by Richard Neer
A moment’s hesitation before Harrison suspiciously answered, “Yes. Who’s calling?”
He explained that he was a store detective and told him of the shoplifting incident. “Is he working on a story right now?”
The moment of truth. Harrison could have been forthright and said that I had never been assigned such a story. I envisioned a tearful night in the local lockup, with my embarrassed parents driving in from New Jersey to bail me out. Could you still work in radio if you had an arrest record? This was before the present day, when such a conviction is considered an asset.
But Michael picked up the cue. “Well, Mr. Neer works freelance. With a reporter of his stature, I never assign him stories. He does them on his own and submits them to me when they’re completed.” He embellished it for good measure. “I’m surprised you don’t know his work. He’s up for a Peabody Award, you know.”
This finally convinced the sheepish detective. “All right, sir. Just checking. I admit his story sounded fishy, but I thank you for your time.”
He apologized to me before sending me on my way. I tried not to run out of the building, but I didn’t look behind me until I was in the safety of my car, speeding away from a store I’d never enter again.
Them Changes
Nineteen seventy saw Bill “Rosko” Mercer on top of the world—he was New York’s most respected jock, a prime-time player at WNEW-FM. Life was treating him well as he and a friend from a record label strolled down West Fifty-fifth Street, looking for a new restaurant they’d heard about. It was a lovely summer day and the streets of the metropolis were bustling with their usual nervous energy. As the two men approached the Warwick Hotel near Sixth Avenue, a commotion burst out on the street before them.
At the curb sat a sleek stretch limousine, shiny black and resplendent in the midday sun. Around the limo, a gaggle of excited young women screamed at the top of their lungs as a colorfully garbed black man with a large Afro emerged from the hotel, surrounded by an entourage of seven or eight assorted bodyguards and hangers-on. There was a blue sawhorse police line separating the women from the car, keeping them at a safe distance from this obviously important personage.
Rosko recognized the rainbow colors of the outfit immediately. He hadn’t realized his longtime friend was in town so the normally reserved Mercer yelled, “Hey Jimi.”
James Marshall Hendrix motioned him toward the open door of the vehicle and gently shoved him inside to escape the clamor. “Hey man, how are you? I was fixing to give you a call.”
“Great to see you, Jimi.”
“One question though, man. How did you know it was me?”
Rosko looked down at the tie-dyed apparel his friend was wearing and burst into laughter. Rather than answer what seemed to be an honest question, he merely hugged his buddy.
“Call me at home later,” he said, extricating himself from the plush enclosure. He wondered how Jimi Hendrix, then at the height of his popularity, didn’t realize what a rock icon he’d become. In his own eyes, he was just a working musician who had a unique style of torturing a guitar.
Rosko never forgot the encounter and he wept openly, as millions did, upon hearing of Hendrix’s death some months later. Their friendship had started at Jimi’s behest. Rosko was a club DJ and radio personality on the West Coast when they’d met. He’d never befriended musicians, and had a disdain for hanging out and getting high. His life experience left him with an appreciation for all kinds of music, and a solid knowledge of jazz and R&B. Hendrix’s rock sensibilities combined the best elements of both, not to mention his deftness in the studio at exploring the sonic wonders of stereo. In the early days of progressive rock, Hendrix was a black man in an almost all-white environment, so perhaps he naturally gravitated to a black DJ in a similar position. The two would talk for hours on the phone at whatever station Mercer was working, often continuing their talks at his home after hours. Bill was impressed by the musicality and lyrical quality of Jimi’s speech. He unconsciously spoke in poetry, and there were numerous times in their conversations when he’d have a spontaneous burst of creativity that made its way onto vinyl weeks later.
Whereas Hendrix was the first guitar hero, Rosko was the first superstar of FM underground radio. Scott Muni and Murray the K were well-known legends of Top Forty by the time they arrived at WOR, but Mercer burst upon the New York scene as a virtual cipher. He’d come from the West Coast to DJ at a club called the Cheetah, in a program that would be simulcast on WOR-FM. Relations between the club and the station broke down early on, but Murray the K had taken a liking to him, and convinced RKO management to hire the small, shy disc jockey.
