Radio Free Boston

by Carter Alan

  Laquidara’s behavior wasn’t always inspired by a noble and ethical purpose. Tim Montgomery recalled, “The Australian Wine Board heard about the legendary WBCN, hired an agency and wanted to run some ads. They also wanted to bring someone from the board and an ambassador or consul from Australia to be interviewed by Charles. They were going to spend a lot of money, by our standards; so I took a deep breath, went to Charles and said, ‘I beg of you, please be on your best behavior.’ Well, that was my first mistake, asking him to be cool with these people.” Montgomery chuckled before continuing:

  The whole group came in for a live interview: two people from the agency, two people from the consulate and two from the wine board. Everything was going great; then, sure enough, in the middle of things, Charles goes, “Hey, you guys ever heard this?” And he played the [now] famous Monty Python comedy bit about Australian wines. So, you’ve got these [six] stone-faced people sitting in the studio looking at Charles as he broadcasted [a comedy sketch] about Australian wine “with the bouquet of an Aborigine’s armpit.” No one got the joke; the agency was ripped! Suffice it to say, we lost that buy too.

  Norm Winer sheepishly accepted a small amount of responsibility for Laquidara’s Monty Python fixation. When he had returned to WBCN in ’71, the new program director brought the first album from that British comedy troupe home with him from Montreal, where Monty Python’s Flying Circus was a popular show on Canadian television, but would not air in America for another three years. “WBCN was famous for playing bits off of every comedy and spoken word album of the time,” he recalled. “Joe Rogers, in particular, had memorized all of them: Fireside Theater, Congress of Wonders, Conception Corporation and the Credibility Gap. We’d play a spoken word bit between songs; it was a punch line that would add another level to the audio entertainment.” The DJS loved the Monty Python record, and listeners seemed to embrace the bizarre humor as well, even though most critics seemed baffled by it. When the British troupe completed its first movie, And Now for Something Completely Different, Winer contacted the management at the Orson Welles Theater in Cambridge to arrange a late-night, WBCN-only screening. “We talked about it on the air and that night the crowd stood around the block.” This gave Monty Python one of its original footholds in America, eventually helping to lead the oddball group to massive success and, even, cultural permanence. Winer related that, later on, the station sponsored a petition drive to prompt WGBH to pick up the television show, “which led to us getting the screening for Monty Python and the Holy Grail [in 1975]. We gave coconuts to each of the BCN listeners who attended: to duplicate the sounds of the horses galloping [in the movie].”

  WBCN enjoyed a long relationship with the Orson Welles, which specialized in independent, art, and foreign film releases. Perhaps the most famous association between the station and the theater was in bringing the 1972 Jamaican classic The Harder They Come to the city. Starring musician Jimmy Cliff, this movie sowed the seeds of a burgeoning island music style known as reggae, which had captivated England in the previous few years but still hadn’t made much of an impression in America. John Brodey became ’BCN’S “initial ambassador,” as he put it, since he vacationed in Jamaica every year and had fallen in love with the beats of the island. “When I was down there, I went to an open-air theater and saw The Harder They Come; I thought it was amazing. That led to a screening and, after that, midnight showings—for years.” Perry Henzell, who wrote and directed the groundbreaking film and compiled its influential soundtrack, mentioned in a 2001 interview in Jamaica, “It had the second or third longest run in American cinema history in Boston at the Orson Welles Theater. It played in this one theater for seven years straight.” The movie showed viewers the unvarnished reality of the Trenchtown slums but also introduced the novel reggae beat and some of the musicians that played it, including Jimmy Cliff, the Maytals, and Desmond Dekker. Norm Winer recalled, “When Jimmy Cliff finally came to Boston to play, we arranged to bring him over to the Orson Welles.” As the midnight showing of The Harder They Come was ending, Winer and friends led the star quietly through a door and into the darkness of the theater. “Then, when the lights came up, Jimmy Cliff was standing there in person, wearing that T-shirt with the star in it that he wore throughout the film. It blew people’s minds! It was so damn cool.”

