FM

by Richard Neer

  “As a matter of fact, I have read it. Look, the news is ending and your show is starting. I’d better leave.” I bolted out the heavy studio door as he shouted something after me. I grabbed my jacket and ran for the safety of the elevator, lest he pursue and interrogate me more about his book.

  As I walked across town toward the bus terminal, I seethed. I knew from Alison that WNEW-FM wasn’t one big happy family but this was ridiculous. I posed no threat to Schwartz. I respected his air work and wanted him to like me.

  But now I was faced with a real test: I hadn’t read Almost Home. There was no way that I could avoid him following up on it the next day unless I left early, and that wouldn’t sit well with my new bosses, whom I was trying to impress with my work habits. To admit that I had lied to him might gain his respect, or it might signal that his intimidation tactics had worked, leading to more of the same. So, as I passed a Doubleday bookstore on the way home, I bought a copy of his tome and began reading it on the bus. I didn’t enjoy it much under the circumstances, but I stayed up until two in the morning until I’d finished every last page. I felt like I was back in college, cramming for an exam.

  Sure enough, Schwartz ambled into the music library at a quarter to six the next evening. I was prepared for him, not only by my study of his book, but by a pep talk from Alison, who told me not to take any more of his crap. She advised that if I did, he’d only try to humiliate me again, but that if I stood up to him, like all bullies, he’d retreat. She conveyed that even though Rosko gave away four inches and thirty pounds to Jonno, Schwartz had backed down from physical confrontations. I filed that away—not given to violence myself, and knowing that winning a fistfight with a star jock would result in losing my job. Not worth it.

  I looked up at him from the pile of records on my desk. “Hey, Jonno, how are you?”

  He reacted as if slapped, but quickly recovered. “Young Neer,” he said sneeringly. At least he used my name; that was a start. “I noted that you retreated rather quickly upon mention of my book. It led me to the inescapable conclusion that you indeed, in fact, hadn’t read it at all, as you stated.” This was typical Schwartz verbosity: perhaps a test to see if you’d rise to his level of literacy.

  “I did read it.” I tried to sound unimpressed. And though his prose was not exactly to my liking, he was obviously talented. Plus, as his tear sheet stated, director Peter Yates (Bullitt) had optioned it for the cinema.

  He looked askance. “Oh, really,” he said skeptically. “What was your favorite part?”

  I then launched into a lengthy description of my favorite story, and then mentioned some other segments that I had enjoyed. He listened to my entire analysis with his mouth open, as if a child of four was explaining quantum physics.

  “I could have sworn you hadn’t read it,” he muttered, almost to himself, as he fled to the studio. My feeling was that I had won something important in my little duel with Jonathan. For once in his life, he was almost speechless. Our relationship, though never a close one, was conducted professionally and with respect thereafter, but for reasons unrelated to my perceived little victory. I grew to like Jonno, accepting his strangeness as a sort of quirky charm.

  I had misread his intentions as poorly as he had misunderstood mine. Schwartz has always considered format to be the “dust in the air” at any radio station, ready to settle down at a moment’s notice. He lived in constant fear of anyone in a position of authority telling him what to play. In his obfuscating fashion, he was letting me know that he was not about to take orders from me when it came to music. Even though my impression of his personal wealth was vastly overstated, he wanted everyone to believe that he enjoyed economic independence from the job. His trumpeting of Almost Home was his way of saying that he didn’t need WNEW-FM, but that it needed him. His writing had garnered the station oceans of free ink, in the New York Times, Newsweek, and other important publications. Along with praise for his work, every article contained the call letters and that impressed the powers at the station. He was also tight with George Duncan, who had told him that he’d be around as long as there was a Metromedia, which was indeed prophetic. Schwartz was defending his territory, fierce in his desire to maintain autonomy and defend free-form tenets.

