PAUL MCCARTNEY 1969 PROFESSIONALI met John Petrie, the store manager, and was trying to work out a professional price on the records so I could buy a few new ones until I could secure record service for the station. I didn't even have all the albums in question, and the station had only a couple, so I went to Discount Records on State Street to buy Abbey Road and some of the other LPs. My five year younger brother had been the Beatles fan in our family, so when listeners began calling me at the station asking about clues on Beatles album jackets and in Beatles songs that seemed to indicate that Paul McCartney was dead, I was in the dark. I had always been a Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, folk, blues, jazz, and 50s rock and roll fan, being 27 in 1969. The ABX offer did help boost my salary up $10 to $85 a week. That was my first real break in radio, and I appreciated it. Finally, I broke down his resistance and he took the chance, giving Ann Arbor its first FM freeform program. Rich had become General Manager of WOIA a few months back, and I had pestered him all summer to hire me for the station's all night show to do my own program, not a format. Rich had been Sales Manager and I was one of the Country Gentlemen at the Big G, WGEE-FM, playing country records from seven 'til midnight, then signing off the station. I also felt some measure of loyalty to the WOIA manager, Rich Hill, with whom I had worked in Indianapolis. I was only making $75 a week at WOIA, but I turned ABX down because I thought my show needed the seasoning it could get only in the lower pressure, smaller market of Ann Arbor. I guess I hoped to work there eventually, though Ann Arbor was a garden and Detroit was a garbage pit similar to Indianapolis, from which I had just barely escaped. Billboard magazine had named ABX the nation's best Underground Radio Station, and it was the station I had been listening to since moving to Michigan the previous month. By the end of my first week I had been offered the all night show at WABX-FM in Detroit for $125 a week. Abbey Road by the Beatles was released later that day. I hit the Ann Arbor airwaves at midnight October 1, 1969. This is the first time I have revealed the story of my accidental participation in the propagation of the Paul McCartney Death Rumor. I can fill in the week before Gibb or LaBour heard about it. Also noted is an article by Fred LaBour in the Michigan Daily, school paper of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Published accounts of the rumor trace it to an article in the September 23 edition of Northern Star, the student paper at the University of Illinois, then to an anonymous caller to the Russ Gibb radio show on WKNR, Detroit on Sunday, October 12. The rumor gained credence on the radio, and for several days there was speculation that Paul was dead. Then, from out of nowhere, people began believing that Paul McCartney was dead and had been replaced by a double. Implausible things had been happening all year, and no one knew what might be next. 1969 had already seen Americans on the moon, Teddy Kennedy's Chappaquidick misadventure, and Woodstock. It was 30 years ago this coming October that a strange and unbelievable rumor swept across the world. Please do not reprint without permission.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |