Radio Free Boston

by Carter Alan

  Peter Wolf’s Houseparty! Taking over the ’BCN airwaves in the name of rock and roll with “the platters that matter!” Photo by Mim Michelove.

  Charles Laquidara, Ken Shelton, and Mark Parenteau had settled into every weekday for most of the decade; Tami Heide now handled nights beginning at six; Bradley Jay, at ten; and Albert O rode the a.m. hours from two until “The Big Mattress” crew once again tumbled in before dawn. “Weekend warriors” included former newsman Steven Strick (who had returned after four years to be a jock), Lisa Traxler (a ballsy midwestern admirer who had driven east unannounced to pitch Oedipus on a ’BCN gig), Shred (a dedicated local-music fanatic), Peter Choyce (known for his off-beat graveyard-shift witticisms), and “Metal Mike” Colucci (who produced Tony Berardini’s “Heavy Metal from Hell” program). I became the station’s full-time music director, replacing Bob Kranes, and trading my regular weeknight shift for a single one on Saturdays. The music meetings, fueled by our prevailing idealism to use this marvelous vehicle to turn people onto new sounds, continued. In Oedipus’s case, he had a weakness for female artists (Tami Heide dubbed them “Oedi’s Women in Pain”—and it stuck); Kathryn Lauren (who did nights for three years) loved any novelty record (“spastic plastic” is what she called them); Albert O might pitch a Robin Hitchcock single; Bradley, his eternal favorite Bowie; or I might be arguing for the new Big Country or the Alarm cut. Collectively, we actually liked it all (well, maybe not Kingdom Come—everyone hated them). “’BCN was fun and craziness, and a lot of political content too,” Lisa Traxler remarked, “but music was an important part of the triad. Everybody, no matter what they might disagree on, had tremendous respect for the music, and musicians.”

  Tony Berardini, handling the business in his pressure-cooker general manager position, let off steam during his weekend “Heavy Metal from Hell” program. “Metallica came to the show in 1988 during the ‘Monsters of Rock’ tour; that was very cool. My favorite moment, though, was when Lemmy from Motorhead came up to be guest DJ. I figured he’d play all heavy stuff and Hawkwind, but all he wanted to spin was Motown!”

  “Guns and Roses were in town playing the Paradise,” Metal Mike remembered. Hired to the Listener Line in ’86, he was filling in for Berardini on the air a few years later. “They had what they called a preshow press conference, which consisted of Axl and the guys pouring drinks in Stitches—the front room of the Paradise. I had just turned eighteen and Duff poured me a sixteen-ounce beer glass of vodka, then added just a touch of orange juice. This was three o’clock in the afternoon! Before I knew it, the ‘Dise show was on; it was like a freight train running through the neighborhood.”

  “It was always the bands whose music I liked the least who turned out to be some of the nicest people ever,” Tami Heide said. “Like Styx. They were so cool. Brad Delp from Boston, God rest his soul, he was the nicest person you’d ever want to meet. So I’d feel bad about not liking their music. But then I’d psychoanalyze it and think, ‘Well, maybe their music does suck, and they have to overcompensate by being really, really nice!’”

  Boston introduces Third Stage on WBCN in 1987. (From left to right) David Sikes (from Boston), Tami Heide, Kathryn Lauren, Brad Delp (of Boston), and Larry “Chachi” Loprete. Photo by Mim Michelove.

  “I remember Brian Wilson when he came to the station,” offered Albert O. “Brian was kind of fragile and had all of these handlers with him. He excused himself and went to the bathroom . . . and he didn’t come out. The handlers were all pacing because they didn’t have the balls to go in and interrupt him. He didn’t come out for forty-five minutes!”

  “I was supposed to do a backstage interview with Stevie Nicks,” mentioned Steve Strick. “She walked in the room in a bathrobe with curlers in her hair, a little disoriented. ‘Where are we now honey?’ ‘We’re in Boston,’ I told her. ‘What station?’ I showed her the WBCN emblem on the microphone and she said, ‘Oh honey, I can’t read that; you’re gonna have to write it bigger.’ So Bill Hurley, the Atlantic Records guy, took out a Sharpie and wrote ‘WBCN BOSTON’ in huge letters across the wall! That’s how the interview began; then she just went off on Fleetwood Mac and how pissed off she was at Mick Fleetwood.”

  “Getting to meet Johnny Rotten Lydon was really cool,” Heide offered. “We ate sushi with him and his wife. He swore it wasn’t rice, but worms, in his sushi!”

