I Am the Walrus
With the changes happening fast and furious at WNEW-FM, Dennis Elsas became music director in early 1972, after less than a year of part-time air work. Dennis was only a couple of years older than I and a devoted Beatles fan. A graduate of Queens College, he’d had a lifelong ambition to be a disc jockey in New York. He especially admired WNEW-FM, which afforded him the chance to work with men like Scott Muni and Bob Lewis, his heroes from an earlier era when they were stars on WABC. Lewis, whose real last name was Schwartzmann, had grown up in Dennis’s neighborhood in Queens and his mom still lived in the same house. Lewis used to talk on the air about his Corvette, and so every time Dennis walked down the mother’s block, he checked her driveway to see if the car was there, hoping that Bobaloo would be visiting.
One night, when he was sixteen, he and a friend noticed the Corvette parked in front. His buddy insisted they ring the doorbell, and Dennis reluctantly tagged along. When Mrs. Schwartzmann came to the door, they explained that they were huge fans and would love to meet Bob. She invited them in for lemonade on the sweltering July night, and they sat at the kitchen table grilling Lewis about WABC. He patiently answered all their questions, although he was probably peeved at his mother for allowing these two strangers into her home. Years later, when Dennis followed Lewis on the air at WNEW, the older jock winced when told of the incident that had made such a thrilling impression on the younger man. Nobody likes to be told that someone grew up listening to them.
Elsas had almost done his career a worse disservice in his initial job interview with Muni. In an effort to ingratiate himself, he told Scottso that his mother was a big fan, almost more so than he himself was. Muni was prepared to let the innocent flattery pass for just that, but Elsas repeated it several times during the conversation. Finally, Muni had had enough.
“I didn’t want to bring this up, Dennis, but how old is your mother?”
Elsas answered and Muni continued, “And how old do you think I am?”
Dennis replied with an age very near that of his mom. “Well,” Muni rejoined, “I hate to tell you this, but I knew your mother . . . very well.”
Dennis blanched when he considered the possibility that his mother and Muni not only were acquainted, but implied in Muni’s tone were issues he wanted no part of. Scott enjoyed the retribution he had exacted, and Elsas never discussed his mother’s fandom again.
Elsas revered the Beatles as a result of Muni, Lewis, Morrow, and all the jocks on W-A-Beatle-C and could cite chapter and verse every phase of their career. Interviewing one of the Beatles became Elsas’s Holy Grail, and from his position at the radio station, he was uniquely situated to attain his goal. Record labels respected Elsas and the power he had over their fare. Much like food companies vie for shelf position in supermarkets today, promo men would bend his ear to gain a coveted spot in the rack. And if Elsas deigned to scrawl a positive comment or two on the album jacket, like “really rocks” or “sold out MSG in two hours,” well then, heavy airplay was almost assured. The rest of the staff generally accepted the sincerity of Dennis’s selections, and trusted that he was not susceptible to bribery or hype, heavy promotion on a record that failed where it counted the most, “in the grooves.”
That didn’t mean the man was immune to persuasion. Promo men dealt with Elsas as they would a prince, and Dennis didn’t balk at the royal treatment. In fact, few disc jockeys resisted much. To get them to see an artist perform in a dingy club late at night, hypesters felt it their responsibility to treat the jocks to a sumptuous dinner at the Palm, Chandler’s, or the Assembly Steak House. Many lobsters and Angus steers sacrificed their lives for radio exposure.
It was all legal, of course, at least at WNEW. Metromedia spelled out strict guidelines as to what could and could not be accepted. Christmas gifts were limited in value, and an evening’s entertainment could not exceed a certain level or it was considered payola. WNEW-FM stayed remarkably clean of that during the seventies. In an industry rife with stories of drugs and hookers, Muni and Elsas were incorruptible when it came to accepting improper favors. But the one favor Elsas wanted more than the lavish dinners or limousine rides to concerts was an interview with a Beatle, and John Lennon lived and worked in New York.
But the record companies weren’t able to help him in his quest to interview Lennon, so he worked it on his own. A friend of his was producing a rookie band at the Record Plant, a legendary recording studio where many great sides were cut. Knowing of Elsas’s desire to meet Lennon, his friend tipped him off that the great man himself was remixing what later was to become the album
Walls and Bridges
in an adjacent room. He invited the young music director to sit in on a session with his band, knowing that Lennon would often peek in while on a break.
