Episode 658 - Jim Ladd & Frazer Smith
Guest:Lock the gates!
Guest:Alright, let's do this!
Guest:How are you, what the fuckers?
Guest:What the fuck buddies?
Guest:What the fucking ears?
Marc:Welcome to the live WTF at LA PodFest 2015!
Marc:Yeah!
Yeah!
Marc:I'm happy to be here.
Marc:I say that because it's a habit.
Marc:I don't know what the fuck to talk about.
Marc:It wasn't a bleak day.
Marc:But...
Marc:Maybe I can share what I wrote on my phone.
Marc:I usually carry around scraps of paper that I write on.
Marc:I rarely write jokes.
Marc:I rarely write things that are funny on my phone or on a piece of paper.
Marc:They're important ideas that are very pressing to me in the moment.
Marc:There were two things that came up in conversation, and I thought I should write them down.
Marc:The first being erratic apes cursed with consciousness...
Marc:Which would be us, I think, is what we're explaining.
Marc:And then this is a fine way to open a show.
Marc:It's amazing how easily we've all adapted to this utterly non-reflective but self-consumed culture.
Marc:Elaborate shallowness based on lifestyle choice and vanity.
Marc:Mutated egos seeking recognition, calling that individuality.
Woo!
Marc:And then the next line says, forget happy, I want to be chipper.
Marc:Right?
Marc:Isn't happiness too much to ask for?
Marc:I mean, are there people here that are capable?
Marc:Like, someone asked me, and this comes up a lot, you know, what do you do that gives you joy?
Marc:And my response is always like, what the fuck are you talking about?
Marc:What could that possibly mean?
Marc:Do most of you experience joy?
Marc:Okay, I asked the wrong crowd.
Marc:No, man, we're just, you know, listening to the things.
Marc:This is what I prepared for the show.
Marc:It just says monologue.
Marc:That's underlined.
Marc:And then... These were the bullet points.
Marc:Desperation everywhere.
Marc:Desperation everywhere.
Marc:Cultural starvation, deprivation.
Marc:And then this one deserves exploring.
Marc:Indulging the talentless.
Marc:Indulge that one.
Marc:You know, it's like I try to stay out of the fray.
Marc:But because there's such a hunger for content, morons are celebrated.
Marc:Now, like, I know, like, if anyone's taking this personally, that's really on you.
Marc:Like, if anyone in here had a moment where you're like, I think he's fucking shitting on what I do, well, maybe you should fucking re-evaluate what you do then.
Marc:Thank God none of us are happy because I think that the entire new media would collapse if people were like, you know, I don't need to, I'm not even gonna go on the computer today.
Marc:What?
Marc:What are you, you're not playing along.
Marc:So let's do some questions.
Marc:I'd like to open with a Q&A because I think that would spark some excitement.
Marc:There are mics set up, so I'm not fucking around.
Marc:I'm going to bring my guests out in a minute.
Marc:But let's do some Q&A because I feel like that will make me excited.
Marc:So go to the mic, somebody with a question.
Marc:Where are the mics?
Marc:Here's a mic right here.
Marc:That's it.
Marc:Hi, Mark.
Marc:Hi.
Guest:Hi, Mindy.
Marc:Hi, Mindy.
Marc:What's up?
Guest:Well, I was wondering how it feels to do a podcast outside of the garage.
Marc:Well, there's less panic involved.
Marc:Like, when I'm in the garage, I don't know if some of you know how honestly long it takes me to approach the garage.
Marc:Like...
Marc:Like, if I have to do this monologue in the garage, it's a good, like, I'll go, I'll set up the file, I'll label it, and then I'll go back into the house and I'll prepare something to eat.
Marc:And then I'll go back out to the garage and I'll be like, fuck, I need coffee.
Marc:And then I'll go back in the house and I'll make some coffee.
Marc:And then I'll maybe go listen to a record.
Okay.
Marc:And then I'll get up from listening to the record and I'll be like, fuck, man, I'm so fucking tired of talking about myself.
Marc:I might just fucking commit suicide on the mic, but then I don't know how people would respond to that.
Marc:So...
Marc:Then I choose, you know, kind of courageously not to kill myself in that moment, because I have a monologue to do about whatever's happening in my little life.
Marc:So then I'll go back out to the garage, and I'll get on the mic, and right before I start, I'll be like, oh, I think I'll play a little guitar.
Marc:and I'll play guitar for a little while, and then I'll set the levels for when I play guitar now at the end, and then I'll sit in there, yeah, after I play guitar and record a little, I'll be like, why aren't, how come I'm not doing this for real?
Marc:And then finally, like, something will happen, something will pop into my mind, and lately it's been housework, where I'll be like, oh, fuck, I just stained my gate.
Marc:I got a monologue.
Yeah.
Marc:So how is this different?
Marc:I don't have any of that going on.
Marc:Next question.
Marc:Good question.
Marc:I enjoy this.
Marc:I feel like I'm getting happy.
Marc:Hi.
Guest:Hi, Mark.
Marc:Did you write something down?
Marc:No.
Marc:Oh, you're holding a book like it's... I am.
Guest:A few years ago, you did an interview with Greg Fleet, the Melbourne comedian, if you remember.
Guest:Yeah, Greg Fleet.
Guest:and uh you you lent him some money at a time that he had a heroin addiction yeah the time when he had a heroin addiction right and so this is his autobiography that he gave to me for free so i was wondering if you wanted to return on your investment and take this book
Marc:You're offering me Greg Fleet's book outside of his knowledge to make up for the debt of the $20 that he shot into his fucking arm.
Guest:I spoke to him about it and he supported the idea.
Marc:Well, I'd like to think that Greg put aside my $20 for that meal.
Guest:We'd all like to think that.
Guest:and i like to think when he stayed in my house that uh he just slept and that was it but you know but you were missing a television how's he doing now he's doing good right now yeah yeah right now i mean read the book it ends it ends on uh yeah it ends on the struggle am i in the book uh where he says that marin that sucker like everybody else let me 20 that he'll never get back
Guest:Not specifically, but he says comedians, so you're in the bracket.
Marc:Thank God we all take care of each other.
Marc:What are you going to do when a guy needs money for heroin?
Marc:I don't want him to get it from somebody who expects it to be returned.
Marc:I'd like it to be a charitable donation to further exploration.
Marc:What's up, buddy?
Guest:How's it going, Mark?
Guest:I'm all right.
Guest:Hey, I know you're a fan of records, listening to music on vinyl.
Guest:I'm a huge vinyl fan, so I wanted to know, what are you listening to, and what do you prefer?
Guest:Full albums, 7 inches, 10 inches, something like that?
Guest:7 inches...
Guest:It's a record size, not a euphemism.
Marc:I am so oblivious to double entendres.
Marc:I'm just sitting here thinking about records.
Marc:The rest of you are like, hey.
Marc:That's where I'm at.
Marc:10 inches.
Marc:I like my cocks.
Marc:I like my cocks.
Marc:No, because it seems that the higher quality equipment you have, the more you have to do.
Marc:If I play a 7-inch, that means I've got to get up and take the needle off.
Marc:If I play a 10-inch, I'm sort of like, why didn't these guys make a whole fucking record?
Marc:And if...
Marc:If I play a whole record, I'm like, I can sit down and wait this out and enjoy the music.
Marc:What am I listening to?
Marc:Like today, I listened to Fairport Convention, Lesion Leaf, and I listened to... What else did I listen to?
Marc:I just bought a batch of records.
Marc:And it's weird because how many records does a person need?
Marc:All the records.
Marc:I listened to Donny Hathaway live, and I was not familiar that much with Mr. Hathaway, but thanks to my pusher at Gimme Gimme Records, Mr. Dan Cook, who kindly puts aside a stack of $20 to $35 records that he thinks I'll enjoy.
Marc:And he knows you'll buy.
Marc:Is that a good enough answer?
Marc:That's fantastic.
Guest:Thank you very much.
Marc:Two more questions.
Marc:I'm bringing my guest up.
Marc:What's up, buddy?
Marc:How's it going?
Guest:Good.
Guest:Cool.
