by Richard Neer
In 1978, Charles Laquidara rejoined WBCN. His cocaine problem was under control, but he initially resisted their entreaties to return because he didn’t like it when people announced their retirement to great ballyhoo, only to return later. So he came back as Duane Ingalls Glasscock, a seventeen-year-old alter ego, and did a Saturday morning program. He was convinced that the listeners didn’t know who it really was, because Glasscock affected gay mannerisms and talked more than Charles ever had. Soon, his program was pulling thirty shares in its time slot and he even ran a mock campaign for president. Laquidara was convinced to return to the mornings (as himself), but he still kept Glasscock on Saturday.
Parenteau maintains that he and Laquidara had a fierce rivalry, born from their divergent views on where they saw the station going. Parenteau was a fast-talking Detroit rocker, who talked up records almost in Top Forty fashion. He could be outrageous on the air, irreverent toward the music, and lacked any political motivation. Although Charles could be downright loopy at times, he favored the more laid-back approach that WBCN was known for after the Peter Wolf gang left. Charles let his characters do the outrageous things and took his political stands seriously. In some ways, he used Glasscock to fight Parenteau on his own turf. Parenteau was also a Kendall supporter, whereas Charles had his differences with the new PD.
Laquidara hated the idea that ratings ruled his life. He refused to celebrate when they rose, because he believed that it would give them credibility and thus power over him when they went down. This caused him problems at WBCN, as some of his superiors took it as a sign that he didn’t care.
Charlie Kendall made an enemy of Charles Laquidara early on through no fault of his own. Laquidara was like a method actor too deeply absorbed into a role—while on the air on weekends, he became Duane Glasscock. Playing his alter ego, he demanded to be addressed as Glasscock by everyone, including Kendall. One Saturday morning, just after ratings came out, Duane Ingalls Glasscock hit the airwaves in full fury.
“The Arbitron ratings have just come out,” he started, “and they say that WBCN has no listeners. Well, I say Arbitron is for shit.” To this day, that is one of the forbidden words on radio. And although Glasscock might have been the first “shock jock” on FM, this was clearly crossing the line. “Here’s what I want you to do. I want you to send a bag of shit to Arbitron.”
He proceeded to detail mailing instructions, with Arbitron’s address and how to package the bundle. Kendall did not happen to be listening at that moment, but quickly heard about it from upper management. This was still Harley Staggers’s time, when the FCC was not the toothless old tiger it is today. Owners lived in fear of losing their licenses for even minor violations. This obscene rant in prime time triggered listener complaints, not to mention the obvious damage it could do with Arbitron. Their contracts with radio stations clearly forbade any mention of the name Arbitron, for fear of skewing the ratings.
Luckily, Kendall had a friend working for Arbitron who called him when packages of the smelly substance began to arrive at their Maryland headquarters. He was able to convince his friend to quietly dispose of the residue for a price. Fortunately, his friend was not skilled at blackmail and only asked for a few albums, which Charlie was happy to provide.
But Kendall had to discipline Laquidara, which took the form of a suspension. He tried to explain that if the station didn’t take strong measures to distance itself from this rant, the FCC could fine it heavily or even pull the license. Laquidara took this as a sign of management’s lack of support for him, and rallied the troops behind him and against Kendall. The resulting power struggle hurt both men, and undoubtedly the station in the process.
Like most progressive program directors, listening to the station was the key to its flow. With the wide latitude afforded the jocks (much like in the early WLIR days), it was possible to follow the format to the letter and still do a poor job. During the daytime hours, Charlie would actually come into the studio and tell a jock that his show wasn’t entertaining and give suggestions on how to improve it. In off-hours, he’d use the hotline to direct the staff. This caused problems.
