World in My Eyes: The Autobiography

by Richard Blade

  Those words meant so much to me. So often in life we don’t express what we feel, particularly coming from England where we are raised to keep our emotions to ourselves, but here was my father telling me to go for it. I couldn’t imagine having better parents and couldn’t wait to see Mum and Dad again and hold them and tell them everything that was happening.

  I folded the letter carefully and knew that I would keep it forever.

  They say all good things must come to an end, and sure enough, my two weeks filling in sped by and the full-time air staff returned from Oahu, tanned and exhausted. They had partied so hard for fourteen days straight that they could barely function for their first couple of shifts.

  Rick Carroll held a rare jock meeting to introduce me as the new production director and weekend guy then brought in Quay to go over the station’s largest promotion ever. It was a concert, but one that was bigger than anything held in Southern California before.

  Quay stood up in that tiny room and addressed the jocks. “It’s called the US Festival. A big computer guy is putting it on. It’s three days during Labor Day weekend. We have the first day exclusively, New Wave Day, Friday, the third of September. Every band on the lineup is one of ours.”

  “I hope they booked some good ones,” said Dusty Street sarcastically. “I’m not going if it’s Killer Pussy and The Buggles.”

  “Oh yeah, they’re good. Gang of Four, The Police, Oingo Boingo, The English Beat, B-52s, The Ramones and Talking Heads. They are saying that they should have 200,000 people there.”

  “Wow. Woodstock 1982,” exclaimed Jed the Fish.

  “Exactly,” smiled Rick. “But this time it’s our Woodstock and our music.”

  It was my job to get the promos for the concert cut and I tried to make them as exciting as possible. This was in addition to recording the commercials as soon as the sales people brought them to me and cutting drops for the jocks. I spent most days at the station with barely a break.

  I’d only been full-time at KROQ for a little over a week when Quay approached me directly.

  “We have a commercial buy coming in from The Roxy on Sunset,” he said. “They want to do a regular KROQ night once a week and the booker there likes the sound of you on the air and thinks you would be right for it with your accent and everything. Have you ever worked in a club before?”

  “KROQ Night at The Roxy with Richard Blade” got underway on July 13, 1982. It was every Tuesday from eight until two, but I would only have to DJ from 10pm until 1a.m.; their house DJ would cover the rest. Right away the night was a hit and attracted not just the local Hollywood crowd but also kids from as far away as the Valley and the South Bay. And for me to have my own night at a legendary venue like The Roxy was almost beyond belief. I would get misty-eyed seeing my name on that marquee.

  It was my third week at The Roxy, on July 27, when I received a visitor in the DJ booth. He was the lead singer of the band who had performed earlier that night at The Greek Theatre. Simon LeBon had wanted to go out and party after his show and had heard that The Roxy was the place to be. He showed up without an entourage but clutching a white-label twelve-inch record.

  “It’s the dance mix of our next single. Would you play it?” Simon asked.

  I grabbed the microphone and announced to the crowd that the lead singer of Duran Duran was there and this was their new single. I put on “Rio” and almost immediately lost half of the dance floor.

  “Shit,” exclaimed Simon. “That’s not good.”

  “It’s new,’” I reassured him. “They’ll love it when they get to know it. Watch.”

  I segued into “Girls on Film” and in seconds the kids were pushing and elbowing their way back onto the dance floor.

  “That’s more like it,” said Simon. “One of the things John and I always try to do is make music you can dance to.” And with that he was gone, off to the bar for a drink and to flirt with his growing number of female fans.

  With Simon LeBon at The Roxy, July 1982

  KROQ was a unique radio station to work for. You felt as if you were a part of something special. Everywhere you went, you would pick up on the buzz on the street. KROQ was the barometer for hipness in Southern California. If you weren’t listening to it constantly you felt that you were falling behind.

  This applied to the jocks as well. In Bakersfield, San Luis Obispo and at KNAC, when you got off the air the last thing you wanted to hear was the station you were working for. You’d put on anything else. The reason? All the other stations were predictable. You knew what was going to happen next, what song would play, what promo would run, even what the DJ on the air would say. But at KROQ it was different.

  We were allowed so much freedom that no one ever knew what would come blaring out of their radio next. The genius of Rick Carroll was that he encouraged you to be better than the music. If you had something exciting, funny or great to say then say it. If you had a new song that was better than the one scheduled to play then pull off the one from the rotation and play yours. If someone walked in the studio who was interesting, put them on the air. It was radio like it should be, radio designed to entertain the listener, not just to sell them commercials. Rick made a point to stress this.

  “There are no bad shifts on KROQ,” Rick told us. “The same listeners that tune into Ramondo and Evans in the morning will be back at lunch time, then in the afternoon and last thing at night before they go to sleep. They are always there. And if they are being that loyal to us then we have to be loyal to them. We need to constantly be reinventing the station and ourselves, making sure there’s nowhere else for them to go for our kind of DJs or music. Remember, we don’t play new wave or punk or rock; we play KROQ music.”