  “We played every significant artist in the reggae world; it was a vital part of the ’BCN legacy,” Winer emphasized. “For several years we were sure it was going to be the next big musical movement.”

  “Jimmy Cliff and all these reggae artists saw that this was where it was happening,” recalled John Scagliotti. “They saw us playing it and people coming to the clubs to see them, so Boston became this, sort of, center of reggae.” Bob Marley and the Wailers chose the city as a jumping-off point for the 1973 tour, their first extended stateside visit, to support the U.S. release of Catch a Fire on Island Records. Fred Taylor, the booking agent, manager, and eventual owner of Paul’s Mall and the Jazz Workshop on Boylston Street, shook his head in amazement remembering those five nights. “It was the original band with Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, and Bunny Wailer. Reggae had taken off because of The Harder They Come at the theater, and I paid attention to the music because of that. Kenny Greenblatt at ’BCN, who was a gem and one hell of a marketer, had convinced the film company that they should not use the traditional method of print advertising, but, because it was all about the music, put the promotion money into the station.”

  Norm Winer remembered meeting the Rastafarian musicians for the first time: “We were all excited, so we got there in the afternoon when they were setting up. As a peace offering, we brought some stuff to share, to break the ice. We didn’t realize that for Marley, [our joints] were like hors d’oeuvres, so it just never came back around in our little circle. I guess he figured it wasn’t full-sized, it must be just for him.” Sam Kopper was also astounded at the considerable consumption of the Wailers, who continually showed the Boston hippies how it was done.

  I parked my broadcast bus in the alley behind Paul’s Mall and started pulling cables out. On every horizontal surface just outside the stage door, there were multiple roaches just laying around. We’re talking Jamaican-styled roaches that were so full of ganja that you could roll two American joints out of one Bob Marley roach. When the band showed up for sound check and when they started playing—they started smoking! Paul’s Mall had a ceiling only about seven feet high, and in very short order, you couldn’t see from one side of the room to the other. I spent the whole afternoon running around in that . . . air.

  Kopper, though, probably wasn’t “running” very quickly, nor in a straight line.

  Just across Boylston Street in the WBCN studios at the Prudential Tower, John Scagliotti waited to conduct an interview with the band. “Bob Marley and the Wailers were walking around, hanging out. Most people didn’t know who these musicians were yet, so nobody was really impressed, but I was just ga-ga. I thought it was the greatest thing that they were there. They came into the production room, which was the size of a little closet, and there was Bob and, I think, three Wailers, so it was pretty crowded. As soon as they sat down, all of them pulled out these huge spliffs, like cigars, and they lit ’em up.” The newsman realized with a shock that anyone strolling by on the Prudential Skywalk could gaze right in through the picture windows, so he whirled around and whipped the curtains closed. “Then the room became filled, I mean, completely filled, with smoke. There was no way the air system could take it out fast enough. They didn’t even offer me a hit, but I didn’t need it! I was totally stoned.” Scagliotti did the interview and obtained quite a scoop, considering how famous and important Marley would become in the future. “I brought them out of the room, and I tried to introduce them to people, but I was falling all over the place, out of my mind. They left and I came back in the studio [to listen to the playback] and I realized I hadn’t hit the record button! I can laugh about it now. It was the best interview—ever, but you’ll jus
t have to believe me.”

  Even as critics questioned the wisdom of moving the hippie radio commune into the ivory tower of the “Pru,” the station thrived in the midst of a most inspired phase. The breadth of music heard on the air rivaled that of any FM rock station of the time, and the many live concert broadcasts the station presented from 1971 to 1975 demonstrated that diversity. There was blues from Canned Heat and the reggae of Bob Marley, while former Frank Zappa band member Lowell George and his new outfit Little Feat brought the funk/rock. Fred Taylor remembered others: “We did Randy Newman, and a Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show broadcast from Paul’s Mall that almost put WBCN off the air. Ray [Sawyer] was the main vocalist; he had the patch over one eye, and he used the f-word like it was a conjunction!”

