Radio Free Boston

by Carter Alan

  Throughout the day from 6:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., WBCN featured interviews and news segments from political leaders and also debuted “Sun City,” the controversial single put together by Little Steven (Steve Van Zandt) of the E Street Band, aided by ’BCN alumnus, Danny Schechter. The single urged musicians to boycott the popular South African resort town where Western rock bands regularly performed. Steven took time out to be the station’s guest, explaining the genesis of “Sun City,” which featured a cavalcade of stars including Bruce Springsteen, Lou Reed, Bono, Peter Wolf, Jackson Browne, and many other supporters of the cause. Abel was delighted that the station rolled with her idea and that people embraced it: “I don’t believe that someone driving around Hudson in a truck was deeply upset about South Africa as I was, necessarily, but I did get enough feedback from listeners to know that they liked and really respected the fact that we cared so much.”

  “From a programming standpoint, it stood out from everybody in the market, and it was a good thing to do because, who’s for racism?” Tony Berardini pointed out. “My thought was that this was very similar to what we did when John Lennon was assassinated: we went commercial free, and it created a bond between our listeners and the radio station. It seemed like the thing that ’BCN would do.”

  “To their credit, Tony and Oedi took it to Mel Karmazin, rather than tell me to ‘go back to the newsroom, you crazy person!’” Abel laughed. “I don’t think that Mel gave a shit about the causes that we were embracing, but he was probably an astute-enough businessman to allow Tony and Oedipus to talk him into cancelling commercials.” Well, yes, but not exactly. Berardini lamented,

  I didn’t make the connection that there was a slight difference in the amount of money involved in going commercial free in 1980 than there was in 1985. Like, a lot of money! The sales department was all up in arms, and my phone rang. It was Mel: “Let me get this straight, you’re going commercial free all day?”

  “Yeah!”

  “How are you going to make up the revenue? If I were the general sales manager, I’d be sitting there saying, ‘You screwed me out of my bonus! Now I’m not going to make my numbers because Tony took all the spots off the air!’”

  Berardini chuckled at the memory, which certainly at the time wasn’t quite so humorous. “One of Mel’s phrases was particularly applicable to the situation. He said, ‘Tony? If you want me on the plane when it crashes, make sure I’m on it when it takes off!’ In other words, ‘Give me a heads-up, because I’ll help you.’ He never told Oedi and me what to do with programming at the station, other than saying, ‘Don’t lose the license!’ So, I told him I’d figure the sales problem out.” Commercial rates being set as they were by time slot, the reality was that any spots removed from the daytime hours could not be made up during the overnights; they had to be played in a concurrent position on another day. “So, I went to Oedipus and told him, ‘We’re doubling the spot load for next week!’” Berardini grinned dryly, “Of course, he was thrilled.”

  Although WBCN’S newscasts were constantly under the knife, the “Boston Sunday Review” (BSR) continued, largely unchanged, for the entire decade. “When I took over the BSR, I recall it being a very free-form show,” Matt Schaffer pointed out, “but what I did was set up a structure to it. There were features on the half hour, newscasts at specific times . . . a combination of live [segments] and recorded interviews.” Abel often worked in a cohost situation with Schaffer but admitted, “For the most part, it was always his show.” When they did collaborate, there was tension: “We were like siblings, fighting a little because we were so different. The dynamic between the two of us was always funny; Matt was all about culture and I was all about politics, and we were constantly butting heads. He’d want to have the Spenser for Hire guy on while I wanted to spend an hour talking about trilateralism or something.” The pair quickly established themselves as master interviewers, facing an extraordinarily diverse collection of heroes and villains on the show. Schaffer mentioned just some of them: “Robert Ludlum, Sting, Allen Ginsberg cursing on the air, Bette Midler, John Houseman was a fabulous interview, Frank Herbert, Robert B. Parker, Erica Jong, Alex Haley, Clive Barker, Julia Child, and some of the most famous chefs of the day.” Schaffer also interviewed Andy Warhol for the BSR: “It was one of the worst interviews of my life!” he moaned. [Warhol] didn’t really talk that much. I think that’s the kind of person he was; he just took on what people wanted him to be.” Sixties icon Timothy Leary also visited Schaffer: “Oh, he was crazy, but smart. He was less a person that dwelt in the past and [more] one who was very much involved in the present. It wasn’t like I took him through his life [in the interview]; he came in because he had some sort of consciousness-raising software that he was [introducing].”

