Private Parts

by Howard Stern

  I was going to work for the world-famous, first-class National Broadcasting Company. This was my dream come true, I thought. Little did I realize it was more like "Welcome to My Worst Nightmare."

  Pig Virus

  It Sucks at NBC Chapter 6

  I had done it. This was the culmination of all my dreams. This made all the shit I ate in Westchester and Detroit and Washington worth it. I was on my way to New York, the nation's number one market, my hometown. I was the afternoon drive-time air personality for WNBC. I thought back to all those commutes I had made with my dad. Now I was going to be the guy who could come out of your car radio and make that drudgery magical. I was jazzed. I wouldn't be for long.

  There were hints even in the first meeting I had with the NBC people. NBC's management came to Washington to meet with Robin, Fred, and me, and at one point in the meeting they asked Robin and Fred what they would do if they weren't hired by NBC. At the time I ignored it and focused on the positive aspects of the meeting, but later I was to find out that the dickheads at NBC had a systematic plan to break up my morning team. Years later, Bob Sherman, the executive vice-president of the NBC radio stations, admitted to New York magazine that they had developed a strategy to tame me before I even came to New York.

  "We wanted Howard without his aides-de-camp, so he'd be as naked and vulnerable as possible to good management," Sherman said. "Naked and vulnerable" -- this sounds like he's talking about a bondage video. Little did I know that wasn't far from the truth.

  For starters, they did succeed in busting us up. They refused to hire Robin after they told me they would. I assured her that I would keep trying to get them to bring her up, but she got really mad at me and she went back to an all-news station in Baltimore. So it was just Fred and I going to New York, but before we even got there another asshole intervened to make my life miserable. This scumbag also worked for NBC, but he was one of the network's television news talking heads. His name was Douglas Kiker, a name that, to this day, summons up my vomiting reflex.

  This story started in Washington. Douglas Kiker contacted us and said he wanted to do a favorable report on the Howard Stern phenomenon. I thought, "That's cool." I had already done a few good interviews with Charlie Rose for his television show and Kiker's piece was going to appear on "NBC Magazine," which was a national show. Great publicity, I thought. At that time, we were doing a lot of live shows and they decided they'd bring their cameras down to Garvin's comedy club where I was scheduled to do the next one. Those shows were a whole story in themselves. I would come out in a bathrobe and we'd all be sitting behind tables and we'd do our normal morning show in front of an audience of rabid fans.

  So Kiker and his crew came down and filmed us. They interviewed me later. While they were preparing the piece, I signed with NBC radio in New York. Fine. Now Kiker and I were working for the same corporation. A few weeks later, the piece aired. I sat down with Alison to watch it and I couldn't believe what I was seeing. The piece was called "X-Rated Radio" and it started with Kiker saying this:

  What you're about to hear is going to shock you because ifs vulgar, even obscene. A warning: If there are any children in the room you might not want them to watch this report. Ifs X-rated radio, barnyard radio, and there's more and more of it on the air because kids love it.

  That was just the friggin' introduction! I was going out of my mind. Then they went to a close-up of a radio and coming out of that

  radio was the voice of, you guessed it, me! "I hear your pappy is so disgusting that he takes a bubble bath by farting in a mud puddle." Okay, so it was a fart joke. Big fucking deal. But then we saw a hand reach into the frame and shut off the radio; the camera dramatically pulled back and we saw the hand belonged to Douglas Kiker and he was sitting in his living room with a six-month-old baby that looked as if it came from Ivory Soap central casting! Give me a break! And now Kiker spoke again:

  This is my home in Washington. It's secure enough. I've got locks on the windows, locks on t he doors, even an alarm system...

  What's the matter, Dougie? Afraid of the schvartzes breaking in? Show us your Uzi, why don't you, you big jerk.

  . . . What I cannot prevent entering my home are the sounds that come over this radio. The idea for this story originated a few weeks ago when I heard my seven-year-old son, this one's older brother, coming down for breakfast saying the same things you just heard this DJ say.

