KHJ
Brings T.V. To Radio In 1965
By Ron Jacobs
|
British Boss
Jock Tommy Vance
(1941 – 2005)
Tommy
Vance did a fine job of adapting to both an unfamiliar environment and a
new profession. Vance revealed when and why he decided to be a Top 40
deejay in the chapter he contributed to my book
KHJ: Inside Boss Radio.
It was the early-1960s.
Vance first heard American rock’n’roll radio while washing dishes aboard
a UK-registered “rust bucket,” a freighter docked in New York City. He
was blown away by what he heard. Alan “Moondog” Freed, the man credited
with inventing the genre dazzled Vance. “I was an ambitious little
Brit,” Vance wrote. “I dreamed of making it in radio ever since I heard
Freed on WINS.”
Since 1958, my first gig as a Program Director, I’ve never met anyone
more intent on learning contemporary U.S. radio, absorbing "the music
scene" and becoming a part of it all. Ironically, Vance accomplished
those tasks better than I did. Working in a “foreign country”—Hong
Kong—my assignment was to build Asia’s first "pirate station.” This
concept was inspired by outlaw jocks broadcasting to the United Kingdom
from ships anchored in international waters beyond government
jurisdiction.
The idea was to plop a tower into the Macau’s reservoir, which held the
water supply for the Portuguese Province. In many aspects this exotic
place was more isolated than the British Crown Colony of Hong Kong, 35
miles away.
The
project was called Radio One. Our English-speaking crew included
Canadians, Australians, Brits and four Yanks. I tried to assimilate
everything I could but stumbled even at my best.
The scheme became
a
bureaucratic knot, which even Henry Kissinger or James Bond couldn’t
untangle.
I spent most of 1964 there
and accomplished nothing.
About the
time I was going nowhere in Hong Kong, which means “Fragrant Harbor,”
Tommy Vance was choking on the equally “aromatic” waters of the Hudson
River. So he climbed ashore and crossed America. Vance spent a year at,
“A hick station in the outback of Washington State with a potential
audience of 300 people and 20,000 head of cattle.”
Vance
confessed that his true motive was to produce and mail out audition
tapes every week. He did this when not blasting the big beat to a bunch
of backwoods bovines. Persistence and polish paid off. Vance moved up
to Seattle and settled in at KOL, doing the drive time shift. Finally—a
market closer to “major” than “medium.” Vance described what happened
next:
Cut back to KOL and the day the call came from
the man. That man was Bill Drake, a name I recognized from the radio
pages in Billboard magazine.
"Hello, Tommy," said Bill.
"Hello mate," said Tommy. "What can I do for you?"
"Just heard the show," answered Drake. "Fancy meeting for a drink at my
hotel?"
Instant thoughts of bloody hell. Am I being pulled for a bit of sexual
hanky-panky here or what? Having survived two years of being in the
British merchant navy with my virginity intact, I took the chance, took
off for the hotel and the great man's suite.
The door opened. Tall,
urbane and charming, Mr. Drake ushered me in, offered me a drink and
commenced a two hour post-mortem about my on air performance. None of it
complimentary. After120-minutes of verbal surgery, the patient was
declared dead, null and void -- and how would I like to come back after
the show tomorrow night at the same time for more of the same? Goodbye.
Next night I went back and got more of the same and the next night and
the next. It was a whirling dervish crash course in American radio
technique from the industry's equivalent of the president. Finally Drake
said,
"Come down to L.A. and we will give you a slot on KHJ.
It's a happening place to be."
"OK," said the fresh-faced Brit, "How much?"
"It's $13,000 a year."
Four decades later that
seems a paltry sum. It was $2000 less than the Los Angeles AFTRA union
minimum scale. The full-time Boss Jocks: Robert W. Morgan, Roger
Christian, Gary Mack, The Real Don Steele, Dave Diamond, Sam Riddle and
Johnny Williams made the big bucks! It was indeed egalitarian: RKO
Consultant Bill Drake and KHJ Program Director, yours truly, earned the
same $15,000 annual salary in April 1965, the launch of Boss Radio.