Guest:I just wanted to ask, you did an interview with Michael Biglia.
Marc:Are you like some weird version of me?
Guest:I'm your son, Mark.
Guest:Is this happening now?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I always waited for it to happen.
Guest:Do you want to play catch?
Guest:I brought a baseball glove.
Guest:I brought a baseball glove.
Guest:I thought we could play catch, finally.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Like existential catch or something that would be appropriate.
Marc:Sure, man.
Marc:I'm just glad all the hard work's done.
Marc:Looks like you turned out okay.
Marc:You're tucking your shirt in and shit.
Guest:Go ahead.
Guest:I just wanted to ask Pops that in the Mike Birbiglia interview that you did a couple of years ago, he asked a question where he was asking like,
Guest:How do you feel like, you were talking about characterizations of stand-ups and people that they sort of play on stage, and obviously since the podcast has been going on for many years, and you've got the IFC show and whatnot, to what extent do you feel like you have to play up the Marc Maron-ness?
Marc:It's funny, my son is just as long-winded as I am.
Guest:Thank you.
Marc:You really got that gene.
Marc:You should start a podcast.
Marc:I bet you could confidently ramble about your cats in your driveway for 15 to 20 minutes.
Marc:You're asking me about, like, how conscious am I of being a caricature of myself?
Guest:Yeah, and do you actively try to defeat that, or what's the deal, man?
Marc:Dude, I am so not real right now.
Sorry.
Marc:It's all been a lie.
Marc:The real me is crying.
Marc:I just turned into Dave Anthony for a second.
Marc:He, um... Get two, three... Yeah, really?
Marc:He's not gonna step in?
Marc:That's amazing.
Marc:The, um... That was... We just witnessed some real strength and fortitude on behalf of Dave Anthony not to somehow steal the stage.
Marc:The, um... I don't... I think that, like...
Marc:What's ultimately happened for me is I think the conversation was around the idea of building your clown, which is some weird thing that I used to say that I still believe.
Marc:That whether you do it on purpose, like some people seem to be fully formed on stage as sort of a heightened version of themselves or something ridiculous that has nothing to do with them, but it's something that exists on stage.
Marc:It's a persona that's generally based on some part of their personality.
Marc:I never could quite handle that because I was so busy trying to figure out who the fuck I was
Marc:That what I think ultimately has happened is that because of the podcast and because of a certain amount of pride and gratitude and self-esteem that seems to have happened by doing something that people enjoy and that I like doing, I think I've become more myself.
Marc:Which is all I really wanted to do.
Marc:I was not looking to become some weird amplified version of me.
Marc:But there are different, like my stand-up persona is really just me consciously trying to be funny.
Marc:The persona in the garage is me trying to work things out out loud.
Marc:And the character on the show
Marc:is a very limited version of me that over two or three seasons we've realized, this guy doesn't do that.
Marc:But I do that.
Marc:It's like, yeah, but you're not this guy.
Marc:This guy's... He's kind to me, but he's not really.
Marc:So I think that the TV thing is the best example of me being kind of a character.
Marc:Does that help?
Marc:I'm just happy to be closer to who I think I am.
Marc:Now get the fuck out of here.
Seriously.
Marc:Not kidding.
Marc:Thank you so much.
Marc:Good luck with everything.
Marc:One more.
Guest:It's a lot to follow your son, I'm just going to say.
Guest:Over 600 episodes in the can, out.
Guest:Are you aware of the kind of history that you are filling in for people in comedy?
Guest:Because I feel like whenever I listen to WTF, the comedians I grew up with and I'm very familiar with are telling stories about the silences in comedic history that people don't understand.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I'm just wondering how important it is to you in what you do and what other podcasts are doing to tell the story of comedians that are not doing late night or doing big movies.
Guest:Well, I think it's like I learned...
Marc:not too long ago that at any point in history there's always been like hundreds of unknown comedians and uh and being part of the the community of comedians that like part of what i did at the beginning was really it was a it was me asking to be led back in to the committee like i wanted to know that i had friends and we were all cool so
Marc:It's true like it because I become so cynical and so fucking weird and angry that that I had marginalized myself in my own mind But usually the people I talked to were like I didn't even know you were mad so Because we're all so selfish but over time I have made conscious decisions to have certain comics on because I thought that people I
Marc:should know about them because I love them so much.
Marc:And even if they remain unknown or whatever, I am sort of conscious of the fact that there are guys and women that do amazing things that people just don't know about.
Marc:And we don't know about it because getting back to what I was talking about in sort of a bleak way, there's only so many fucking hours in a day.
Marc:I mean, even when I have somebody on like Richard Thompson, who's a wizard of a guitar player, I've said lately that there's no real late to the party because the party is ongoing.
Marc:And that you can come at anything at any time because it's all available.
Marc:But who the fuck has time?
Marc:So there is part of me that feels like there are definitely people that deserve to be recognized for what they do.
Marc:And there are some really fucking funny people that nobody really knows who they are.
Marc:And I love talking to them.
Marc:So I'm conscious of it.
Marc:And sometimes I do it on purpose.
Marc:How's that?
Marc:All right.
Marc:Let's begin the show.
Marc:Wait, you okay?
Marc:Did you want any more attention?
Marc:What's up?
Marc:No, come on.
Marc:No, tell me.
Marc:Tell me.
Marc:Now I'm the asshole?
Guest:No, I'm the asshole for making you look like an asshole.
Guest:No, you didn't.
Guest:Though I am an asshole.
Marc:You're actually more like me than the other guy.
Marc:Go ahead.
Guest:I'm actually a little charmed by that.
Guest:This is actually my first WTF.
Guest:And I was going to ask, what's your favorite episode?
Marc:Come on.
Marc:Who's in charge?
Marc:Get the diapers.
Marc:All right, good.
Guest:I'm actually new to L.A., and I was wondering how... How old are you?
Guest:I'm only a 21 babby boy.
Marc:And you just moved here?
Guest:I just moved here.
Guest:On your own?
Guest:On my own.
Marc:Are you in school?
Guest:No, sir.
Guest:What's your plan?
Guest:I was just, I wanted to know.
Guest:I'm getting sad.
Guest:I just know where the line was between networking and being talented.
Marc:You're asking the wrong guy.
Marc:All right, thank you.
Marc:No, listen, no, listen.
Marc:There are people that are fundamentally untalented that can have great success because their ambition is so focused and they work hard.
Marc:And there are people that are talented that have no success because their talent drains them of their ability to be successful.
Marc:So you gotta find somewhere in between.
Marc:If you are talented, you should try to figure out what those are and what the parameters are and how you can use them to help you as opposed to hurt you.
Marc:If you're not talented, you're gonna have to work really hard and you'll probably become more successful than a lot of your talented friends.
Marc:All right.
Marc:Thank you very much.
Marc:It's my pleasure to bring up my first guest, who is one of the warriors of free-form rock radio on KMET right here in L.A., a legend, Mr. Jim Ladd, ladies and gentlemen.
Marc:Hi, Jim.
Marc:Why don't you sit right in that one.
Marc:This is... I don't know how many people know who Jim is.
Marc:You want to hold it or you want to talk into it?
Marc:I'll just talk into it.
Marc:Listen to that voice!
Marc:That's a real fucking deal.
Guest:So, when did you get into radio?
Guest:Oh, man.
Guest:I have to say that in front of this crowd.
Guest:Yes, sir.
Guest:Everybody's 12 years old here.
Guest:1969.
Guest:1969.
Guest:1969.
Marc:See, now I feel like I'm going to be this weird interpreter.
Marc:That's when things happen.
Marc:It was before my time, but I was very appreciative of it.
Marc:69.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So what was the radio landscape?
Marc:I should preface this.
Marc:The reason I had Jim here and I've got Frasier Smith in the wings is that...
Marc:Fraser Smith, another legendary rock DJ and stand-up comic, is that we owe a certain amount of props to these guys who fucking cut the way for fucking radio and broadcasting when you had to figure out how to be unique and creative and still have a fucked up shitty boss.
Marc:So in 69, what was the angle?
Marc:What was radio doing?
