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

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After Boss Radio

RON JACOBS: At KHJ, the deal was pretty cool in that we had set it up so if you had any problem you would talk to me and so the jocks wouldn’t be getting it from two different directions and mixed signals and shit.

BILL DRAKE: I thought that was the most important thing. And I had worked what was before. I’d seen the horrors of what can happen and of course the general manager was kept out of that, you know, it was the program director. And it was the first time I think, that programmers really ran radio stations. General managers could run the overall station, they could run sales, Sales managers could run sales, but I always thought a programmer should program, sales people should sell, and, if I got in the middle of that—if you had been at KHJ and I had been going around you and behind your back all the time saying that, that and the other and so forth, that’s the reason. Good God, you know, even when we brought Bill Watson in, he would call you. Or I would call you. But, it had to be a thing that those jocks had to know that if they screwed with Ron Jacobs, they were going to be fucked. And they couldn’t go around us and it couldn’t be allowed.

RON JACOBS: I mean no internal shit never got leaked out of there. The thing is, I think in the beginning man, you and I were talking to each other a lot.

BILL DRAKE: Oh, yeah, absolutely. On a constant basis.

About The Music

RON JACOBS: So about the music, I would only deal with it after Betty Brenneman had gone through it. And what were you doing, you were giving Betty ideas too?

BILL DRAKE: Well, yeah, there was a thing of—it was filtered in a few things... I mean she would deal with the record people or you or whoever would—.

RON JACOBS: I never talked to them. But you were actually taking the time to listen to full records.

BILL DRAKE: Oh yeah. And we had to—I thought I was doing it for the other stations like KGB and KYNO here and then later with others. But it was a thing of overall, everything was filtered through Betty even from the other stations. See, I had to deal with the other stations too on that basis. And the good thing was that I could take these ideas and could break them down to simplistic things that the guy working at the service station or McDonald’s or whatever could do. And remember I used to say, “This is not radio man’s radio.”

RON JACOBS: Yeah, but the best thing we had going man, was that I’m too far out and you want to take it back out and the place where we met in the middle was always cool.

BILL DRAKE: That’s why it worked.

RON JACOBS: Because the music that you were listening to at home was different from the music that I was listening to at home. I'm at home listening to Miles Davis, right? But it had nothing to do with work.

BILL DRAKE: Well, I realized we couldn’t make a living on KHJ with Miles Davis.

RON JACOBS: More into Phil Spector's works.

BILL DRAKE: Greatest producer I ever knew.

RON JACOBS: And that section in "The History of Rock and Roll" I did in 1969, I didn’t believe Spector was ever going to go for that, that he actually came out and did that. Because that was based on the old jazz magazine blindfold test deal. And he really got into it.

BILL DRAKE: The thing is, he liked KHJ a lot.

RON JACOBS: Oh yeah?

BILL DRAKE: Yeah. I remember the first time I met Spector, we were at Martoni's one night and the place was packed. And the bar, the people were like three of four deep. I'm 6’6” and he's not. This was before The Byrds and the granny glasses and all this. Spector's there, he's go on this leather jacket, got his goatee. He’s got on some kind of leather hat.

RON JACOBS: And he’s like twenty years old.

BILL DRAKE: Yeah, and he’s got all this shit on, and these granny glasses, and he’s got on these motorcycle boots, this, that and the other. And he and I are trying to talk like this close in a crowded bar. And I’m thinking to myself, "This is the strangest looking guy I have ever seen!" And there was a lull in the conversation and he looked at me and said “You know, Drake,” and I knew he was serious. He said, “A lot of strange looking people in here.”

The Best

RON JACOBS: Putting KHJ aside, what do you think was the best RKO station of that era?

BILL DRAKE: Aside from KHJ?

RON JACOBS: Yeah, put KHJ aside because we know KHJ was—if KHJ wasn’t the best one, we should just stop the tape. I mean that’s a given.

BILL DRAKE: Obviously after KHJ the best was KFRC.

RON JACOBS: Because?

BILL DRAKE: Well, I think because of a lot of factors. Had a good feel. It was very close in the heels of KHJ. The problem we had with people that we’d send to San Francisco would be you’d send them up there and in three fucking months they’re wearing beads and doped out and drugged out and sitting on the goddamn corner and chanting and marching in parades. I mean that really happened.

RON JACOBS: Best non-RKO station, or, the best station that you didn’t have anything to do with.

BILL DRAKE: I can’t think of any.

RON JACOBS: Oh, come on.

BILL DRAKE: Ah.... different time, different situation, and of course a lot of it had to do with signals. You have to realize that poor timing. WLS in Chicago was a good station at the time because it was playing 30 records.

RON JACOBS: What time period?

BILL DRAKE: You’re talking late 1950s. Early 1960s. And WABC in New York. They had 50,000 watts.

RON JACOBS: Let’s talk about music. For the whole time, who was the best male artist?

BILL DRAKE: Oh good God, that’s—.

RON JACOBS: A hard one, eh? But, I mean Elvis has to be in there, right?

BILL DRAKE: Well, yeah, but there’s no way you can go into that. You have to realize that most of the time that we were at KHJ, Elvis's records sucked. I used to talk to Elvis about it. And the thing is, that was because of Colonel Tom Parker saying—these godawful movies are what made money. But, for his records, Elvis hadn’t had a fucking hit in years because of that. Elvis got on the phone one time and said, “Damn, Drake, I had more hit records before I met you." And I said, “Elvis, you recorded more hit records before you met me!” (Laughs.)

RON JACOBS: OK, when did you first meet Elvis? Before KHJ when you were in Atlanta or what?

