Private Parts

by Howard Stern

  We were on a roll. Our ratings were going through the roof. Even Imus started coming around and dropping in on my show. If he wasn't there physically, he would make sure to call in. That was pretty weird since when we first got to NBC, nobody from Imus's show would even deign to talk to any of us. But when some of my bits started showing up on Imus's morning show, I realized why he

  was suddenly my new best friend. He was stealing my act. Suddenly, he was opening the mike, allowing guests to come in, breaking format. But he was so bad at it, it was laughable. He was very threatened by what we were doing. He had to change. It got so bad that Imus started calling up my mother on the air. But she knew how to get rid of him. She told him that he didn't want her for a mother because that would make us brothers.

  Things were almost too good to be true at NBC. In fact, things got so good that Randy got a nice promotion to president of the radio division. To fill his vacated post they brought in a young, clean-cut new general manager from San Francisco. His name was John Hayes. Soon I would know him as the Incubus.

  From the minute Hayes got to NBC, it seemed as if he had one goal in mind: to get his highest-rated, biggest revenue-producing, most creative on-air radio personality fired. We knew we were back in battle mode Hayes's first day when Robin bumped into him after our show was over. She made an offhand comment about how funny the show had been that day and Hayes gave her a look as if he wanted to vomit.

  But I had learned my lessons in my struggles with Pig Virus. The best defense is a good offense. I was all over the Incubus from day one. In fact, even before day one. When we heard that Hayes had been hired, I dialed his station in San Francisco.

  "I'm not even having lunch with him. If this guy comes on the air, I'm gonna lay it on him. For all you people out there, this is the way to deal with management."

  Someone answered.

  "Is John there? This is Howard Stern and tell him to hurry. I don't have a lot of time. I got his secretary reeling, Robin. He's under the impression he's my boss. Capo di tutti capi. Who the hell does he think he is? Mr. Boss Man with his newfangled ideas. You should hear the deejay on the air now."

  They had me on hold. Way too long, I thought.

  "You should hang up on him when he comes to the phone for making you wait," Robin said.

  Hayes got on.

  "Hello, is this John Hayes? This is Howard Stern. You kept me waiting. I understand you were busy. WELL, YOU DON'T KEEP ME WAITING!"

  I slammed the phone down. "That'll teach him," I crowed.

  I called him back a few days later. He was out but I left explicit instructions with his secretary. I wouldn't have lunch with him. I wouldn't meet his wife. I didn't do remotes. I didn't go to shopping centers, circuses, or dopey animal hospitals. He couldn't bring any of his stupid friends into the studio when I was working. He had to meet with my agent before he could even meet with me. All my material was copyrighted and he was not allowed into my writing meetings. He had no say over anything I did. And if I wanted to, I would belch on the air. That should set him straight, I thought. I made his secretary read back my message and hung up.

  Hayes finally got to the station on October 1,1984.1 met with him briefly that day and then went on the air and reported on the meeting. "I spent two minutes with him," I told Robin and the world. "I don't have time to sit in meetings with the GM. He started in, 'It's great to be here.' I'm going, 'Oh, man, what a douche bag.' Of course it's great, he wouldn't have come here otherwise. He seems to not have any ideas, which is great. He was respectful and kind of timid. It's great when they shake in their boots. I think he's a pushover. I think this show is gonna get dirty as hell."

  Well, I was wrong. Not about the show getting dirty. Hayes did have ideas, even if they were all lame. His major idea was to bring Soupy Sales to the station as the personality between Imus and me. Now, as a kid I idolized Soupy. I thought it was brilliant when he told a kid who called his show to go through his parent's pockets and send him all the pieces of paper with the presidents' pictures on them. But I was now the personality. I deserved the perks. But no, they were still treating me like a child. Soupy came into the station as if he was a conquering God.

  Right off the bat, Hayes gave Soupy a limo while Robin and Fred and I had to squeeze into a Fugazy fleet car every night and hear the driver bitch about how he wasn't getting paid.

  Hayes had a real investment in Soupy doing well: Soupy was his idea. Soupy even had Hayes bring a grand piano into the studio and hired a pianist to accompany Soupy on his show. Whatever Soupy wanted, Soupy got. And I was jealous. So, of course, I got on him unmercifully.

