What I learned (too late) from Rush Limbaugh
On the occasion of the first anniversary of his passing, I recall how Rush figures into two of my greatest missed opportunities...
I often describe my own life as "a saga of bad choices and missed opportunities."
Today, February 17, marks the one-year anniversary of Rush Limbaugh's passing. And even though I never met the man, he figures into two of those missed opportunities, even though one of them -- possibly my greatest missed opportunity -- was years before I or anyone else had ever heard of Rush Limbaugh.
In the spirit of full disclosure, I should warn you that this is far more about me than about Rush Limbaugh.
But I'll start by telling of the second, and lesser, missed opportunity. Rush Limbaugh made his New York City (and national network) radio debut in 1988, when, one morning, he appeared in what had been Bob Grant's timeslot on WABC-AM.
At the time I was staying with my folks at their place in Clifton, NJ (not far from Passaic, where they had both grown up) and where they had landed up after moving to California (after some four decades in Manhattan), pronouncing it "a cultural wasteland," and moving back East.
I was working as an itinerant Boardwalk Pitchman. Having served my apprenticeship working for two years on the actual Boardwalk of Atlantic City (where the Pitch Biz started, and where the motto is "Ocean, Emotion, and Constant Promotion"), I had signed on as an “agent” for a fellow we called "Mr. Meatball," who sent me out each week to events as far South as Florida and as far West as Ohio to pitch items like "The Amazing Ginsu Knife" for 30 percent of the gross, staying in motels. By the way, this was during my "dogless years."
It could be grueling, working 12-hour days 3 or 4 days a week, 52 weeks a year, staying in motels, but it was a decent living. I often joked that I was "homeless, but with really nice luggage." And when time and geography permitted between shows, I'd stay with my folks.
So I was there one morning, and my mom and dad and I were anticipating listening to Bob Grant, whom we all loved, when this new guy came on. He was different, right from the start; "'Rush Limbaugh'? What kind of a name is 'Rush'?"
We also could tell right away that this guy really had something going on; we all looked at each other and said, "This guy is going places."
And that's when an opportunity occurred to me. As a youth I had been an enthusiastic follower of not only radio talk shows (Jean Shepherd, Barry Farber, Long John Nebel) but, earlier, of disk jockeys like "Murray the K" Kaufman and B. Mitchel Reed. I had even gone to the WMCA studios and introduced myself to B. Mitchel Reed, resulting in his broadcasting a "salute" to my school, JHS 104, and mentioning my name on the radio.
I knew that, back then, people could just walk into radio station offices and have a shot at meeting the "personalities." So my idea was to go to WABC and offer to be the newly-arrived Rush Limbaugh's personal guide to NYC.
After all, I had lived in Kansas City, Rush had come to NYC from KC, and I figured that would be an instant connection, and I could show Rush some of the great non-touristy features of NYC, and, for example, explain the layout of NYC in a KC context: "'See, Rush, Manhattan is Kansas City proper, while Queens is Independence and Brooklyn is Raytown; Staten Island is like Grandview and Belton, and The Bronx is like North Kansas City. And New Jersey is the Kansas side, like Overland Park and the rest of Johnson County."
I could've hitched myself to the rising star that was Rush Limbaugh; I could've been his right-hand man. I could've been Bo Snerdly.
I could have spared him some embarrassment. Once, for example, when he was speaking of New York Times writer Francis X. Clines and wondered aloud if that was a man or a woman, I was surprised that he didn’t know “Francis” from “Frances,” but I could have whispered in his ear, “Rush, the name not only tells you it’s a man, it even tells you his religion!”
But, alas, I didn't go. Why? I don't know. It wasn’t shyness or timidity; after all, I made my living stopping strangers in their tracks, assembling a crowd, holding their attention for five or ten minutes by sheer force of personality and then inducing them to reach in their pockets and pull out $20 to buy something they’d had no intention of buying.
Even if it was a bad idea, I had nothing to lose. Which is why I say that my bad choices and missed opportunities have been nobody's fault but my own.
And Rush managed to fare pretty well in NYC without me!