Progressive jocks tend to view what they do as an art form. Blending music and talk elements into a powerful whole is indeed like creating a painting—using words and music instead of oils and canvas. No artist would tolerate the interruption of a critic while halfway through a work, denigrating what he’d seen so far. The old saying goes, “Art is like sausage, best not viewed during its making.” But radio is a constant stream in which progress is evaluated in quarter-hour segments. Whereas an artist can paint over mistakes on canvas to achieve a successful result, one misstep on radio can cause listeners to flock to the competition, perhaps never to return. Consistency is critical, and Kendall monitored WBCN at all hours to ensure that consistency.
The problems result because the temperaments of jocks and artists are similar. The egos are every bit as delicate, and Kendall was not one for subtlety. He also had no qualms about ruling through intimidation and fear. His hotline calls were as dreaded as those of Bill Drake’s. Charlie could be very undiplomatic, and one scathing call could ruin a jock’s psyche for days. One would think that, as a former jock himself, Kendall would realize this, but his early experiences were with abusive managers and he learned early on to accept that the critiques weren’t personal. But many creative types don’t respond to that kind of pressure and Charlie was either loved or hated at WBCN; there was little ambivalence.
This made him a great quick-fix program director, or as another of his employees later characterized him, “a great wartime consigliere.” Like a football coach who terrorizes his players, they tend to have success initially because of the instant discipline they instill. But over time, the stress builds on both sides and these leaders become ineffective or lose all their best players. The problem would dog Kendall in years to come.
Like WNEW-FM, WBCN put women in prominent time periods, the most famous being Maxanne Sartori. Maxanne first made her mark in Seattle at KOL-FM, where she was the first female progressive jock in that city. Sartori loved hard rock, and her fast-paced approach was quite different from that of the sensual, laid-back Alison Steele, but it served her well. She became friends with Steven Tyler of Aerosmith, and her advocacy of his band was largely responsible for their success. A frequent clubgoer, she once saw a group she liked called Cap’n Swing. She befriended their leader, who coincidentally had attended Antioch College at the same time she had. As their rapport grew and he became more impressed with her knowledge and contacts in the music business, he asked her to manage the band, but her plate was full and she turned him down. She did suggest that their singer play an instrument, but she was told that he really could only play bass in a rudimentary fashion. Seeing big things in their future, she said that he’d better learn.
They recorded a demo called “Just What I Needed” that she played daily on her program, and that led to a record deal on Elektra. By then they’d changed their name to the Cars.
My Aim Is True
By the late seventies, the problems that plagued KMET, WBCN, and KSAN were affecting WNEW. Ratings now became more than just a yearly memo; they became of paramount importance and Mel Karmazin wouldn’t tolerate another winning ratings book from WPLJ. The Rock in Stereo format, under the direction of Larry Berger at WPLJ, had tapped into a strong vein.
Berger had assembled a solid staff of veterans, led by Jim Kerr in the mornings. They also had lured Tony Pigg in from the West Coast to give stability to the lineup. Carol Miller, who’d gone back to Philadelphia radio after leaving WNEW (she also worked briefly at WQIV), was rolling up numbers in the evening. Pat St. John gave them a quality afternoon presence. Zacherle had come to terms with his mistake in leaving WNEW and was doing well in the late-night shift. The format made them all sound too mechanical, repeating the call letters every few seconds, but the numbers were sturdy, generally in the high-three range.
WNEW was still strong in the ke
y eighteen- to thirty-four-year-old demographic, and WPLJ’s massive 12+ (the twelve and older demographic) share was aided by their dominance in teenage listeners. There was now a new force to be reckoned with. WPIX had given up their Top Forty format and were mimicking KROQ in Los Angeles, playing exclusively punk and new-wave music with an upbeat approach. They had taken Meg Griffin away from us, and had hired my brother Dan for his first major-market gig. Although that station never achieved big numbers, the combination of the two (like KLOS and KROQ in L.A.) imperiled WNEW’s share to the point where Karmazin had to contemplate changes.