BILL DRAKE: No, I met him in Las Vegas for the first time. I remember Elvis opened the door and I’d seen the show. But to see him up close! He was the most gorgeous son of a bitch I’d ever seen in my life. And he said, “Ah! I know you’re Bill Drake!" He said, "Damn, you’re even taller than they said you were."

The Mytique

RON JACOBS: So, what about underexposure and the Drake mystique? Always you don’t know where the guy is, you can’t get him on the phone, you gotta go through people to get to him and this just makes for a bigger mystique. What is that? I mean, did you do that deliberately? Because remember you told me you wouldn’t even take Gene Chenault's phone calls when you were in San Francisco at KYA.

BILL DRAKE: Well, that’s true, I don’t talk to people I don’t know. And I also realized that in the situation that you and I wound up in as far as when this happened, you got everybody coming at you out of the woodwork from one side or the other and you start dealing with that stuff you can’t do—that’s the reason I didn’t want to be in radio stations all the time.

RON JACOBS: What do you mean, when “this” happened?

BILL DRAKE: When Boss Radio happened. When Los Angeles happened. The thing is, at that point what’s going to happen is, you’re going to have all the stuff music business, people in radio, this, that and the other, all trying to glom and you start dealing with that stuff you can’t maintain what you’re supposed to be doing. And no, it wasn’t a design or a thing of trying to create anything at all. All I was trying to do was to avoid dealing with the bullshit so that I could concentrate on what I should be concentrating on. But there was no design, other than to keep the bullshit away from me. That’s all I was trying to do.

And I guess, as it turned out, the less of that stuff I did, the more they said about it, which was certainly not my intention. But the thing is, I couldn’t have dealt with every record promotion man or people in radio and this, that and the other, of being available to them or people writing—. I never in my life tried to get an article written about me. And the thing is, articles were written and sometimes I got burned in a thing like that. And you’re just trying to avoid the horseshit so you can concentrate on what you’re concentrating on.

No, it wasn’t no design as far as trying to do anything other than keep things as calm as you can because that can gobble you up, man. People coming in writing this or record promotion men doing this and people saying this and people in the radio business saying this, that and the other. And you deal with them and you say, Good God, who needs that? I never wanted that!


RON JACOBS: It had to be a kick coming from Donalsonville, Georgia to see like an article about you in Time magazine, or to be in a 1971 Dewars Scotch ad in national magazines. I mean you can’t tall me that that wasn’t a kick, come on man.

BILL DRAKE: It sure was, particularly to my mother. Because if you remember, Time magazine—and this is the only thing I remember about the article—they called me “a monument to public tastelessness!” (Laughs.)

RON JACOBS: Good. Well, that I don’t remember.

BILL DRAKE: And then right underneath the picture, they called me a “country bumpkin”!

RON JACOBS: Hmmm. And then the Dewars Scotch ad.

BILL DRAKE: I don’t even drink Scotch.

RON JACOBS: And they didn’t care?

BILL DRAKE: No. They contact people and say well, so you get publicity. That Dewars Profile thing. I don’t drink Scotch. And then they said they didn't care.

What is Most Important

RON JACOBS: OK, so work is more important essentially.

BILL DRAKE: Well, Ron, it wasn't a thing of that necessarily. Work was certainly—what I was concentrating on was more important. But, I never cared about trying to stand in front of a whole lot of people that don’t mean shit to me and convince them of anything at all. To me it was irrelevant. It made no difference whatsoever. It was all horseshit. They’re all there for whatever their reasons are and I also know that it’s usually with ulterior motives. And I found no enjoyment or possibility of enjoyment. I mean that’s crap to me.

RON JACOBS: Do you think that was, in a way, the best thing you’ve done? I mean KHJ during those several years? I do. I mean I think that was the best thing I did—in that area. I mean making albums is another thing, syndication’s another thing but as far as running a live station.

BILL DRAKE: Oh yeah. That was definitely the most fun and more lucrative things has happened to me but I think, to anybody who was involved in that—particularly you and me—it’s almost sad that so many people that have been in the business or are in the business or would be in the business, very few of them will ever have that kind of thing happen to them at such a time, on such a level with such impact which is still related to very fondly by so many people in the business. You and I used to be the bitterest of “enemies”—you know, competitors.

RON JACOBS: Yeah, but that’s why we respected each other.

BILL DRAKE: Of course! And that’s why I said, “Hey, he’s the best!” But as far as things and people, we’re very lucky, Ron. Very few people ever in the business have gone through something like that. But the impact at the time, you know, very few people have had that kind of thing happen. In radio I think we probably had one of the best. There are probably too many people that we should give credit to. I mean, we can’t think about it. You can’t compress 35 or 40 years into a thing of sitting down and talking about something in that amount of time. I’m sure a lot of people are well deserving that contributed to me and to you, and the whole phenomenon that happened that frankly at the time we had no idea who. We were too goddamn busy doing what we were doing; we had no idea what was going on out there. And I’m sure people were overlooked.

RON JACOBS: What do you think is the overall biggest misconception if you want to talk about the Drake Format--the whole generic thing. That's it and that’s what it’s going to go down as. What do you think is the biggest misconception?

BILL DRAKE: I have no idea what the biggest is. There are a lot of misconceptions, and I think probably the only people that know about that would be people like you and me who were there at the time. And you’ll have all kinds of people that had all kinds of opinions and this, that and the other. They weren’t there, they don’t know, and probably have a preconceived idea going in. So as far as misconceptions, who knows, but there were a lot of them and some were accurate You can’t tell about misconceptions, you know.

RON JACOBS: And also it happened at what was maybe the most exciting time in American popular music.

BILL DRAKE: Can you imagine if we’d started KHJ in the John Denver era? We’d have been fucked.

December 31, 1943 – October 12, 1997

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