Billy Pearl was one of the best jocks in the Top 40 era. I don’t think there’s a single person in radio at that time who would dispute that. His rise in the industry was meteoric, but no one could begrudge him because of his enormous talent on the air. By the time he was 24 he was doing nights on KHJ, Los Angeles. KHJ was the very top of the mountain in Top 40 radio — a legendary powerhouse of a station. The only other stations in its league were WABC, New York and WLS, Chicago.
Needless to say, he was the envy of all the rest of us radio nerds. But he was a good guy and we were all very happy for his success. And he was fun to listen to.
At the time I had quit radio and moved back to Los Angeles to try to launch my writing career. This was early 1975. I was toiling at the KIIS Broadcasting Workshop during the day and writing spec scripts with David Isaacs at night and on the weekends. Pearl was making great money. I was pulling down $650 a month. But I didn’t care. I was actually enjoying this time in my life.
One night I had arranged to get dinner with Billy after his show. I met him at KHJ while he was still on the air. Like I said, KHJ was Valhalla, and to see my good friend sitting behind that mic, that was really something. Imagine going to a movie theater and there’s your former roommate as one of the stars of THE AVENGERS.
After his shift we went across the street to Lucy’s Adobe Cafe for Mexican food and top flight margaritas. And throughout the entire meal, all he did was bitch about how terrible KHJ was. The audio quality on the cartridges was muddy, the promos were horribly worded, the music rotation was bad — practically everything about the programming pissed him off. I listened and just nodded, but inwardly what I was thinking was: “Are you fucking kidding?! You’re on KHJ!!! We would all KILL to be on KHJ! So what if a stupid promo is worded poorly?”
Apparently he made his displeasure known inside the building to the point where he was let go after maybe one year. And think about it, for a station to fire one of their absolute best and most popular performers, he must’ve driven them scooters.
Now flash-forward two years and David and I are on staff of MASH (which I guess you could say was the KHJ of sitcoms). Not that there weren’t frustrations on that job, but there was not a day that I didn’t drive onto that lot and go “Wow, I’m on MASH. How incredibly lucky am I!” I’d think back to that dinner and appreciate even more my good fortune. And I carried it over to all the stops in my career.
Sometimes you gotta look at the big picture. We’re all going through hard times now. It might be worth a moment to step back and appreciate those things in your life that give you pleasure, give you meaning — be they career situations or relationships or both. Who knew great lessons could be learned at Lucy’s Adobe Cafe? It’s still open, by the way, if you’re looking for your own epiphany.
30 comments :
Ken, I'm so sorry to hear about the loss of your friend. Also, those are very good words of wisdom.
Wise words, Ken.
It's interesting that some people complain about things, but don't really do anything or offer realistic solutions to make it better. Sometimes you do have to move on, but I've found personal happiness making my surroundings better day by day.
It's a small world no matter your industry. Do you want to be "oh ... that guy" or do you want to be "OH! That guy"? The choice is yours.
Friday question:
Do agents normally get a piece of their client's residuals?
Friday question:
Have you read (or heard about) this article on "wokeness" in Hollywood, by Peter Kiefer and Peter Savodnik? If so, what are your thoughts?
https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/hollywoods-new-rules
Count your blessings, as my Mom used to say.
KHJ, WABC, and WLS for sure, but I certainly would add CKLW (Detroit/Windsor, ON) of the 60s and 70s to the conversation. The Big 8 was a monster station.
Superb message. It needs to be heard. Thank you.
As a copywriter who worked for one of Barry Diller's IAC companies a while back, I remember thinking how lucky am I to be permanently employed as a writer. Most are freelance or contractors. I'm getting benefits and working with a fantastic creative, collaborative team. One year into what would be my five-year stint, we began writing scripts for our new animated video product. I recognized they needed characters with dialog. Naturally, they needed voiceover, too. Even though we didn't have a sound department I proposed we find a way to make this happen and was given the go-ahead. It became part of my job for the next four years. Today I perform VOs and produce video when requested. It was a fantastic time and I'm always grateful for those days and the people I worked with - some of whom I'm still in touch with 10 years later.
Mike Royko wrote there's a reason why people have to pay other people money to work. I would be reminded of that whenever the job got tedious and frustrating.
Remember folks to count your blessings. I was lucky to grow up in L.A. listening to radio greats like Billy Pearl, The Real Don Steele, Gary Owens, and Beaver Cleaver. RIP Billy. Nice tribute, Ken.
Excellent post, and words I think I needed to hear just now. Thanks.
Mike Teverbaugh—Or maybe he was just bitching about KHJ so you wouldn’t feel so bad about not being there and you took the wrong lesson from that dinner. Just sayin’ …
YouTube food vlogger Adam Ragusea synthesizes the same valuable life lesson out of both his own career and that of Warrant frontman Jani Lane, who came to despise having written the hit "Cherry Pie." Definitely worth a watch.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoAgW3U9XRE
Pointless Epiphany: Epiphany Proudfoot is the name of a character in the novel FALLING ANGEL.
