by Howard Stern
In Hartford, I began to conceptualize what I could really do with a morning show. I started off by demanding that the governor recognize my birthday as a state holiday. No response. I called aides to the mayor of Hartford. They told me I'd have to be dead. Finally, I got the majority leader of the state senate to send me an official-looking document that "for the rest of eternity" January 12 would be commemorated in Connecticut.
When Paul McCartney got busted in Japan and imprisoned for possession of grass, I called Tokyo to protest. When Yale and Harvard medical schools announced there was a shortage of dead bodies for research, I ran a cadaverathon on the air. But the one thing that got me the most publicity in Hartford was my "To Hell with Shell" boycott. It actually wasn't even my boycott, it was a listener's idea. During the summer of 1979 we experienced some gas shortages. I read a chain letter that was sent out to people in Hartford urging a two-day boycott of Shell products because Shell was foreign-owned and was the first company to ration its supply. We discussed the letter on the air and I suggested that people drive with their lights on to protest the rise in fuel prices. "Turn the lights
on bright until they get the prices right" was the rallying cry.
Pretty tame stuff. But you have to remember that this was at a time when disc jockeys kept their mouths shut and never bad-rapped anyone. We were the stations' goodwill ambassadors, and controversies were to be avoided. Advertisers are gods in radio, and the rule is you never upset them. Two people from Shell even called our station, but we kept up with the campaign. Why not? Shell wasn't advertising with us.
I was doing well at the station, I had been there for a year, and I asked for a raise. A lousy, stinking twenty-five-dollar-a-week raise. The owner, Sy Dresner, told me he had to think about it. That really pissed me off. I got on the next morning, I was doing my show, it was a Saturday, and I put on "Free Bird" and all of a sudden I was overwhelmed, I was on my knees, praying that somebody would hear me from Hartford and get me the fuck out of there. I just couldn't believe I was wasting my time at this annoying job.
Plus, I had the worst living conditions. I was living in this connected town house with neighbors who became obsessed with my show. At four in the morning they would play their stereo super-loud and if I banged on the wall they'd go even louder. And then they started a campaign against me. They started hanging all these signs on my front door. They said it was freedom of speech. "You can say what you want on the radio, we can say what we want on your front door." They were like mental cases. We were living in an apartment where you flushed your toilet and the next morning you woke up and there was shit all over the floors and water was everywhere. It was just un-fucking-believable. I was living the nightmare of being a famous person who was poor. I couldn't afford to live in an unattached house. People always think that you're rich if you're famous.
So I was praying to get the hell out. The next day, I got a call from Dwight Douglas, one of the biggest radio consultants. He said, "I heard your show. I think you're fuckin' brilliant."
"You're kidding! That's fantastic," I said.
Then he told me he was going to put me at one of his stations. Now, Dwight's company was so powerful at that point, it was like the touch of God coming to you.
"We've got a great opening in Columbus, Ohio," he said.
Now, to me, Columbus sounded like Hartford.
"You don't understand. This is the hottest station in Columbus.
They have a real ratings book, four times a year, the whole thing. Hartford had a ratings book once a year," Dwight said.
So I put together a tape to give to their people in Columbus, and a week or so later he called me and told me the jock had decided to stay in Columbus.
"But don't worry, I've got you in mind," he said.
Meanwhile, I was ready to kill myself.
Again, I was looking through Radio & Records and I saw that a station in Detroit was looking for a morning man. Detroit sounded like a big market. But I'm bad in geography, I had no idea where Detroit was. I didn't know it was north of Canada! I called Douglas and he said the opening wasn't for me. I thought, "Fuck him." So I called the GM of the station, Wally Clark, and sent him a tape by overnight mail. That night I got a call.
"You're hired. We're flying into Hartford to do the deal."
"You're kidding!" I said.
So we arranged to meet at the Marriott, the biggest hotel in Hartford. I couldn't believe this was happening. I said to Alison, whom I'd kept in the dark about all this, "I'm going to meet with some guys from Detroit. They want to hire me."