  Hey, his son was quoting me! He should be thrilled! What's wrong with a seven-year-old kid into fart humor? Is that a crime? Asshole. Okay, then they cut to me on the stage at Garvin's and I was singing "Fifty Ways to Rank Your Mother," to the tune of Paul Simon's "Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover."

  My friends always enjoyed your mom they said to me

  She was so generous, she did so much for free

  Until they found she gave them all a social disease

  There must be Fifty Ways to Rank Your Mother

  Then this jerk Kiker came back:

  His name is Howard Stern. His station is DC-101. He's on the air from six to ten in the morning when grownups are on their way to work and their children are off to school. And he is hot.

  Back to me onstage, singing:

  I heard she's frigid tho' she might just be hard to please But if that's so why does she douche with antifreeze? She says she likes it 'cause it also kills her fleas There must be Fifty Ways to Rank Your Mother

  I liked this song! But Kiker didn't. Then he said that when "word got out" that he was doing this piece, a group of "concerned parents" contacted him and requested to be part of the show. Yeah, right. "Word got out." Who's he kidding? Anyway, they assembled a group of these mutant parents and here's what they had to say about me:

  "I don't consider it humor at all, adult or child. I think it should be completely off the airwaves."

  Oh, this housewife was a comedy critic? And she wanted to ban me from the airwaves? Thank you, Mrs. Hitler.

  "Kids are looking for rock V roll music and they get a guy pandering smut to kids."

  "Kids call in with their own rankouts on mothers and I'm a mother!"

  But my favorite one was this guy:

  "Vietnam at dinnertime was bad enough, but this stuff over my Cocoa Puffs is driving me crazy! It just doesn't need to be there."

  Great, he was comparing me to Vietnam. Who were these people? And what's more important, why were they giving these people so much time to propound their theories when they hardly mentioned the fact that I was number one! People wanted this kind of radio. And you, Kiker, you big jerk, you didn't need bars on your windows. You weren't being invaded by your radio. He sounded like one of Alison's mental patients. IF YOU DON'T LIKE WHAT YOU'RE HEARING, TURN THE FRIGGIN' RADIO OFF!

  The piece went on and they showed some other no-talent disc jockeys in other markets who were doing naughty humor. But the real kicker was the ending to the piece. After they ran the report, Kiker was in the studio:

  That is X-rated radio. And you could be hearing it next in your hometown. This is a story with a little twist to it. While we were in the process of producing this report, Howard Stern was lured away from his Washington radio station by a New York City station which offered him a big increase in salary. That station, you guessed it, is WNBC-AM, which is owned by NBC. Dom Fioravanti, the station general manager, told us that WNBC-AM, and I quote, "is mindful of its responsibility to present programs in accordance with acceptable public taste."

  Great way to start a new job. I couldn't even get the NBC guys in New York to return my phone calls after that piece. That one piece poisoned my entire relationship with NBC for the next three years and all because Douglas Kiker didn't like his son going around telling fart jokes. Man, I was happy when I heard that Kiker kicked the bucket. Big jerk!

  Finally, I got a letter from Dom Fioravanti. He said they were excited about me coming to the station and that my show should blend "satirical, farcical, and absurd comment" to expose "the inconsistencies and hypocrisies inher
ent in certain public standards, mores and norms of conduct." Sounded good. Then he told me what I couldn't do.

  NO

  1. jokes or sketches relating to personal tragedies

  2. slander, defamation, or personal attacks on private individuals or organizations unless they have consented or are a part of the act

  3. jokes dealing with sickness or death

  4. jokes dealing with sexual topics in a lascivious manner

  5. scatological or other "barnyard" type material

  6. ridiculing religion for the sake of ridicule or making fun of the religious faith people may have

  7. use of the so-called seven dirty words

  Great, I was the number one radio personality in Washington, D.C., and these guys had to remind me not to say "fuck" or "cock-sucker" on the air. What was I, a baby? I tell you, they really knew how to make a new employee feel good. And it only got worse.