  My agenda was to be accepted as a peer. The only system that WNEW-FM had to regulate music was the “rack.” This was a rolling wooden bin, about thirty inches tall, with a partition in the middle. It contained about 250 albums. Similar to what Tony Pigg did at KSAN, my job was to give the rack a semblance of organization. Albums were designated NA (new album) and PA (progressive album), which merely meant that it was a current release. In the back were FA (folk album), JA (jazz), and INST (instrumental). In those days, the station simulcast hourly news with WNEW-AM so instrumentals were helpful in filling time to the top of the hour. At any given moment there might be sixty NAs, one hundred PAs, thirty FAs, twenty-five JAs, and a handful of INSTs. I would listen to the new releases and mark tracks that I liked, although the jocks were under no requirement to heed my suggestions. I might include a bit of biographical material or a brief description of the sound of the record. Weekly memos came from my desk, detailing the new albums added.

  The rack was changed every six weeks and this was enough to keep me awake the night before. It entailed winnowing out the NAs, moving the successful ones to PA or FA, and eliminating the ones nobody played. The NAs might then shrink temporarily to ten, before gradually building to sixty again and necessitating another rack change.

  To keep the PAs at a manageable level, the less-played ones would be put in the “wall,” a massive shelving system along the rear of the studio. All records that achieved PA status went into the wall, regardless of merit or airplay, and stayed there after they lost their designation as a “current.” Politics played a big part in deciding the fate of an album. Holy hell would be raised if you removed a record that a friendly promoter was hyping to Muni or Steele. You had to be sure that it was toast before relegating it to the obscurity of the wall, since anything that left the rack saw an enormous drop in airplay. The rack-change memo was my biggest enemy, in that regard. With all the albums available, I figured that I could sneak a few losers out of the system without anyone noticing. But the memo had to state which new records went into the rack, which into the wall, and which just vanished. The jocks then perused the memo and if one of their favorites was eliminated, I heard about it. Muni generally insisted that I return it to the rack or, on a few occasions, suggested that jocks play their own copies.

  I also had to check over the taped shows to make sure that the proper albums were pulled from the library and inserted into a cardboard box containing cue sheets. Tom “Tammy” Tracy produced the taped shows, meaning that he recorded the vocal tracks and barked out timing so that the jocks knew how many songs they could play within a given hour. He typed a detailed cue sheet for the weekend engineers, who most often were veterans of WNEW-AM and neither knew nor liked rock and roll. Very, very often, even Tracy’s clearly labeled instructions were misinterpreted and disaster followed.

  Schwartz tells of one particular tape operator we’ll call Lewinski who, in Jonno’s words, “would never be confused with Saul Bellow.” One evening, a friend had arranged a ménage à trois for the always adventuresome Schwartz. Upon reaching his Manhattan apartment, one of the two nymphets suggested that they videotape the encounter for posterity. Unconcerned that the tape could surface later and cause him embarrassment, Jonno carefully positioned his video camera and adjusted its focus toward his king-size bed. He flipped the stereo to 102.7, where his taped show was about to air. He anticipated a night of ecstasy—listening to himself on the radio while enjoying the lascivious attention of two young women. It just couldn’t get any better than that.

  Just as they were getting down and dirty, his voice came over the speakers, announcing that he was about to play the Beatles. The unmistakable percussive beginning of the Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil” stopp
ed him mid-stroke. A triple dose of Viagra couldn’t ameliorate the physical reaction it had on him, as he screamed, “Goddamn it, Lewinski!”

  The women, wondering if he was invoking the name of an ex-lover and thinking they had uncovered another dimension to Jonno’s kinkiness, just played along.

  The moment still amuses him whenever he replays the videotape.

  Helter Skelter

  Dave Herman was WPLJ’s best and most famous disc jockey. Dave’s career had gone the route of so many free-form pioneers: He had started out doing mornings for a tiny station in Asbury Park, New Jersey, playing standards by Sinatra, Nat King Cole, and Tony Bennett along with the typical Mantovani and 101 Strings. He had a small family, and was carving out a respectable middle-class living, one that sustained him for ten years. He never dreamed that major-market radio would come calling. But in 1967, he tried LSD and experienced an epiphany that transformed his entire being. He became a hippie, in appearance, lifestyle, and attitude. He decided that he had something to say, and he felt that he could bring something to radio that he wasn’t presently hearing, much like Tom Donahue did in San Francisco. He became a fan of WNEW-FM, and fell in love with the music they were playing, music that spoke to him in a way that Percy Faith never had.

