{"id":2134,"date":"2014-01-22T21:00:21","date_gmt":"2014-01-23T03:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.robertfeder.com\/?p=2134"},"modified":"2014-01-22T21:28:14","modified_gmt":"2014-01-23T03:28:14","slug":"feder-flashback-wls-meets-the-beatles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/2014\/01\/22\/feder-flashback-wls-meets-the-beatles\/","title":{"rendered":"Feder flashback: WLS meets the Beatles"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"WLS\"<\/a><\/a>The Beatles' first American television appearance 50 years ago next month \u2014 said to be the most significant moment<\/a> in pop music history \u2014 also marked a turning point for Top 40 radio.<\/em><\/p>\n

Nowhere was the British invasion welcomed more warmly than at WLS AM 890, where the Fab Four dominated the Silver Dollar Survey on\u00a0Chicago\u2019s 50,000-watt giant\u00a0<\/em>for rest of the decade.<\/em><\/p>\n

Here is the piece I wrote for the Sun-Times on Feb. 5, 1984 \u2014 days before the 20th anniversary of the Beatles\u2019 debut in America. (Posted with permission.)<\/em><\/p>\n

Beatles seize Chicago radio<\/strong><\/p>\n

Television\u2019s \u201cEd Sullivan Show\u201d may have brought the Beatles into our living rooms for the first time, but radio made them a permanent part of our lives.<\/p>\n

\u201cRadio and the Beatles were a perfect marriage because both used the other so effectively,\u201d said Clark Weber, morning disc jockey and program director during the 1960s at rock \u2019n\u2019 roll powerhouse WLS AM 890.<\/p>\n

\"Clark<\/a>

Clark Weber and Ron Riley<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cWe were into it because we recognized it was a massive infusion into a very sick body,\u201d Weber said. \u201cRadio had become stagnant and it desperately needed that excitement. And Capitol [Records] desperately needed that hit. We both got on the bandwagon of massive teenage hysteria and exploited it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Twenty years later, Weber still is among Chicago\u2019s top five morning personalities, having outgrown rock music for adult talk on WIND AM 560. But he\u2019ll always remember introducing the Beatles at Comiskey Park in 1966.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen Ron Riley and I stepped out onto that stage, Ron said to me, \u2018Look, you can feel it.\u2019 And as we brought the Beatles on stage, we put our hands out and you could actually feel<\/em> the sound from the crowd passing through your fingers. It was an incredible experience.\u201d<\/p>\n

Riley, an evening jock on WLS from 1963 to 1969 and station\u2019s most outspoken \"advocate\" of the Beatles, laughs at the stunts he pulled in order to be first on the air with new releases.\u00a0\u201cI used to get Beatles records smuggled out of the factory in England and would drive out to O\u2019Hare to pick them up from British Airways,\u201d Riley said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember playing songs like \u2018Something\u2019 for the first time and just blowing out phone lines with people wanting to hear them again. They hadn\u2019t even been licensed to play on the air yet, so the next day, of course, we\u2019d get a cease-and-desist from Capitol Records saying they were gonna sue the station.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now a broadcast marketing consultant and weekend weatherman on WJZ-TV in Baltimore, Riley says he still feels \u201ca great attachment to that portion of our lives. It represented a personal turning point for a lot of us because the Beatles brought such a renaissance. The music still goes through my head.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dick Biondi, the first genuine superstar DJ on WLS, missed the big buildup in Chicago because he was fired in 1963 \u2014 a year before the Beatles\u2019 invasion of America. But he still boasts of being the first in town to have played the Vee Jay releases of \u201cPlease Please Me\u201d and \u201cFrom Me to You.\u201d<\/p>\n

In fact, WLS music charts document that the station was the first in the country to list the Beatles (misspelled as \u201cThe Beattles\u201d) on a weekly record survey \u2014 dated March 8, 1963.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I took the records with me to the West Coast in the summer of \u201963, I played them in Los Angeles and got calls from kids who said, \u2018Take that crap off and play the Beach Boys,\u2019 \u201d said Biondi, now morning man on WBBM FM 96.3<\/p>\n

But few other jocks claim to have prophesized the Beatles\u2019 success. \u201cTo be honest, when they first came around on Vee Jay Records, we all dismissed them as a just another band from England,\u201d said Weber. \u201cBut when they came through again on Capitol, thanks to that massive Capitol hype, they took off.\u201d<\/p>\n

A few years ago, Riley had the chance to relive it all when he and his wife finagled a backstage pass to visit with Paul and Linda McCartney after a Wings concert in Washington, D.C.\u00a0\u201cThey spent an hour with us just chitchatting about Chicago and all that stuff. When it was over, I walked out of there with wet eyes. Talking about that period of time just does that to me. Still does.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Beatles' first American television appearance 50 years ago next month \u2014 said to be the most significant moment in pop music history \u2014 also marked a turning point for Top 40 radio. Nowhere was the British invasion welcomed more warmly than at WLS AM 890, where the Fab Four dominated the Silver Dollar Survey... Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2134"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2134"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2134\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2144,"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2134\/revisions\/2144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}