Guest:There was a revolution happening.
Guest:Two names you should know is Tom and Rachel Donahue, who invented FM radio, because before Tom and Rachel, the landscape was top 40 radio.
Guest:You know the guys that talk like that?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Hi!
Guest:I'm always really, really fucking happy.
LAUGHTER
Guest:And Tom and Rachel came along, and one day, I'll tell this story really quickly.
Guest:Oh, take your time.
Guest:There.
Guest:Oh, that's right.
Guest:I'm on a podcast.
Guest:Oh.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We'll take it.
Guest:We'll take it.
Guest:Anyway, the story goes, one day up in San Francisco, Tom was sitting around with some friends.
Guest:Tom, at that time, was a 350-pound guy, big AM radio guy, one of those guys that talk like that.
Marc:Was he a station manager or a DJ?
Guest:A DJ.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And he'd gotten sick of the bubblegum Top 40 stuff.
Guest:Anyway, so they're sitting around, they're blazing on LSD, playing cards, they're melting, they can't figure out what the fuck they're looking at on the cards.
Guest:And...
Guest:he had been given an acetate of a brand new band that no one had ever heard of called The Doors.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Good timing on that.
Guest:Good timing on that.
Guest:So the end is playing on a vinyl record.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:In the back.
Guest:And Tom says, why don't we hear this on the radio?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Next day, he gets up.
Guest:He puts on his power tie.
Guest:And he says, he calls.
Guest:He gets a phone book out.
Guest:That's when you had phone books.
Guest:And he finds an FM station whose phone had been disconnected.
Guest:He said, I've got it.
Guest:I've got him now.
Guest:We're going to go paint the sky blue for this guy.
Guest:So he went down to this radio station in San Francisco.
Guest:did his magic talk.
Guest:Tom and Ray go home.
Guest:They take up their own albums in boxes down to this FM station.
Guest:By the way, FM at that time was basically foreign language, classical music, and static.
Guest:That was it.
Marc:I would be listening to the static station.
Guest:Nobody gave a shit about FM radio.
Guest:Nobody knew about it.
Guest:If you bought an AM station, they'd throw the FM.
Guest:Anyway, so he went on the air there and started a literal broadcast revolution called Freeform Radio, and I came along about two years later.
Guest:Yes.
Marc:A lot of these... I remember Freeform Radio, because when I grew up in New Mexico, there was KRST in Albuquerque.
Marc:And really...
Marc:And, like, all I remember was that we put it on in the restaurant I worked at, and a guy would come on and be like, hey, how's everybody doing?
Marc:Right now we're gonna play side two of Jesse Collin Young's second album.
Marc:And then that would be it.
Marc:And then he'd come back on, and he'd be like, I just got back in.
Marc:Uh...
Marc:But that was beautiful in a way, wasn't it?
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:And when you started in on that, what was your angle?
Marc:Because I know that from very early on, you would utilize the music to sort of make points.
Marc:You would have themes.
Marc:You would sort of pepper your monologue with music and sort of carry it through.
Marc:So it was an entire listening experience.
Guest:That's a very...
Guest:good way to describe it.
Guest:My particular thing that I found, and I do it today on Sirius XM, I'm allowed to, thank God, still do it.
Guest:My approach to Freeform Radio was, first off, it was very, we were very involved in what was going on in the streets.
Guest:Vietnam was still going on.
Guest:the civil rights movement, all of that 60s social ethic.
Guest:We felt obligated.
Guest:It wasn't like something, well, we should do this to get listeners.
Guest:We were listeners who were just lucky enough to get to play with the PA.
Guest:That's the way we looked at it.
Guest:We're at the party and we get to play with the thing.
Guest:So it was incumbent upon us to comment on what was going on in the streets and what the protesters were doing.
Guest:Well, then, you have to remember, you have Bob Dylan singing songs about these issues.
Guest:You have the Beatles and the Stones and the Doors and all these great artists writing this extraordinary music.
Guest:So what I tried to do was take what was happening in the streets
Guest:the lyrics of the songs, combine them with my take on that particular issue and put them together into a show.
Guest:So if I set up a set about the environment or, you know,
Guest:politics or getting laid or whatever you want you know how many times did you do that last one that was mostly the show yeah pretty much you know we had things like the all-girl harmonica band looking for ladies with the best licks in town uh long-legged pony reviews things like that but these real bands is that no no no that was no i made that up
Guest:No, no.
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:The all-girl heart.
Marc:See how sensitive and stupid I've gotten?
Marc:It's like, wow, they were really performing that kind of stuff then.
Guest:They were performing all right.
Guest:It was a whole different kind of performance.
Guest:But anyway, where the hell was I?
Guest:So anyway, we try to take these topics, and if you listen very carefully to the lyrics of these songs, they will continue the story that I set up.
Guest:So you would have to really listen to what the song was saying, and the next song, and the next song, and it would have a beginning, a middle, and an end.
Marc:And so from that, you get what became
Marc:You know, rock radio, FM rock radio.
Marc:Like once the social issues, though they're back and they never quite go away, but once the 60s sort of kind of like fizzled out and became exploitable music-wise, that, you know, once there were people that really meant something and then the record companies were like, well, it's just a sound.
Marc:We can get everyone fucking doing this.
Marc:And then it just became a party from what, 1972 to like three years ago?
Guest:Pretty much.
Guest:Pretty much, yeah.
Guest:I'll tell you when it ended, because this is kind of serious.
Guest:I don't know how many of you here remember a radio station called KMET, but I miss it every day.
Guest:And it was the epitome of FM freeform outlaw rock radio.
Guest:And it was a must-listen in town.
Guest:And we had complete and total freedom.
Guest:As you have freedom on your podcast, which is the brilliance of being able to do podcasts, because nobody's telling you what to do,
Guest:No one told us what to do then.
Guest:And so it was heaven.
Guest:It was heaven every day.
Marc:But what was your relationship with the people that were in charge?
Marc:I mean, I have to assume that we just got a letter in the post...
Guest:yeah oh yeah yeah in the post yeah yeah thank god there was no email two weeks ago this this person mailed this letter right she had a problem with something you said and you were like i don't even fucking remember what exactly and and those letters were all you can always tell them see them coming because they were about that thick yeah they had like 40 pages of handwritten information and they never and oh yeah after they'd steal the envelope they had to write on the outside of the envelope
Marc:So healthy people.
Marc:Healthy people.
Marc:Real healthy people.
Marc:What were most of the complaints then?
Guest:Well, you know, people would be probably put off by my political stance.
Guest:It might be a bit too liberal for them.
Guest:As we got going, you know, at the first, everybody, it's a big tribe.
Guest:And everybody says, yeah, because it was our community bulletin board.
Guest:So, you know, go to the anti-war rally.
Guest:Go to this protest.
Guest:And that was all fantastic.
Guest:Then Ronald Reagan came along.
Guest:And I remember the night that I got, I said something about Reagan.
Guest:Guy calls me up, he goes, look, man, I'm a rocker for Reagan.
Guest:Shut the fuck up.
Guest:And I went, man, the world has just changed.
Guest:My world has just changed.
Guest:And what happened was Ronald Reagan did a thing called deregulation, because, you know, Republicans love to deregulate things.
Guest:Sure, no rules.
Guest:Let the people fend for themselves.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:You know, we don't need clean water.
Guest:We don't need clean air.
Guest:You know, the...
Marc:When it gets real bad, a private company will take it over, and that's how we create businesses.
Guest:Global warming is a... You know, that's not happening.
Marc:Yeah, apocalypse management.
Marc:It's a future business.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:So they deregulated the broadcast industry, and without getting too technical, what used to happen is you could only own seven radio and TV stations up until Ronald Reagan.
Guest:That meant that there was thousands of...
Guest:radio stations across the country, owned by people who were actual broadcasters, who loved the media.
Guest:You didn't know what you were doing.
Guest:Well, once that went out the window, it was like everybody had a podcast.
Guest:No, it was...
Guest:It was quite the opposite, actually.
Guest:And that's why, all joking aside, what you're doing out here is important.