  So he trundled off to Philadelphia and pitched Gary Stevens at WMMR, another Metromedia station, on the concept of doing a free-form program. The station was basically an automated music service, existing only to placate the FCC by not duplicating its AM sister, WIP. Herman gave management a fanciful presentation that showed how progressive radio was catching on in other markets, most notably in New York at WNEW-FM and KMPX in San Francisco. They remained skeptical, since Philadelphia considered itself the home of Top Forty radio with Dick Clark’s American Bandstand and WIBG, where Donahue once worked as Big Daddy. But with little to lose, Dave’s persistence convinced them to give him a one-year contract to take over the evening hours at WMMR.

  Dave had to give himself a crash course in rock and roll when he was hired. His early days in Philadelphia were spent learning, listening to album after album of the rock that he never played in Asbury Park. In 1968, this was not so daunting a task because there wasn’t that much underground music. There might have been two hundred albums that were important to be conversant with, and by listening and reading up on the artists in Rolling Stone and the nascent music press, he educated himself enough to get by while developing his own tastes. And he’d learned interviewing techniques in New Jersey, talking to local politicos to assemble newscasts for his morning show.

  Within months, Herman’s show, The Marconi Experiment, was the toast of the town. He was supported by clubs, concert promoters, record labels, counterculture newspapers, boutiques—in short, all the emerging businesses that appealed to the youth market. WMMR was pleased with the buzz it created and sought other jocks to fill the rest of the day.

  Herman had become a political animal, holding strongly stated positions against the war and government in general. Revolution was a concept that he supported, and he harbored fantasies of an overthrow of the federal government and its replacement with one more responsive to the people’s wishes. Dave spoke at an alternative-radio seminar in Vermont sponsored by Larry Yurdin, which seemed to be more about overturning the system than creating great radio. The Marconi Experiment interviewed the radical thinkers of the day, underscoring their words with appropriate music. Dave was keenly intelligent if admittedly somewhat misguided, but never came off as a wild-eyed young radical. He was older than most of his fellow travelers and his professional baritone impacted even conservative listeners who didn’t share his politics but were soothed by his measured presentation.

  His success caught the ear of Alan Shaw, who was assembling a revamped ABC-FM network. Shaw offered Herman the chance to be heard nationally at a greatly increased salary, but since ABC had no affiliate in Philadelphia, Dave would have to move to New York and broadcast from corporate headquarters. It represented a tough decision and he sought counsel in two areas. First he spoke to his father, a rabbi, who asked Dave the fundamental question: Why did he want to be in radio? Was it for the money? Fame? Politics? Dave said that although he would appreciate higher pay, his main reason for doing what he did was that he thought he had something to say that could change the world in a positive way. His dad replied that if that was the case, he should seek the biggest forum he could find, and that fifteen hours a week on the ABC network and twenty hours live in New York topped doing a local show in Philadelphia.

  Although his father’s advice made sense, Dave still was torn. Barely a year out of Asbury Park, he was an enormous cultural figure in Philly, and was making more money and having more impact than he’d ever dreamed of. He traveled to the Jersey shore and asked a Gypsy fortune-teller what he should do. She supported his father’s counsel. Not without misgivings, he accepted Shaw’s offer.

  As difficult as it was to make sense of what WPLJ was doing musically, its politics were consistent—radical left. Alex Bennett did a morning show that was mostly talk. Alex had established himself as a weekend talk show host at WMCA as it drifted away from Top Forty before becoming all talk. Michael Cuscuna, the jazz maven, did middays, followed by Mike Turner, Herman, and Vin Scelsa. It became a mecca for the likes of Jerry Rubin and his cohorts in the Chicago Seven. John Lennon had even filled in there when Bennett went on vacation. The language they used was unabashedly revolutionary stuff, and was often coarsely stated. Lawyers were constantly buzzing around the studios in the ABC Building on Sixth Avenue, trying to stem potential libel suits and FCC sanctions.