Rosko was a compact man of light color, with a high forehead and noble features. He thrived on the freedom that WOR-FM provided and in a matter of months became one of its most popular jocks. But months were all the pioneering station was allocated. Upon arriving for his program one late summer’s night in 1967, he was greeted by a memo, brusquely stating that the station would be BOSS radio soon and that Murray the K had been fired. Mercer immediately called his friend at home and Murray detailed how he’d been sacked as he was told about Drake-Chenault’s plans to overturn their sandbox.
Rosko immediately went on the air and resigned, telling the whole story of how he felt he’d been betrayed by RKO. He had been hired on the condition that he could play and say what he wanted and that now that promise had been broken. “I’ll stay on the air until they send somebody up to get me, but this is my last show.” He segued records for forty minutes until Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul and Mary came through the studio door to offer his sympathy.
“How did you get up here?” Rosko asked incredulously, knowing of the building’s tight security.
“I told the guard downstairs that I was your brother,” the pale, balding Yarrow replied. “While he was trying to figure that out, I hopped on the elevator and here I am.”
They shared a laugh and played a few more songs on the radio until Rosko’s replacement arrived. Mercer never spoke another word on WOR-FM. Bob Fass invited Murray and Mercer onto his program on Pacifica’s WBAI to tell their story. Fass used the hour to illustrate how the establishment was squelching free speech and suppressing rock and roll, years after the payola scandal.
Bill wasn’t out of work for long. A mutual friend arranged a lunch with George Duncan of WNEW-FM, and the ex-Marine and the African-American iconoclast hit it off immediately. Eventually, the subject came around to Rosko’s on-air resignation. This is something all broadcast executives dread. Whenever a station changes format or fires a disc jockey, the existing audience feels disenfranchised, quite simply because they wouldn’t be listening if they didn’t enjoy what they were hearing. Since terminations only happen when leadership perceives the program to be unsuccessful, listener protest is generally manageable and subsides within a few weeks. However, WOR-FM represented a radio revolution and had garnered the highest ratings FM had ever seen to that point. The ensuing protests presented a nightmare for RKO, which was trying to woo much the same youthful audience, only more of them.
(It has since become de rigueur not to allow disc jockeys to continue working after they’ve been fired, seeking to avoid the kind of angry harangue Rosko vented. This was something Rosko did again later in his career, and it was to cost him dearly. But now, jocks are generally told after they get off the air that they’ve done their final show.)
At their luncheon, George Duncan did not admonish Mercer when the on-air resignation came up. “I hope that I’ll never do anything to you that will cause you to resign on me,” he said.
Rosko actually got misty-eyed. Most managers he’d known wanted to lay down rules and regulations immediately. Here was a boss who was telling him that he had faith in him and that he could do whatever he wanted on the radio, and that he only hoped that he could live up to Rosko’s paradigm.
As noted earlier, he began at WNEW-FM on October 30, 1967, and immediately became the star of the station. His tradem
ark opening about “reality being the hippest of all trips” was in actuality a strong antidrug message. “A mind excursion, a true diversion” encouraged self-exploration. His philosophy mirrored that of the Robin Williams role in Dead Poet’s Society—question authority and seek the answers not from others, but from within yourself. He read not only poetry and stories, but also columns and essays ranging from Jimmy Breslin to Russian dissidents. One of his literary heroes was the Soviet poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko, who wrote You Shoot at Yourself, America. At the urging of Ted Brown of WNEW-AM, he read the piece on the air. Brown, who knew of Duncan’s superpatriotism and strong Roman Catholic beliefs, was mischievously setting Mercer up for a confrontation with his general manager.
When the expected complaints from listeners on what they perceived as an anti-American diatribe crossed Duncan’s desk, he called Rosko in for a meeting. “Do you really think this is a good idea, Bill?” he asked.