  “I think we interviewed Ronald Reagan’s entire cabinet,” Abel estimated. “That’s something Matt gets a lot of credit for because he developed relationships with publishers. We got all these big names interviews coming through town: whether it was Alexander Haig, [David] Stockman, or Jimmy Carter. They felt, basically, if you were going to Boston on a book tour, you better do WBCN because they own a certain segment of the audience.” Since a lot of these interviews were taped during the week, it was not uncommon for ’BCN staffers to arrive at the station by day to the sight of unfamiliar figures standing about alertly, hidden behind sunglasses, with small coils of wire running out of unobtrusive earpieces and disappearing into conservative dark suits. When one of the two doors into the air studio opened occasionally, perhaps as a Listener Line volunteer walked in or out, a high-decibel shriek of music followed them, buffeting the Secret Service agents as they swept the station for dissidents, bomb-making materials, or perhaps those sensitive files Danny Schechter had “misplaced” back in 1971.

  In a significant collaboration between the news and music departments at the station, WBCN signed on to broadcast the daylong “Live Aid” concert from London and Philadelphia in July 1985. Organized by Bob Geldof on the heels of his successful holiday benefit single “Do They Know It’s Christmas,” the worldwide concert telethon was devoted to famine relief for a starving multitude in Ethiopia. Although the presence and performances from the era’s biggest stars (Paul McCartney, Queen, and Elton John) and reunions of past legends (Led Zeppelin, The Who, and Black Sabbath) made the on-air commitment palatable from a programming standpoint, the unvarnished messages of alarm expressed on behalf of the Africans were certainly disturbing. Nevertheless, the day became a momentous and compelling event during which any concerns about ratings points were rendered insignificant as, not only WBCN, but also radio stations around the world, lent their airwaves to help mitigate a human disaster.

  I ended up doing commentary from Wembley Stadium for WBCN via telephone, which at the time was not as easy as it sounds. International callers still had to ring up an overseas operator to get through to the States, and since this was way before cell technology had become common, utilizing one of the sparse phone booths in the stadium was necessary. Fortunately, I was able to avoid the long lines by compensating a janitor (a trusting bloke) to use the telephone in his office. Thanks to U2, I had a fantastic seat in the press section, about a third of the way back from the stage. Just before the concert began with a performance from Status Quo, the entire Wembley audience suddenly wheeled in my direction to look at . . . me? “Hey everyone, wave to the visiting Yank!” I basked in the fantasy for two seconds and then realized that Prince Charles and Lady Diana had arrived and taken their seats about forty feet away. Of course, every time I tell the story, they get a couple feet closer.

  The effort to decry racism, begun with “Commercial Free for a Free South Africa” in 1985, became the last, great advocacy campaign from the news department at WBCN. It continued into 1988, when the station made national headlines with “Shellshock,” a monthslong protest over Shell Oil’s continuing practice of doing business with South Africa. Charles Laquidara asked listeners to cut up their Shell Oil credit cards a
nd send them in to him as a protest against apartheid. “Let’s get the Shell out of South Africa!” became the rallying cry. For nearly half a year the crusade continued, and even though Shell did not stop doing business with the apartheid government, “Shellshock” achieved a great deal by adding numbers to the voices of protest. However, even with this encouragement, the process of paring down the percentage of news on WBCN continued. “This transition was occurring as part of a much bigger transition in the industry,” Abel observed without bitterness. “I don’t think you can point fingers at individuals at the station who were somehow unable to hold back the tide.” There were, however, a couple of big hurrahs left for the news department, as Sherman Whitman, hired five years earlier as a reporter for “Big Mattress,” took over many of Abel’s duties when she exited in early 1989. It would be Whitman’s pleasure to see the dramatic completion of the work Abel had fostered but also his sadness to witness the end of WBCN’S legacy as a game changer in the area of local news reporting.