"You applied for a job without telling me?" she said. "You don't even know where Detroit is!" I gave her my whole radio rap about how we had to travel around the country building my career or we were doomed to be stuck in Hartford. My philosophy was that you needed a resume with nine hundred call letters on it. I was always shocked at the number of disc jockeys who were willing to stay in places like Hartford with owners who wouldn't even give them health benefits.
So I went to meet the guys and they told me the station was an incredible rock station called W-4. They were in the process of moving the station to the Renaissance Center, which was a brand-new series of beautiful high rises with crystal and the works.
"I'll do it!" I said.
Clark handed me a piece of paper.
"This is the salary."
I opened it up nonchalantly. Twenty-eight thousand dollars. Holy shit, twenty-eight thousand dollars! This was it! Finally, I could tell my father I was making twenty-eight grand.
So I went home and told Alison -- she flipped out. I told the radio station to go fuck themselves. I called Douglas, the consultant. He
told me he was hoping for a better station for me, because W-4 was having some problems. I didn't want to hear about any problems. I didn't care, I was pulling in twenty-eight. Then I called my father. And I was thinking maybe I should go for thirty. He told me twenty-eight was great but there was no harm in calling the guy and asking. So I called Wally back and he said, "Okay," and now I was pulling down an even thirty.
I was totally jazzed. I packed up all my stuff and drove up to Detroit alone, because Alison had to give a month's notice on her job. They put me up at the Renaissance Center. It was beautiful. I said, "Where's the radio station?" "Oh," they said, "we're not in the Renaissance Center yet. But you just drive down the block, into downtown Detroit, and the station is straight down this road." So I got up the next morning at four o'clock, I was ready to go to work. Meanwhile, I had talked to the program director and he had given me a whole list of rules. Don't take phone calls from women because you sound wimpy when you talk to women. Only talk to men. Program directors were always burdening me with their lame theories. I figured, if they knew anything they'd be doing the morning show. How the hell am I going to control who's calling?
So I left the Renaissance Center and drove to the station. As I was driving, the neighborhood was getting progressively worse. Finally I saw the station. It was a bombed-out old house. I swung into the parking lot and parked the car and got out and there were fucking rats nipping at my feet. I was flipping out. The station was a toilet bowl, but who cared? I was the morning man in Detroit! A major market.
What I didn't know was that Detroit was going through one of the worst economic crises in its history. The auto industry was in the toilet and everyone was getting laid off. The whole town was depressed! Including the staff of the station, who were all pissed off that I was making at least ten grand more than they were. So I figured to get noticed I'd riff on the hard times. I tried to think up some bits. I decided to call the Kremlin and apply for five billion dollars in foreign aid for Detroit. I called other countries and tried to sell off New Jersey to raise money. We had a big promotion and I led hundreds of people who donated $1.06 (our call numbers) to smash the shit out of a Toyota, then we turned around and donated the money raised to Chrysler. I started to get national coverage on some of these stunts.
I did al
l sorts of crazy things. I had contests where I gave away sixteen cents, which was my pocket change. I called dentists' offices on the air and begged them to change their reception room radios to our show. I called the governor and tried to get Ted Nugent's "Wang Dang Sweet Poontang" declared the official state song.
We had Go Back to Bed Day where we got bosses to let the lucky winners go back to bed, with pay. I did a lot of Dial-a-Dates, which I started in Hartford, but this time I got Penthouse pets as contestants. That presented a problem once when we found out one of the winners was a convicted sex offender who had served time for one offense and was awaiting trial on a similar charge.
I began to assemble what would later become our famous Wack Pack. This woman Irene called up one day and I found out she was a real-live leather-clad, whip-carrying dominatrix. So I dubbed her Irene the Leather Weatherlady and every day I'd call her for the weather and she'd say outrageous stuff, like "Bitch, this is the weather and if you don't like it I'm going to come over and beat the crap out of you." One time she even recommended that people buy their mothers a red leather enema bag for Mother's Day.