  Sadly, for all his brilliance and innovation, Rick was a deeply troubled soul and struggled constantly with drugs. Sometimes he would disappear for weeks at a time only to reappear with a phone call from a motel room in Orange County or Santa Barbara. When Rick was gone Freddy Snake-skin would step in as acting program director and make sure that things got (mostly) done. It was during one of Rick’s benders that I got a huge opportunity.

  It was the end of the first week of August that Denise Westwood gave her notice. She was leaving and heading across town to KMET for double her current salary. This meant the nine-to-noon shift was open. No one had heard from Rick Carroll for over two weeks and Pat had put Freddy back in charge of running the station. Faced with Denise’s sudden departure, Freddy called us all in for a meeting that Friday afternoon.

  “So Westwood is leaving. That’s fine with me,” he said. “Now we can put someone in who’s got a grain of talent and get some ratings there at last. I’ve asked Rachel Donahue to join the station and take the slot. I’ve already put together a new ad showing the change.”

  Freddy showed us the ad, then continued with some rather unsavory comments about Denise and her personal habits.

  What Freddy—or any of us—didn’t know was that Denise Westwood was dating Mike Evans and they were getting serious. As Freddy laid into Denise’s reputation, Mike started to boil. He was going to do one of two things: knock Freddy out in that meeting or embarrass him on the air. Fortunately for me, Mike chose the latter.

  As soon as the meeting was over Mike secretly called KMET and asked them for a job, any job. That night he met with the bosses at the Mighty MET and they offered him a position as sports reporter on their morning show and he took it. With that in place, Mike made his plans to exact revenge on Freddy.

  The next morning, at around 9:30, Mike drove to the station in Pasadena and walked into the studio while Ian Whitcomb, one of KROQ’s weekend jocks was on the air doing his Saturday shift.

  “I was in the area and thought I’d come by,” said Mike with a big smile.

  Ian was flattered. It was not often that one of the full-time DJs, especially one half of the fabled morning team, would drop in on his show.

  “Do you want to say hi to the listeners?” asked Ian innocently.


  “Sure,” replied Mike and he walked around to Ian’s side of the console.

  Ian hit the microphone on as the record faded, “It’s K-R-O-Q and look who is in the studio with me. Mike Evans! What brings you here this morning, Mike?”

  Mike leant forward and held his finger down on the on button for the microphone. Now he couldn’t be silenced. “Well, Ian, I know what you and all the listeners are thinking and that’s ‘What’s the Hose doing at KROQ on a Saturday morning?’ The answer is that I came here especially to tell you I’m leaving this shithole and going to KMET starting Monday with Jeff Gonzer on their morning show, so you can join me and Denise Westwood on 94.7 or stay here listening to that fat idiot Snakeskin. And by the way, his real name is Scott Campbell but he answers to ‘asshole.’ Talk to you on the Mighty Met Monday morning—whoo yah!”

  Mike strode out of the studio and the station leaving Ian sitting there, stunned. Behind him the hotline lit up and furiously blinked red as Freddy Snakeskin desperately called in to silence the broadcast.

  Two days later I received a phone call at home from Freddy. “Mr. Snake here. How do you feel about getting up early tomorrow? If you can be at the station by six I’d like you to do the morning show with Ramondo.” And that one simple call created the morning team of Ramondo and The Blade.

  For me, having the opportunity to do mornings with Raymond was a match made in heaven. His timing was superb, his wit dry and funny, and his hands-on technical ability with the equipment was precise and kept our show driving non-stop through the morning. Every day I couldn’t wait to get on the air with him and I bounded up the back stairs of the KROQ building eager to learn new tricks and techniques from Raymond.

  Photo courtesy of Joel Gelfand

  And the enthusiasm wasn’t just on my side. The listeners responded in droves and within days of our becoming a team we had girls at the back door bearing donuts and coffee as gifts, waiting for us to arrive. We were inundated with offers to appear at store openings and to MC fashion shows and school dances. Even Pat Welsh noticed and actually spent some money on hiring a photographer to take official publicity shots of his new morning show team. We knew we were at the beginning of a wild and crazy ride together.

  Considered the ultimate KROQ ’80s on-air lineup, August 1982

  Rick returned to KROQ and took back his position as program director. With me now on the morning show it meant that I was only working one Saturday shift every other week so the station was short of weekend air personalities. Rick asked if I knew anyone who was good and could fit in with the KROQ format. I didn’t hesitate. I recommended Katy Manor, telling Rick that she was as good as it gets. I knew that Katy had left Magic 98 in Bakersfield and was now working at KBOS in Fresno but was desperate to get out of there.

  In minutes I had Katy on the phone with Rick and he arranged for her to do an on-air tryout that coming weekend. As soon as he said that I knew Katy would get the job. I was so happy to be able to help her a little. Even though there was no longer any romance between us, I still considered her to be a dear friend and a great asset to any radio station lucky enough to have her on staff.

  With Rachel Donahue doing mid-days and Katy rocking the weekends, the station sounded as Rick had always wanted it to, with no bad shifts, no wasted day parts. Tune into KROQ anytime and you would hear someone who was giving you their all. Just like that, one of LA’s most formidable on-air lineups was in place.

