World in My Eyes: The Autobiography

by Richard Blade

  I punched the microphone on. “By special request, for the lovely Terri Nunn of Berlin, here’s a couple of extended versions back-to-back on K-R-O-Q.” Then I thought, What the hell, just go for it, or as the Bishop said to the actress, “How would you like a twelve-inch on a Saturday morning?”

  As the opening drum beats of “Tainted Love” pulsed through the studio speakers Terri was already on her feet and coming around to my side of the console.

  In late November of 1982 I took a few days off from KROQ and Terri and I flew to Oahu. It was the first time for either of us to visit Hawaii. We stayed in a little hotel just off of Waikiki’s main tourist strip and after a day of exploring the legendary beach and playing in the clear waters there we rented a car and headed up to the unspoiled North Shore.

  As we cruised Highway 72 past Makapuu Lighthouse an intense panorama appeared before us of an endless sapphire-blue ocean flecked with breaking whitecaps echoing the line of small cumulus clouds on the horizon.

  Terri gasped and urged, “Pull over, pull over!”

  We stopped a mile down the road at the appropriately named Lookout Point and jumped out of the car. Terri threw her arms in the air and danced and twirled in the sunshine to a song that only she could hear, perhaps played to her by the warm trade winds that blew in from the east.

  She turned and flung her arms around my neck saying, “There is a paradise on this Earth!”

  She kissed me and held me tight, laying her head against my chest. She was right: there was a paradise, but it wasn’t the view of the mighty Pacific or anything on the islands of Hawaii that was showing me Heaven; it was this diminutive beauty who showered me with her love.

  It was in Hawaii that I asked Terri if she would marry me. It just seemed right. Everywhere around us the stores and hotels were getting ready for the holiday season; Christmas ornaments were going up and signs saying “Mele Kalikimaka,” Hawaiian for Merry Christmas, were being hung. The season of joy was coming and nothing I could think of would give me more joy than being with this amazing girl forever.

  I dropped to one knee and proposed the old fashioned way. Terri had tears in her eyes when I asked her. She knelt down, put her hands out and cradled my face.

  “I will, but not yet. I’m not ready right now. But I will be one day I promise.”

  And with that we kissed and hugged and knew our destiny was determined.

  Berlin at the record company showcase at S.I.R. Studios

  Terri and her band, Berlin, were now an inescapable part of the KROQ playlist and were generating a huge buzz all over LA and Orange County. Tune into 106.7 and within an hour Berlin would be roaring out of your speakers.

  The band’s manager, Perry Watts-Russell, felt the vibe they were generating and knew they were ready to take it to the next level. He booked time to put on an industry showcase performance at S.I.R. Studios in Hollywood where I introduced them on stage to an invited audience of record company scouts who were so blown away by what they saw and heard that night that a bidding war erupted for the rights to sign them.

  After multiple offers they decided to go with Geffen Records. As part of that deal, Geffen acquired the rights to the first album, Pleasure Victim, from their original smaller label, Enigma.

  Geffen was one of the biggest players in the business and their roster of artists read like a who’s who of the recording industry with John Lennon, Donna Summer and The Eagles as part of their lineup. This mega-corporation loved what Berlin had achieved with their debut record and decided to re-release it without changing a thing about it, not the production, mix or even the artwork. And the bigwigs at Geffen were right; the album quickly was certified gold and I was thrilled when several of the executives showed up at the radio station to present me with an RIAA Gold Disc to commemorate the milestone and my little contribution to the group’s success.

  I did everything I could to help get the word out about Berlin. Everyone who heard them or saw them live was won over by their raw talent and recognized almost immediately what a wonderful front person Terri is. But there are definitely other ways I could help as well.

  I was shooting the TV show MV3 and arranged to have Berlin perform live on the show. Terri consulted with me before the shoot and was concerned that people might take our relationship the wrong way.

  “Look,” she said, “I know you have to do the interview with us before we go on but we can’t give it away that we’re together. Is that okay with you?”