  “I had a great interview with Ziggy Marley, most of his brothers and sisters and Rita Marley,” Ken Shelton mentioned reverently. “I’d seen Bob live at the Music Hall and I never got to meet him, but to meet his family! I felt like I was in the presence of the family of a god.”

  “Lisa and I kind of kidnapped Sammy Hagar and Eddie Van Halen one night,” Heide recalled. Traxler confirmed the claim: “We gave them a ride back from their show at the ‘BCN-trum’ in a Subaru. It was a pretty wild ride on the Mass Pike; Michael Anthony passed us, driving by at eighty miles per hour, standing up in the sunroof of his white limousine and toasting us with Jack Daniels. It was a total rock star moment, a ‘golden gods’ sort of thing.” She laughed at the memory and continued, “We decided we should do a call-in to the radio station, so we stopped at the Natick rest stop. Eddie walked up to the phones with me and I got Kathryn [Lauren] on the hotline. She immediately cut off the song that was on the air and we did some hijinks on the phone. But nothing happened that night. Suffice it to say, both Eddie and Sammy seemed surprised to have plenty of time on their hands after we dropped them at their hotel.” Traxler chuckled, “We may have planted the seed for the song ‘Finish What You Started.’”

  Late in 1988 Peter Frampton had been booked for an interview with Parenteau, but the star was running late. When a listener called in to report that the guitarist was chirping happily away on the air at KISS-108, even though he was already supposed to be at ’BCN, Parenteau began berating the British star relentlessly on the air. Across town, Frampton finally finished his interview and hurried through the driving rain into his limousine for the twenty-minute ride to WBCN. Instantly the long car filled with a booming voice: “I don’t care if he ever shows up at this point. It’s obvious he considers the disco station in town more important than the rock and roll one.” Frampton looked at his promotion man in disbelief. A couple of songs followed, but then the tirade resumed: “Let’s call him disco Peter, if he ever comes at all!” By the time the limo arrived at WBCN, well over an hour behind schedule, Frampton had already decided not to enter the station. Parenteau continued to whip the affair up into a misadventure of dramatic proportions, goading the artist repeatedly: “Peter Frampton is finally here at BCN—well, he’s actually outside in a limo and he won’t come in!” While the Atlantic Records promo man tried to negotiate a truce and the musician stewed angrily in the car, no one from WBCN even saw him, except for sales secretary (and my future wife) Carrie Christodal, who slipped outside with Ed Maloney, a production assistant, to have their dogeared copies of Frampton Comes Alive signed. There was no sense blaming these two; the star rolled the window down, smiled, and autographed the records.

  A couple of weeks later, Frampton would protest his treatment in a personal letter to Oedipus, lamenting that a friendship with WBCN, which dated back to his Humble Pie days in 1969, had been trashed. Impressed with the star’s candor, Oedipus resolved to bury the hatchet and invited Frampton back whenever possible. But it took five years before the planets aligned and Parenteau stood face-to-face with the guitarist. More than a foot shorter than the towering DJ, Frampton brazenly challenged: “Do you have something to say to me?” I hovered behind the two and prayed that Mark would take the high road. And he did, apologizing and, uh, eating humble pie. After that, all was forgotten as the pair became the best of “show-biz” buddies on the air. Frampton didn’t even get mad when Parenteau busted his balls over the abominable Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band film he did with the Bee-Gees.

  Although WBCN had evolved greatly over the years, the station’s involvement with musicians a
nd artists remained consistent. The “Rock of Boston” concert showcased nine of the city’s premier bands in a “Horizons for Youth” benefit at the Boston Garden on 2 December 1988. Long committed to promoting local music and, when possible, advancing careers to the extent of helping to secure record deals, WBCN celebrated each band’s success story. Punk/R & B shouter Barrence Whitfield and the Savages opened the night, followed by New Man, national hit makers ’Til Tuesday, the Fools (with singer Mike Girard stripping right down to his underwear during the first song), O-Positive, Tribe, Del Fuegos, Extreme (on their way to a platinum future), and Farrenheit closing the show. The Cars’ Greg Hawkes joined Tribe onstage, and singer Eddie Money took a moment before his show across town at the Orpheum to emcee for ’Til Tuesday. This success prompted a second “Rock of Boston” concert in October the following year. Once again a royal flush of A-list local bands, including Scruffy the Cat, performed, but the finale of the night beat the house as the Neighborhoods were joined onstage by the “Brads”: Brad Whitford and Brad Delp, to rock out on a set of their signature Aerosmith and Boston songs, as well as a scorching version of “Communication Breakdown.” The following November, the third annual “Rock of Boston” shifted focus from local talent to an international lineup, attracting ten thousand fans to see, not only the Boston groups Tribe and O-Positive, but also Irish bands the Hothouse Flowers and Something Happens, along with the Call and Masters of Reality.