  Soupy and his crew were always leaving food debris around and stinking up the place for when I came in. One day they spilled some salad dressing on the floor. I decided to make a bit out of it so I called them on the air and told Soupy if his producer wasn't in the studio

  in two minutes cleaning up their mess, I was gonna cut his fucking piano wires. Fred went out and got some wire cutters and sure enough, the deadline passed and I started snapping away. I think I had about four notes out before they finally cleaned up the mess. After that, Soupy stopped talking to me.

 

  NBC's Dream Team (left to right): Soupy Sales, that idiot Don Imus, me, and Wolfman Jack.

  After a few months, my relationship with Hayes deteriorated totally. He was fucking with my show just like Pig Virus and I was fucking with his head every day on the air. I would rant and rave about Hayes being some punk kid who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, whose father gave him everything, whose wife was smarter than he was. He would sit in his office listening to this, seething. After nine months of this, things came to a head when we actually got into a fistnght on the air.

  I don't even remember what specifically caused the fight. I had met earlier with Hayes and he was insistent that I not talk on the air about what we discussed. But you know me, when someone tells me not to say something, I've got to say it. So I called his office to get him to talk about our earlier meeting.

  "Could you put that idiot on the phone with me?" I asked his secretary.

  "No, I can't, Howard, he's in a meeting," she said.

  "He's always in a meeting."

  "What can I tell you, he's an executive."

  "Who's he in a meeting with?"

  "Very important people."

  "Who?"

  "I can't divulge that."

  "Tell him to put down that magazine and zip up," Fred yelled in the background.

  "I hear him talking," I said.

  "I have the radio on. That's how I know what you're doing," his secretary said.

  "That's how the Incubus knows all. Poke your head in and say I want to speak to him on the radio now. That supersedes anything he could be doing," I asserted.

  She wouldn't comply with my wishes. I sent Gary back and he reported that Hayes's door was closed and his "Privacy" sign was up. I sent Big Al Rosenberg and Gary back to bang on the door, all the while forcing the secretary to stay on the phone so we would be broadcasting all this.

  "The Incubus is back there talking to his father, the Devil," I mused as we waited for Gary and Al to get back there.

  Rosenberg banged on the door and Hayes opened it, told them to go away, and slammed it shut.

  "He's too busy planning a bumper sticker promotion. He's an idiot. He's a big moron," I ranted.

  "I told you he was in a meeting," his secretary crowed.

  "Scum," I cursed.

  "He came out all authoritative," Gary reported. "He said, 'This isn't funny.'"

  "What's funny? Soupy?" I smirked.

  I decided to go back there myself, get on the telephone, and yell at John.

  "Who can he be in a meeting with?" I mused. "Maybe he's giving the program director hot beef injections."

  I made my way toward his office.

  "This could be it," Robin prophesied. "Either he'll resort to physical violence or he'll freak out."

  I got on
the phone to Robin.

  "I'm back here. First I'll yell. I won't bang on the door, he's got his 'Privacy, Please' thing up. JOHN! JOHN!"

  Hayes came to the door.

  "I got him!" I exulted.

  "Another monument to radio," he said.

  "Hey, nobody's in here with him," I noticed. "He's just working. Hey, John, come on the air with us."

  "This is great radio, Howard. Boy, what a bit," Hayes sneered.

  "What are you working on, man? How come you can't talk to us?" I was petulant.

  "Because I'm working."

  "On what?"

  "I'm not telling."

  He started closing the door on me.

  "YOU IDIOT SCUM! DON'T TALK THAT WAY TO ME!" I shouted. "IDIOT, YOU WORK FOR ME! I told him off, huh, Robin? He's really mad. He looked like he was gonna cry. He's got papers on his desk. He was doing budget stuff. He was seething. You should have seen the look on his face. Now he's not even coming out. COME OUT AND TALK TO ME! He's a baby. He's an idiot. Oh, here he is."

  He had come out again and he was pissed. But, hey, this was great radio. And it was going to get better pretty quick.

  "Howard, go back and do your show."

  "You can't take it, can't take it," I taunted him.

  "Howard, this isn't fun," Hayes snapped.