 

  NBC press photo. I was fat with a bad mustache.

  They had no idea what to do with me, and that was evident from their first advertising campaign. "Howard Stern Returns," they were trumpeting all over. Well, it was true that it was a return because I grew up in New York, but I had never been on the radio there before. Imus was the one who had been in New York then got fired and then came back.

  I was scheduled to go on the air right after Labor Day, 1982, but the station program director, Kevin Metheny, decided he wanted to "test" me out before that. He wanted me to do an overnight stint before my actual afternoon show. First of all, this was totally demeaning. They had hired me away with big bucks from a major market and now they were treating me as if I was a college kid doing an audition. But what was worse, Metheny and Fioravanti kept telling me that I should develop "characters" for my show, just the way "Mr. Imus" had. They sat me down every day and forced me to listen to tapes of Imus's show while they cooed how "brilliant" and "creative" Mr. Imus was.

  It was amazing the way everyone at that station was kissing Imus's ass. And he was doing a lame, tame show with "characters" that were older than me! He had his Reverend Hargis bits, and this stupid Moby Worm routine, which was just his voice put through a synthesizer. The whole bit was that Moby Worm was coming to eat your high school. So he'd warn you a hundred times, "Coming up next hour, Moby Worm is gonna eat Rockville Centre High," and then they finally did the bit and they played a few sound effects and Moby Worm ate your school. No real conversation, nothing innovative, just the same stupid bits over and over. Lazy radio. If I had my preference, I would have come to New York, gone on in the morning, and just beaten the crap out of him.

  I didn't get it. But "Mr. Imus," "the genius," did characters, so

  they wanted me to create characters for my show. I told them a hundred times that I don't do characters. I'm me on my show. But they wouldn't relent. They got me so crazy with this characters stuff that I decided I'd give them a character for that first overnight. As a matter of fact, I did the entire show in character. I was Lance Eluction, a hairdresser who was getting his big break in radio, and Lance was joined on the show that night by his life mate, Bob, who was played by Fred. We were two over-the-top gay guys, thrilled to be on the air.

  Now you have to remember NBC at that time had a Top Forty format. So while I was Lance, the prancing gay guy, I was also doing a parody of the typical Top Forty guys who would do these inane intros to a record right up until the lyrics kicked in. There I was in my falsetto voice, commenting on Andy Gibb's voice: "How does she get up so high, what does she do? Is it the tight leather pants or what? I just got a note from the program director, it says, 'Always say double-u-ennn-b-c' Double-u-ennn-b-c. Ohh."

  That was another thing. The program director, Kevin, whom I started calling Pig Virus because he reminded me of a kid I knew in camp who looked like a stupid porker, would always make me practice saying the call letters. He would come into my office and lie on the floor and make me repeat again and again, "Double-u-ennnnn-b-c." This Pig Virus would just lie there and shake his head and say, "Nope, that's not it. Do it again. You're not doing it like Mr. Imus does it." I wanted to kill that creep, but I later realized that he was just a pawn in this whole game. The NBC brass were putting heavy pressure on him to get me in line and he was just doing his job. But I resented the way he did it with such viciousness. I could never forgive him. So that whole first night I kept moaning "Double-u-ennn-b-c" almost like I was coming.

  Around one in the morning, Fred came up and I put him on the air:

  "Lance Eluction here at double-u-ennn-b-c. I'm here with my friend Bob who just dropped in because when you work here at WNBC, excuse me, it's not WNBC, its double-u-ennn-b-c, when you work here late at night your friends can drop in and the program manager never knows the difference. I'm so glad it's getting late here at double-u-ennn-b-c because I just spoke to the program director of the station and he's going to bed now and we're really going to have some fun as soon as all the network brass and my program

  director go to sleep. I'm going to gargle to all the songs here at double-u-ennn-b-c. THE FUN BEGINS WHEN THE BRASS GOES TO SLEEP. I LOVE IT, DOUBLE-U-ENNN-B-C."