  WBCN traveled through the eighties with a couple of powerful positioning slogans: “The Rock of Boston” and “Your Number 1 Rock and Roll Connection,” the latter dispensed in dozens of variations such as “Your Number 1 Concert Connection,” “Your Aerosmith Connection,” “Your Springsteen Connection,” and so forth. Ironically, it was Clark Smidt, WBCN’S former adversary at WCOZ, who coined the phrase “Your Number 1 Rock and Roll Connection.” “I became a broadcast advisor/consultant at the time, and Tony hired me for 1,500 bucks to work on a slogan. That’s what I narrowed it down to and they loved it.” The image of a Fender Stratocaster headstock and part of its severed neck, sometimes with strings dangling, became the iconic logo of the station throughout the eighties. Plastered liberally on billboards, on bumper stickers, and in magazines, the use of the guitar indisputably identified WBCN as Boston’s home for rock and roll. Since the image also showed that an instrument had been shattered, or was in the process of being destroyed, it implied that the station lived its life boldly, like a guitar poised in midflight over Pete Townshend’s head rather than one hanging safe and sound on the wall of some music shop. With that in mind, many of the ideas that emerged from the WBCN promotions department around this time involved attitude, altitude, gravity, and motion.

  David Bieber and assistant Larry “Chachi” Loprete built their department into a formidable instrument through a thick Rolodex of contacts, an informal “think tank” atmosphere and the spirit of adventure. “We had weekly promotions meetings, and we did go for outrageous things,” Bieber recalled. The idea emerged from one of those brainstorming sessions to hold a chancy, but certainly ear-catching, event in conjunction with Elek-tra Records to promote the newest release from the Cars. “We put Mark Parenteau in a car, suspended by a crane, over the Charles River. He did a live broadcast from up there and [then] we gave away the car. We did not clear it with OSHA or anyone else; we just rolled the dice.”

  “The wireless mike really gave us the freedom to try stuff like that,” Parenteau recalled, with a laugh. “The car sat on a platform of wood with cables attached to the four corners; then the crane hoisted us up. I was sure that if the wind picked up enough to cock me at a forty-five-degree angle, the car would just roll off the platform like a bunch of tacos off a plate!” Another hairbrained idea led to Parenteau broadcasting live while riding the legendary wooden rollercoaster at Paragon Park on Nantasket Beach (before it closed down in 1984). “They duct-taped the wireless mike to my arm so I could hold onto the coaster car while it was flying down the track. I just remember getting to the top of the big drop-off, and when we dropped, I began yelling, what I think is, the longest expletive ever broadcast on the radio anywhere: ‘FFFFFUUUUUUUUUUU . . .’” Parenteau chuckled, then added, “But, you know, that might have actually been legal, because I never completed the c or the k; it was just one long “FFFFFUUUUUUUUUUU . . .’ while the car was coming down that hill!”

  Although ’BCN’S afternoon DJ had not been forced to escape a car that was rapidly sinking into the (still highly polluted) Charles River, nor been tossed hundreds of feet from the “Giant Coaster” on the South Shore, the promotions department did begin dropping other objects intentionally. Larry Loprete said, “This was like the early days of David Letterman’s show, when he would drop stuff off his roof.”

  “We would get a tie-in with a client to do a live broadcast,” Mark Par-enteau explained, “and people would come out of the woodwork to see a five-hundred pumpkin slam into the ground!”