  "It's fun for us," Robin piped in. "I love it when you squirm."

  "I'm not squirming. I'm not even having fun."

  While Gary diverted his attention, I rushed into his office and looked at the papers on his desk. Hayes had a desk full of papers that detailed everyone's salaries. I started yelling that I could see Imus's and Soupy's ridiculously inflated salaries.

  "Hey, Howard, get out of there!" Hayes yelled.

  He freaked out and started pushing me out of his office. Actually shoving me forcefully and with bad intent. I couldn't believe it. I was doing a bit but he was dead serious. I went back to the studio.

  "What a goofy guy to get upset like that. He doesn't understand me or my sense of humor. My audience loved that. He was all red and he was pushing me. Could you tell how angry he was on the

  phone? He hates us. He doesn't understand why it's funny when the Marx Brothers screw around with Margaret Dumont because he is Margaret Dumont. He dropped the phone, he was wrestling with me. He's an idiot. I can't deal with him."

  This was really war. Fred and I went into the studio and made a promo that we started running on my show:

  YOUR FRIEND HOWARD STERN IS IN TROUBLE AND HE NEEDS YOUR HELP. . . HERE ARE THE FACTS:

  ITEM 1: Howard Stern has the biggest ratings at WNBC.

  ITEM 2: John Hayes, the general manager of NBC, was born with a silver spoon in his little mouth.

  ITEM 3: How can a little rich boy possibly understand this radio show?

  ITEM 4: John Hayes wants to radically change the "Howard Stern Show" . . .

  that's right, change the "Howard Stern Show."

  ITEM 5: Would an intelligent, caring general manager tamper with success?

  WHAT CAN YOU DO TO HELP? BE A PART OF A GRASS-ROOTS MOVEMENT TO FIRE JOHN HAYES . . .

  Here's an officer from the 106th precinct. . .

  Officer: Hey, John Hayes, know what I wanna do? Tie him down and poke him with a sharp stick . . .

  NO, NO, DON'T DO THAT. LET'S GET HIM FIRED.

  Here's a Manhattan art dealer. . .

  Art Dealer: I want to take him up to Rockland County, fit him with a leather mask, you know, the one with the zipper, and chase him naked up and down the hillside throwing walnuts at his anus.

  GOOD IDEA, BUT THAT'S NOT WHAT WE'RE GOING FOR. THE BEST THING

  TO DO IS TELL ALL YOUR FRIENDS ABOUT THE SHOW. AND WITH THE BIGGEST AUDIENCE IN HAND, WE'LL VANQUISH THE DEMON JOHN HAYES.

  Here now is Cosima von Bülow . . .

  Cosima: Hey, if John doesn't knock this off, I'll tell my . . .

  JOIN MILLIONS OF NEW YORKERS IN AN EFFORT TO DRIVE JOHN HAYES

  OUT OF THE RADIO STATION. AND REMEMBER, NEVER APPROACH JOHN

  HAYES IN THE EVENING WHEN HIS POWERS ARE THE STRONGEST.

  We were really going wild. We were attacking management, we were dealing with sex and bodily functions and every known radio taboo. I was pretty out of control but I didn't care. I just wanted to do great radio. I've always felt you can't back down after a certain point.

  Randy Bongarten tried to give me a little message one evening when he insisted I let him drive me home to Long Island. As soon as the car got out of the parking garage he began to work on me.

  "Your ratings are great, Howard. But I'm telling you, back off a little. You're doing very strong material. And the powers that be don't like it," he said.

  "Be direct, man," I said. "Who doesn't like what I'm doing? We'll go sit down with them and explain the jokes to them. I'm trying to revolutionize radio."

  I was on a high horse, but I was serious. I wasn't going to back down. I was too fucking popular. I didn't even know how to hold back. I didn't know what Randy was driving at and, frankly, I didn't care to know.

  A couple of weeks later, I got on the air and announced my greatest Dial-a-Date ever. I was going to do Bestiality Dial-a-Date! I was fantasizing on the air about how I was going to set up a listener with an animal. That night, Randy came over to me when I finished the show. It was time for another ride home.

  "What are you going to do on the Bestiality Dial-a-Date?" he asked.

