephen Stills and Led Zeppelin.”
“Okay. Well, you understand I never heard of those guys. Ain’t like they’re the Beatles or nothing. Probably the listeners don’t know either.” He then busied himself with a stack of LPs, shaking his head in nonrecognition at most of them until he found
Otis Redding at Monterey Pop.
I was tempted to pull the plug right there but Michael spoke first. “Keep rockin’ man. Come in Monday morning and we’ll talk about the show. Have a good one.” He shoved me out the studio door, a little too hard.
When we reached the corridor out of earshot, he grabbed my shoulder. “Look, the women are waiting in the car. If we yank him now, either you or I do the show. You know how that’ll go over with the women. The damage is done, my friend.”
“I know. But he’s got such a great voice. Don’t you think we can teach him how to do this?”
“He’s got no clue about the music. He lied to us. We’ve got to let him go. It can wait ’til Monday, though. Let’s just go to the movies and not listen anymore. It’s only going to get us upset. Let’s forget about it until after the weekend.”
We got in the car and drove up Hempstead Turnpike to a cinema in Uniondale. We couldn’t resist tuning in on the way, hoping against hope that he’d improve and that we could find something salvageable. But things went from bad to worse, as he immediately repeated the Imperial Square Garage tag, and misidentified another record. We switched to Alison Steele and made our way to the theater, trying to put our dashed hopes out of mind.
Another problem was caused by our own insecurity in the first few months. A loudmouthed engineer from WPLJ arrived on our doorstep one day and bragged about how he could put us on the map immediately. He told us that he had contacts at record labels and could have our library stocked within days. If we would just give him a weekend air shift, he’d use his influence to bag us interviews with Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin, both of whom he claimed were his personal friends. He’d worked with Tom Donahue in L.A., he said, and knew everything there was to know about underground radio.
I was impressed, although I sensed Michael seemed threatened by this guy who seemed to outclass us. Nevertheless, we gave him a Sunday show on a temporary basis. Although he sounded good and was very clever on the air, he proceeded to break every rule we had set down.
We called him into the office the next day and he broke into tears, apologizing for upsetting us and swearing it would never happen again. When he left, Harrison theorized that he was a spy from WPLJ, looking to subvert our operation and steal our secrets. I dismissed the idea as ludicrous, but was troubled by his insubordination.
The next day, he came up to the station with a woman that he introduced as his wife. He was there to practice formatics so that he could improve his work to our standards. He took his wife into the production studio with him and began toiling on a tape. The woman was proving to be quite a distraction around the station. She paraded around in cutoff jeans, just barely covering her bottom and ripped in strategic places, topped by a tight T-shirt with no bra. Her bosom seemed to have a life of its own as it surged beneath a thin layer of cotton. She was an obviously bleached blonde. If our Sunday host had told us he found her soliciting in Times Square, we would have believed him.
He motioned me into the production room and played a tape that he had made—a montage of songs put together to illustrate a political point ridiculing Nixon. Although the station had antiwar overtones in attitude and music, we tried not to be overtly political when it came to specifics. I told him that, although creative, it really wasn’t for us but that I was sure that WPLJ would appreciate it. But he’d quit WPLJ, he protested, in anticipation of more work at WLIR. I quickly disabused him of that notion, saying that he was only here on a tryout basis, and in any case, there were no full-time positions available.
He shocked me with his next comment. He said that he noticed me stealing a glance at his wife’s boobs. Would I like to see them? If so, he had an apartment in Queens, and Harrison and I could join them later that evening. Just bring some hash, and we could take turns partying with his wife. I was embarrassed for her, but she said that it was cool. I begged off as gracefully as possible, using the excuse that Michael and I were both engaged, but that didn’t seem to bother either of them. Bring your women along, too.
As I beat a path out of there, I tried to come up with a justification to get this man out of my life. He seemed more than a little unbalanced but we were still naÏvely impressed with the contacts he’d talked about. We were hoping that we could rein in his wild streak and maximize his obvious talent. He had done an interesting show the previous Sunday.
No further incidents occurred involving his wife and he had the good sense to pretend it never happened. He still seemed defiant on the air, breaking our guidelines during every show but always apologizing profusely thereafter. To his credit, he never repeated the errors, but constantly found new ways to tweak our noses. But we were getting our music library filled, whether he had caused it to happen or not. He continued to be an erratic presence, alternately delighting with his creativity and dismaying with his blatant disregard for our rules. But he never did anything serious enough to warrant his dismissal, until he crossed Harrison.
One morning while going over music sheets, Michael told me he’d heard some scuttlebutt about this man’s intention to overthrow us and take over as program director. Although we trusted that Reiger would give us the time we needed to accomplish our mission, any dissension within the ranks could only hinder the process. So he asked me to speak to the man confidentially, indicate that I had doubts about Harrison’s leadership, and see what developed. He was asking me to be Luca Brazzi to his Don Corleone, and ferret out a traitor. Intrigued, I complied with his request and sure enough, the guy broke free, expanding on how Harrison had no clue as to what he was doing and that I should be running the place. He would be my right-hand man of course, until I got up to speed. He already enlisted other staffers to back him up and I had only to give him the word. I felt like I was in a Robert Ludlum thriller. Any benefits the guy might have offered were thrown aside when I told Harrison my story. The knave never did another show at WLIR.