All of us other than Christian and Riddle, who had already “made it” in
L.A., would have paid for this shot. Three years earlier, Morgan, Frank
Terry and I worked together in Fresno. We fantasized about breaking into
the bigtime—HOLLYWOOD. Not one of us doubted that we would prevail. Once
there what we lacked in money we more than made up for in confidence and
dues paid in small markets. Hey, we were in our mid-20’s, why not?
(Further,
in that economy, I paid the mortgage on a new house atop Laurel Canyon,
leased a new Caddy convertible and whipped out 15 bucks on my first
visit to a “hair stylist.” My short “going Show Biz” phase faded away
about the time my hairline did.)
Roger
Christian was the second Boss Jock who didn’t make the cut. Letting
someone go was the worst of any of my duties. To me the
operative word in Program Director is “director.” When someone was
fired I always saw it as failure on my part. Indeed, “timing is
everything.” Tommy Vance wasn’t aware of the decisions being made at
5515 Melrose Avenue. His life was about to change forever.
Drake had
never sent me an Aircheck. Then arrives Vance’s: recorded live from a
cow patch. This was a tape of someone with much to learn about the very
basics. But Drake sensed something special about the Englishman.
Otherwise there never would have been a meeting between the two of them,
especially one resulting in a firm offer. I wouldn’t become aware of the
dimensions of Vance's talent, determination and classic "British" wit
until he threw himself into learning the role of a KHJ Boss Jock.
His
education began the day after Vance drove nearly non-stop to Southern
California. Vance described the fast-moving events: Driving his Canadian
wife of a few weeks in a Chevrolet Impala crammed with his worldly
possessions, Vance arrived at the hotel on Sunset Boulevard, “The room
booked and paid for by RKO General radio.”
V
KHJ Kartoon portrays the arrival
of "T.V." in Boss Angeles
Like a latter day
Alexis de Tocqueville, who toured and wrote about the United States of
1831, Vance brought a Continental perspective to his American travels
and adventures. How could we see things from Vance’s point of view? What
was “normal” to us was alien to him. Vance’s take on the events that
followed.
His meeting with Bill Drake was unique:
Slept and
phoned KHJ as directed the next morning. "Come on down to see us," said
an anonymous voice from the Melrose Avenue base of the most exciting
radio station in the whole of the U.S.A. Eventually found the building.
Externally interesting art deco-type structure. In the door and
introduced myself to reception. Explained who I was. Blank but polite
faces pointed me to a seat in the foyer. Nothing in my field of vision
screamed glamour to me. It was less than impressive. In fact KHJ was
housed in a drab, well-worn shell that reminded me of wartime London. As
I discovered later, it was the ideal location from which to launch an
all out assault on the established major radio stations in the
metropolis.
I don't even recall him shaking my hand. "I am Ron Jacobs, Programme
Director." The phrase delivered curt and clipped. I stood and looked
into eyes that were part Nero, part Fagin. Gestapo-cold, yet compelling.
Shit, I thought. Looks like it's time to get serious or get out. "Come
into my office," was the command. Then as an afterthought, "Welcome to
Boss Angeles."
I didn’t devote much energy
to making new “friends.” Other things preoccupied me more than breaking
in a new jock, let alone one who required extra attention. The KHJ air
staff had bought into a team concept. At the start earning the respect
of the air staff was what mattered to me. “Winning over” the crew was
insignificant. The winning we were out to do was to capture the biggest
audience in Los Angeles radio history. As with all things complex and
creative, it required much “backstage” effort and resolve to be “Boss”
on the air.
When we moved in KHJ had a “Format of the Month” reputation. No one gave
us much of a chance. (Chief exceptions from Day One: Internally, veteran
RKO engineer Bill Mouzis. In the trade media, Claude Hall, Billboard
Magazine’s Radio-TV editor.) Our small band of Boss brothers felt that
we just might become the coolest thing to light up Southern California
radio dials and turn on those who long ago tuned out 930 AM. Fortunately
there were few expectations. But Vance? He came late to the party and
realized that he had to jump on a moving train.