  The transformation of WABC-FM to WPLJ extended to the decor, and was analogous to the clash of the two cultures. ABC had a strict policy of bare walls, stating that no art could be hung without management approval. It was the epitome of a sterile corporate environment, with strict rules about the way the office was to be kept not only free of clutter but also about unauthorized personnel, i.e., female visitors and radical hangers-on. But once the offices closed for the day, posters of Che Guevara went up, tapestries were hung, and hash pipes broken out. Lava lamps and other psychedelia decorated the place, with friends loitering around “doing their thing.” The air studio took on the appearance of a murky drug den: dimly lit, smoky, and smelling of incense. Spiritually, it resembled WFMU, a little college community of like-minded hippies bent on changing the world.

  There was a palpable disregard for authority; indeed, the inmates were running the asylum. Once Michael Turner was asked by general manager Lou Severin to speak to him on a matter of some importance. Turner replied to his boss that he had to take a crap, so why didn’t Severin follow him into the stall and discuss his issues with him there? Orders were ignored as memos from the top went up in smoke, literally and figuratively. Any attempt by management to bring some balance to the operation was met with sneering disregard and acts of defiance that became bolder and more outrageous.

  Shaw tried to remain a buffer, shielding his charges from higher management on the premise that they needed this work environment to weave their magic on the airwaves. He tried to school his people on how to express their radical sentiments without incurring legal action. But it had gone too far, and any attempt at direction only alienated Shaw from the staff, who lived in constant wariness of selling out to the corporation. The “suits” wanted to see ratings and revenue, but WNEW-FM was winning those wars handily, and it was becoming harder to justify what management viewed as a repugnant culture when the financial rewards failed to be forthcoming.

  At WNEW-FM, John Zacherle liked what he was hearing across town in the spring of 1971. Zach would get off the air at 2 a.m. and, still energized from his show, drive around Central Park for hours with the top down on his VW bug convertible, the radio turned up loud. His contract was expiring, and although he was free to play whatever he wanted, the respective atmospheres at the two stations reflected a stark contrast in the open expression of their political leanings. Upon Rosko’s
leaving, there was precious little political talk on the station, and most of that was nonspecific. For example, Fornatale reacted with horror to the Kent State shootings, and later he played “Ohio,” which was rush-released by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young a month later, four times in a row. Opposition to the war was a given—by attitude and the music played. Most jocks were in sympathy with the protesters and supported them on their own time. Schwartz and Muni were independent thinkers, allying themselves neither with conservatives nor liberals by rote but reacting to every issue on its own merits. No one seriously thought that overthrowing the government was the answer, basically jibing with John Lennon’s line in the Beatles’ “Revolution”: “We’re doing what we can.”

  Drug use was also something that separated the two stations. Muni was a fan of scotch, as was Schwartz. If either used marijuana, it was strictly to be convivial when someone passed a joint around. In the twenty-five years I’d known her, I never saw Alison Steele intoxicated by anything more than a New York Rangers victory, and Harrison and Fornatale mostly abstained. Zach always seemed to be on something, but I think it was more a case of his flighty personality than any substance abuse.

  Zacherle also was at odds with his colleagues’ more extravagant lifestyles. He was never a conspicuous consumer; he owned a VW Beetle and lived in a rent-controlled apartment with his elderly mother, whom he supported. He was surrounded by Schwartz, who had a perpetual tan from his Palm Springs retreat and “beautiful people” friends among the literati of New York and Hollywood, and Steele, who spent thousands on exotic clothing and her luxurious Manhattan rental. Even Muni, who didn’t flaunt his wealth, owned a boat and a beautiful lagoon house in an affluent community on the Jersey shore.