  WBCN visits James Taylor and Carly Simon at their house in 1976. Note: that’s Tommy Hadges stylin’ in the white pants. Courtesy of the Sam Kopper Archives.

  Then there was the R & B–infused rock and roll poetry of a young singer/songwriter/guitarist out of New Jersey. Bruce Springsteen was a barely known entity outside of Asbury Park, but his determined gigging up and down the East Coast had slowly built a small following. Once his debut album, Greetings from Asbury Park, NJ, came out in January 1973, Springsteen played Boston relentlessly. Just a few days after the album release, he was in town for a full week of concerts at Joe’s Place and Paul’s Mall, stopping in at WBCN with members of his E Street Band to do an interview and unplugged performance on Maxanne’s show. The assembly played six songs including “Blinded by the Light” from his album and a cover of Duke Ellington’s “Satin Doll,” utilizing guitar, accordion, and even a tuba. Although Maxanne never mentioned this interview as being a peak moment in her career, Springsteen’s eventual superstardom and the impassioned legion inspired by his music and lyrics would fondly elevate this amiable visit to iconic status. However, a year later, Springsteen’s second rendezvous on Maxanne’s show would be the one recorded and “bootlegged” on vinyl and CD with such frequency that it became one of the most highly sought-after broadcasts ever conducted. Even today, the April 1974 appearance is readily accessible from Internet sites. The visit, much the same as the first, utilized players from the E Street Band in a rollicking and informal acoustic performance. Once again the assembly did a half dozen songs including “Fourth of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)” and “Rosalita” from Springsteen’s second album The Wild, The Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle. The unique and hilarious performance of the latter is easily one of the most memorable nine minutes in WBCN’S entire history.

  Then there was hard rock, best exemplified by a scruffy and pimply local band named Aerosmith, which released its first album the same day Bruce Springsteen released his. “The first person ever to play our record was Maxanne, who was on ’BCN in the afternoons,” Steven Tyler mentioned in the band’s biography Walk This Way. Maxanne involved herself deeply with the Boston music scene, loved the hard bluesy rock of Aerosmith, and persistently championed the group to Norm Winer and the other jocks. Nevertheless, everyone missed the appeal of a band that channeled the Yardbirds, James Brown, and the Jeff Beck Group. “I refused to let Maxanne play Aerosmith in the beginning,” Winer confessed, “I thought they were too derivative. But, of course, she was right.” The program director decided to let ’BCN’S listeners be judge and jury, and then admitted defeat when all the positive reaction on the phones just blew him away. Winer even green-lighted a live broadcast of the band from Paul’s Mall on 23 April 1973. That show, which featured songs from the debut album, plus some covers, showed the WBCN staff what Maxanne had sensed all along: this was a terrific live act and one that the station should invest in. Some of the folkies on the air staff might not have liked Aerosmith all that much, but any group that took a serious crack at “Mother Popcorn” by James Brown had to deserve some respect.

  In August 1975, WBCN’S first serious challenge from another radio station abruptly shouldered its way onto the FM radio dial. Previously known for playing innocuous elevator music, WCOZ began broadcasting an automated selection of album-rock favorites from The Who, the Eagles, and Rolling Stones among others. In short order, the owners at Blair Radio hired some talented radio personalities to fill out the schedule. These new challengers emulated the format and personas established by ’BCN’S veterans, speaking conversationally and concentrating on younger lifestyle issues, but sharply reducing the variety of the music selections played. Not unlike the AM Top 40 approach, though not as extreme, the station installed a format that whittled down the available library to just the most appealing tracks, as determined by requests and market research. Andy Beaubien, who would later work as a DJ and program director at the new station, commented about its arrival: “We didn’t take ’COZ very seriously. To be perfectly honest, we had a superior attitude, which was endemic at ’BCN. We were kind of elitist: ‘They’re nothing compared to us; we’re the originals, we’re the best.’”