  I agreed 100%. The last thing I wanted to do was hurt Terri or the band’s chances of being judged fairly. The big fear was that other radio stations would not play Berlin if they found out the lead singer was dating Richard Blade of KROQ, and without airplay the group’s momentum could stall.

  The day of the TV taping arrived and the band rehearsed, sound checked and blocked for the cameras. I stayed as far from them as possible.

  When I got the word to report to the set and introduce the Berlin segment of the show I trotted over right away and avoided even looking at Terri until the cameras were rolling. After the interview one of the producers came up and asked me, “I thought you liked the singer from Berlin? I guess I was wrong.” Apparently the act that Terri and I put on was too good! But whether Terri and I came across as distant or not, Berlin staged a rocking show on what was their very first national television performance.

  The other opportunity to give Terri a little push was when I received a call from “the Woz,” Steve Wozniak. We had hit it off a few months before at the first US Festival and he wanted to come on my show at KROQ and ask the listeners who they would like to see on the bill for the second US Festival that he was planning for Memorial Day.

  I arranged for him to join me on my Saturday morning program and in early February the Woz showed up and started taking calls on the air from the excited KROQ audience. However before the show started I got together with my phone op and interns at the station to have them call in themselves and ask for Berlin to be in the lineup. With that in place I was ready to go.

  I talked with Steve on the air and went to the phone lines. I had no monitor or display to tell me who was on what line or what they were calling about; I just had to hope for the best. Almost immediately the calls were for Berlin. I saw the Woz write down the name and then the next call was for Berlin and the next. That’s when I realized that it wasn’t just my interns calling; the request lines were exploding with KROQ listeners who really wanted Terri on the bill!

  By the end of the show the tentative lineup for New Wave Day was in place and included The Clash, David Bowie, U2, Stray Cats, Men at Work, INXS, Oingo Boingo, English Beat and, of course, Berlin. I was thrilled that my girlfriend would be a part of such an event and I also knew that she would steal the show.

  To ensure that the band’s exposure continued Geffen sent them out on the road on tour. This meant Terri was gone for more than a month and our magical weekends away were over. But instead of simply saying goodbye for a month we came up with a brainwave; we just pretended that she had gone ahead to our weekend away and I would fly out to join her at whatever location she was performing at.

  For the next five weeks I’d hop on a plane to see her in concert across North America and after the show we would retreat to our private sanctuary. Among the cities I flew into were Chicago; Detroit; and Athens, Georgia. It was in that home of The B-52s and R.E.M. that something mind-blowing happened.

  Berlin was onstage and rocking into their second song as I watched from the audience. You can’t appreciate a show from backstage; the sound is never as good and you are seeing the artist from behind and can’t experience their moves and facial expressions as they work to give the audience their best. I leave backstage to the poseurs who don’t really care about the music. I want to be where it’s loud and sweaty, on the floor in the auditorium; that’s where the real action is. That night was different.

  As the song progressed I noticed the buzz in the audience was changing. The crowd was no longer
looking at the stage; they were looking at me! A circle formed around me and one brave girl broke ranks and stepped forward. “Are you Richard Blade from MV3?” she asked. That’s when I realized that my TV show was on in Georgia and obviously had a huge following with exactly the same crowd that would of course love a band like Berlin.

  Within moments things were getting out of hand and security had to rush me through the barriers to backstage. Terri saw the whole thing from onstage and that night, tucked up together in her hotel room, we laughed about what had happened. Over the next two weekends Terri had me come up onstage to introduce Berlin and the audience loved it. For me it was incredible to have the privilege to bring my girlfriend out onto the stage, then watch her raw talent win over the crowd.

  During the week when I was back in Southern California and away from Terri, I returned to DJing in the clubs. It was there that I fell victim to temptation, and sadly not just once.

  I found myself straying almost every night. It started when I was judging a bikini contest in Newport Beach. My co-judge was a former Miss California. Later that evening I found out just how qualified she was for that title.