Guest:Because what happened to our media is that instead of more and more people owning it, fewer and fewer people start owning it.
Marc:Sure, and then you get the clear channel radio mills.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:Oh, look at that.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You don't, yeah.
Guest:So now there's just a handful of very, very powerful people who've watered down rock and roll.
Guest:I always thought...
Guest:Who can make rock and roll boring?
Guest:Well, they figured out a way.
Guest:Somebody sat down and go, I'm going to make a format and made it boring, for fuck's sake.
Guest:How do you make rock and roll?
Marc:I know from being a comic, you go on the road, and then you go do a radio show, and you do all your radio in one building, because it was all crazy.
Marc:channel so you're like alright you're going in with Joey and the dummy and then we're going to go to Billy and the stupid lady so you just kind of walk down this hallway to a bunch of guys going hey here he is Mark Maron's in the house and it was kind of frightening because you realize that there was no independence at all and that the game was fixed
Guest:Completely, totally fixed.
Guest:You're going to bring a guest on here in a minute by the name of Fraser Smith, one of the most creative and talented people I've worked with.
Guest:And they still are trying to figure out how to, you know, grind him down.
Marc:Oh, well, shit, that's a hell of an intro.
Marc:Why don't you come out, Fraser?
Marc:Fraser Smith, ladies and gentlemen.
Marc:Still at it.
Marc:Still on the dial.
Guest:You want me to move over?
Marc:No, you guys, you can be.
Marc:He's all right, because we're going to start talking about partying pretty soon.
Guest:Anybody got any blow?
Marc:Come on, let's get this shit going.
Marc:What is things asked in the 80s?
Marc:Nice shirt, bro.
Marc:Fraser, so... All right, you can work the room for a minute.
Guest:Go ahead.
Guest:Do it.
Guest:Work the room.
Guest:Do it.
Guest:What the fuckers?
Guest:What's up?
Guest:Yeah, okay.
Okay.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Jim Ladd, come on, a legend.
Guest:Come on.
Marc:So now, but before Reagan came, before deregulation, there was a period there from like 71, 72, all the way through the 80s, where it was just a fucking free-for-all, I have to imagine.
Marc:I mean, this is L.A.
Marc:rock radio.
Marc:This is where the music business is.
Marc:When did you know that things were out of control, Jim?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Probably when I was doing lines on the bench in the studio and the general manager walked in and said, where's the straw?
Guest:You know, that probably was the moment, you know, when the...
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's where I used to get my blow.
Guest:Where?
Guest:From the GM.
Guest:They always have the best drugs.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:So he didn't give a fuck either?
Guest:No.
Guest:Honest to God, when KMET moved to the new building of Metromedia Square...
Guest:Rachel, Donna, you kids with the architect.
Guest:And they show, okay, here's the studio, here's the music library, here's the door in between.
Guest:She goes, no, you're going to have to build this little, like, telephone-sized vestibule, this little booth.
Guest:You walk in one door, you can close the door, then you walk in the music.
Guest:She goes, well, we don't need that.
Guest:She goes, no, there's got to be a place for the jocks to smoke dope.
Yeah.
Guest:They went, okay, we'll build it, and they did.
Marc:We called it the Paraquat Lounge.
Marc:The Paraquat Lounge.
Marc:That Paraquat was a thing they used to spray on marijuana that caused it to be cancerous and horrible.
Marc:They did it in an effort to kill the marijuana plants back when people grew it illegally in fields in Mexico.
Marc:Yeah, you learned something.
Marc:Was that right?
Marc:It wasn't right?
Marc:But didn't they use it on pot plants in the States?
No.
Guest:So now we're back to Vietnam.
Guest:Yeah, it always comes back to Vietnam.
Guest:I want to just say, if I can, just for a second here.
Guest:Because this goes to the power of why this was important and why it's important we lost it.
Guest:You're right.
Guest:Paraquat was a defoliant used in Vietnam.
Guest:But then what they did was in the Carter administration, they brought it and they started spraying it on Mexican marijuana fields to kill the marijuana.
Guest:Well, what would happen is the drug dealers being the conscientious folks that we all know them to be.
Sure.
Guest:would harvest the plants and then ship them over here, sopping with this horrible chemical.
Guest:So here's an example of what you can do with real radio, real FM radio.
Guest:We got a hold of this story.
Guest:Our news guy, Pat Kelly, read this story.
Guest:I'm listening to it at home because you actually listened to your own radio station in those days.
Guest:Back in those days, yeah.
Guest:Back in those days, you weren't embarrassed because they were playing the same fucking song over and over.
Marc:Hey, Aqualung, it must be 1215.
Marc:Aqualung is 1215.
Marc:Yeah, Aqualung must be 1215.
Guest:How about some more Bad Company?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And let's have the same exact Bad Company song.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Can't get enough of your love.
Guest:Thank you.
Guest:Yeah, there you go.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because obviously the audience is not...
Guest:hip enough to want to listen to more than three records.
Guest:You wouldn't put on a vinyl record and just explore it, would you, Mark?
Marc:Never, man.
Marc:I'm just going to play Bob Seger's Night Moves over and over.
Guest:There you go.
Guest:Great album.
Guest:So I hear this thing.
Guest:I go into the station.
Guest:They've already written up a public service announcement.
Guest:I go on the air and I say, look, this is important.
Guest:You heard Pat talk about this.
Guest:I'm on the air now, and I said, why don't you write your congressman?
Guest:And we had the congressman write down.
Guest:And then I started a song like Homegrown or something from Neil Young, right?
Guest:So I, you know, turned the mic off, the phone rings, I pick it up, and it's a friend of mine, and he says, well, why don't you have him call the White House?
Guest:And I went, fuck.
Guest:yeah like i got jimmy carter's number he said no no no there's there's a public number you can call yeah 24 hours a day and by the way it's the same number today and i said what and he said yeah so i i okay so i wrote the number down i call the white house and by god there was somebody there sure now now it's like 11 o'clock la time yeah right so it's like three in the morning two three in the morning
Guest:So I said, okay, I just want to make sure you're there.
Guest:So I went back on air, and I said, guess what?
Guest:I got the phone number for the White House, and I'm going to give it to you.
Guest:And we're going to call, and we're going to be polite.
Guest:We're not going to be assholes, but we're going to tell them what we think about this.
Guest:Well, I gave the number out.
Guest:put on another song, I dialed the phone to the White House, it was busy, hung up, dialed it again, and I got that thing, which you probably don't remember, but there used to be a message, I'm sorry, all circuits into Washington, D.C.
Guest:are busy.
Guest:So we shut down the phones.
Guest:When I got off the air that night, I'm leaving the studio, and the guy that's on after me goes, hold it, hold it, the Secret Service is on the phone.
Guest:So I had to talk to them, and the next day, of course, the general manager calls me and threatens to fire me and everybody else in the studio.
Guest:If we ever mention this again, as I'm walking down the hallway, the news director is just starting his show, and he's the first story out of his mouth.
Guest:Well, the Paraquat in Washington, D.C., and here's the phone number.
Guest:We just...
Guest:Completely blew this asshole off, right?
Guest:So the end of the story is, in about a month, we had gathered 250,000 signatures, sent them back with the news director to Washington, D.C., and within two months, Congress stopped the funding of Paraquat.
Guest:That was all due to our audience.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then our newsman became known as Paraquat Kelly.
Guest:Is that true?
Guest:Great Paraquat Kelly.
Marc:Now, let's talk about, like, how, like, the sort of, like, you guys were backstage talking about all the places you were fired from and how, you know, when you started doing radio, what was your format?
Marc:Was it freeform as well?
Guest:Yeah, because that was the era for FM, as Jim pointed out, and it had just pretty much started around 68, 71, I got into it.
Guest:And it was really a new medium.
Guest:Jim's right, there was nothing on there.
Guest:And what was your angle?
Guest:I just like to fuck around.
Guest:I figured, how can I get paid for that?
Guest:Which is pretty much what I did.
Guest:And you still do it now?
Guest:Yeah, pretty much.
Guest:I'm on Sunday night on KLOS 95.5.
Guest:If you get a chance, please check it out.