On a Tuesday night in late September, Elsas snuck in and sure enough, big as life, there was John Lennon, working diligently on his latest release. Silently, Elsas watched his hero through the glass like a boy watching model trains in a store window before Christmas. After what seemed like hours, Lennon stopped in for a brief, stumbling introduction before quickly retreating back to his mixing console. After the flurry, Elsas noticed a pretty Asian woman in the hallway, also reverently watching the ex-Beatle at work. She introduced herself as May Pang, whom he knew was Lennon’s assistant and rumored mistress. Of course she’d heard of WNEW-FM and knew of his work, but what stunned the normally unflappable Elsas was her offhand assertion that John was aware of him as well. Emboldened by the rush of adrenaline at the idea that his hero actually knew of his existence, Dennis ventured the unthinkable. He asked May if John wanted to see the station sometime, or maybe wanted to hang out with him on the air. She gave a perfunctory nod, took his name and number, and said she’d run it by John.
Dennis floated out of the Record Plant on that cool but glorious night, dizzy with the dream that John Lennon might even
consider
appearing on his radio show. As he sat in his office the following day, the gleam had still not worn off. He told everyone he talked to about meeting his idol, but held off explaining about the interview invitation. As the hours wore on, he realized that May Pang was probably just being nice and that Lennon, who’d rarely if ever sat down for radio interviews, would undoubtedly not give it a second thought, if indeed May had even brought it up.
Two days later, still buoyed by the experience but realistic about his chances, he was screening albums in the music library when his extension rang.
“Dennis Elsas?” asked a small, accented voice on the other end.
“Yes.”
“This is May Pang. I spoke to John and he told me he would love to be with you on the radio. When would be a good time?”
Elsas waited a beat. This couldn’t be a practical joke, although this was just the sort of thing Muni or Schwartz would do. But neither Jonathan nor anyone else could have gotten wind of his invitation. He hadn’t even told Pete Fornatale, his closest friend on the staff, about the possibility of an interview. It had to be the real May Pang.
“Well, May, I’m on Saturday from two to six and Sunday from noon to four this weekend. Do either of those times work for you?” His voice trembled a bit and was slightly higher than normal.
She said that she’d check with John and call him right back. The room spun on him for several minutes but she was as good as her word, returning the call to specify Saturday at four and could John bring in a few R&B tracks he’d like to play on the air? Elsas stammered that it would be perfectly fine. She asked if there was anything else she could bring. He thought for a second of saying a cheesecake would be nice but wasn’t sure she’d appreciate the attempt at humor. He’d settle for the biggest rock artist in the world. She asked the address and how they could get into the building and Dennis gave her instructions before ringing off.
He still couldn’t tell anyone. What a laughingstock he’d be if Lennon developed a headache or was in a cross mood or something else struck his fancy that afternoon and he didn’t show. So, fairly bursting at the seams with his secret, Elsas tried to patiently wait two more days, hoping a meteor wouldn’t strike the Earth before then and spoil his dream. Even coming on the air at two on Saturday, he would only hint that he had a big surprise awaiting his listeners later in the show as he counted the excruciating 120 minutes until 4 p.m. arrived.
Sure enough, at four o’clock, there was Lennon. He was every bit as charming and irreverent as he’d been with the Beatles. For some reason, I had lingered in the music library at the station for a couple of hours after my show, suspecting something was up. When I came back into the studio at 4:15, there was John. He was gracious upon being introduced, and left me with the feeling that he knew who I was. Whether he actually did or whether he’d perfected the act to ingratiate himself with the media, it did have the desired effect.
Lennon demonstrated during the interview how he still could relate to the feelings of everyday people. When Elsas said, “You can’t possibly understand how exciting this is for me,” Lennon replied, “Yes, I can. It’s like when I met Chuck Berry on the
Mike Douglas Show.
”
He revealed for the first time that at the end of “I Am the Walrus,” excerpts from a BBC production of
King Lear
were used, simply because it was playing on a radio in a room next to the studio. He talked about the original cover of
Yesterday and Today,
which was pasted over because it depicted bloody scenes of the group in a butcher shop. They peeled back the covers on the LP at the station to determine if it had been done to their copy. Lennon remarked on how they all look put out on the new cover, because they were annoyed at having to reshoot it for American sensibilities.
Since John was present to promote
Walls and Bridges,
Elsas asked the obligatory questions about the latest solo work, all while itching to ask
the
question, “Will the Beatles ever reunite?” To this John hedged, not denying the possibility but not encouraging it either. He read live commercials, did weather reports, and seemed to thoroughly enjoy the two hours.