  It seemed that at every gig there was always a fun-loving, club-going girl who wanted to get together and have a good time so I went for it. And the sad thing is I knew I was so wrong to do what I was doing and that I had no excuse or reason to cheat. I was an asshole for doing it. But the flesh is weak and mine was weaker than most. I realized if I kept this up that there would not be a happy ending to it but I couldn’t stop.

  Terri returned from her tour and with her back in town I ended any extra dalliances and devoted myself to her once more. We drove together to the US Festival and I brought her onstage and watched as she pulled off an unbelievable performance for more than 180,000 people at the Glen Helen Regional Park on May 30, 1983. I could not have been any prouder as that tiny girl with a miracle of a voice captivated such a massive crowd.

  Backstage at the US Festival – May 30, 1983

  Terri & Berlin rocking the US Festival, 1983

  As much as we tried to keep our love affair secret it became impossible, and at the US Festival there were so many journalists backstage that it was inevitable that someone would see us together. Within just days there were a number of articles about the two of us being a couple.

  Terri, John Crawford and David Diamond, the trio that made up the writing core of Berlin, hunkered down in the studio to prep their next album. I stayed out of their hair for those sessions but Terri and I still made time to see each other as much as we could. As our relationship grew even stronger we became close with each other’s mothers, Terri with my mum, who had come over to visit from England, and me with Terri’s mom, Joyce, who was not only the genetic source of Terri’s beauty but also a person who helped teach me the benefits of spirituality and inner calm. Joyce was a very special person and I was blessed to know her.

  As Terri worked hard in the studio and time took her away from me again, I returned to rocking the clubs and, sadly, to my wicked, wicked ways.

  1983 was racing to a close and people were out in droves, trying to get their partying in before the clubs took a hiatus over Christmas. Mr. J’s was particularly crowded that night. The capacity was around 450 and at least 600 were crammed inside with another 100 waiting outside in the parking lot. By the time I entered the club around 10pm the energy was electric. There was a huge cheer as the house DJ, Hot Toddy, introduced me. He handed me the microphone and I welcomed everyone to the club, threw out a few t-shirts and bellowed a guttural “Kay—Rock” that mimicked the jingles that ran on the station.

  In the DJ booth at Mr. J’s

  I slipped quickly behind the turntables and pulled the vinyl from my leather record company shoulder bag. The brown bag held maybe forty albums and twelve-inches, enough to supplement the club’s collection. I was playing a two-hour set so I went immediately into a series of crowd-pleasers—New Order, Depeche Mode, Thomas Dolby, The Cure. The place was rocking. It was a DJ’s dream. The club was so jammed that you couldn’t empty the floor if you tried, there was nowhere to go. And I had no intention of allowing even one person to stop dancing. This was a KROQ party after all, damn it! I clearly recall doing a beat-on-beat segue between Soft Cell’s “Sex Dwarf” and B-Movie’s “Nowhere Girl” when the Pink Fairy arrived.

  How to describe him? He looked like the topper to a five-year-old’s birthday cake, if that particular five-year-old had a fixation for six-foot-tall men dressed head to toe in pink spandex with a set of lace fairy wings with wire supports protruding from their back.

  He was standing at the entrance to the DJ booth and as soon as he got my attention (which, in that outfit, was pretty quick!) he waved his pink magic wand at me three times with a great flourish.

  I laughed at this pastel apparition and grabbed the mic. “Looks like someone’s got a singing telegram! Anyone expecting a pink fairy?”

  I dipped the music for a second and the crowd stopped dancing and took in the crazy sight in front of them. The Pink Fairy gestured for the mic so I held it out to him.

  “The message is for you!” He half sang, half spoke into the microphone.

  “Okay,” I said, “let’s hear it.”

  “Not in here,” came the sugary reply. He gestured to the stairs with his wand. “Up there.”

  I laughed again and yelled into the mic, “Who wants to check it out with me?”

  I nodded to Hot Toddy to take back control of the decks for a couple of minutes and jumped down from the DJ booth.