Guest:Ten tell two.
Guest:Thank you.
Guest:Apparently they haven't heard the show.
Guest:Okay.
Marc:And what was the training for radio?
Marc:What did you guys do to get into radio?
Marc:What was the sort of course of the career?
Marc:What was the plans?
Guest:Well, you know, I started at a little AM station.
Guest:I was going to school in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and they had a little AM station called WYYY, which is what they asked after they fired me.
Guest:That sounded scripted.
Guest:Why did we put this guy on there?
Guest:But it was a really good experience because you had to learn how to do everything.
Guest:It was one of these little deals where you had to do the sports and the news and sweep up afterwards and turn on the equipment.
Guest:Traffic.
Guest:Traffic, and you had to do it all.
Guest:So I think as you move up in that world, it always kind of stays the same.
Guest:The buildings get bigger and everything, but the mechanics are basically the same.
Guest:I saw a guy that used to work with carts.
Marc:You guys had the carts, right?
Guest:Yeah, the carts, yeah.
Marc:Like, I saw a guy once, it was like a throwback.
Marc:I did a show with him, and he was working carts, and he was doing all the voices, and he had the 360 machine that had all the buttons with the sound effects, and it was like a one-man fucking band.
Marc:It was horrible, but it seemed like an amazing skill.
Guest:It was, but it was very, very difficult.
Marc:Now, part of the... What was the relationship, though, that I'm curious about?
Marc:What was the relationship with a station like you, like you guys doing Freeform, with the record companies?
Marc:I know you got tired of Bad Company, but you definitely had to...
Marc:have some sort of negotiation with them, right?
Guest:Well, I think it got less and less as time wore on.
Guest:There was a time where you had a little bit of leeway to maybe break a record, break a band early on when we got in there.
Marc:Did you ever break a band?
Guest:Well, I did a couple, yeah.
Guest:I started at K-Rock when I got to L.A.
Guest:and...
Guest:There's the program director and his family.
Guest:The K-Rock was awesome because it was independently owned, one of the last big independently owned stations.
Guest:And I remember we were in a little two-story building in Pasadena.
Guest:This guy used to climb up the fire escape while I was on the air, climb in through the window, kick in the door.
Guest:You go, hey, dude, you got to play my test pressing, man.
Guest:Come on, bro.
Guest:Really?
Guest:It was David Lee Roth.
Guest:So...
Guest:I'm like, get the fuck out of here, dude.
Guest:This is professional broadcasting.
Guest:He goes, you'll be sorry, man.
Guest:So he did this for like three months.
Guest:Finally, just to get him off my back, I go, all right, buddy, I'll play that for you.
Guest:Because it was K-Rock.
Guest:I could still, in those days, play one or two cuts if I wanted.
Guest:So I played Ain't Talking About Love.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Went through the roof.
Guest:You were the guy.
Guest:Well, allegedly.
Guest:But...
Marc:Were you and Dave friends after that?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:We've been friends for a long time.
Guest:And that happened once in a blue moon.
Guest:You could do that.
Guest:I remember I used to get cassettes back in the day.
Guest:I get them now.
Marc:People send me cassettes.
Marc:I'm like, I don't have a machine that does this.
Marc:Do I need to get a machine that does that now?
Marc:Is that the new thing?
Marc:Lo-fi cassettes?
Marc:I don't need to?
Marc:All right.
Marc:That lady who sends me is going to be disappointed.
Guest:Well...
Guest:I was the rocker for Reagan.
Guest:But anyway, call back the I get these cassettes and I'd be like at the Rainbow or something and people go, hey, dude, play this.
Guest:Can you play this, man?
Guest:And OK, so you take it because you get so many of them.
Guest:You're not trying to be rude.
Guest:You'd like to help whoever you can help.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But, you know, you get a lot of them when you're on the air all the time.
Guest:So you kind of throw them in a drawer and every once in a while you play a couple of them.
Guest:And I played one and it sounded really good.
Guest:It was Motley Crue.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was Live Wire.
Guest:So I go and ask my boss, can we play Live Wire?
Guest:No.
Guest:Who are those guys?
Guest:And so then I just played it anyway.
Guest:And I had enough grace at that point to wither or something like that.
Guest:I didn't, you know, I wouldn't get canned over one of them.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:And that was another band I helped out a little bit.
Guest:How about you, Jim?
Guest:Did you break any guys?
Guest:Yeah, I was very, at KMET, we would get back in those days, and I'm not making this up,
Guest:30 albums a week in our mailboxes.
Guest:Every jock got the releases.
Marc:The promo copies, the white label.
Guest:Yeah, promo copies.
Marc:Got any of those left?
Guest:Can I have a... Long ago, sold those for... Never mind.
Guest:But we took... We certainly didn't take ourselves seriously because we pinched ourselves every day that we were working there.
Guest:We knew then, while we were there, 20 years old...
Guest:You know, not knowing anything.
Guest:We knew how lucky we were.
Guest:But we took it seriously because we felt, you know, these guys formed a band.
Guest:So we would listen intently.
Guest:And we had complete freedom to play anybody we wanted.
Guest:One of the new bands that we had played nobody had ever heard of was Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.
Guest:Oh.
Guest:I remember playing that first.
Guest:I remember George Thurgood and the Destroyers.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And so, yeah, they would come up and all of the jocks, not just me, but everybody had a good ear.
Guest:So, you know, we would, if we felt it was quality stuff, we would play it.
Guest:If we felt it was shit, we just wouldn't see.
Guest:Yeah, the entire staff knew music at KMET.
Guest:All the jocks.
Guest:Could have been a program director.
Guest:They knew what was going on musically.
Marc:It's rumored that Tom Petty wrote the last DJ about you.
Marc:Can we validate that rumor?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's very nice.
Marc:It was pretty humbling.
Guest:It's pretty humbling.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And is Johnny Fever based on you?
Marc:No.
Guest:I hope not.
Guest:No.
Marc:Talk about a guy who can work the cards.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:Now, you've interviewed just about every fucking rock and roll person in the world, and I watched some video of you presenting Slash with his star on the Walk of Hollywood fame.
Marc:You have a star on the Walk, too, don't you?
Guest:I do.
Guest:I do.
Guest:I keep waiting for somebody to come up and go, just kidding.
Guest:But yes, I do.
Guest:Well, that must have been a big day, huh?
Guest:Oh, man.
Guest:I was so overwhelmed.
Guest:My father, God bless him, was still alive, so he got to see that.
Guest:Oh, that's great.
Guest:Brother and sister and stuff.
Guest:And it was...
Guest:You know, rarely in life do you have a perfect day.
Guest:You know, there's always something that goes wrong.
Guest:That was, from the moment I woke up to the moment I went to sleep, was a perfect day.
Guest:And I'll never forget it.
Guest:And Jackson Brown came and spoke.
Guest:And Woody Harrelson came and spoke.
Guest:And, you know, a lot of these very kind people came and spoke.
Guest:A lot of weed, huh?
Guest:A lot of weed.
Marc:Perfect day.
Yeah.
Marc:That's fucking beautiful, man.
Marc:It was... Where in Hollywood Boulevard is it?
Guest:You know where the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel is?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, good place.
Guest:Yeah, it's got good real estate.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Thank God that hotel turned around.
Guest:Amen, amen.
Marc:Mines and wants.
Marc:Really, it runs out that far?
Guest:Yeah, I was... Yours is coming crazy.
Guest:It took a turn, yeah.
Guest:You know, it's funny because my dad, you know, he's a World War II vet.
Guest:They lived up north.
Guest:Very supportive.
Guest:Couldn't have better parents, but...
Guest:Yeah, they didn't really relate to the rock and roll lifestyle.
Guest:You know, lifelong Republican, and here I come, you know, this liberal asshole that, you know, believes in everything from smoking pot to... Anyway, so... But when I got that star, that...
Guest:You know, got to my dad.
Guest:You know what?
Guest:Because John Wayne has one.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And his boy got something John Wayne.
Guest:So suddenly I was cool.
Marc:That's a fucking beautiful moment.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:When your dad finally realizes that you're all right.