  There was a great deal of interest in Masters of Reality, a formerly unknown upstate New York band that Ginger Baker, the legendary English drummer of Cream, had joined. I was supposed to help out ’BCN’S production of the show by hustling emcees on and off stage, but then Chachi walked up and told me there was no one available to pick Masters of Reality up at Logan Airport. I drove the Chevy Lumina (the same, lame, rear-wheel drive van that got stuck at all our ski events) down the Garden’s long back ramp and over to the airport. After a short wait at the curb, the scruffy rock group tumbled out of the terminal and jammed noisily into the back of the van, Ginger Baker claiming the seat directly behind mine. While pulling out onto the access road, I could see the drummer’s toothy wreck of a smile as he fixed my face in the rearview and said something completely unrecognizable in a mutated Cockney. I found myself wondering why this iconic musician hadn’t taken some of the considerable royalties he must have made from Wheels of Fire back in ’68 and repaired the few choppers left in his mouth. Perhaps Baker read my mind, because he started to mess with me. As we raced through the Sumner Tunnel, with the cement wall flashing past to the right, and cars whizzing by just to the left, the drummer reached forward and put his hands directly in front of my eyes! “Ahhhhh! What are you doing?! You trying to kill us?” I screamed.

  “Ha, ha, ha,” he guffawed in return, like some demented Sasquatch, and then yanked his gigantic paws away after a few seconds. In a morbidly perverse way, the only thing I could think about as we popped out of the tunnel and flashed past the North End to the Garden was how I could have made “Random Notes” in Rolling Stone. With my luck, though, the story would have been ironically titled “DJ Perishes as Rock Legend Survives Fiery Crash.”

  By 1991’s “Rock of Boston” concert, ’BCN had completely filled the Boston Garden with a bill that included Ray and Dave Davies of the Kinks, Foreigner, Brad Delp’s new band RTZ, the Smithereens, and Boston’s own Raindogs. The following year’s Garden concert, number 5, featured the Spin Doctors, Michael Penn, Material-issue, and WBCN’S own foppish rock band of employees, the Stools (fronted by the Big Mattress’s master writer and resident dry wit Lance Norris). Sales lagged behind expectations at first, but that situation abruptly changed when WBCN added a newcomer named Phish to the bill. The Vermont band’s active network of fans had quietly gained such numbers and passion that, to everyone’s amazement, the concert sold out within hours. Of course, that pattern would become typical; Phish filled up any place the band members chose to play during a long and acclaimed career. Jeffrey Gaines provided a highlight for WBCN listeners when Mark Parenteau surprised the singer as he walked offstage after his set and down the corridor to his dressing room. With wireless microphone in hand and live on the air, the DJ congratulated Gaines, who stopped on a stairway cradling an acoustic guitar, his shirt soaked through with sweat. Suddenly, the singer burst into song, crying out a rendition of “In Your Eyes.” His version of the Peter Gabriel hit had become a runaway success story on WBCN, and the powerful delivery from the steps, echoing dramatically in the cinderblock-enclosed space, was captured by Parenteau, who held the microphone as steadily as possible till his arm turned blue and the hairs on everyone’s arms stood at attention.

  Backstage pass for the “Rock of Boston” concert, 1992. Phish packs the Garden. From the author’s collection.

  Live broadcasts of bands, a tradition since the earliest days, increased in frequency as the station presented classic performances from artists like John Hiatt, the Alarm, Bad Company, Lenny Kravitz, Little Feat, Iggy Pop, Sinead O’Connor, and Georgia Satellites. A broadcast series originating from Newbury Sound, across the street from WBCN, showcased local music and emerging national acts live on the air. By the end of the eighties, WBCN’S engineering department had mastered the technology to pull of remote check-ins from just about anywhere in New England. When Great Woods, the outdoor arena in Mansfield, opened in 1986, the techies installed a permanent broadcast area backstage, just yards from the musicians’ dressing rooms. The space also housed the venue’s washer/dryer combination, which endlessly laundered sweaty stage outfits and soiled towels. If one listened closely, many of those backstage interviews included the sounds of a squeaky rotating drum and thumps of heavy clothes or the occasional pair of sneakers in the background.