True to his word, Jonathan Schwartz had departed in 1976 and Dennis Elsas took over the coveted 6 to 10 p.m. slot. Dennis was the polar opposite of Schwartz—he had a pleasant, conventional radio voice and very mainstream tastes in music. His rap was limited to pertinent music information, telling no rambling stories in the style that Jonno favored. While not governed strictly by the clock, Dennis was very conscious of talking too much and not playing enough music. His ratings stayed consistent with the rest of the station, which had to be all Muni and Karmazin could hope for.
Dennis by now was a cottage industry. Always desirous of a voice-over career in addition to his DJ work (like his hero Bob Lewis), he was voicing and producing countless record-company commercials as well as doing his show. His production deal with Atlantic Records led to a meeting with Mick Jagger.
Peter Tosh, a reggae artist, was releasing the first album on Rolling Stones Records, called Don’t Look Back, and Jagger sang the title song with his latest discovery. Dennis was commissioned to produce the radio spot to promote the album. He knew that he wasn’t going to be the voice on the commercial, so he tried to come up with a creative way to frame it. He contacted his friends at Atlantic, the company that distributed the Stones’ private label, and suggested that Mick Jagger be the one to voice the commercial.
Expecting his request to be a long shot, he was surprised when they got back to him quickly and said that Jagger would be happy to do the spot. Dennis and an engineer brought a portable Nagra tape deck to the offices of Rolling Stones Records at 75 Rockefeller Plaza and interviewed Mick about Tosh, using bits of the interview interspersed with the music to create an effective ad. After the taping was over, Mick asked if they’d like to hear Keith Richards’s new solo single, a version of Chuck Berry’s Christmas song, “Run Rudolph Run.” Of course they agreed, and Jagger popped it onto his stereo. As the record played, Mick began to dance to it, and Elsas was treated to a private performance by one of rock’s biggest stars. As he watched Jagger go through his wild gyrations, it seemed as if he were watching a Rolling Stones parody on Saturday Night Live as opposed to the real thing.
Although Dennis’s presence didn’t hurt us, audiences were shifting, moving away from nights toward AM drive time as the preeminent time slot on the station. Now that FM radios were common in automobiles, the morning commute could be eased by listening to familiar music. Dave Herman was starting to take root as an established morning personality in his own right, and we expanded our news and traffic features to rival those of most AM stations.
Muni had no desire to format in any way and Karmazin realized that Scott’s main value was his presence, both on and off the air. However, Mel believed that the station needed an active program director and not just a caretaker who would passively keep the status quo. But to relieve Muni of the title would be a slap to his ego, and Mel was very careful to keep his biggest star happy. So he came up with the idea of hiring an operations director, who would theoretically report to Muni, but in fact would call most of the daily shots. He considered bringing in someone from the outside, which would have resulted in cataclysmic changes. Consultants were beginning to feel their oats by this time, and they all had prescriptions for how to bolster WNEW’s numbers, most of which involved taking the freedom to program music away from the jocks and changing half the staff.
Karmazin wasn’t ready to commit to that. He wasn’t eager to be seen as the ogre who had destroyed one of the last bastions of free-form radio in America. WNEW still had absolutely no structure, and the music lacked focus. Herman’s tastes were a little left of center, Fornatale favored country and folk rock, Muni was fairly mainstream, as was Elsas. Alison’s show was more progressive but that suited the concept of her late-night slot. But we still made too many mistakes minute by minute against WPLJ’s heavily researched playlist.
I wrote Mel a long memo proposing that I take the position. I stressed my experience at WLIR and the fact that my concert production work had given me strong ties within the local music community. I was tight with the owners of the Bottom Line, and friendly with John Scher, who produced concerts at the Capitol Theater in Passaic, New Jersey, and also managed the Grateful Dead. I knew all the key record people. Most important, I was an insider who got along with everyone at the station and knew the ropes and could dance politically around some of the stickier issues. The job was carved out of nothing in the budget, so I wouldn’t be permitted a music director or promotions manager. I also wanted a weekly show to keep my disc jockey options open if this didn’t work out. Karmazin agreed to give me the job, although it seemed he had some reservations.