You forgot to mention Charlie Van Dyke refused to listen to Bills' advice on the direction to take the station. This made his and Charlie's relationship fall sour and he left to KRLA. Upon arriving to KRLA, he applied his own advice to the station and jumped KHJ in the ratings. All Bill did was put his money where his mouth was.
I posted a link to an article about Pearl's passing in the Comments section early last week, knowing he had a background in LA Radio.
I found it very hard to reconcile Billy Pearl with the Pearl I knew. I had quite a bit of online interaction with him regarding local Long Beach Politics over the years. I was a county attorney and my wife worked for Long Beach. He constantly complained about how the city did things via his website and rarely offered any solutions for a cure. As bright as he obviously was, he would very often enter into a situation with some preconceived notion and be wrong. It seemed he was always going upstream. When something was explained to him, he would dismiss it without comment. He knew better. See him wife's comments in the article I linked about he would rewrite even her, a journalist with decades of experience, for his website. He knew better about EVERYTHING.
Frankly, he was very hard to like if you only knew him via his website, which was and is generously described as prehistoric in format. He refused to change THAT, too. There was no doubt he meant well, his heart was usually in the right place, but he thought nothing of naming names of hard working civil servants who didn't deserve it, often because he got wrong whatever it was they allegedly did. No apologies in print were ever forthcoming. He didn't quite needlessly ruin lives but he came close a few times.
I have three favorite Pearl stories, among many. He was always, always making Public Records requests of the city for some arcane and/or inane thing. The city was required to comply unless they could cite to some legal reason why not. These requests were very time consuming and since there was no budget to do them they often ran into overtime. Then, later, he would get a copy of that department's payroll expenses and complain about overtime.
Another time years ago a specially equipped weightless in flight plane was at Long Beach airport. Credentialed media were invited to go up in the plane. Pearl showed up ready for his flight. Problem was, he was told he was not credentialed media, which was true. He thought he was, reasoning he had a website that reported local news, so therefore by default he was media. He complained loud and long about that one. Just before he died and still physically able, he finally got to go up in one with his son. He wrote up the experience for his site and still complained about the previous incident.
Lastly, despite his website claiming so much transparency, he rarely allowed opposing views in the comments section. This is where he and I clashed. Somehow, he figured out I had resorted to using a pseudonym after refusing to approve any posts under my own name and he banned that name, too. I eventually just stopped trying, because it wasn't worth it. If you went to his site, which always trumpeted how he was first to report something, you never saw anyone disagreeing with him because he never allowed it to be published. He also never published a city official's explanation about anything if it clashed with his own view. He had one snitch at City Hall and we all knew who it was. However, that person termed out of office and his information pipeline dried up to a trickle.
I thought of Pearl when I read Ken's remark about comments on Bob Saget's passing. The comments were genuinely heartfelt and not perfunctory. In Pearl's case, most of the comments from local leaders past and present were perfunctory. The heartfelt comments came from the small choir he preached to via his website. Although apparently his time in radio was a way to pay for law school, he stopped practicing and devoted his energies to the website, where he never made any money. It was a puzzling existence for the last 20 years or so of his life, but one he chose. I hope he's finally found some peace.
“Oh, you hate your job? Why didn't you say so? There's a support group for that. It's called everybody, and they meet at the bar.”
-- Drew Carey
Friday question:
How important of the names of the characters it series, particularly sitcoms. I assume some are important and some are just names. To me Sam Malone is a nice name, but not particularly significant, but Diane Chambers seems to bea more snooty name that fits her character. And what goes in to choosing names?
What happened at KHJ from 1976 onward was trying to catch the audience shift to FM. After PD CVD, it was Michael Spears, then John Sebastian, then Chuck Martin leading to country. So, to say Billy went to KRLA and beat KHJ is an over simplification. Yes, Billy was energetic, animated and young with a great sense of timing on air but as major market PD within the confines of RKO, he was not going to cut it.
To often we look back and think about how good we had it. We should try to enjoy the present and realize how good something is "right now".
Great story Ken
gratitude is the the reason you're still relevant.
I was lucky to be at KRLA when Billy Pearl, along with Tom Greenleigh and Sherman Cohen (also deceased) put the "Hit Man" format together under Art Laboe. With their production guidance KRLA shot up in the ratings and over took rival KRTH. Don't remember if we beat KHJ as they weren't our target.
Here is a remembrance about Billy Pearl:
https://www.ocregister.com/2022/01/10/remembering-khj-radio-dj-and-kabc-legal-mind-billy-pearl/
Making it to KHJ at 24 was an amazing accomplishment. When I was 24 I'd been in radio 2 years and working in Paducah Kentucky. It was a great station, approaching the level of stations in Memphis and Nashville, but it wasn't KHJ.