Rather than debating the intricacies of the Russian’s work, Mercer simply answered, “Well, you know, Yevtushenko is Jackie Kennedy’s favorite poet.”
“Oh, then I guess it’s okay,” Duncan said, immediately dismissing the matter.
For all his seemingly leftist views, he actually was a supporter and fan of Richard Nixon. He judged him to be an excellent president who did many positive things for the country. He felt it a shame that his personal meanness destroyed what could have been a great presidency. And Rosko wasn’t reflexively antimilitary either. He was once summoned to the Pentagon by Major General Winston “Wimpy” Wilson, who solicited his views on why the National Guard was having such a difficult time recruiting America’s youth. In the company of the general’s aide, a major whose name is long forgotten, Rosko listened to the man’s problems. He replied that the National Guard had a bad image; that every time students were protesting, the Guard was called in to bash heads. They were perceived as the enemy.
Rosko then said, “But if a television camera was in this room, kids could see how you honestly care about protecting your country and all it stands for, they’d respect you for it. They would see how a mighty general is humbly asking me, a mere civilian—a mere disc jockey, for advice.”
The general’s aide angrily stood up and said that he was sick of trying to explain to America’s young men that they had a duty to their country, and that they should be grateful for all it had given them. Calmly, Mercer said that perhaps the major should be fired because recruiting was his job: explaining history to young people and why they should be proud to serve. That was his mission and if he was sick of performing it, it could only fail. He looked up meekly at the general, who had taken in the entire confrontation and would undoubtedly sympathize with his aide. But Wilson sided with the DJ and told them that perhaps quite a few majors deserved to be fired. Years later Wilson was in command of the National Guard during the time they opened fire and killed four students at Kent State University. He took early retirement shortly thereafter.
One of Rosko’s great traits was his knack for blending seemingly dissimilar songs together. He once segued from the Doors to the Singing Nun, then back to the Rolling Stones, and it all somehow made sense. He liked to work without a net. He once told a colleague that he didn’t want to know what he was going to play on turntable two until a record was already spinning on turntable one. He did his show completely by feel and although sometimes bizarre, most of his sets were works of art. And although he was considered a musical guru whose taste many of his peers at the station admired and imitated, he deferred to younger people when it came to new music. His formal education in music was in jazz, so he had to learn about rock like everybody else. He and George Duncan frequently visited area colleges for seminars and learned as much as they taught.
Although Mercer was a powerful presence and extremely popular with his listening audience, he didn’t enjoy great friendships with his peers at the radio station. He regarded Schwartz as a spoiled rich kid and an intellectual bully who tried to intimidate and impress with his wordsmith’s vocabulary. He attributed this to attempting to live up to his celebrated father’s expectations instead of carving his own path. Mercer and Schwartz shared a rivalry that sometimes threatened to break into physical violence when their verbal jousting got out of control.
Alison Steele had alienated him early on with what had seemed to be a relatively innocent encounter, at least to her. When the station moved away from sharing offices with WNEW-AM to its own digs at 230 Park Avenue, working the streets there was a hot dog vendor with whom Rosko had become friends. Every so often he would enjoy lunch alfresco, munching a wiener and shooting the breeze with the man. One day, Steele happened by on her way to the studio and saw them together. She barely nodded a hello, and that night, following him on the air, she said sarcastically, “Imagine the great Rosko, outside eating a hot dog.”
Mercer was offended. The passing remark told him all he needed to know about Steele. He considered her an elitist who lacked the common touch and was only performing an act on the radio as opposed to investing her heart and soul. With her show-business background, he expected little else.
And he allows that he gave as well as he got. His attitude toward coworkers was simple: He extended the hand of friendship but once. They could embrace that hand and accept him for who he was, the sensitive, cerebral Bill Mercer, or they could reject it and view him as Rosko, radio star and competitor. And once you were on his bad side, he admits, he could be the biggest bastard who ever walked the earth.