  "It's kinda dry in the studio, don't you think?" Bob said.

  "It is dry, Bob. That's why I'm going to do the gargling thing now. At double-u-ennn-b-c they give you a pitcher of water for the djs."

  "That's so nice."

  "Let's play the next song, and I'm going to gargle over it."

  Fred cued up "Don't You Want Me" by the Human League and I gargled through the song.

  "I gargled the whole song. Pretty funny bit. My tonsils are killing me from this stupid station -- you have to keep talking the whole time. And it's so dry in here."

  "Would you like a neck massage?" Bob asked.

  "Give me a neck massage. Bob's going to give me a neck message. This is the first time I've ever been on the air anywhere. This is sort of an unbelievable story for me. From hairdressing school right to the studio. Double-u-ennn-b-c is the most liberal network in the whole world. Is it marvelous? Only in America. God bless America. God bless double-u-ennnnnn-b-c."

  We went on like that all night. And the reaction was incredible. The switchboard operators at WNBC were so flooded with calls that at one point they actually called upstairs to find out if there was something wrong. They said they never got a response like that before. I was thrilled. We came in the next day and Pig Virus was beet red. He said, in that slimy Southern accent of his, "You ruined us. Do you know how many phone calls we got?"

  "But you guys want characters," I protested. "I did it in character."

  He brought me in front of five other empty suits sitting on a couch, the board of censors, and started telling me what I couldn't do. I was flipping out, because these guys didn't get it at all. They should have been thrilled with the reaction they got. All of a sudden, I was having a flashback to DC-101. I hadn't even started my show yet and these guys were trying to kill me.

  That was the way it was for the next three years. Except for one guy, Randy Bongarten. He came in as general manager and understood what I was doing. These morons had no clue whatsoever and tried to kill my show from day one. Meanwhile, I was desperately trying to reunite my team. I kept nagging and nagging them to

  bring Robin in from Baltimore. They wouldn't do it. Divide and conquer, right? So I started doing my show, in this incredibly restrictive format, and I was on the air a little more than a month and, bingo, I was suspended.

  Again, it was God that got me in trouble. I was dying to do bits on my show but these guys thought the comedy was distracting from the real value of the show: the Trini Lopez and Neil Diamond records I was spinning. But I was able to squeeze in a bit or two an hour between all the music and the double-u-ennn-b-c bullshit. I figured if they wanted characters, I'd give them characters. So I put God back on the air:

  "Okay, now it's time for me to unveil another God video game. You've heard of Donkey Kong, haven't you? Now, are you ready for this? Virg
in Mary Kong."

  "Oh, my God, are you crazy?" I said.

  "The object of the game is Virgin Mary is being chased by all these guys in a Jerusalem singles bar. You have to keep her away from those guys or she won't be the Virgin Mary anymore, if you get my meaning."

  At the end of the bit the Virgin Mother was impregnated by some dude who pushed her up against the wall of a singles bar. Anyway, I thought it was a great skit. I had no idea they'd suspend me for something like that. I was shocked by their reaction. Maybe that's why they call me a shock jock, I am always genuinely shocked by people's reactions to what I do.

  But the suspension was a blessing in disguise. I went to Pig Virus and Fioravanti and told them that I did that bit because Robin wasn't there. She was the one who made sure I didn't do stuff like that. Of course, it was all bullshit. Robin didn't rein me in. Robin's whole thing was after I did something outrageous on the air, she'd go, "Oh, Howard, that's terrible." But they thought bringing Robin in would keep me in line. What was really happening was we were about to go to war and I wanted more troops.

  I'll never forget Robin's introduction to Pig Virus. Her first day at the station, she was just sitting in the studio, getting familiarized. I went on the air, and I was rapping and we were about to go into

  some music and then we heard this loud thud coming from the other engineer's booth. It was really dark in the engineer's booth, so we couldn't see what was happening, but Robin turned to me and said, "What's that?"

  "Oh, I think Kevin just threw the phone at the wall," I said nonchalantly.