  At the end of August I began getting some ribbing from the other jocks because that’s when a book was published that featured me in it. It was called Lady’s Choice: A Guide To The Eligible Bachelors of Los Angeles.

  I’d been approached to be in it about five months before when I was DJing at Le Hot Club. They arranged for me to go to a studio to shoot some photos and took down my bio and then I heard nothing more from them. That was until my first day on the air at KROQ. I received a call from the editor who said he recognized my voice and asked if Richard Blade and Dick Sheppard were the same. When I asked why he said I had made the book and they were going to rush and try to have my name corrected before it went to press. And now I was holding the book.

  The shock was that I not only made the top one hundred bachelors, I was voted the number-one most eligible bachelor in Los Angeles! I didn’t talk about it on the air but the other DJs did and a lot of listeners saw the book and the mail I was receiving more than doubled. The person who was most excited was my mum. I sent her a copy of the book and she called me with a word or two of advice.

  “Better be careful now, my love,” she cautioned. “A lot of women will see this and get the wrong idea about you, that you’re out there just to meet girls and you wouldn’t want that now would you?”

  Errr . . . actually I would but I couldn’t say that to my mother so I agreed with her antiquated views and sent my love to her and Dad down the transatlantic phone line.

  With everything that was happening at KROQ, time began to speed by and even gather momentum, like a race car accelerating from the starting line. Before we knew it September 3 had arrived and Raymond and I were shuttled out to Glen Helen Regional Park to appear onstage at the US Festival. We were awestruck at what we saw waiting for us.

  The stage was massive, almost as big as a football field, and the scaffolding around it towered a hundred feet into the air with giant video screens stretched out on either side. But that stage paled in comparison to the crowd; they reached as far as the eye could see. The entire level area in front of the stage going back over 400 yards was jammed with people standing shoulder to shoulder and that mass of new wave fans continued all the way up the hills that framed the natural arena.

  The two of us stood side by side in the wings waiting to go on. We had nothing prepared and now we had to fill for ten minutes before bringing on The B-52s. Raymond’s look spoke volumes, and those words were “Holy shit!”

  The sound tech signaled that he was ready to the stage manager who said to us, “Go out there. Be funny,” and physically pushed us onto that cavernous stage. We hit the center mics and Raymond went first.

  “I’m Ramondo,” he yelled into the microphone.

  “And I’m the Blade,” I said.

  The crowd roared when they heard our names. They were all KROQ listeners and pumped to be at such a revolutionary show. The screams continued for what seemed like forever and we had to pause because there was no way to be heard over that wall of sound. Finally we had to speak. I went first.

  “Are all you guys in line for the bathroom?” I joked.

  “Damn, I knew I should have gone before we got here,” responded Raymond picking up on my wisecrack.

  “Which one of you brought the toilet paper?” I asked.

  The audience loved it and the next few minutes flew by. I think I was almost in a trance up there until I heard Raymond and myself saying together, “. . . The B-52s!” We ran offstage and promised each other we would never forget the thrill of that moment.

  Onstage at the US Festival, Sept 3, 1982

  Forty minutes later when The B-52s finished their set, their lead singer Fred Schneider came up to us backstage and said, “I am officially changing the name of this from the US Festival to the Dust Festival!”

  When that incredible party band from Athens, Georgia, had hit the stage with “Private Idaho” the whole crowd started pogoing and those 200,000 people turned the US Festival into the world’s largest mosh pit, stirring up the dry, baked soil and creating a dust cloud that obscured them from the stage. The dust and the heat remained merciless as the anvil of the sun beat down upon the concert-goers for the entire weekend with daytime highs being recorded at around 111 degrees. But I loved every red-hot second of it.

  Four days after the US Festival wrapped up I received a call from Anne Beats. She was a five-time Emmy-nominated writer on Saturday Night Live and was now filming her own show that she’d created for CBS. She wanted to know if I would like to be one of the recurring characters in it.


  With Stewart Copeland of The Police, Backstage at the US Festival – Sept. 1982

  The show was Square Pegs and starred a young girl called Sarah Jessica Parker. It was about trying to fit in at high school and Anne had thought it would be funny if I played the manager of all the bands that stopped by the school to perform. The joke would be that my accent was so thick that the only person who could understand me was one of the students who was a hip punk kid and he had to translate my words to everyone else.

  The bands she had lined up for her TV show came straight from the KROQ playlist—The Waitresses, Jimmy and the Mustangs and Devo. Of course I said yes and just two days later I was on the set at an abandoned school in Long Beach shooting the first episode.

  Anne Beats wasn’t the only one in the industry to hear about what was happening over at 106.7; KABC TV picked up on the buzz and on Tuesday, the fourteenth of September, sent over a crew to shoot us for Eye on LA as host Paul Moyer described us as “LA’s fastest-rising morning show.”

  It seemed that every phone call Raymond and I got brought nothing but good news, with more and more offers coming our way. We were unstoppable. But nature has a way of keeping you grounded. For every high there is a low, and for me the worst low of my life arrived in the form of a call I received on Thursday afternoon, September 16, 1982.