He had no problems with Zacherle, who was a kindred spirit. Scott Muni and he shared no common interests, but there was no real bad blood between them. He was cordial to some of the newer members of the staff (he liked and respected Fornatale), but forged no real relationships with most of them.
Mercer’s real struggle was with fame, in all its double-edged ambivalence. He once said he spent his whole life needily seeking love. He wanted to be heard and loved by millions, but perform “his craft or sullen art” in solitude. It’s a common foible of radio people; otherwise, they’d be on television. He tells a story about how his ex-wife would always introduce him as Rosko and brag about his broadcast exploits. He came to realize that she loved his on-air persona and all the fruits that his fame harvested, but had only a nodding acquaintance with the inner man.
They soon divorced, but he met a woman shortly thereafter who was refreshingly different. Their initial encounter took place while they were walking their respective dogs in Central Park. After their first lunch together, he took her to visit Jerry Moss, an old friend of Bill’s and the M of A&M Records. Moss’s mother was ill at the time, and the two men engaged in a discussion about her health and Mercer pledged sincerely to offer any assistance he could. Upon leaving, they encountered several promotion men in the lobby, who proceeded to work their shuck and jive on the city’s most influential disc jockey, and Rosko gave it right back. His then girlfriend called him on it when they were alone. She asked how he could be such a warm and caring friend in one situation and such a transparent phony in another. Bill Mercer had met his new soul mate and they spent the rest of his days as husband and wife.
What it came down to with him was that he wanted to be accepted for who he was, and not what he could do for someone. Surrounded by record promo men and sycophants who constantly told him how great he was, he appreciated a woman who would not hesitate to criticize him when he transgressed their shared principles. She could help steer him to a higher path instead of silently accepting his flaws. As the relationship blossomed, however, his job left him feeling increasingly empty. He grew tired of the glitz and superficiality that came along with his stardom. He still loved the work, being able to impart what he viewed as the best part of himself to his audience, but if they only chose to see him as a cool guy with a great voice and missed the underlying message, well, that was their loss. It took its toll on him, as well.
Over the three and a half years he spent at WNEW-FM, the showbiz side of it all began to over
whelm him until even he wasn’t sure who he was. He’d vacationed a couple of times in the south of France, and was impressed by the French people’s indifferent attitude toward him. They couldn’t care less about some black American disc jockey who only spoke a few words of their language. The French wanted to know Bill Mercer for the man he was, not for his celebrity. It was an epiphany—as if he’d found in France millions of people who shared his wife’s values.
So in 1971, at the top of his profession, Bill “Rosko” Mercer decided to walk away. George Duncan had ascended to the top of Metromedia’s radio division by then, and he and new general manager Varner Paulsen prevailed upon Rosko to stay with all the usual inducements. But it wasn’t about money, as it almost always is, or long-term security, perks, or the other little trivialities we occupy our time worrying about. He wanted to rediscover himself. How very sixties it now sounds.
He wasn’t closing any doors—he might return to America one day and he might even do radio again. But to the delight of his colleagues, the coveted 6 to 10 p.m. slot was about to open up. There was blood in the water.
Move on Up
It was a chilly night in late winter 1971. Mike Harrison had just finished his 5 to 9 p.m. shift on WLIR and I was wrapping up some paperwork in the office. We grabbed a quick cup of coffee and went out to the rooftop of the Imperial Square Building with a portable radio that was locked in at 102.7 WNEW-FM.
“Something’s up with Rosko,” Harrison said. “I just heard him say something about doing his last show.”
“Wow. They actually fired Rosko? I can’t believe it. I wonder who they’re bringing in.” We stared westward into the dark night, looking toward the city. Long Island is relatively flat, and from seven stories up, you could see the New York skyline on all but the most hazy nights. The lights of the Throgs Neck Bridge twinkled in the distance, but our focus was on the crest of the Empire State Building. At that time, most FM antennae were located atop its tower. In the evening, we often retreated to the serenity of the rooftop after working, to mellow out and formulate our plans for WLIR. Those plans had taken a different turn of late.