But the even bigger missed opportunity had come years earlier, long before Rush Limbaugh came on the scene. And yet it wasn't until Rush Limbaugh became known, along with details of his own career, that I realized how big an opportunity I had squandered.
Circa 1968 I was Kansas City's first "underground d.j.", on the FM airwaves from 2 to 6 a.m., broadcasting from a little cinderblock building in the middle of a Kansas cornfield.
I played some pretty esoteric stuff (it was, after all, "free-form," "underground" radio): Moondog, Ken Nordine's "Word Jazz" and Jean Shepherd, to name a few. I played music from all over the map, by Linda Tillery and the Loading Zone, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, Laura Nyro, Ian and Sylvia, Buffy St. Marie, and Rotary Connection, plus Iron Butterfly, Fever Tree, Janis Joplin, The Doors, and lots of "psychedelic" stuff.
My airname was "Lloyd Spencer Drake." Besides the significance of the initials, I claimed to be the illegitimate son of Bill Drake; that was a little "inside radio" gag, as many in music radio credit Drake with implementing the "Top 40" format (and since what I was doing was the antithesis of "Top 40").
One thing I liked to do was play different versions of the same song, one after another. I remember playing "Season of the Witch" by Donovan, then by Vanilla Fudge, then by Julie Driscoll and Brian Auger, and then by Mike Bloomfield, Al Kooper and Stephen Stills (from their "Super Session" album).
I loved reading and improvising on the live commercials, often "channeling" Long John Nebel's style of testimonial commercials. One of my sponsors was a custom leather shop in Lawrence, Kansas. Somebody gave me an album called "Tortura, The True Sounds of Pain and Pleasure," and over its sounds of whips and chains and moans, in my raspiest voice I channeled the legendary Wolfman Jack talking about all the great BDSM gear he got from the leather shop.
Well, the sponsor didn't complain (it was a funny bit), but the General Manager fired me for being "too outrageous."
And here's where (at long last), Rush Limbaugh comes back into the story. Y'see, back then, I thought that being fired from an on-air radio gig was ignominious, a mark of shame.
It wasn't until years later, when I heard Rush tell of having been fired multiple times (11 times? Whatever the actual number, he got fired a lot!), that I finally came to realize what I should have known back then: that being fired from a radio station (especially for being "too outrageous") is hardly a mark of shame; in radio, being fired is a badge of honor. In Rush's case, it certainly didn't stop him from becoming possibly the biggest name in radio ever!
So, upon being fired, instead of hanging my head in disgrace and slinking away, and for years afterward only occasionally dabbling in radio (a little voice work here and there, and participating in a trivia show on public radio in Portland, Oregon), I should have been boldly knocking on the door of another radio station the very next day, proudly telling them how I'd just been fired for being "too outrageous." I should have made the rounds of radio stations; I had everything to gain and nothing to lose. But I just didn't know any better.
Had I known then what I know now, who knows what I might have become? I might not have become Rush Limbaugh, but my nascent radio career wouldn't necessarily have stopped dead in its tracks; I might not have squandered what could have been a tremendous opportunity, just because I was too dumb to understand how radio works.
Lots of guys who made careers in radio started young; not long ago I heard George Noory, who has, for years, hosted a nationwide, all-night talk show that often deals in the paranormal; it's reminiscent of the show Long John Nebel hosted for years. Noory remarked that he's been in radio since he was 18 years old. As Lloyd Spencer Drake, in 1968, I was 20.
It was John Greenleaf Whittier (not Shakespeare!) who said, “For of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: 'It might have been!'"
Please don’t take this as an insult, but to me, with my INTENSE love for all things Rush, I think that was the most interesting thing you’ve ever written, Stu!!! I loved it, I was riveted from the start, and the ending left me pondering… 🤔 and with the decision that I’m going to absolutely write that quote on a 3 x 5 card and put it up in a prominent place of my house where I see it every day 😃😃😊, to remind me to not be so lazy and to (pardon the borrowed phrase from a company I’m currently boycotting) ‘Just Do it!’
Thank you so very much for all that very very interesting insight… TTYL 😘✌🏼