I did anything to get noticed. I entered a local Dolly Parton Look-a-Like Contest. I wrestled women (and lost!) on the front lawn of the station at 8:00 A.M. in front of two hundred screaming maniacs. When the Republicans came to town for their convention we organized a protest in support of the Equal Rights Amendment. It was "Burn your B-R-A for the E-R-A" and again, I humiliated myself in front of hundreds of people, parading around in a bra and then collecting a few dozen others and burning them.
But the worst had to be the public appearances outside the station that we had to do. Let me tell you, promotion people at radio stations are usually assholes. They're always talking as if they have their finger on the pulse of the public, when, in fact, it really makes little difference what you do out on the street. If you put on a good radio show, people are gonna listen. They couldn't give a shit where you're showing up. But the promo people had this idea that you had to do promotions -- promotions, promotions -- and they got you so crazy with it that you had to go do them or you're considered "an enemy of the station."
Now, to me, promotions reeked of these bad djs who go out and do bar mitzvahs. I always felt disc jockeys were lowlifes. When I worked in Westchester I used to see some of the old WMCA Good
Guys, who were now working up in places like Westchester, and it was depressing. They'd do these appearances in blue blazers with their big dumb voices. They looked about a hundred and fifty years old and sad. And they had been the biggest radio personalities. They used to be the WMCA Good Guys! If they were once at the top of the radio profession, and this is what happened to them, what did the future have in store for me? I was really frightened of the whole business.
I was in Detroit and I was the morning man for this failing radio station, and I had no listeners to start with, so every weekend I had to go out on a wacky promotion. I was the moron my father always said I was, I agreed to this stuff. So Halloween night they dressed me up as Dracula and I was supposed to appear at three or four different showings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. I had to get on stage and introduce the movie. Well, first of all, nobody knew who I was. Number two, if you've ever seen an audience for The Rocky Horror Picture Show, they don't want anything interfering with the movie. They're all in costume, they got their toast, they know the friggin' movie by heart, they live for this movie. Plus, Detroit's a very angry city to begin with. Everybody's unemployed.
So I went to do the introduction and all these lunatics were marching up and down the aisle. I felt as if I was at some kind of PTA meeting in hell. I started to speak and all of a sudden toast and garbage started flying, I was booed unmercifully; people were screaming, "GET THE FUCK OFF THE STAGE, YOU FAGGOT!" They were going nuts. This happened four straight times.
The next weekend, they sent me to Windsor, across the border in Canada, to a little punk club. I took Alison with me. Again, I was supposed to do the introductions for the bands. So I got up on stage and said, "HI EVERYBODY! MY NAME IS HOWARD STERN AND I'M FROM W-4 IN DETROIT ..." Now, I'd been in Detroit maybe a month, nobody knew who the fuck I was, so again, everybody started booing. Then this one imbecile kid in a mohawk ran up on stage and boom! He smashed me in the face with an egg. Everybody cheered. Boom! Smashed me with another egg. I stood there stunned. Boom, boom, boom! Three more eggs. I was drenched in egg. Alison was sitting there, she couldn't believe it. I just said, "HEY! FUCK THIS!" I threw the mike down, and we split.
I vowed never to do these appearances again. But the following
weekend they booked me to race another disc jockey at a racetrack. And the Leather Weatherlady showed up, too. By now, she really had the hots for me. She frightened me because she was a real dominatrix who really wanted to dominate me sexually. I mean, I had never seen leather people before this. She really came on strong, and quite frankly, it was pretty exciting. But she was really living the lifestyle. Even her little daughter had a whip. This was a sick crowd.
So they decided I was going to race another disc jockey. Now, I don't race cars, I can hardly drive a regular car, I didn't know what the fuck I'm doing. And they got me in this dragster and I was racing this other guy in front of thousands of people. This was such a dumb promotion that I got really pissed off and I grabbed the loudspeaker and I was yelling, "WHO THE FUCK CARES ABOUT THESE FUCKING CARS!" I was out of my mind.