  "I don't even really know what I'm going to do. I was getting into a thing on the air. I've done lesbians. Triplets. I've done it all."

  "Just don't do the Bestiality Dial-a-Date," he said.

  "Are these guys thinking we're going to fuck a dog? What are you talking about?" I said. It was obvious he wasn't understanding.

  We were still fucking with Hayes, too. He called us into his office for a meeting and he was talking his usual shit about how we had to clean up our act so he could get better, more prestigious advertisers on the show, and Robin and I looked at each other and just got up and walked out of his office in the middle of a sentence.

  As we were walking down the hall, Robin looked at me and said, "Are you sure we haven't gotten a little crazy here? We just walked out of the general manager's office while he was in the middle of a sentence."

  "What are they gonna do to us, Robin?" I shrugged. "Fire us?"

  Meanwhile, I was out of control on the air. New York was in the middle of that stupid Statue of Liberty two hundredth anniversary and Robin was reading a news story about how Lee Iacocca had raised $200 million for the statue's restoration but he needed to raise another $200 mil.

  "What do they need all that money for?" I wondered. "What are they gonna buy her, a bronze tampon? They gonna get fifty thousand gallons of copper so she can douche?"

  Here I was the number one radio entertainer in the world. I was invincible. Everyone wanted me ... and no one could touch me.

  I don't know, call me naive, but I thought I could just go on and entertain my millions and millions of listeners at NBC as long as they were happy and still tuning in and the network was making millions and millions each year selling my ad time. Well, I was wrong. The bastards were going to fire me.

  Except God intervened in the form of a major hurricane. On September 27,1985, New York awoke to howling winds and torrential rainfall. Most New Yorkers took the day off, but I called Robin and Fred, and we decided to go in and brave the storm. It never occurred to me to stay home that day. Dale Parsons, my program director, called to beg me to stay home. The truth was Dale was told by NBC management to make sure I didn't go to work because I was supposed to be fired that day. It was a Friday and this way the Saturday newspapers would carry the story and it would be forgotten by Monday. None of the execs were available to fire me that day because the storm kept them home. They just figured I wouldn't come in. I came in and did one of the most vicious shows ever. Ironically, I even predicted my own firing.

  The show was going fine until I heard tha
t Soupy had announced on his program a few days earlier that he had just signed to do a

  syndicated version of his show on the NBC network. I became livid. For years I had been trying to get my show syndicated on the network. I had been promised that they were working on it, but it was all hot air. And now Soupy got to do his show nationally. I totally freaked on the air. I refused to believe it until I got confirmation from my bosses. The problem was, they weren't at work; they were all hunkered down in their suburban homes waiting for the hurricane to blow over.

  I frantically tried to call Randy at home but I couldn't get through. I reached Hayes and I put him on the air and he denied knowing anything about it. His denials sounded hollow. All the while I was ranting on the air that if this information was true, that was it, I was quitting NBC.

  Now here I was embarrassing all the execs by throwing them on the air, and they were freaking out because I shouldn't even have been on the air! They had promised Grant Tinker, the president of NBC, that I would be fired.

  I threw open the phone lines. All my listeners called in and said they'd hate to see me go but they'd understand. Putting Soupy on national was too much of a humiliation for anyone to take. It was nearing time for my shift to end. Jack Spector had already come into the studio to prepare for his show. I took one last phone call. It was the guy we set up for the Bestiality Dial-a-Date.

  "Howard, this is your dog lover dial-a-date. No one called me yet," he complained.

  "It might take a month or two," I said.

  "By the way, I heard Soupy talking about the show, too. You really not coming in Monday?"

  "I'm not sure how the scenario will play out. We have three offers from other stations. There's a lot to consider," I said.

  "By the way, I hope your bathroom has towels in it. It didn't when I was there. I had to wipe my hands on my pants," he complained.

  "Here's a guy who made love to a dog worrying about wiping his hands on his pants. I don't see how that would disturb you."

  "It was a clean dog," he said.

  That was the last call I ever took at NBC.

  I went home that night bummed out. Over the weekend, I went jogging and tripped over some of the tree debris from the hurricane. So on Monday morning I reported for work on crutches. Robin and