  “At Ernie Boch’s on Route 1, a helicopter flew in, picked up a giant pumpkin, and dropped it out of a net,” Loprete laughed. “Try to do that today with the FAA! Then, the Norwood Chief of Police called us saying that we’d never be allowed to drop anything in the city again because all of Route 1 had been totally backed up. Ernie Boch, obviously, loved it!” The pumpkin drops typified WBCN’S penchant for the extreme, and in an overinflated, multicolored “I Want My MTV” era with big, poofy hairstyles, zillion-zippered parachute pants, pompous shoulder pads, Flashdance leg warmers, and heavy-metal makeup, “outrageous” scored points. But was it that much different from packing a lunch to go see wing-walking barnstormers at the local airport back in the twenties? People have always loved spectacle, and this was about as big and unusual (and stupid) as it got. Hundreds, even thousands, of WBCN listeners and curious onlookers would be swept up in the delirious moment, excitedly watching an approaching helicopter or a fully extended crane lift its doomed cargo to the heavens. There was the obligatory on-air buildup . . . wait for it, wait for it . . . the release . . . the booming “Thud” and “Splat!” . . . then the perimeter would collapse as dozens of people rushed toward the pulpy mass, reaching in and tugging out armfuls of the gooey innards. As Mark Parenteau ad-libbed the play-by-play for each vegetable assassination, listeners at home or work couldn’t possibly step away from the radio. Why? Just because it was a ’BCN happening, and who did that sort of thing?

  Dropping the Great Pumpkin! Parenteau and Chachi ponder the impending pulpy massacre. Photo by Leo Gozbekian.

  The idea of gravity as a promotional tool expanded. “It became the ‘Drop Era’ of ’BCN,” Mark Parenteau chuckled.

  “Oedipus said, ‘Let’s drop a piano,’” Loprete recalled. “I don’t know why we did it; maybe it had something to do with Elton John. We went through several locations and it turned into this weekly thing: ‘Where are we going to drop the piano?’ because each city [we approached] turned us down. The newspapers kept covering it, though, and it became the great piano fiasco. Finally, we dropped it at the Charlie Horse in West Bridgewater.” “I can still remember those final piano chords in my head,” Parenteau chuckled. “It was great, better than the end of the Beatles ‘A Day in the Life.’”

  After warming up on titanic pumpkins and the notorious baby grand, the idea to drop “Wicked Yella,” the WBCN van, was a natural. The vehicle had accumulated well over a hundred thousand miles on its odometer by the end of the decade and was considered a rattling deathtrap after years of faithful service. Tank, for one, was not sorry to see the gaudy, lemon-toned van, with its emblazoned station logo and image of the Sunbeam Girl decorating the side, slated for a final plummet to glory: “That thing used to break down all the time! We used to have to get jumps from the WAAF van in Worcester, and how embarrassing was that?”

  “It was a big Chevy Econoline,” Parenteau remembered. “We took the gas tank out of it and hoisted it up by crane to over three stories high in Norwood. It smashed into the ground with this huge crash and made great radio and [also] great visuals for the newspapers.” To complete the demolition, a three-thousand-pound concrete block was lifted high into the air and dropped squarely onto the van’s roof, before hundreds of spectators rushed in to claim souvenirs.

  “They were just peeling parts off,” Larry Loprete recalled, shaking his head. “I saw one guy walking away with the driver’s side door!”

  “The van drop was one of my fond memorie
s,” Tami Heide reminisced. “But I remember getting a hard time from some listeners because it was a Chevy, and then we got a Toyota as a replacement. ‘U.S.A.! U.S.A.! What are you guys doing?’”

  Perhaps the most famous drop cooked up by the ’BCN promotions department was a pair of ingenious re-creations of the 1978 classic Thanksgiving episode of “WKRP in Cincinnati.” In that renowned television sitcom, staffers at the hapless radio station set up what they thought was a tremendous promotion to drop live holiday turkeys from a helicopter to hungry Ohioans on the streets below. Unfortunately, no one realized, or they forgot, that turkeys possessed only limited flying capabilities, and the poor birds plummeted, one by one, to their deaths. WKRP newsman Les Nessman (actor Richard Sanders) described the action on the air and his cries of excitement quickly turned to ones of alarm, and then panic: “Oh, the humanity!” mixed with his very visual description of turkeys hitting the pavement “like sacks of wet cement.”