I got a ride back to town from another dj and the Leather Weatherlady was sitting in the backseat next to me. Now she was always attacking me with lots of sexual innuendo, always coming on to me, the whole thing. I was sitting back there and she started going "Oooh, I want you, I want you."
I had had enough of her bullshit, too.
"You fucking want me?" I said. "My cock is right in these pants. If you fucking want me, go in and take my cock out and do something."
Now, I never do this kind of shit. All of a sudden she was unbuckling my pants and was starting to move her hand down. The disc jockey who was driving was watching all this from the rearview mirror and couldn't believe what was happening. She was looking at me and she couldn't believe I was letting her do it! I finally called Irene's bluff, because it was just getting out of hand. I never thought someone could be this fucking annoying; every minute she was coming
on, grabbing my ass, taking the whip, hitting me, and I couldn't take it, I was so angry. So as soon as she had an opportunity she goes, "Oh, I don't believe you're gonna let me do this," and she never laid a hand on me again.
After a few months my show in Detroit became really wild. I was taking no prisoners. I had whole biker gangs in the studio. One of the gangs came in one day and whipped out coke and started snorting it, and I said, "You can't do coke," and they said, "Oh, yeah? What're you gonna do about it?" I couldn't stop these guys. I was thinking, "Oh, my God, I'm going to lose the station's license." But I'd rather lose it than my life. And I got wilder with Dominatrix Dial-a-Dates with the Leather Weatherlady. One time, in the middle of another Dial-a-Date, I decided I was gonna drink and I got so loaded I passed out on the air during the show. I woke up an hour later, and these people were still talking.
So I was plugging away at this job, the station was going downhill fast, but I was getting some major attention. I won the Billboard Award for best AOR disc jockey, I won the Drake-Chenault Top Five Talent Search, and one of my bits went out on a record to everyone in the industry. So I was starting to get well known. I was getting some job offers when, overnight, the station went country. I looked at Alison, told her to start packing, and I ran out to get a copy of Radio & Records, an industry trade paper with lots of classifieds. It was time to hit the road again. Somehow, I couldn't see myself as Hopalong Howie.
NEXT STOP: THE FUNNY FARM
One of the job offers I got was from an album-oriented station in Washington, D.C. -- DC-101. Again, it was Dwight Douglas who wooed me to come to D.C. I was considering offers from Chicago's WXRT an
d a station in Toronto. I told Douglas I wasn't sure about the D.C. station because the general manager seemed slow on the phone and not really aware of what I did. He told me not to worry. I should have. Between the time W-4 went country and our move to Washington, I was holed up in my office in our second bedroom at home and I plotted out my show. After a few weeks of deep thought, I knew exactly what I wanted to do.
First of all, I decided that whoever worked with me on the air must be simpatico. Then I decided that I was going to kill my competition.
I was going to say whatever the fuck I wanted to say. I vowed that I wasn't going to blow this chance in Washington because Washington was the Northeast and my eventual goal was to make it in New York. I know it sounds corny, but when I was still in college, I was so totally focused on winning that when I flew over New York, I'd look down at the city and say, "One day everyone will know my fucking name in New York City." I wanted to be famous partly because I wanted to get back at all the women who rejected me in high school. In my warped mind I thought they would feel bad that they rejected me. Bad girls! They needed to be punished.
So Washington was a step toward New York, and there was no way I was going to lose. I decided that the Washington show was just gonna be off the wall. The first step was to put my team together. It was time to find my newsperson. I realized how important the news segment was to my show. Since so much of great satire is topical, I wanted to find a newscaster with a good sense of humor who could riff with me on the current stories. I wanted to tear down that artificial wall between the show and the newscast. I found my ideal partner in Robin Quivers.
Robin had been a nurse and had just broken into radio. She was doing consumer reports for a small station in Baltimore. She'd been in radio less than a year, but Denise Oliver, the program director of DC-101, played me a tape of Robin and she sounded great. So I said, "Go get her." But for some reason, Robin was playing hard to get. Right, Robin?
