Woodstock, the legendary rock festival that was billed as “Three Days of Peace and Music,” virtually defined a generation. The amateur promoters who organized the event, however, were left nearly bankrupt, as only a small minority of the 400,000 concert attendees had actually purchased tickets. Although the event itself was a financial bust, the promoters had the foresight to secure the film and recording rights for the performances. Michael Wadleigh’s subsequent documentary Woodstock (1970) put the promoters back in the black, demonstrating that, properly marketed, a celebration of youth counterculture and freedom could remain a valuable commodity for decades to come. Without overly romanticizing the Age of Aquarius, it had become clear by 1970 that rock and roll was not only here to stay, it was big business.
The 1970s began as the decade of the rock superstar. Excess became the norm for bands such as the Rolling Stones, not just in terms of their private wealth and well-publicized decadence but also in terms of stage and studio effects and costs. The sheer scale of rock album sales gave musicians—and their ever-growing entourage of managers, lawyers, and accountants—the upper hand in negotiations with record companies, and for a moment it seemed that the greater the artistic self-indulgence the bigger the financial return. By the end of the decade, though, the 25-year growth in record sales had come to a halt, and a combination of economic recession and increasing competition for young people’s leisure spending (notably from the makers of video games) brought the music industry, by this point based on rock, its first real crisis. The Anglo-American music market consolidated into a shape that did not change appreciably for the next three decades, while new sales opportunities beyond the established transatlantic route began to be pursued more intently.
Guitarist Ron Wood and singer Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones onstage in Knebworth, outside London, Aug. 21, 1976. Michael Putland/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
The 1970s, in short, was the decade in which a pattern of rock formats and functions was settled. The excesses of rock superstardom elicited both a return to DIY (do-it-yourself) rock and roll (in the roots sounds of performers such as Bruce Springsteen and in the punk movement of British youth) and a self-consciously camp take on rock stardom itself (in the glam rock of the likes of Roxy Music, David Bowie, and Queen). The continuing needs of dancers were met by the disco movement (originally shaped by the twist phenomenon in the 1960s), which was briefly seized by the music industry as a new pop mainstream following the success of the film Saturday Night Fever in 1977. By the early 1980s, however, disco settled back into its own world of clubs, deejays, and recording studios and its own crosscurrents from African American, Latin American, and gay subcultures. African American music developed in parallel to rock, drawing on rock technology sometimes to bridge black and white markets (as with Stevie Wonder) and sometimes to sharpen their differences (as in the case of funk). Rock, in other words, was routinized, as both a moneymaking and a music-making practice.
Inevitably, as teenagers grew up, the Top 40 formula began to wear thin. In the late 1960s, so did rock. A new generation sought freedom, and on the radio it came on the FM band with underground, or free-form, radio. Disc jockeys were allowed—if not encouraged—to choose their own records, usually rooted in rock but ranging from jazz and blues to country and folk music as well. Similar latitude extended to nonmusical elements, including interviews, newscasts, and impromptu live performances. While free-form evolved into album-oriented rock (or AOR, in industry lingo), other formats catered to an increasingly splintered music audience. Initially labeled as “chicken rock” when it emerged in the early 1970s (“chicken” as in, “people who are afraid of real rock”), adult contemporary (A/C) found a large audience of young adults who wanted their rock quieter. A/C blended the lighter elements of pop and rock with what was called “middle of the road” (MOR) rock, an adult-oriented format that favoured big bands and pop singers such as Tony Bennett, Peggy Lee, and Nat King Cole.
On both sides of the Atlantic, rock-and-roll radio had matured. Commercial broadcasters took a page from the pirates who had ruled the airwaves in the ’60s, transforming stagnating Top 40 stations into an array of specialized, genre-specific channels. In the United States, syndicated programs such as the King Biscuit Flower Hour showcased performances from both established and up-and-coming artists, while call-in shows such as Rockline and Innerview explored the stories behind the songs. Live concerts aired by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) drew a following in both Britain and the United States, and programs featuring specific artists became highly sought after by “tape traders,” who participated in a transatlantic barter system of live recordings (of both the legal and bootleg variety).
Pirate radio stations, the unlicensed broadcasters that operated outside the national boundaries of their signal’s target audience, would forever hold a special place in the history of rock-and-roll radio, and the “outlaw DJ” would become one of rock’s more enduring archetypes. By the 1970s, however, large-scale pirate operations were in decline. North American “border blasters” faced financial difficulties and increasingly restrictive treaties that limited their signal strength. A 1986 broadcasting agreement between the United States and Mexico effectively ended the border radio era in North America, and an increasingly competitive FM market forced Radio Luxembourg’s AM signal to go dark in 1991. They also faced direct competition from commercial broadcasters as the rapid expansion on the FM band saw many stations offering “pirate quality” playlists with high-fidelity sound that could not be matched by the pirates’ AM signal. In Britain, many of the offshore disc jockeys had migrated to the London studios of Radio 1 (the BBC’s popular music network). British DJ Johnny Walker (born Peter Dingley), for example, became popular on Radio Caroline and later shifted to BBC’s Radio 1; in the mid-1970s, he even worked on American radio. Doing it the other way around, British expatriate John Peel began in American radio in the 1960s, later joining pirate Radio London and then transferring to Radio 1.