Just over a year later, Dennis accomplished phase two of his dream when he was granted a brief audience with Paul McCartney backstage at Madison Square Garden, prior to a concert on the
Band on the Run
tour in 1976.
By this time, Dennis was getting used to brushes with celebrities. Before he even did his first show at the station, he was introduced to John Denver. Denver invited him to his show at the Bitter End. He then accompanied other WNEW jocks in a limo to Shea Stadium, where they hosted a Grand Funk Railroad concert in front of fifty-five thousand fans. Although he didn’t go onstage that night, he did make his on-air debut after the concert. For Harrison and me, it was even wilder. Having arrived at WNEW less than two months before, we were shocked when Muni sent us out on our own to introduce Grand Funk.
By the time he met McCartney in 1976, Elsas had already met and talked to Lennon, Pete Townshend, Elton John, and a host of others. He was still a little nervous about finally meeting the “cute” Beatle. What if McCartney was arrogant or curt and brushed off his questions as inconsequential?
His fears were baseless. Paul was a gracious guest, and the only time during the interview he grew impatient was when he cut off Elsas as he asked about a Beatles reunion. He recited a piece of doggerel he’d composed for the hundreds of times he’d been asked the same question. In his best Muhammad Ali impression, he neither refuted the possibility nor encouraged it.
Young Dennis Elsas felt like a made man.
Hotel California
WNEW-FM’s change to Dave Herman in the morning didn’t do much for ratings, and whether it affected the station’s credibility a great deal is intangible. But interestingly, the castoff Michael Harrison took less than twenty-four hours to land on his feet after his sudden and devastating dismissal.
Within that time he was on the air in New York again, doing Top Forty radio, largely due to a man named Neil MacIntyre. Neil was the program director of WPIX-FM, a low-rated station owned by the New York
Daily News.
They had tried an easy-listening format called the “PIX Penthouse” for years, affecting the same sort of pseudosophisticated approach that WLIR had failed with. Their only claim to any market identity came during the holiday season, when they played nothing but uninterrupted Christmas carols for twenty-four hours, in a simulcast with WPIX-TV, which showed only a blazing Yule log on the screen. Now, Top Forty wasn’t going well at PIX either, as WOR-FM and WABC dominated the ratings.
But Neil was a veteran radio man with a solid staff, and he tried anything and everything to get his station on the map. So when he heard of Harrison’s fate, he immediately called the twenty-three-year-old and asked him to fill in that night on the overnight shift.
Despite his economic situation, Harrison had to think twice. As a Top Forty fan growing up, he had learned through bitter experience that he wasn’t any good at it. Until progressive radio came along, the hyperenergized approach was the only way to play the rock music he loved on the radio. He’d tried to get a job at WGBB in Freeport, Long Island, a tiny hit-oriented AM station, and was rejected. His voice just sounded forced and unnatural when he tried to rev it up, and he expressed his misgivings to MacIntyre.
“Come on, try it. Just give me a little more than you did on NEW in the mornings and that’ll be enough.”
What the hell? Why not? So Michael trooped into the station a couple of hours before the overnight shift was supposed to begin, and was shown the ropes by Al Gee, a DJ with a speedball approach. Harrison was in awe of Gee, and how the man could be so relentlessly up-tempo on the air for four hours. He was the most nervous he’d ever been in radio as his hour to debut on WPIX drew near. Doing his first show in New York at WNEW, he’d had some initial jitters but ultimately he was confident in what he was doing and settled in quickly. The irony struck him that a couple of years earlier he wasn’t good enough to work at a small Long Island Top Forty, and now he was doing it in the biggest market of all.
By his own estimation, he was terrible. He found a better groove as the night went on, but to his ears he sounded like a fish out of water. But others disagreed with his assessment, most notably Neil MacIntyre, who called him as he was getting off the air at six.
“You were great. I knew you could do it. I’ve got a lot of work for you, doing weekends and fill-ins. I can promise to keep you busy.”
Even though the money wasn’t much, it paid the rent and would give him free time during the week to explore other endeavors. Plus Neil was a great guy to work for, and all the jocks he’d met at PIX were supportive and friendly, possibly because they didn’t consider him a threat. So Harrison went to sleep that morning, still shaken by the events at WNEW, but heartened by the fact that he wouldn’t exactly be destitute.
He was awakened in the early afternoon by a phone call from the program director of another struggling New York station, WCBS-FM. “Why are you working at PIX? What about your credibility? Come work for us.”