Those of us who grew up on the East Coast never heard KHJ or any other LA stations. I wish we had! My inspirations were 1520 WKBW from Buffalo, the previously mentioned Big 8 CKLW Windsor/Detroit, and Big 10 WCFL from Chicago. (Sorry Ken but WLS would have been a second choice to Super CFL). They all rolled in like locals at night. We could pick up 77 WABC New York day and night, but they didn't light my fire like the other 50-kilowatt blasters did. I loved their "sound" but they were too slow on new music. WBZ in Boston was a great station when they were rockin' at night in the mid-60s.
Unfortunately, that "bigger than life" sound all of these stations had that made them so exciting is gone from the radio dial today. (**Sigh**)
I could bitch loud and long about the problems at some of the stations I worked at but since I was the "new guy" coming in at the tail end of some of the format changes or sale of the station I was ignored. At one station ratings were sliding [late 70s] we had what would be considered a "soft rock" tinged with some AAA format. They brought in an "insultant" who decried "No more back announcing of records! You have 13 seconds to do a weather forecast! Keep your breaks short, no more than 30 seconds of talking! Play those ads! Play those ads! PLAY THOSE ADS!" I screamed "Why are you suggesting we do stuff that people I talk to on the street are complaining about? We play some songs that people have probably never heard and you don't want us to ID them?" After implementing his suggestions, the ratings turned into an upside down rocket heading for the basement at warp 6. Wasn't long after that ran into a person at a mall doing a survey for a broadcast company that wanted to know what type of music they want to hear on the radio. Curiosity peaked, I asked a few questions and she finally admitted it was for a company that was about to purchase the station I worked at and change the format. I yelled "Holy crap! I work there!" The look on her face was an "Oh shit, I just lost my job look." I ran back to the station and informed the PD/MD/production director and told him, he ran to the station manager/owner who finally broke down and admitted it. Word spread, one DJ on air quit in the middle of his shift [put on a long song, said "I quit" and walked out the door.] The rest spent the last week or so putting T&Rs together and shipping them out to various stations. Subversive cartoons posted in the break room. You could really tell on the air that the DJs were pissed off. Eventually they just shit canned everyone and fired up the ancient automation machine in the basement. Kept two people, they were told to just sit there and check off the songs as they played, check the transmitter meter, and NOT to go on air, period, even if the Russians launched nuclear bombs at us.
After yesterday's blog I probably shouldn't say this, but I will anyway. "M*A*S*H" was closer to the KMET FM of sitcoms. More like a progressive rock station and less like a standard TOP 40 station. Sorry Ken.
M.B.
I knew Bill Pearl at UCLA, before he was Billy Pearl. In that small group at the student station, a group that spawned at least 12 radio jocks and newscasters that I can think of, Pearl was acknowledged to be something special, on air and off. Hanging around the station at the back of the Ackerman Union ballroom one night, he bet he could get Bill Drake on the phone. Yeah, Bill, why not start with something easier, say the Virgin Mary? But he bluffed his way thru to Drake's lair by saying he was from KLM Electronics. Bill Drake on the phone in 1969? It would have been easier to beat the UCLA basketball team with Lew Alcindor that year.
And props to you, too, Ken, for taking some of your own advice from a few days ago.
Ken, I’m so saddened to hear about Bill’s passing. I hadn’t seen him since our days together at UCLA, but I find that the older I get, the more I think about those good old days. Lately, I’ve been thinking about them a lot. I just wish I had known then that they were the good old days when they were happening.
I was the request girl for Billy Pearl at KHJ. He was great to me, always friendly and kind. And he was a great jock. He could talk up to the vocals with the best of them. But I think the stress of working at such a powerhouse finally got to him. Where he used to riff his intros, he ended up writing a lot of them out, towards the end of my time there with him.
We would occasionally go to dinner in Chinatown and he was obsessed with knowing what everyone else in radio was doing. He had a great need to be the best, and I think it ate away at him.
But there was also a generous side to him. When I worked at KHJ, I also was finishing up my college degree in communications and had to pull a shift at the college radio station. He came to Rio Hondo and pulled my shift for me one day, promising to show off by talking up to the vocals. He chose AWB - Pick up the Pieces. :) And he thrilled all my radio compadres.
He was good to me. But I think he was also a very tortured soul. I'm sorry to hear of his passing.
Billy Pearl had the most coveted job in Top 40 radio, period. Like a lot of jocks I've worked with they only want to be better, and perfect their craft. No doubt a lot of young jocks were jealous of Pearl's success at KHJ. He didn't sound like an "announcer" which seemed to be the trend in the mid 70's at KHJ. Pearl was fired, and then beat KHJ at KRLA with an antique facility and a haphazard management structure. KRLA had a different demographic in mind, but they ended up on top of the game for at least several rating periods. Billy could have likely gone anywhere with his programming and on air talent and prowess. But he became and attorney and a talk show host. Not understanding this "be thankful for working there" vibe. I believe that stems only from competitive rivalry, not anything else.
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