Happy Hare on a Rocky Roll

Here’s the thing: It was latter 1970. I had been blown out of my gig at KCBQ in San Diego, despite being tops in the market. Go figure.

In latter 1971, within a year after firing me, Dick Casper, the GM of KCBQ, was himself purged. So was Program Director, Buzz Bennet, who had whacked me. His tenure lasted less than a year.

Bennett made the strategic blunder of allying with Casper in a dual money demand, coupled with Casper’s power play to take over Bartell Corporate.

The suits at Bartell flicked Buzz off the table. It’s a game of moves. Own the shots, and control the table, as true in radio, as it is in Ping Pong.

Buzz Bennett, over the years, slowly melted away, and no one knows his whereabouts. Claude Hall wrote an eloquent piece about him this week, describing the mystery surrounding his disappearance. I am actually sorry he’s gone. I was mad at him then, but not that mad. Not at all, now.

Actually, my ouster was a benevolent prod to get out of jocking. Viet Nam was happening, and getting worse. Here I was, the city’s cheer leader waking up tens of thousands of San Diegans every morning, telling them how great things were while the country was suffering a nervous breakdown.

VP/GM Peter Lund wanted me for the morning anchor at News/Talk KSDO. .I seriously thought about that one. I was a news junkie and he encouraged me to be as satirical as I wished….. within reason. I asked him to let me put it on hold while I gathered my thoughts.

I might have spent all of forty two seconds gathering my thoughts had I known that Peter would wind up running CBS.

In last week’s episode, I described VP/GM Al Heacock’s invitation to come to work in a key slot at KDKA in Pittsburgh where he managed. While I was pondering that one, my old army buddy/colleague dropped dead while taking his morning shower. I still miss him.

In that same year, 1970, Specs Howard and I were on a short list at WCBS to do mornings if they “went music.” Specs, by then, was launching his world renowned Radio and Television school, so we would not have gone, but that was taken off the table, anyway. WCBS went “talk”, hosted by Pat Summerall in the morning slot.

I was at a cross roads. I had reached my early forties and had begun to entertain more sober thoughts. Visions, not of sugar plums, but of joining management began to dance in my head.

Had I sincerely wanted to remain on the air, I probably would have taken Peter Lund up on his offer to make me the morning news anchor job at KSDO. Listen to Bill Handel’s stream, mornings on KFI, and you will get an idea of how I would have done it, although probably not as well as Bill.

Another consideration about remaining on the air: Radio was changing, especially the music. It was hardening. Lee Abrams, with his long cut Album Oriented Rock, was fomenting a revolution.

It is not cost affective to be as labor intensive in research as Lee was, but at that time, he didn’t care. He was a young man on a mission. He researched what the jocks were playing on the air, but not content with that, found out what they were playing at home, often out of the same album. If he agreed with them, he put it on the play list.

He went to retail stores, found out what customers were buying and called them at home to ask them which album cuts wound up as their favorites. A book could be written about his techniques.

He teamed up with Kent Burkhart in a Consultancy, and they soon dominated radio, with Lee the FM partner, implementing AOR into a large number of stations and their hot new concept swept the country like a Kansas prairie fire.

I was not destined to join Lee’s FM revolution in that era. I was neither soft spoken, nor did I like the long album cuts and the hard music at the time.

To reinforce my personal reality, I called my chum, the giant talent Tom Donahue, in San Francisco, and thought aloud about, maybe using my gifts to change scenery, go to “San Fran,” and go FM. Tom was a fan, and knew all about AOR. His booming voice pounded my ear drums. “Hare, you are not an FM jock. Forget it. Go buy a station.” I stayed put in San Diego, and enjoyed great years….still do.

At home, Carol and I now play a number of the very artists I did not like years ago. The Rolling Stones were way up there in the AORevolution, but now their music has osmoted down to the cellular level into my home. Karen Gault, a family member, manages both the Stones and Paul McCartney on their road trips.

Brian May, the greatest rock guitarist going right now, is a family friend who has played privately for my grand daughter, Jenna Patch .

Jenna is the daughter of my daughter Melanie. who planned some of the road trips of Bette Midler, Queen and others before marrying her husband, Patrick.

Another grand daughter, Bea, occasionally plays in my son-in-law Erich’s new band, “The Gentleman Farmers.” Bea is a budding drummer at age seven, the daughter of Melissa Martin L.A.’s a powerful commercial casting agent. Another incredible daughter and grand daughter…,.lucky me...

From the 70’s into the late 80’s, AOR radio gradually morphed beyond recognition, marking the end of the historic era fostered by Abrams.

He hibernated in luxury for a few years until a corporate head hunter called, asking this restless man’s advice on who might be capable of handling the multi-faceted music of the new XM Satellite Radio. Lee unabashedly said, “Me” He was right, He now happily presides over the maze of XM programming.


I pondered the past. In the 50’s, it had been a rush to help incite the first rock revolution. Remember, no one appreciated rock and roll when I and other hearty souls, first began playing it.. Now, decades later, former listeners still recognize my voice while standing in movie lines conversing with Carol. Imprints are insidious.

Twenty years of doing radio my way was ebbing. I could have milked it for another five or six years in San Diego and reclaimed my ranking, but this period appeared to me to be the appropriate time to bail, and do new things. It helped that Carol stood over me with a cudgel and made the same….suggestion.


Enter Mike Stafford.

Mike had been a sales rep when I “owned” San Diego. I had often gone on calls with him to help him close clients, all of whom knew me. Mike was the greatest sales “street fighter” I have ever seem, so it didn’t take much help on my part to help him get going.

By the early 70’s, he had become a major Sales force in town He had watched me soliloquize like Hamlet over the KSDO News anchor offer, empathized with my sad experience concerning Al Heacock at KDKA, and was privy to my spastic dance with Dick Casper.

Letting me dangle for a while, he now felt it was time to move in.

The talk went something like this.

Mike: How much did you ask Casper for when he booted you?

Hare: I named the figure.

Mike: I am going to give you that amount as a guarantee if you go into Sales, and give you a prestige car, a $100,000 life insurance policy and full medical.”

Full medical! That was what got me. Full Medical. Why hadn’t I thought of that? It hit me. I had been walking around in my mid 40’s with no medical insurance for me or my family, a highly vulnerable state which would have left me in trouble in the event of a major mishap. I considered myself immortal but…why take chances?

I will slice and dice this series with a little anecdotal stuff about Sales, what I learned during a successful and eccentric sales career. However, it will not be a primer on how to sell, don’t want to corrupt anyone.

I sold tons of stuff and made frequent side trips to L.A. to do national voice work.

Stafford looked the other way when I played hooky, and seemed to enjoy having me around.

I shrunk away from being a radio General Manager. Bad timing, especially true these days during terrestrial radio’s identity crisis.

I did become a “suit,” however, but not in radio. Instead, Picture Palace Films, a Hollywood movie company in which I am involved, has just completed production on a picture titled, “Kings of the Evening.”

Haresay:

Show me a Mexican cowboy who rides side saddle, and I’ll show you a gay caballero.


A jumper cable walked into a bar and the bartender said “Okay, I’ll serve you, but don’t start anything.”

A dyslexic man walked into a bra.

Might be funnier to a radio person if I wrote that he walked into an arb.

An invisible man married an invisible woman, and the kids are nothing to look at either.

Deja Moo… an eerie feeling that you’ve heard this bull before.

What do you call a fish with no eyes? A fsh.

After infinity, then what?................Chuck Blore