Was he still dreaming? Another job offer? He sleepily agreed to come in for a meeting Monday morning and marveled further at the turn of events. Eighteen months earlier, he and I had pitched CBS for a job and were politely sent away. Now they were calling him on a weekend. WCBS-FM was a Top Forty station with progressive aspirations that favored a more up-tempo approach than WNEW, but required nowhere near the frenetic pace of WPIX. Michael would be a better fit there, not only with his presentation but with their wider range of music.
But he felt guilty about Neil MacIntyre, who had rescued him off the scrap heap in his darkest hour. (In a typical radio horror story, Neil MacIntyre was fired from WPIX a few years later. He was on vacation in the Caribbean and was notified by telegram at the hotel in which he was staying.) When he expressed his reservations about PIX to the managers at CBS, they encouraged him to work at both stations, which he gratefully did. With two stations now in the mix, he was averaging four shows a week and making a decent living, although not up to the salary level he had achieved at WNEW.
But even that station wasn’t completely in his rearview mirror. Scott Muni called him a few months later and said, “Hey Fats, you’re sharing the talent with all these other stations, why not help us out?”
With that, he added another fill-in job to his burgeoning résumé, which included teaching a class in radio programming at NYU and a record he produced on a small independent label. He sometimes wound up doing a program on all three stations in one day, leaving one gig a few minutes early to shoot across town and slide into another chair just under the bell. But even though he was busy in spurts, he was leading a shadowy existence. Most of his shifts were after hours—weekends or at night. And he never actually felt part of the stations where he worked—he was a hired gun, brought in to clean up when the regulars were away. But by living one year in that disquieting uncertainty, he was able to complement his radio education. Since he’d never actually worked in Top Forty, he was learning its rules for the first time. He discovered when to schedule commercial breaks to maximize ratings, something that progressive stations never thought of. He understood the importance of playing the most popular songs at the most critical times. He got his virtual master’s degree in all the time-honored tenets of successful broadcasting that the progressives had cast aside in their quest for total freedom.
As he worked within the tighter formats, he began to formulate a plan. Refining what we had done at WLIR by applying a few Top Forty rules, he came up with a format that would sound free form, but could get the type of ratings that the progressives could only dream of. His idea would also retain credibility with listeners and sponsors, who didn’t understand the mechanics of radio anyway. By combining the best of both worlds, he felt he could assemble a station that would not only be successful commercially, but would have respect and authenticity in the community.
So he spread the word throughout his contacts in the music business that he was available with a great new concept that could overturn conventional thinking and bring great rewards to some forward-thinking station. Almost immediately, he was contacted by KPRI in San Diego, which needed a program director and morning man. Harrison fit the bill perfectly.
There were a few problems. Money headed the list. KPRI was willing to pay $200 a week for the dual role. Had he stayed at WLIR, he’d probably be making that or better now. But unlike Long Island, he was able to find a luxurious apartment in San Diego for $135 a month, and the station’s owner was willing to offer him ratings bonuses in writing, which the confident Harrison knew he could attain. But Harrison’s family was on the East Coast, and moving thirty-five hundred miles away was still a frightening step.
The second problem was a thornier one. Ron Jacobs, the prodigious BOSS radio programmer who had run KHJ in Los Angeles for Bill Drake, was in San Diego at the monster KGB AM-FM combination, and was piling up big numbers. The big, bearded Jacobs had taken a sabbatical in Hawaii to recharge his batteries before returning to Southern California. But more distressing to Harrison was the fact that through a different path, Jacobs had come to the same conclusions he had about progressive radio. He had given KGB Top Forty structure, and it sounded very much like Harrison’s concept. He also had a staff of top-notch jocks featuring Brad Messer, Bob Coburn, and Gabriel Wisdom, all men who later went on to even bigger things. And Jacobs had a big ally in the publishing business to expand his legend.
Claude Hall was the radio editor at
Billboard
magazine, the bible of the music industry. Hall wrote a weekly column called
Vox Jox,
and it was required reading for everyone in radio. In it, he detailed the comings and goings, hirings and firings, ratings highs and lows—all the gossip and minutiae that we lived by. He had connections in every major market, and a positive write-up from Hall could mean big-time career advancement. Hall loved Ron Jacobs and, like a latter-day Walter Winchell, built Jacobs into such a legend that Harrison felt he was up against Goliath, without the benefit of David’s slingshot. Hall’s relentless advocacy of his favorites created a larger-than-life aura about them, which in turn could intimidate potential rivals. But despite the odds, Harrison and his wife, Sharon, packed up all their belongings, hopped into their car, and headed west.