Training
jocks new to established formats and helping them through their
understandable yips and jitters was nothing new to me. I’d one it dozens
times. But working with one who might still be suffering nightmares of
Luftwaffe midnight bombing raids over Great Britain? Fate
provided me a share of empathy. My resume included watching black smoke
rise over Pearl Harbor, seven miles away. I was four years old, too
young to know the meaning of the word “infamy.”
Shortly
the slender Englishman would attend his first Boss Jock meeting,
encounter a team with championship aspirations and realize that we
played for keeps in the big leagues. Vance was soon to be party to a
bloodless coup. But he recalled those explosive times during his first
day on the job as if he were a black and white World War II movie.
"Follow me," came the order from the camp
commandant. Lap dog-like, I did. The door swung open to the conference
room. Oversized table that allowed little room for maneuver once all the
chairs were occupied and they all were bar two. One at the head of the
table and one to the side of it. I knew my place and headed for it.
Jacobs sat at the head. Ran through an introduction sequence. The head
of promotion. The head of this. The head of that. The Real Don Steele.
Sam Riddle. Robert W. Morgan. At once I could sense that these were
battle-hardened broadcasters. I was like a new recruit dropped into a
drill sergeants' convention and expected to perform as well as them in
the field of fire. Shortly after the intros in the room, the door swung
open. A man entered whom I recognized as a songwriter. The atmosphere became brittle in milliseconds. He was
Roger Christian and I was to take his place. Until that second, as is
industry standard, everybody knew but him. Linger he didn't and with
hardly any exchange of words, he left.
The clique regrouped and I was told what was expected of me. Exactly
where 93/KHJ stood in the ratings battle and where it was headed. The
possibility of failure never entered the equation. The face of L.A.
radio was about to change and I was to be part of the squad to wipe the
expression of complacency off that face. A reception was to be organized
at which I would meet the L.A. press and I better be good or else. But
first I should report to the Capitol Tower at Sunset and Vine for a
photo shoot and once that was complete, pop down the road to the RCA
studios where the Johnny Mann Singers were about to audio-etch my name
into radio history. Tommy Vance was getting set up to play more music on
Boss Radio 93/KHJ. As I left the building and lurched onto Melrose the
harsh sunlight bounced off my glazed eyes.
From the
start I realized that to Vance, more than any other future Boss
Jock-to-be, the KHJ gig represented a major upward move professionally.
He was forced to quickly adjust to new processes and people.
Vance had
to deal simultaneously with: A new place to live, KHJ's obsessively
specific "Boss" format and the cast of bizarre characters that he
encountered— and more bullshit than surrounded his first station.
Certainly he knew that what made him "different" could be a career
asset. Vance was cool about that. He used his British accent, habits
and general behavior in a way that was not pompous or condescending.
This
native of Oxford, a bit more than 50 miles from London, grew up knowing
that extra effort could bring extraordinary rewards. Intelligent person
that he was, Vance measured his abilities against the toughest
challenges he ever encountered, then sucked it up and drew inspiration
from the most heroic countrymen of the times. To me, this passage of
Vance’s memoir reflects a self-aware but confident warrior.
Vance
didn’t lack a sense of irony. And he could write. Not just
radio “copy,” but self-aware prose. Had he chosen, Vance might have
enjoyed a successful career as an author or journalist.
It’s a
hell of lot easier to read than to write well. Like this:
The dimension of what I was
now committed to really scared me. I was an untrained nothing who had
been propelled into a world populated by people who had everything in
their field, who had earned their position and come up through the
ranks. Me? I was going from the street straight to the top drawer. But
heigh ho. Robert Plant spent a year on the road playing blues harmonica
before he got the call from Jimmy Page and became a part of the legend
called Led Zeppelin. The British had left their tiny Island many times
and ended up controlling most of the globe. Maybe I should call myself
Winston Churchill, but I doubted that the Johnny Mann Singers could
blend their harmonies around that. The Capitol Tower photo studio
session went well. The same man who had once photographed Frank Sinatra
and Nat King Cole worked his magic on me. Down the road at the RCA
studios I watched the group as they effortlessly blended my name into
the station call-sign.
While talking to the engineer, I learned that a band called the
Liverpool Five who were signed to the label had a flat in the suburbs
that my wife and I could rent. Went back to the hotel, sorted out the
accommodation situation and moved in that night by which time I had been
a resident of Los Angeles for 36 hours. Next day back to the radio
station. I stopped by a branch of the Wells Fargo Bank situated on the
same block to open that all-important account, soon I believed, to be
stuffed to the gills with George Washington's picture printed on the
proceeds of my efforts.
Bolstered by his heritage,
Vance busted his butt to learn. I noticed that he never made the same
mistake twice. I judged Vance "by the book," not allowing for his lack
of experience or his sometimes “weird” vocabulary and pronunciation.
Most often he was "spot on"—a phrase I first heard used conversationally
by Tommy Vance, not Mick Jagger or George Harrison, who I’d met prior to
the Brit Boss Jock.
Tommy Vance and the
Rolling Stones at the Hollywood Bowl December 5, 1965
In the tidbits of time when
we weren't taking care of Boss business, Vance and I swapped slang: My
Hawaiian Pidgin English for his several British dialects and phrases. A
kupono trade—and “jolly good fun.”
There was
little time for those encounters. Vance attended what, in his words,
was “Boss Jock Kindergarten.” Had he been an American NFL fan he might
have realized that it was Training Camp.
I
reported to KHJ reception. Called into Jacobs' office I timidly inquired
what time I was to address the microphone. That at least extracted a
mild smile from the man. About the only one I ever saw during our
acquaintance. "Follow me." I dutifully did. Round the corridor to the
back of the complex and the location of another studio. We entered. I
sat at the console while he laid out the plan. I was to spend six hours
a day doing it until he decided when I would be ready for the real
thing. He would be listening in his office. If the red phone rang, pick
it up and listen to every word he said. Very carefully. Take notes and
follow his directions to the letter. Jacobs left me in my Boss Jock
kindergarten. For six hours every damn day I played the records. Read
the commercials. Again and again and yet again. The red phone never
ceased ringing. Criticism was heaped upon me hour in, hour out. I began
to picture Jacobs as the force behind the Spanish Inquisition. As the
Marquis de Sade. Jack the Ripper. To get back at him one day I played
the same two records for an hour. He never mentioned it. Must have been
the lunch period.
Vance
proceeded to learn and improve. He added another texture to the mosaic
air personalities. (Yes, kiddies, once upon a time all deejays didn’t
sound the same, like today’s droning clones.) The “British Invasion”
shocked and awed domestic music fans. Obviously Vance wasn’t a Beatle
or a Rolling Stone. Or even a Kink. The girls didn’t faint when the
Brit Boss Jock showed up at record hops and school dances but they
squealed louder for T.V. than for any deejay I’d ever seen. The ratings
reflected Vance’s growing popularity. Drake and I felt like we made the
right mood.
Then like
Churchill and Britons he lead, Vance was bit with a full-on blitz.
Virtually overnight he left KHJ under strange, unpredictable
circumstances: An immigration hassle.. Unfortunately even the RKO
General lawyers couldn’t get the government off Vance’s case.
At the time the corporation
had considerable clout in Washington, D.C. The Aerojet General division
manufactured napalm and provided “research and development on weapons
delivery systems,” among other so-called defense-related operations.
Anyone reading the KHJ license renewal application could note these and
other activities under “Businesses of which Licensee owns more than a
25% interest.” I contemplated this whenever KHJ played Barry McGuire’s
“Eve Of Destruction,” (which hit #1 on the Boss 30 on August 4, 1965.)
Over time,
Vance’s abrupt departure worked out to his benefit.
Prodigiously
so. The Times of London later wrote that when Vance returned home
he joined, “The biggest of the pirate stations, Radio Caroline.
