Boss Radio: Revealed at Last
    Ron Jacobs & Bill Drake
    June 19-20, 1999       home

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The History of The History of Rock and Roll

RON JACOBS: When we finished the last 24 hours of “The History of Rock and Roll” in 1969, it was insane. Pete Johnson was crawling on the floor, Robert W. Morgan was about to pass out, Bill Mouzis let me run the board. I’m freaking out because I know [some major event such as] Harry Truman is doing to die within four minutes of when it’s supposed to go on. A guy had stolen my radio that I had planned to listen to it on. And then it was over. My phone didn’t ring. And I thought we had laid the biggest egg in the history of radio. Now you had a blast going on in your house or something when it was on?


BILL DRAKE: Probably. I don’t remember.

RON JACOBS: OK, but what was your feeling? Because you guys had come down--. Someone at KHJ had asked for a sales demo when we had about 4 hours together. We squeezed it together and the first time you and Gene Chenault came down, we just smashed together 3 or so hours.

BILL DRAKE: The main problem that I remember that we had to deal with was: I wanted to go what—at that time it was 48 hours I think and later it was 52 hours. But in doing that, I remember in designing it, we had to plan so that the weaker stuff showed up like in the all night show. And we found out later people were sitting up all night listening and taping the thing.

RON JACOBS: Yeah, and also what was the weaker stuff from a standard top 40 standpoint allowed me, in the only time I was there, and the only time that I was able to do it, and you didn’t hassle me, I was able to do my far out things. Like interview Phil Spector, which was a classic, for 15 minutes, which he would never do. Steve Allen comes in and he reads the lyrics to songs. We had the Bob Dylan stuff, you know. We had these things in the middle of the night that we called prime sweep and stuff like that, that now people—that was like ten, twenty years ahead of its time. But, what I’m trying to figure out as you were hearing it—like when I heard it--it was like you paint the Golden Gate bridge and you go back from where you started. When you were hearing it, when you heard it, when I heard it, it was like I was hearing shit that I couldn’t even remember because we had produced it 2 months before. When you were hearing it, you were hearing it more like watching a movie for the first time. So did it just blow you away, just keep coming at you or what?

"The History of Rock and Roll" Origins: Ellen Pelissero worked at KHJ in the 1960s in the traffic/sales department. She remembers that source of the one idea for what became the famous rockumentary originated from a 1969 sales presentation film for KHJ named "The Beat Goes On" that she wrote and produced in its entirety. Pelissero was hired by Ron Jacobs to work on "The History of Rock and Roll" and she remembers it took 13 weeks or so for the production. She also remembers: "Our leader and coach and push-meister and inspriration and through every second of that production was the incredibly talented -- albeit sometimes rough to be around -- Ron Jacobs. And no one deserves the ultimate credit for 'The History of Rock and Roll' besides Ron Jacobs." Read More

BILL DRAKE: Oh yeah, but you have to realize, I was pretty well up on things anyhow. I knew what to expect. And as far as the design and so forth, the layout of what we had to have. And here again, it was just so different at the time. It wasn’t brain surgery, it was a lot of work—. RON JACOBS: Did you stay up and hear any of the offbeat stuff? BILL DRAKE: I don’t remember. RON JACOBS: But I think that I had heard that when it was over, which was at noon, that you had some people there and you had an idea it was a pretty big deal. I got nothing until—. I thought we had bombed. No phone calls. And then I go in the next day and there’s people with telegrams saying “I was on my way to New York and I got sucked in and I stayed overnight at a motel listening to it,” and Dick Clark is sending in all this stuff and all the yadda yadda that happened after it. And it went on to become what it went on to become. BILL DRAKE: Well, it was the first of those things that was ever done. RON JACOBS: Rockumentary.

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