Wars are won in the trenches, not in the press, and Harrison soon found vulnerabilities at KGB. Despite what some of the purists at WNEW-FM felt, Michael was very knowledgeable when it came to rock music, and was better than Jacobs at instinctively knowing what his audience wanted. He crafted a mammoth record library, and used a Top Forty–inspired color chart to direct the jocks. He kept their presentation low-key and loose, and gave them great latitude on music selections, stressing segues and meaningful sets, but not at the expense of quality. He always believed that if the jocks were fully engaged in programming their shows, they would sound in sync with what they played, as opposed to being handed a list of songs to play sequentially. The jocks needed to be an impassioned force in programming their own shows. Michael believed in this and called it the X factor: that if a jock is totally into what he was playing, the commitment will come across and sell to the audience as well. It was akin to Dave Herman’s natural gift of sounding at one with the music. It might sound like some worn-out hippie concept now, but the proof is in the pudding: Listener loyalty is much weaker with the disengaged jocks of today.
So even though there were restrictions, the DJs had enough choice to give their shows individuality, but there was enough in common to make the station sound like a unified force. This concept of unity has come to be known as “stationality.” It’s something that the great progressive stations came by naturally. Since the jocks at a Donahue or Muni station were so involved in what they did, they listened frequently to their colleagues and unconsciously picked up cues and catchphrases from them. They actually mimicked one another in subtle ways that caused the listeners to recognize what station they were tuned to without prompting.
But as progressive radio grew and the jocks became more involved in divergent outside interests, they drifted apart and many stations wound up with no stationality, sounding only like whomever was on the air at the time. So Harrison reinforced his message with certain phrases that the jocks were to work into their raps whenever they felt it appropriate. These in reality were rudimentary slogans, which aided recall when ratings were taken. They were never formalized into liner cards, which are standardized lines to be read at prescribed intervals.
Slogans have been a part of radio almost since its inception. WNEW-FM started as “the New Groove,” and when that became embarrassingly outdated, it was ditched for “Where Rock Lives.” ABC-FM had their “love” format replaced by “Rock in Stereo.” CBS-FM had the “Young Sound.” The key is to carve out an identity that doesn’t sound corny or forced. Very often these phrases will bubble up naturally from the staff, and those are really the best kind.
Problems arise when these catchphrases are too omnipresent. If you mandate a DJ to parrot a phrase frequently, in evenly timed intervals, it becomes stale and predictable. That’s the Top Forty approach and most educated radio consumers resent this manipulation. Harrison and I, dating back to WLIR, had guidelines instead of rigid formatics and hired intelligent people to seamlessly integrate the structure and style into something of substance. Too often the substance gets lost in trying to create a style, or the structure shows through and sounds artificial.
Harrison knew that the substance would always be the music and constantly turned it over to keep it fresh. But he didn’t see his formula as the show itself, but only a means to eliminate negatives and harness the human element. He used sales research to buttress his own instincts, but basically flew by what he believed. The music spectrum was broad: rock, R&B, jazz-rock fusion, country rock, and folk rock.
He also learned at WNEW-FM that free concerts were a great way to promote the station while reinforcing a sense of community. Like Cousin Brucie at WABC a decade earlier, he got the jocks out among the people. Store openings, trade shows, concert emceeing, sporting events, television appearances . . . anything to promote KPRI. With San Diego boasting probably the best weather in the country, he could do free outdoor shows for the audience on a year-round basis. The acts were bands like the Outlaws, Jimmy Buffett, Jim Croce, the Average White Band, Dr. Hook, Al Kooper, Bloodrock, Mandrill—all willing to perform without pay to build their careers. Some never achieved mainstream success, but who in the audience could complain? It was all for free.
Harrison was pecking away at the competition with hundreds of little promotions, but he wanted to go for a big score. KGB had a very successful promotional tool in the KGB Chicken, which later became simply the San Diego Chicken. This was tough to combat, so Harrison hatched a bold plan: He’d reunite the Beatles.
First, he needed a local venue and the only one big enough for such an endeavor was Jack Murphy Stadium, where the Padres and Chargers played. But the conservative city council didn’t want their ballpark torn up by a bunch of raucous hippies, so they banned rock concerts from the stadium. The only performances that could take place there had to be in conjunction with a sporting event—halftime at a football game, between games of a doubleheader, or after a day game. Harrison approached the Padres, whom he knew from personal experience were having attendance problems. He’d attended many games when only three hundred people surrounded him as the Padres played his hometown New York Mets.