Almost as soon as he’d hired me to run the programming, he called me in and grilled me about our music.
“Do you think we have better disc jockeys than WPLJ?” he asked.
“Of course I do. There isn’t one of our people I would trade straight up for one of theirs.”
“You’re obviously aware they always beat us in the ratings. So if we were to play the same music that they play, with our superior disc jockeys, wouldn’t we win? Just asking.”
By then, I knew that Mel’s “just asking” constituted a challenge. He would often extend a proposition innocently, but in reality he was stating his position and wanted an explanation of why it wasn’t valid. I thought hard for a moment, knowing that he wouldn’t brook me just giving the answer I thought he wanted to hear.
“Part of what makes our jocks better than theirs is the ability to choose our own music. Their people have great voices, like ours. That’s a subjective thing anyway. But whereas they just go off a playlist, our people have to plan their shows. So when they talk about the music they choose, it comes from the heart. And the listeners pick up on that and respect them for it. If they just read off liner cards like they do at PLJ, we’d be reduced to what they are and they’d beat us worse. We have to play on our court to have a chance to win. If we play on theirs, it won’t be close. Also if we went to a playlist, Scelsa and maybe two others would just quit.”
“Okay,” he said, still appearing unconvinced. “You’re the programming expert. We’ll do it your way. I’m just a salesman, I don’t know anything about programming. That’s your responsibility.”
Meeting over. Message sent.
He wouldn’t argue with me but I knew deep down that he might be right. If ratings were our only objective, duplicating our competitor’s format of rock hits might get us higher numbers in the short term. But we’d be just another radio station and that sizzle that helped us rise above the crowd would be gone. And for all his hard-edged business sense, Mel understood this intangible mix and stayed the course. He avoided bringing in consultants and let us have our head.
One aspect of the job I wasn’t prepared for was the reaction of my “friendly” colleagues. The people who loved me as a coworker reacted quite differently to me as their boss. The first problem I had was with Dave Herman.
When I did overnights, Dave and I got along famously. I’d been to his house a few times socially, was friendly with his wife, Drea, and even worked out an accommodation to cover his morning show so he wouldn’t be inconvenienced. Since Dave lived in Connecticut and didn’t want to drive in and incur the expense and hassle of parking in the big city, he took mass transit. The first commuter train from his area didn’t arrive at Grand Central Station until a few minutes after his 6 a.m. start time. So Dave offered to pay me
twenty dollars a week to stay until 6:20 and program his first few records. He had a recorded opening on cartridge that said, “Good just barely morning, I’m Dave Herman at WNEW-FM.” I played that, segued three or four tunes, and then Dave slid in as if he’d always been there.
But immediately upon taking the new job, my relationship with Dave changed for the worse. He seemed to resent everything I asked him to do. He couldn’t understand how the overnight guy was now his boss and could give him instructions on how to do a better morning show. He openly defied any direction I gave him, knowing that he could complain to Mel or Scott if I suggested something he didn’t like. Fornatale and Elsas were eager to please, but handling Muni became an art form that all subsequent program directors would have to deal with.
I was always deferential to his wishes, but I knew that he’d have to make some changes if the station was to rise above its share in the low-two range. Every morning, I’d spend at least a half hour in his office, talking sports or what needed to be done at the station. Scott was the station’s personal ambassador to Vin Scelsa. Vin was working weekends and had all the potential to become a star on the radio, but had always resisted anything remotely commercial. His music was too eclectic and I felt that it got in the way of his engaging radio personality. Muni and I were constantly of the belief that if Scelsa could be coaxed into playing more accessible music,he could be as big as anybody in the country. As it was, he had a fiercely loyal cult following but was constantly quitting the station over one minor directive or another. Muni was always dispatched to smooth his ruffled feathers and woo him back into the fold. Scott was tiring of the efforts and was beginning to wonder if Vin was more trouble than he was worth.