Radio stations, as a rule, reflect and serve the local community. In Cleveland, Ohio, where Alan Freed rocked and ruled in the early 1950s, it was WMMS-FM that came to represent the city in the 1970s. Central to the success of WMMS was deejay Kid Leo (Lawrence J. Travagliante), who ultimately became the station’s program director. By the time Kid Leo joined WMMS in 1973 (after graduating from Cleveland State University), the station had been rocking for five years. By 1976 he had helped take the station to the top of the city’s radio ratings. Kid Leo combined a belief in rock’s blue-collar appeal and an irreverent attitude on the air with a zeal for obtaining—and playing—new recordings by major acts before anyone else had them. WMMS won numerous industry awards and Rolling Stone magazine polls as the nation’s favourite radio station.
The launch of London’s Capital Radio in October 1973 signaled a new era in British broadcasting. However, if those who had campaigned for a legitimate commercial radio network in the United Kingdom were expecting the flagship of Independent Local Radio to rehoist the Jolly Roger, they were soon disabused by the slick, seamless—and advertiser-friendly—format of daytime programming that relegated non-Top 40 musical “specialisms” to the evenings and weekends, alongside current affairs, drama, and the weekly concert of classical music that the station’s license demanded. Capital nevertheless made rapid inroads into Radio 1’s listenership and created the breakfast-show (a morning drive-time program) blueprint—first with Kenny Everett and then with Chris Tarrant—that virtually all British stations have followed.
Once underground, or free-form, radio proved itself capable of attracting listeners and advertising revenue in significant numbers, radio corporations jumped onto the bandwagon. None was as successful as Metromedia, which owned the West Coast pioneers KSAN in San Francisco and KMET in Los Angeles. The company soon switched its New York City FM station, WNEW, from an all-female deejay format to free-form, which as it matured under corporate umbrellas became known as progressive rock radio. Sister stations WMMR in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and WMMS in Cleveland, Ohio, soon followed suit.
WNEW attracted one major name from Top 40—Scott Muni, who had replaced Alan Freed at WAKR in Akron, Ohio, in the early 1950s on his way to WMCA and WABC in New York City. WNEW’s on-air staff also included Bill (“Rosko”) Mercer, who had been part of a short-lived free-form experiment at WOR-FM; Dave Herman, who had been a progressive pioneer at WMMR; Allison Steele, “The Nightbird”; and Carol Miller, also from WMMR, whose daily Led Zeppelin feature was engagingly titled “Get the Led Out.” In 1969 Billboard noted that some 60 progressive stations were on the air. The two top stations, according to the magazine, were WNEW and KSAN.
For some, the disc jockey’s role had evolved irreversibly from the dream career of a music enthusiast with an unstoppable desire to share his or her tastes with the widest possible audience to an apprenticeship for would-be TV entertainers for whom the records mattered less than their on-air personalities. This was especially true in Britain, where DJs such as Kenny Everett, Noel Edmonds, and Chris Evans successfully made the jump from radio to a host of other media. For others, there remained no higher praise than the label “tastemaker,” and the challenge of remaining abreast of the latest trends in music was one to which they would happily rise.
Throughout his four-decade career, John Peel (born John Robert Parker Ravenscroft, August 30, 1939, Heswall, Cheshire, England—died October 25, 2004, Cuzco, Peru) was one of the most influential tastemakers in rock music. Peel was renowned for discovering and championing emerging artists and for his connossieurship of groundbreaking offbeat music and performers.
The son of a cotton merchant, he grew up in upper-middle-class comfort near Liverpool, for whose powerhouse football (soccer) team he developed a lifelong obsession. After attending boarding school and a stint in the military, he emigrated to the United States in 1960—to Dallas, Texas, where, still using his given last name, Ravenscroft, he worked at the Cotton Exchange and then sold insurance. In 1961 he landed his first (unpaid) job as a disc jockey, at station WRR. Thereafter, as the British Invasion, led by the Liverpudlian Beatles, swept the United States, he capitalized on his Scouse accent (the distinctive dialect of the Merseyside region), and, though he had left England before the advent of “Merseybeat,” became its authentic ambassador on local American airwaves.