Guest:And he deserves that star because Jim Ladd really was a pioneer with music.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:and would not just sit there and play the same old stuff over and over again.
Guest:He put his career at risk many times and also had a political viewpoint that he wasn't afraid to share, which is awesome.
Guest:In this day and age, it takes a lot of guts and putting your job on the line, which he did every night, basically.
Marc:What were some of the fights you had to fight within the hierarchy?
Guest:Well, first off, let me just say having to compete against him put my job on the line as well.
Guest:Because that wasn't easy.
Guest:Let me just return a compliment.
Guest:We're not kissing anybody's ass here.
Guest:But there was a time when this guy was the phenomenon in L.A.
Guest:in the morning and he was against us.
Guest:And we were really aware of Fraser Smith.
Guest:And also, I was thinking about this knowing I was going to see you.
Guest:How fucked, excuse my language.
Guest:Go ahead.
Guest:How fucked up is it that a creative guy like this comes up with the phrase party animal, which everybody knows became a big advertising thing with Spud McKenzie.
Guest:And gee, how much money did they come and dump on your doorstep for that?
Guest:Not a lot.
Guest:Spuds got most of that.
Guest:You came up with party animal?
Guest:He invented that term, party animal.
Guest:It's part of the American lexicon.
Guest:Well, unfortunately, at that time, I was the party animal.
Guest:The hard part is trying to do morning radio after you've been out partying all night.
Guest:It's never easy.
Guest:Did you have to do that?
Guest:Yeah, I did.
Guest:The first couple years are like that.
Guest:I remember I was young, so I was partying every night.
Guest:Doing the blow?
Guest:Well, yeah.
Guest:I would go in late to work.
Guest:I'd get there about 7 in the morning.
Guest:For a 6 o'clock call?
Guest:For a 6 o'clock show.
Guest:I would have my engineer play taped shit for an hour.
Guest:It's an old radio trick, guys, if you want to think about that.
Guest:And then I would park in my boss's spot because it was the closest place to the station.
Guest:So then I would go in there, I would do the show, and then hopefully I would remember later to move my car during the show.
Guest:So one day I forgot, I got involved in the show, and I remember I'm on the air, and he had my car towed while I was on the air.
Guest:So I took my mic outside and I interviewed the tow truck guy.
Guest:I go, who's...
Guest:Who's towing my car?
Guest:Well, it's this guy.
Guest:And I go, it's my boss, that fucker.
Guest:So my slogan was too hip.
Guest:I had the slogan too hip.
Guest:And he had gotten these too hip personalized license plates.
Guest:So I said, if you see a silver Cadillac with too hip license plates, give them the finger.
Guest:So everyone in town at every stoplight was flipping them off.
Guest:I love it.
Guest:Everywhere he went, people were flipping him off.
Guest:They'd hawk.
Guest:They'd go, fuck you.
Guest:This is my boss, and so I was fired three weeks later.
Guest:But I do have a story on that just quickly.
Guest:They really started putting pressure on me after that.
Guest:They were really kind of hassling at every turn.
Guest:So I had sold a script I thought to MGM at the time was MGM and I'd written a script with Jack Handy who was the writer of the jerk with Steve Martin and So we wrote this saying and I actually got green lint for a day.
Guest:I Thought it was a sold deal.
Guest:Yeah, so I went on the air and I go, you know I won't be needing this job anymore
Guest:These guys are losers.
Guest:Look at these idiots.
Guest:Yeah, you didn't hear about this.
Guest:And every single thing that I was pissed about, I went off for like three hours.
Guest:I didn't play one record.
Guest:These morons.
Guest:So I'm saying all this stuff.
Guest:All of a sudden, I hear this pounding on the glass, on the studio glass.
Guest:I look over.
Guest:It's my news guy.
Guest:And he's holding up the LA Times calendar section.
Guest:It says, studio head fired.
Guest:It was the guy that greenlit my project.
Guest:So there was no movie deal.
Guest:Did you get back on the mic and say, I've made a horrible mistake these last three hours.
Guest:Yeah, sorry about that.
Guest:We're going to commercial.
Marc:And I was out looking for work the next week.
Marc:So Jim like in terms of interviewing people because I do it for a living now and I know you like you in musicians are not easy really for me They like because they don't have to talk right and some of them, you know are very you know, they have a certain Image that they have to maintain and it's hard to get through right so in in the history of the hundreds of interviews you did Who is the fucker that you still you're sort of like that fuck?
Guest:Oh, man, you want to ask it that way rather than who's the nicest person?
Marc:No, let me try it another way.
Marc:Who's the most difficult?
Guest:Well, I'll put it this way.
Guest:And by the way, this guy in his garage gets the president of the United States.
Guest:Yeah, how about that?
Guest:Come on.
Guest:That's awesome.
Guest:Pretty damn impressive.
Guest:That's awesome.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Pretty damn impressive.
Guest:That's awesome.
Guest:Thank you, taxpayers, for paying for that trip.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You're right with musicians because their job is to play music.
Guest:It's not to talk.
Guest:Some are quite good verbally and they can express themselves that way and others just have no clue whatsoever.
Guest:Then you can get them on a bad day.
Guest:Everybody's got a bad day.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:I got Robert Palmer on a bad day.
Guest:I remember that very clearly.
Guest:And Elvin Bishop on a bad day.
Guest:But that's about it.
Marc:I think Elvin's had a couple of bad years, really.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But, you know, I'm not going to go into detail.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:But over the... I didn't show... It was the first nationally syndicated...
Guest:uh show about interviewing rock people called interview and it ran on 160 stations for 11 years and during that time once a week that's probably the only two people i would say i had a problem with everybody else was pretty robert palmer and elvin bishop yeah that's it yeah i think you're being diplomatic jim
Guest:Well, I'll tell you, there's people who you better come with your guns loaded.
Guest:If you're going to interview Roger Waters, he doesn't suffer fools gladly.
Guest:But he's one of the nicest people and one of the smartest people you'll ever meet.
Marc:And he used you on a record, didn't he?
Guest:He did.
Marc:What was it?
Guest:Radio Chaos.
Guest:Radio Chaos, yeah.
Guest:And Jim was live on stage at the forum.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:It was kind of fun.
Guest:It was awesome.
Guest:He called one day and he says, I'm going to do this record.
Guest:It's called Radio Chaos.
Guest:I'm looking for a DJ who lives in L.A.
Guest:His name is Jim and he fights her free-form radio.
Guest:Do you know anybody like that?
Guest:So anyway, yeah, I got to do that.
Guest:But he's very good.
Guest:Stevie Nicks was always a pleasure to do, to interview.
Guest:Yeah, both actually.
Guest:Classic.
Guest:um so anyway but most i'll tell you what i found you're probably the same way the bigger the star usually the nicer it was the guys that had one hit and thought they were elvis yeah that had the attitude right and when they would come up to the house in a limo with an entourage you know and you know their pr blah blah blah blah
Guest:When I interviewed George Harrison, he drove himself in this little nondescript BMW.
Guest:You never recognize it.
Guest:No problem.
Guest:Came up, spent the first 10 minutes making me feel comfortable.
Marc:Yeah, that's what Obama did.
Marc:Like, I was so fucking nervous.
Marc:Seriously, he didn't come in his own thing.
Marc:But I was like, holy shit, this is going to be tricky.
Marc:You know, and he sort of came in.
Marc:He's like, how are we doing?
Marc:We're going to have a good time, right?
Marc:I'm like, I don't know.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:Are we?
Guest:It's up to you, man.
Guest:That was a great interview, man.
Guest:Thanks, buddy.
Guest:Yeah, that was great.
Guest:It really was good.
Guest:It's crazy.
Marc:Did you ever interview John Lennon?
Guest:I did.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, I did.
Marc:What period was that?
Guest:Very early on, I was 23 years old, never met a Beatle, never been to New York, never ridden in a limousine, nothing.
Guest:And John Lennon put out a Walls and Bridges, that album.
Guest:Yes, you can applaud that.
Guest:That's that one guy.
Guest:Yeah, right?
Guest:Dringo.
Guest:And... Dringo.