We also had a problem keeping the place from turning into a flop house. We maintained a strict “no visitors after hours” policy. Don K. Reed, one of the straightest guys in the universe, complained that the studio reeked of marijuana many mornings and that he’d found seeds behind one of the tape decks. We traced the material to a weekend jock and brought him in for a warning: no more visitors or pot smoking on the premises. We also had a minor uproar when Reiger’s wife found a used prophylactic in the cushions of the aptly named loveseat in her office. We issued a memo in strong terms, but privately suggested that any amorous encounters after hours be conducted on the roof. The view was better there anyway.
But our weekend guy just couldn’t accept our restrictions and one Saturday evening, we were dining out in Hempstead and realized we had forgotten some albums at the station. Harrison and I found not only our jock floating away on a marijuana trail, but several of his friends toking away in the main offices. This time, we did fire him on the spot and Michael finished the show.
We were luckier with most of our other hires. Ken Kohl went on to a successful talk career and is now a highly placed executive for a Sacramento-based ownership group. Pete Larkin became a program director in Maryland and later worked at WNEW-FM. George Taylor Morris, also an alum, went on to run an NBC radio division and hosted mornings at WZLX in Boston. So we did help to start some careers in the right direction.
But most surprising to us was the speed at which WLIR rose to the top of the ratings on Long Island. Within six months, we were number one in total listenership. We knew early on that it was working, but it quickly surpassed even our expectations. Record companies, who initially didn’t want to send us their releases, were falling over themselves to visit in person. We got on mailing lists for home service and artists made the station a regular stop when on press junkets. We were asked to broadcast from trade shows, and we actually drew crowds. We crafted commercials for local boutiques and their business improved overnight. People recognized us and asked for autographs.
The zenith came when we cohosted a concert in Eisenhower Park in East Meadow with a jock from WNEW-FM who lived on the Island. He was introduced first, to scattered applause. When our names were announced on the P.A., the crowd went crazy. Had we actually toppled the great WNEW-FM in a few months? That night gave us hope. But we still revered Muni and Steele and of course Rosko, and intuitively knew that they were light-years beyond us.
Although our confidence was growing, we wondered if we ever would get beyond small-market radio and move up to the station of our dreams. We spontaneously called Alison Steele at WNEW on the air one night for guidance. She knew all about us and was gracious enough to come out to Long Island for an interview. She later invited us to rendezvous in the city at a sleek East Side restaurant. When she excused herself during the meal to use the phone, Harrison and I burst out laughing as she walked away. Here we were, two twenty-one-year-olds, just out of college, having lunch with this accomplished, sexy woman in tight leather pants at a trendy Manhattan bistro. Alison was every college boy’s wet dream and she was
our
friend. We’d made it to the big time, and if it had all ended there it would have been worth it.
The commercial log at WLIR was sold out for the first time, and rates were raised regularly to reflect its increasing pull with advertisers. Harrison and I had made a deal with Reiger to start at $110 a week apiece in our new jobs as program and operations director, respectively. As ratings and revenue grew, he promised that we could expect hefty raises. It still seemed like short money, even in 1970, but we trusted Reiger so we agreed. We’d even started making some money on the outside for in-store appearances and concert hosting. Our expenses were under control, since Harrison and I had rented an apartment together over a bakery in Oceanside for $175 a month. We weren’t exactly driving Cadillacs and living on Park Avenue, but our prospects had improved markedly in a very short time.
While at the apartment one evening, the phone rang and a stilted voice, affecting a mid-Atlantic accent said, “Is this Dick Neer?”
It was the program director of WHLI in Hempstead. I was a bit off balance because WLIR had catapulted over WHLI and with my newly bolstered ego, I considered them a step down. They still played stodgy easy-listening music and, frankly, I hoped we’d left that world in the dust. But I played along, curious to see what he wanted. It seemed their evening host was taking a couple of weeks off next month and they were wondering if I’d be interested in filling in.
I told him that I wasn’t interested in filling in, but asked if he was offering a job. He hedged, continuing to act as if joining his station would be my crowning acheivement in radio. After a short time, his arrogance got to me and I reminded him that WLIR had soundly beaten him in the last ratings book. To which he replied that I had a lot of nerve asking for a job that I didn’t intend to accept, conveniently leaving out the fact that I’d applied over a year earlier.
I hung up, more satisfied than angry. Revenge was sweet. But that winter, Michael and I were in for a chastening experience when we approached Reiger for raises. Christmas had been a bonanza for WLIR. They’d increased the rates and the spot load several times and still couldn’t handle the demand. They were raking it in, and now it was time for us to collect our rewards.
Reiger knew that this day was coming and dreaded it. Despite the revenues surging into the station, he’d incurred such debt running the old format for so many years that he was unable to extricate himself. He candidly showed us the books and indicated that even at this pace, it would take him another year to reach solvency. He could offer us a fifty-dollar raise over the next twelve months but even that was overextending. He was looking for a partner, an investor to inject some capital into his growing business. If he could pull that off, maybe someday he could pay us what he knew we were worth.
Michael and I dejectedly left his office and went down to the building’s coffee shop. He stared at me with his intense brown eyes, and stated the obvious. It was so damn depressing. We had set our sights on a lofty goal, and now that we seemed so close to attaining it, we found that it was fool’s gold. There was no recourse but to leave. For $250 a week, we could have lived like kings. And we ruled WLIR. We set the format, called the shots. Reiger had no desire to interfere with programming, knowing nothing about it. We had thought that someday we might even own part of WLIR, and have the cars, the house, and the boat that Reiger had. But we hadn’t known it all was mortgaged to the hilt to support his business.