[Vance’s] nickname and calling signal was ‘TV on Radio."
I'd hear
reports of Vance's success back in the U.K. His radio popularity,
on-camera presence and modish look catapulted him into television,
resulting in even more fame and fortune. Vance was sometimes called,
“The Dick Clark of England.” While many circumstances “killed” radio,
“TV” became a video star.
Vance and I reconnected in
2001. I asked him to write about his time at KHJ. His response comprises
a chapter in KHJ: Inside Boss Radio. In a personal P.S. he thanked me
for spending “extra remedial time” with him. Vance said his KHJ
experience enabled him to walk into Radio Caroline without an aircheck
(because he left L. A. in such a rush) and land a job on the spot. He
was a Certified Boss Jock from the Mother Ship.
We
communicated via occasional email. Our cyber-banter contained the
needles and jabs that occur between friends who share the same
sensibility, knowing what is serious and what are attempts at "humor."
Last month Vance was one of the first to sign up for a
KHJ 40th
Anniversary Streetscape lithograph, His correspondence was typically
terse and to the point, dispensing with needless grammar and
punctuation.
"mr jacobs. the queen thanks you for the comments about
her realm. her majesty accepts that because of citizen blairs bad
management she now rules a sad little third world back water but at
least not one that endangers the royal testicles by floods of steaming
lava emerging from the royal commode without warning. thanks for the
details. will ship money by stage coach just as soon as i get the
figure. fond regards. t vance."
I replied:
"Re. transfer of huge funds from your island to mine: Can dig the hassle
since you indeed live in a third world country" and suggested a bank
transfer. I advised that the print was available in larger sizes and/or
in canvas versions. Predictably, Vance went for the top of the line:
hello from london ron. asked my bank to transfer to
yours $450-00 to cover cost of big kahuna edition and postage to me here
in the third world. this comes from my account at barclays bank in
jersey, channel islands which is under my real name richard hope-weston.
looks like it could take a week to get to you. any overage to be used to
provide a cocktail for your goodself. regards. t. vance.
That email
of February 21, 2005 was the last time I heard from Tommy Vance.
Thirteen
days later, he died after suffering a stroke, at age 63. I’m pondering
the best way to display the “Big Kahuna" giclee canvas.
Vance
eschewed the idea the oft-quoted title of Thomas Wolfe’s last novel,
“You Can’t Go Home Again.” His bank account frozen, Vance returned to
England staked to a plane ticket by his friend Ian Whitcomb. During his
career he achieved distinction that merits a detailed obituary in the
Times of London, “With
deep voice and smooth delivery, Tommy Vance was one of the most
in-demand radio disc jockeys of the past 40 years, who also enjoyed a
successful television career, including a stint as a presenter of Top
of The Pops.”
In “Boss Jock Kindergarten,” Vance
summed up how his time at KHJ segued into the U.K. radio scene:
I became part of the commando unit that caused that explosion. The key
to my part in that revolution was my time in that drab art-deco
Hollywood building that was the home of 93/KHJ, staffed by rugged
veterans who taught me everything I know and have traded on ever since.
In my own little world on my side of the Atlantic, they tell me I am a
radio legend. A label I would not be wearing if I had not had the chance
to be trained by the best in the world. Some of the comments I write
about Ron Jacobs may seem harsh but believe me they are not. I owe that
hard bastard everything I have and ever had. I love the son of a bitch
even though he still thinks that the Royal Albert Hall is a necktie
factory. Once a Boss Jock always a bloody Boss Jock.
Tommy Vance at the
opening of Virgin Radio, London. April 1, 1993
Back in my
tenure the KHJ programming department comprised 72 people. And everyone
who was at Boss Radio during Tommy Vance’s too-short time there are
saddened to see him go. He quickly absorbed our way of doing things
while bringing a new dimension to Boss Radio. It was our good fortune
that some of his gentleness and humility rubbed off on us.
Kaneohe,
Hawaii
March 2005inston
Churchill