  I had not come alone to the club that night. With me was Peter Facer, the music coordinator of MV3, and my former co-host, Karen Scott.

  Karen and I had begun a secretive affair a couple of months before and only Peter knew about it. Mr. J’s had sent a limo for me that night as the club was so far from my apartment and I had to be up so early the next day for my morning show, so I invited Peter and Karen to join me. Plus I had planned that the night would end with Karen staying over at my place.

  “Come on, this will be a blast,” I said. “A singing telegram dressed like the sugar plum fairy. Crazy!”

  Peter, always cautious, gave me a quick, “Careful, Mr. Fun.” (his nickname for me) “You never know.”

  I’d been in a few skirmishes outside clubs and still carried a four-inch scar on my right wrist from that particularly nasty encounter in Denmark eight years before but I didn’t think this Pink Fairy was anything to be concerned about. I didn’t realize that Peter was right. I was about to be hurt a lot worse than any angry biker with a broken bottle had ever hurt me.

  I bounded up the steep, carpeted stairs two at a time, not because I was excited about the message that was waiting – it was after all, in my mind, probably just a fan wanting to say thanks for the music. I was moving quickly because I hate leaving the DJ booth for even a minute when I’m playing. I might be known as a radio presenter or a sometime TV host but look inside me and you’ll find a club DJ who loves getting a crowd on the floor and keeping them dancing.

  Ironically the only other time in my entire career that I left the booth in mid-set was that first time I met Terri. Now, all these months later, unknown to me, that same girl was causing me to leave the DJ booth once again, but this time my exit would mark the end of our relationship and hurl both of us into nearly a decade of romantic distress.

  It was cold outside in the parking lot that night. It was late November and there was a definite chill in the air. And it had been so hot in the club that even if we had stepped into a sauna it would have seemed cooler than that packed dance hall. I saw Karen shiver and pulled her in close. She slipped her arm around my waist and held me tight. I kissed her gently on her lips. Now there were nearly 200 people surrounding Karen, Peter and me that had followed us up from Mr. J’s.

  “Okay, Sugar Plum. Sing me your telegram,” I said.

  “I don’t have it. It’s up there!”

  He pointed his wand into the clear night
sky. There, maybe 500 feet above our heads, a small fixed-wing aircraft was circling. On cue it lit up. The plane was sky-writing a message across its wings. It was short, to the point, and horrific. On most other nights I would have welcomed those seven words with unbridled joy, but I knew, I just knew, what was going to happen as I read the message.

  I’M READY TO JUMP. MARRY ME. TERRI

  Have you ever been in a situation when the world stops? Perhaps during the first milliseconds of a car crash or when those feelings pulse through your entire body as you put the phone down after receiving word that a loved one has passed away? Nothing exists but the moment that you are caught in and the awful realization that you cannot do anything about it. You have lost control and there is no way to get it back. That’s how I felt as I turned to the pink messenger of doom.

  “Please, just tell me she’s not here,” I begged.

  He grinned happily, unaware of the sentence he was bringing down upon the two of us. “She’s over there,” he giggled.

  It took an eternity for me to force myself to turn my head in the direction he was pointing. I felt Karen kissing my cheek as I turned.

  Terri’s yellow Cadillac was parked just forty feet away. She had seen everything. Her eyes met mine through the car’s windshield. Karen kissed me again. The car door opened slightly and Terri started to get out.

  My God. She was wearing the wedding dress she had worn in the video for “Masquerade”! Was it going to be tonight? Did she have an officiant lined up, waiting, or were we going to shoot off to Vegas, get married and race straight back, barely making it in time for the morning radio show?

  That was the spontaneous Terri I loved. Like the time we woke up on a Sunday morning after the kind of night that they write songs about and I wanted to take her to a fancy brunch. She said she had nothing appropriate with her to wear so I laughed and said I would buy her a dress. I tossed her a bath towel and told her to put that on for now and get out of bed.