Guest:Dringo's here.
Guest:I called... Anyway, I hear that he's got this album out.
Guest:And then I hear they're giving an interview on an AM station.
Guest:It's 1973.
Guest:And being... Having absolutely no fucking idea about how the business is done.
Guest:More balls and cents.
Guest:I call up Capitol Records and I go...
Guest:What are you thinking?
Guest:AM radio?
Guest:We're the revolution.
Guest:Are you kidding me?
Guest:And I just went off on this guy.
Guest:I didn't even know who he was.
Guest:This poor guy picked up the phone.
Guest:So after like 15 minutes of me just blowtorch into the phone,
Guest:I mean, no clue.
Guest:I could have been talking to the president of the Capitol for all I knew.
Guest:Guy goes, okay, okay, okay, okay.
Guest:I'll call you back.
Guest:And I thought, sure.
Guest:Well, by God, I'm on FM radio.
Guest:You better call.
Guest:You know, we were the social revolution.
Guest:We were, you know, hippies.
Guest:Come on, man.
Guest:About 10 minutes later, he calls back.
Guest:He goes, hey, you got an interview with John Lennon.
Guest:And I went, now what am I going to do?
Guest:You know?
Guest:What?
Guest:So anyway, long story short, I end up going to New York.
Guest:The station put me up.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They were taking bets on the fact that since I was a native of Southern California, I would not survive from the airport terminal to the cab without being mugged.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Because I was so lame about this stuff.
Marc:And this was the early 70s, right?
Marc:Yeah, 73.
Guest:So it was different in New York.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:73.
Guest:So anyway, I go there.
Guest:Next day comes.
Guest:I get in my first limo ride.
Guest:They take me to the record plan in New York.
Guest:All right, wait over there.
Guest:Now I start running all the old Beatles press conferences in my head, thinking, oh, man, this guy is going to tear me to pieces.
Guest:He's just going to take one look at me and tear me.
Guest:Suddenly, John Lennon walks in.
Guest:And I'm introduced.
Guest:And they said, come with me.
Guest:So we go down the hall.
Guest:He's saying hello to every secretary, every engineer.
Guest:Hi, by name.
Guest:How's the kids doing?
Guest:Couldn't be nicer.
Guest:Get locked in a room.
Guest:And the record company guy goes, you got an hour.
Guest:Next thing I know, John Lennon's sitting behind the desk.
Guest:I'm on the other side.
Guest:Here we go.
Guest:So I unpack my bag with my little stupid tape recorder.
Guest:And I'm in the record plant, which is one of the unbelievable facilities in the world.
Guest:And I bring this little tape recorder.
Guest:Idiot.
Guest:And I start to set it up, and I forgot.
Marc:The microphone?
Guest:The mic stand.
Guest:The stand.
Guest:But this looked like what I should have brought, and I didn't have it.
Guest:And just one mic?
Guest:One mic.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Because the station, you know, it's only John Lennon.
Guest:What the fuck?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:John Lennon.
Guest:So he sees me now become even more nervous.
Guest:He says, what's wrong?
Guest:I said, oh, I'm so sorry.
Guest:I've tried to, you know, I forgot the mic stand and I don't want this.
Guest:He goes, ah, no problem.
Guest:He goes, hand me the phone book.
Guest:And there's a big, thick New York phone book.
Guest:He goes, okay, put it over here.
Guest:He says, now hand me the dictionary on the desk.
Guest:So he puts a dictionary on the phone book.
Guest:He spies a half-drunk cup of coffee,
Guest:pours out the dregs, turns it upside down.
Guest:He goes, give me the mic.
Guest:I gave him the mic.
Guest:He puts it on top, takes some tape, tapes it up.
Guest:He goes, okay, let's go.
Guest:And I just got saved by John Lennon.
Guest:Well, those Beatles are nothing if not inventive.
Guest:and that was like that must have been he made it through he did an hour he could have been maybe John Lennon he could have looked at me guy a kid you know no it's exactly the opposite and fortunately I had prepared because as you know except for Fraser and I which apparently had what 30 seconds of prep work you know it's all about the homework when you do an interview it's all about the homework yeah and it's like 90% what the fuck
Guest:So he saw that I was prepared, and he couldn't have been nicer, couldn't have been more funny and engaging.
Guest:And so it's a great memory.
Guest:Thank God it came out to be a great memory.
Guest:And then it dawned on me years later, I'm in the fucking record plant.
Guest:Why didn't I ask them for a mic stand?
Guest:They only have like 1,000 of them in their very kind of description.
Marc:Anyway, it was a great interview.
Marc:That's great.
Marc:How about you, Frazier?
Marc:What do you got?
Guest:You mean interview-wise?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:My favorite, I think, interview that I ever had, I had Rodney Dangerfield and Rowdy Roddy Piper on the same show.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And Rodney had no idea who Rodney Piper was.
Guest:He was like, who is that guy?
Guest:Hey, what you doing?
Marc:Had you been up all night with Rodney?
Guest:And Bob Saget.
Guest:Bob Saget was on the show.
Guest:Oh, you mean Bob Saget, too?
Guest:He was the interpreter.
Yeah.
Guest:Because those guys.
Guest:But that was a favorite of mine.
Guest:And then another favorite was Alice Cooper.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I always think Alice is a hilarious guy.
Guest:You know, a funny guy.
Guest:In fact, Johnny Carson used to say he was the best interview of all the rockers because he had a wit and he's just a charismatic guy.
Guest:And let me say before this, I am getting to do what we're talking about.
Guest:right now on SiriusXM.
Guest:This is extraordinary for me, yeah.
Guest:Because it's not about me, it's about keeping Freeform alive, and these people have not only given me four hours a night to do it, they put a studio in my house to do it in, and most importantly, they leave me alone.
Guest:They do not tell me what to play.
Guest:Yeah, there you go.
Guest:I have never had him tell me, don't play that or why don't you play this.
Guest:So anyway, Sirius XM, Deep Tracks, I got to thank him.
Guest:And whether you are listening or not, you should thank them because Freeform Radio, it's not around anymore.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:What record do you find over the years you've returned to the most?
Marc:Oh, it's The Doors.
Guest:I was going to say, I know what it is.
Guest:The Doors.
Guest:The first record I heard you playing when I walked into KMET and met you for the first time, I opened the door to the studio and a giant cloud came out.
Guest:And I saw some sunglasses in there somewhere.
Guest:And he was playing The End by The Doors.
Guest:One of the great songs of all time.
Guest:That was the one that started it.
Guest:Your theme song, right?
Guest:Amen.
Marc:Did you ever meet Jim?
Guest:No.
Guest:I got to know and still do know John and Robbie really well.
Guest:Unfortunately, I got to know Ray really well.
Guest:I saw Jim once.
Guest:I only saw The Doors perform once.
Guest:At the Troubadour?
Guest:No, it was at the Long Beach Arena.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:And they were the band.
Guest:I always say you have to put the Beatles on their own shelf, separate from everybody else.
Guest:And everybody has their gateway band.
Guest:The Doors did it for me.
Guest:That was the one that went, oh, wait a minute.
Guest:Something really interesting is going on here.
Guest:far beyond tapping my foot, far beyond a love song.
Guest:This is talking to something deep within me and resonating with something I didn't even know what it was at that point, but I was on the journey to find it.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:How about you?
Guest:What's your path?
Guest:For me, it's Striper.
Guest:Yeah, buddy.
Guest:That's how I roll.
Ah!
Guest:No, I'm a big guy.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:I'm a big David Bowie fan.
Guest:I love David Bowie.
Guest:Did you ever interview Bowie?
Guest:No, I have never interviewed Bowie.
Guest:That's one of the people on my bucket list, along with Dylan.
Guest:I have never interviewed Dylan.
Guest:That'd be tricky.
Guest:You know, I met him one time.
Guest:You know Al Cooper, right?
Guest:The famous organ player.
Guest:He played on all the Dylan albums.
Guest:Early ones, yeah.
Guest:He had a little band.
Guest:They were playing out in Trankus.
Guest:He goes, hey, why don't you come on and watch my band?