After working at radio stations in Dallas, Oklahoma City, and San Bernadino, California, he returned to the United Kingdom in 1967 to host his late-night, hippytrippy Perfumed Garden on Radio London. While his fellow deejays cultivated wild and crazy personalities, Ravenscroft, having adopted the last name Peel as a pirate mask, was droll and unflappable but ever the iconoclast. Still, when the BBC established Radio 1 in September 1967 in response to the challenge of pirate radio, Peel was one of the new network’s original recruits. From then until the early 21st century, Peel was the advocate for new and often challenging music, playing recordings to which a less adventurous broadcaster or less committed music enthusiast would likely not have given airtime. In the process he became enamoured of everything from art rock to punk, post-punk, and beyond, introducing his audience to previously “unknown” artists such as David Bowie, Joy Division, the Smiths, Billy Bragg, and countless performers who flooded his mailbox with demo tapes. Meanwhile, he remained steadfastly loyal to an eclectic array of personal favourites that included Captain Beefheart, oddball poet-singer Ivor Cutler, unconventional songwriter Kevin Coyne, abrasive rockers the Fall, Northern Ireland’s Undertones (whose “Teenage Kicks” was Peel’s all-time favourite song), the ethereal Cocteau Twins, and PJ Harvey. Yet the same breadth of taste that tested the boundaries of what could be broadcast on the BBC could also find room for a good-time group like the Faces—Peel famously mimed the mandolin part from Rod Stewart’s “Maggie May” (1971) on Top of the Pops—and an unlikely love affair with the Eurovision Song Contest, the annual competition sponsored by state-run European television stations to determine the best new pop song.
John Peel, 1968. Central Press/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Never particularly adept technologically (he occasionally played records at the wrong speed), Peel was nevertheless seemingly ageless and effortlessly hip. He was a perennial choice as NME magazine’s favourite deejay of the year, and his year-end “best-of” playlist, the Festive 50, conferred significant cachet for those who found their way onto it, much as his longtime involvement with the Glastonbury Festival helped ensure its status as one of the world’s premiere rock festivals. Likewise, being chosen to record a live Peel Session for his show was a sign of arrival. Those thousands of sessions—many of which were released as commercial recordings—originated as a work-around response to needle time, a longtime requirement of British broadcasting that limited the amount of airtime that could be devoted to playing records. Even after the repeal of this requirement, Peel Sessions remained the signature and mainstay of his program. Peel was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1998. He died of a heart attack while on vacation in South America in 2004. On the anniversary of his last appearance on BBC, the network annually presents an annual celebration, John Peel Day.
In a career that spanned four decades, B. Mitchel Reed (born Burton Mitchell Goldberg, June 10, 1926, Brooklyn, New York, U.S.—died March 16, 1983, Los Angeles, California) roamed the wide world of radio formats and established himself as a standout in both Top 40 and its flip side, free-form FM rock. He began his radio career as a jazz announcer in Baltimore, Maryland, in the early 1950s, but his first fame came as a fast-talking deejay at KFWB in Los Angeles and WMCA in New York City (“I’m not talking too fast,” he once said, “you’re listening too slow”). By the time he moved to the pre-Top 40 KFWB, he was calling himself “the Boy on a Couch” and telling stories from sessions with his psychoanalyst between jazz cuts. When the station shifted to a rock-and-roll format, Reed became the rapid-fire “B.M.R.,” helping turn “Color Radio” into a success.
After five years at KFWB Reed accepted an offer from WMCA, duplicated his success in New York City, and returned to California. There he helped pioneer underground radio—first at KPPC in Pasadena, then most prominently at KMET, the “Mighty Met,” in Los Angeles. Reed decelerated his delivery to a jazz tempo and took a warm, conversational approach. Just as listeners had accepted his switch from mellow to manic in the late 1950s, so they welcomed his reversal a decade later. KMET went on to give KHJ, “Boss Radio,” its first strong challenger. A new generation of rock music and a new form of radio had arrived on stereo FM.
British radio broadcaster and author Charlie Gillett (born February 20, 1942, Morecambe, Lancashire, England—died March 17, 2010, London, England) championed world music after having earlier helped to popularize in Britain classic American rock and roll in a career as an influential host of radio programs. Gillett also wrote a well-respected serious history of rock and roll, The Sound of the City: The Rise of Rock and Roll (1970). He originated and hosted (1972–78) the BBC Radio London show Honky-Tonk, which in its early years focused on American music and later was credited with launching the careers of British musicians Elvis Costello and Graham Parker and the band Dire Straits. In the mid-1970s Gillett partnered with Gordon Nelki to create the record label and publishing company Oval Music; its successes included “Lucky Number” by Lene Lovich (1979), “19” by Paul Hardcastle (1985), and “Would You…?” by Touch and Go (1998). In 1980 Gillett became a disc jockey for the commercial station Capital Radio in London, where in 1983 he launched the world music showcase A Foreign Affair. In 2000 he released World 2000, the first in a series of 10 double-CD compilations of world music, the last of which, Otro Mundo, came out in 2009.
“I’m just plain fantastic—the best damn rock-and-roll DJ of our time or any other time!” wrote Larry Lujack (born Larry Blankenburg, June 6, 1940, Quasqueton, Iowa, U.S.), a Chicago radio kingpin in the 1960s and ’70s, in his autobiography, Super Jock (1975). Lujack had the ratings to back up his braggadocio. Sweeping in from Seattle (with a brief, unhappy stop in Boston) in 1967, he bounced between Chicago’s dueling rock stations, WLS and WCFL, which made him the object of high-priced bidding wars until his retirement 20 years later. Lujack was the anti-deejay, offering sarcasm and insults instead of happy talk. But he also prided himself on preparation, so that his comments would be topical, and he matched the rock and roll he played with a brash, high energy.