  “We were certainly aware of what they were doing, but we felt it was most important to perpetuate what it was that ’BCN represented,” Tommy Hadges observed. “Maybe we were naive in the beginning; we didn’t know how much impact [’COZ] would eventually have in the marketplace.”

  Indifference to the new challenger soon led to a grudging awareness. Almost immediately, WCOZ had an impact on the veteran station as listeners who might not enjoy the many colors of the musical palette suddenly had an alternative to switch to. A rock music fan who would have remained listening to WBCN while Old Saxophone Joe segued from the Stones into a Sonny Rollins saxophone piece could now flip the dial to find “Won’t Get Fooled Again” on ’COZ. It was such a dramatic incursion that by mid-1977, WBCN’S Arbitron rating stood at 1.7, while its chief tormentor had stomped to a 4.6. “The downhill thing for me was the whole ’COZ thing and the ratings that they got,” bemoaned Al Perry. “Maybe we needed to clean up our act a little bit, but traditionally, in the history of radio it happens a lot: someone comes along, beats the big guy up for awhile, the big guy makes adjustments, stays the course and people come back.” But the general manager was constantly kept under pressure by Mitch Hastings, who, despite his frail appearance and absent-minded behavior, became surprisingly irritated and tenacious. “Mitch wasn’t a stand still kind of guy. He kept saying, ‘There’s something wrong, there’s something wrong.’ I said, ‘We just have to stay the course.’ But, he didn’t want to stay the course; he kept the pressure up until finally I said, ‘I can’t do this, it’s too much.’”

  Al Perry’s departure marked a sea change for WBCN. Then there was another serious blow: Norm Winer, who had presided over the circle of DJS for five years, also decided to move on. “I was personally disenchanted with some of the stuff [going on] in Boston, given the ideals of the time. The school bussing thing really disturbed me; Boston had been a horribly racist place in previous generations, and we thought we had escaped that. My girlfriend of many years split and my home in Concord was empty with me being the only one living there. That was all part of my general disenchantment.” When Winer received an offer to replace the morning man at KSAN-FM in San Francisco, he pounced. But, as critical as were the double departures of Perry and Winer, fate hammered a third stake into WBCN’S heart in ’76 when Charles Laquidara completed his final show and quietly skipped town. Particularly hard to accept, by those who knew the truth, was that the host of “The Big Mattress” was not jumping ship to another radio station but leaving to embrace the new love of his life: “I was heavily into cocaine, and the show was getting in my way,” Laquidara remembered matter-of-factly. The official excuse at the time was that the DJ was leaving to pursue his passion for acting full time. “Yeah, that’s because I couldn’t tell everyone I wanted to go off and do cocaine for the rest of my life. But, when I left, I literally told friends, ‘I know this [is] going to kill me, but it’s such a great way to die!’ That’s how much I loved it.” When Laquidara came in for his last broadcast, only a few people had a clue that it was the
end. He had prerecorded the last two hours of the “Mattress” the day before. “When I started the show, I announced to everybody I was leaving. I did the first couple hours live, then I started the tape, and just walked out. I was through with radio for the rest of my life, and I was on my way to Vermont.”

  As Laquidara drove west on Route 2, further and further from the station that had made him famous, away from a stunned group of coworkers and thousands of surprised listeners, he focused with delight on his new, if impulsive, freedom. Seduced by the taste of a new relationship, an obsession that would most likely kill him, the ex-morning announcer bopped blissfully along, tugging on a big, fat joint and listening to the car radio the whole way out to the northern interstate, even as the fringes of static began to grow and grow. Then, as the roach cooled in the ashtray and the car whizzed past the pines along Route 91 north, no amount of fiddling with the knobs on the radio could prevent the atmospheric noise from completely crowding out any trace of 104.1 in Boston. But by that point, Laquidara wasn’t even trying.