  The Great Woods’ local crew and some bands themselves often utilized the laundry room/broadcast studio, located just a few yards behind the stage. This led to some surprises, as when Van Halen marched into Mansfield for a show in 1993. When the ’BCN technical crew arrived, they discovered that their broadcast area had been commandeered and transformed into a huge pyrotechnics supply depot. “No, no, no! You absolutely cannot be in there,” the band’s stage manager yelled. Protests were lodged with Tom Bates, Don Law’s captain on the ground, and WBCN struck a deal with the reluctant visitors. Only under the watchful eyes of Van Halen’s crew, who would have shared the ride to the hereafter if a mishap occurred, was the ’BCN team permitted to check in live, amidst a potentially lethal amount of flash pot ammunition and explosive charges piled high in boxes all around them. Needless to say, neither Sammy Hagar nor Eddie Van Halen could be enticed to do an interview from the powder keg.

  It didn’t get any bigger than Foxboro Stadium, the home of the New England Patriots, and WBCN broadcast live from the venue on Aerosmith’s 1986 “Back in the Saddle” tour; for U2 the following year; from 1988’s “Monsters of Rock” show; for a pair of Who reunion shows in ’89; on three wintery nights that same year with the Rolling Stones on the “Steel Wheels” tour; and at Paul McCartney’s return to the stage in 1990. John Mullaney, hired as a broadcast specialist for dozens of remotes, mentioned, “At Foxboro, we put a transmitter in a golf cart and sent the signal up to the press box where we placed the equipment to hook into the phone lines back to the city.” No longer tethered exclusively to backstage phone lines, WBCN’S jocks now roved freely through the parking lots at Great Woods and Foxboro in full view of its tailgating audience. As soon as concertgoers realized that the vehicle closing in on them did not contain security personnel or police but instead sported a WBCN logo and conspicuous antennae array, a sea of people would surge forth to greet the radio envoys. “Once the people got in front of you, you were kind of done, ’cause you couldn’t run them over!” Mullaney laughed. Like a political candidate wading into a forest of campaign supporters, they found themselves completely inundated. “Hey ’BCN! Can we go on the aaaaair?” “Want a hamburger?” Broadcast producer Jefferson Ryder remembered, “Golf cart
s were never designed for this; three radio guys, two hours, and one objective: get real fan interviews and get out alive!” Ryder dubbed one particular section of the Foxboro parking lots “The Gauntlet,” because of its triangular shape and difficult traverse. The cars parked there had to be arranged in rows that rapidly pinched closer and closer, constraining forward progress. “You couldn’t go zooming through there, so people would just crush in around you,” Mullaney added. “Plus I think they parked those folks in there first, so they were a lot more inebriated than the rest of the audience!”

  Broadcasting live from “Monsters of Rock,” Foxboro Stadium, 1988. The WBCN remote crew hangs with Van Halen. Notice how each member of the band has to have a radio lady next to them (it’s in the rider). Courtesy of WBCN.

  Although none of the merrymakers at WBCN knew it, this was their last chance to drink up, metaphorically speaking, because other partygoers were about to crash the open bar. The first significant and dangerous challenge came from WZLX-FM, a station that signed on the air in October 1985 with a brand-new format playing “Classic Hits.” Their rationale was that a large number of listeners had grown up on the rock songs of the sixties and seventies, and were unhappy with the recent MTV-spawned Top 40 dance fare, like Duran Duran, or the blight of “hair band” metal. This proved to be an inspired guess, and WZLX experienced immediate acceptance and rapid growth. Billboard magazine reported that in January through March 1986, which would have been the first complete ratings period with the new format, the station had blasted off from a number of 3.1. to an impressive 5.0 share in all listeners over the age of twelve. In men eighteen years and older, WZLX raised eyebrows by jumping from a 3.9 share to a striking 6.9. In only five months, the groundbreaking “Classic Hits” station stood second in rank to WBCN in the important “men 25–54” demo. Billboard continued, “WZLX program director Bill Smith says his station’s Arbitron gains have been achieved at WBCN’S expense. ‘We’re delighted with the results,’ he says. ‘We have so many people calling the station who admit they switched from WBCN.’” At first, there was little reaction at “The Rock of Boston,” although Oedipus did experiment with the term “vintage” in labeling ’BCN’S own heritage music selections. That didn’t resonate with the station’s listeners, though, so the imaging term was soon dropped.