Guest:So I came out there on a Sunday night.
Guest:I was out there at the bar, and I didn't recognize him at first.
Guest:It was Bob Dylan.
Guest:I was talking to him for about 15 minutes before I knew who it was.
Guest:Really?
Guest:How high were you?
Guest:Well...
Guest:He had a disguise.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Anyway, at the end, after the conversation, Al walks by and he goes, oh, I see you guys are getting along.
Guest:That's Bob Dylan.
Guest:What?
Guest:And so we were talking for a little bit.
Guest:I didn't understand hardly anything he said.
Guest:Hi, everybody.
Guest:I didn't know what he was talking about.
Guest:But we had a nice conversation, actually.
Guest:And when I left, I was so nervous.
Guest:I didn't know what to say.
Guest:So I go, keep up the good work.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He goes, I will, Mr. Dees.
Marc:Yeah, got you.
Marc:All right, so let's hear the good war story.
Marc:Because I remember when we shot my show with the three of us, that episode of Marin, that radio cowboy thing, there was some real shit going on.
Guest:Well, let's see.
Guest:Should I go serious or should I go funny?
Guest:I can't go funny with you guys.
Guest:No, go funny, man.
Guest:Well, we did have this thing called, as I mentioned earlier, the all-girl harmonica band.
Guest:true story i i kameet was programmed by a woman yeah which is the first woman boss i ever had and she was brilliant she was great and she i start doing this bit and she's like looking at me like oh god jim here you go again because it was slightly sexist back in the day but not now right oh no no no
Guest:You know, I like my theme song was Backdoor Man from The Doors.
Guest:I mean, you take it from there.
Guest:So I come up with the all-girl harmonica band, and I was known as the Lonesome L.A.
Guest:Cowboy, which I copped from a new writer's The Purple Sage song.
Guest:So anyway, I start doing this thing about this double entendre about all-girl harmonica band, looking for the ladies with the best licks in town.
Guest:The best licks?
Guest:Best licks.
Guest:Right, sure.
Guest:The, you know, licks and or a guitar lick.
Yeah.
Guest:I have to explain him.
Guest:Is it me or is it him?
Marc:No, I just wanted to make it clear for those.
Marc:He's a podcaster.
Guest:I remember.
Marc:Okay.
Guest:You can put visuals on this thing.
Marc:I know.
Marc:Just see my Jack Benny take.
Marc:My Milton Berle.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:So anyway, this program director gives up the idea.
Guest:Well, you know, Hohner harmonicas that makes the great harmonica, they have all these different sizes.
Guest:And the smallest one is called, oddly enough, the Little Lady.
Guest:It's a real harmonica, four reeds.
Guest:It's about that big.
Guest:She gets a hold of...
Guest:The company goes, well, we've got a guy out here, and he's doing the all-girl harmonica band, and we'd like to have a box of those little harmonicas as a promotional gift.
Guest:Glad to do it.
Guest:So they, having no clue what I'm meaning with this, send us this big box of these little harmonicas, which you could put on a chain and wear like a necklace, right?
Yeah.
Guest:When they sent it out, they also sent this wonderful press release talking about all the people who play honor harmonicas, these celebrities.
Guest:One of which was Jacqueline Smith of Charlie's Angels.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Great harmonica player.
Guest:Likes to blow the harmonica.
Yeah.
Guest:On a break.
Guest:And then there was, of course, the Catholic nuns band.
Guest:Of course.
Guest:And so I'm reading all of these on the air, and the general manager did take offense to that when I got to the group of nuns playing harmonica.
Guest:That one, I just, yeah.
Marc:That pushed the envelope?
Marc:That pushed the envelope just slightly, yeah.
Guest:And then when he walked in and there were a couple of contestants in the booth at the time, that was also a moment.
Guest:The contestants were what?
Guest:The 17th callers?
Guest:No.
Guest:I would have them write in saying, where was the coolest place you ever played the harmonica?
Guest:If I read it on the air, they would get one of these things.
Guest:So anyway, but I had to do some personal auditions.
Guest:You gotta do it.
Guest:Come on a show job these poor women trying to I'm trying to help them out just tell them out.
Guest:Yeah Yeah, what do you got Fraser?
Guest:Well mine was kind of an off-air experience.
Guest:I remember I was kind of in a battle with management go figure and
Guest:They still asked me to do the marina Christmas parade.
Guest:So I was going to be the, what do they call them, the grand marshal.
Guest:And they do it in boats, and you go around the boat.
Guest:So I thought, oh, man, everyone from management is on the boat.
Guest:It was me and all the management people.
Guest:So I was like, I've got to get out of here, and I'm on a boat.
Guest:So I knew the woman that was the bartender on the boat.
Guest:So she kept making me these drinks, and then next thing I know, I'm throwing all the food in the water.
Guest:I threw like...
Guest:Like a couple thousand dollars worth of food in the water.
Guest:There's egg rolls bobbing up and down in the marina.
Guest:People were yelling, Merry Christmas from the shore.
Guest:And I found one of those bullhorns and I was yelling, fuck you.
Guest:Next thing I know, I passed out on top of the boat, face down in my suit.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I woke up, we were at the dock, and I go running off the boat and stopped just in time to throw up on my boss's shoes.
Guest:So another firing ensued shortly thereafter.
Guest:That's a good one.
Guest:That's actually true.
Guest:All right, you got one more there, Jim?
Guest:You got one more.
Guest:This is kind of hairy.
Guest:At KMET, I was working at 10 o'clock at night.
Guest:And I was always as high as I would ever get.
Guest:I was always on time.
Guest:But this one night, I had stopped at my dealers on the way in, and so I was running a little late.
Guest:So I get there, and I go get my headphones, and I'm running down the hall, and I hit the studio door and push it open, and I hear... And I'm looking at the business end of a 12-gauge shotgun pointed right there, held by an LAPD officer.
Guest:freeze okay what's going on and and good question yeah well uh the late now i got hair down to here and i look like what they you know yeah but the lady on the air went no no no no that's jim that's jim apparently there'd been a death threat and the cops responded to the death threat right right so uh i'm like taking a deep breath and he's okay okay okay so do you mind if we pat you down
Guest:And I'm thinking, oh, boy, here it is.
Guest:I said, why?
Guest:They said, well, we want to make sure you don't have any weapons because we want to get it caught in a crossfire.
Guest:And I said, oh, OK.
Guest:Are you only looking for weapons?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Go ahead.
Guest:So they pat me down.
Guest:And of course, they hit the lid right here.
Guest:The lid.
Guest:Oh, classic.
Guest:A lid of pot, ladies and gentlemen.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:This is before medical marijuana.
Guest:And we could all go and get it in the car.
Guest:And I know this guy knew it was there, but he was there to protect me.
Guest:Long story short, they said, okay, well, we've got to give you an escort home.
Guest:And I said, well, no, I've got to do the show.
Guest:And they said, well, get somebody to come in.
Guest:And I said, well, what if that guy thinks the guy that's sitting here is me and he gets blown away?
Guest:So anyway, they somehow figure this out with security.
Guest:We go downstairs.
Guest:There's like four cops surrounding me.
Guest:We go down in the elevator, and they're all doing this thing, you know.
Guest:looking around and shit and at that time i had a uh a firebird that looked like jim rockford's car if you remember that yeah so i get in the car and i'm holding the pot and i now have four black and whites following me and i hit sunset boulevard and of course i'm going
Guest:seven miles.
Guest:Because I got the pot and seven counts.
Guest:And I get to a stop sign.
Guest:Boom, boom, boom.
Guest:I look over thinking it's the guy that's going to kill me.
Guest:And the cop says, let me in, let me in.
Guest:So this guy jumps in and he goes, what are you doing?
Guest:I said, well, I'm going home.
Guest:He goes, punch it.
Guest:You got a police escort.
Guest:You got a police escort.
Guest:Punch it.
Guest:Jim Ladd, Fraser Smith.
Guest:That's our show.
Guest:Give me some music.
Guest:thank you la podcast i hope you had a nice time these guys are legends jim ladd fraser smith veterans of real radio you guys are great
Thank you.