The Beatles Are Here! (11 page)

IN 1962, WHEN
I first started getting these records by a group called the Beatles, none of us really took it too seriously. We’d had music from overseas before, but nothing that would cause a sociological change like the Beatles did. So we didn’t think about it much.

But then something started happening. We were watching what was going on in Europe, in Hamburg, and all the places this band was visiting. The Beatles were causing riots! This was wonderful, in a way, because we
needed
something to happen in music at that time. We needed something very special. The music and radio industries were getting kind of dull.
Nothing
exciting was happening in American music. It was getting flattened out. Music was just lying there. The attitude in corporate America was “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” and that’s very wrong.

We needed new energy.

So when the Beatles came over, these four “moptops” from overseas, all heck broke loose.

The band didn’t happen overnight. It was a pretty long process, at least several years. John Lennon and Paul McCartney grew up listening to American rock and roll, blues, rhythm and blues, and jazz. They loved our expression of music. They loved the Everly Brothers and Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis.

At first they were replicating American music, they hadn’t developed their own style. Then they began taking that music, beginning with rock and roll, and refining it, adding new energy and excitement to it. They developed this over the years, and a new sound came out—this whole new British sound—based on American rock and roll. They refined it and they went wild.

Their music was important, but what was more important at that time, in our lives and in our society, is that we needed something to latch on to, we needed to smile. We weren’t smiling too much. We had assassinations. The nation was really divided. Youth was divided against anybody over thirty. You remember the old expression “Don’t trust anyone over thirty”?

The Beatles
really
helped to bring the music world, the American music industry, together. They started fixing it. Well, they sort of helped to bring
everybody
together.

MY CAREER AND
the name Cousin Brucie were born many years before the Beatles. You can trace it back to probably ’58 when I was on [New York radio station] WINS.

We had Elvis and the Everly Brothers and all the early, early rock and roll groups—like the Drifters. I was very involved with all of them. I did a lot of shows with them; for years I was involved with Palisades Park. So my career was developing, it was doing very, very well. Still, the Beatles were probably the most important thing that happened in my career. They gave it a tremendous surge, a tremendous surge.

Because of the power of the New York radio station where I worked, WABC—which we eventually called “WABeatlesC”—I was the disc jockey who got the Beatles records before anybody else. This was literally due to power—because of this fifty-thousand-watt clearance from the transmitter, record companies like EMI and Capitol would make sure I received the records first. The other radio stations in the rest of the country wouldn’t get them till the next day.

When new Beatle records came out it was huge, huge. They would arrive in my office with an armed guard and a promotion man. It was kind of weird—the guard would have an attaché case, with the new record in it, handcuffed to his wrist. I had to promise not to play it until the next day.

AM radio, which preceded satellite radio, had an interesting physical characteristic: It bounced off of the ionosphere. If you remember your physical science, you’ll recall that the ionosphere rises at night. As it got later, the AM radio signal would bounce. The higher the ionosphere layer, the farther I would reach; by nine o’clock, I was reaching forty states. That’s how I got a national image.

When other radio stations and Beatlemaniacs found out that I had a new record, and that I was going to be playing it, they would record it. I’d play it on the air and suddenly Pittsburgh, say, would have it or Wisconsin or Chicago. They’d have it that same night, they’d tape it off the air. It got so crazy with people taping that every ten seconds I would announce “Exclusive! Cousin Brucie Exclusive! Exclusive!” and it would completely obliterate the record. It was a terrible thing to do but the audience understood. We had to do it so nobody else would copy the record, especially our local competitors.

Whoever got a Beatle record exclusive first won the game. We got the highest ratings. We would always get them.

THE BEATLES HAD
an amazing sociological influence. I don’t think that when they came here they knew what they were going to cause.

Beatlemania was an amazing thing, not only for the music industry but for the clothing industry, television, and the news. People started changing the way they spoke, the way they wore their hair, the way they dressed. Everybody changed their attitudes and we suddenly all became Anglophiles. It was very funny.

I’ll give you a cute example: A boy named Johnny would call me from the Bronx, and he’d say something like—this is before the Beatles came over, a couple of weeks—he’d say “Hey, Brucie, this is Johnny from the Bronx, I live on the Grand Concourse. Will you play a record for my girlfriend, Shirley? Play something by Chuck Berry, will ya? We love him.”

About three weeks later this same young man would call and this is what happened: “Ello, is this his majesty Brucie? This is Sir Jonathan of the Grand Concourseshire in Bronxville, would you mind playing a record for me and me bird?”

That, by the way, is very true. It happened many times. Suddenly everybody developed English accents and we were excited about something and people started smiling again. So the Beatles gave us something tremendous. Tremendous! A big party, that’s what they gave us.

OH SURE, I
met the Beatles many times. If you listen to my shows on SiriusXM now, you hear a promo that says something like “Hi, this is John! This is George! This is Paul! This is Ringo! We love you, Cousin Brucie!” They did that promo for me and they used to call me all the time from their car—this was before cell phones, they had mobile car phones.

I was at the original thing, the press conference they did at Idlewild Airport (which had just been named, you know, Kennedy, JFK Airport). They came on my show several times.

Anytime they came to New York they would come over to me because WABC—WABeatlesC—was a major station here in the city and, as I say, when I was on at night I reached forty states. Before satellite radio, that was a big deal.

On their first visit, I was up at the Warwick Hotel where they were staying, waiting to broadcast a live interview from their suite. While they were entering the hotel, a crowd of girls surged at them from across the street. They’d been herded behind police barricades at the Hilton Hotel but, when the Beatles came in by limousine, they broke through the barricades and came running to grab ahold of their heroes. They ripped Paul’s hair and grabbed John’s clothing and a certain young lady got hold of Ringo.

When the Beatles finally made their way upstairs, I said to Ringo, “What’s the matter? You don’t look good.” He said, “Somebody grabbed me St. Christopher’s medal,” and then I went on the air right away.

Of course, I knew I had something very important—if you got anything like that exclusively from the Beatles, it gave you a terrific winning possibility for ratings.

There were five or six thousand kids standing outside the hotel with their transistor radios. If I’d go over to a Venetian blind that was facing the kids, or even just say on the air something like, “Ringo, why don’t you or Paul or John go look through the window at the kids”—you’d hear the kids [imitates a roaring sound] go crazy. All you had to do was shake the Venetian blind.

I went on the air and said to the kids: “Look, somebody must have found Ringo Starr’s St. Christopher medal.” I didn’t say “took it” or “stole it.” I said “somebody found it.”

I said, “Look, if you return it you will not be in trouble and you’ll come up here with Cousin Brucie and you’ll meet Ringo and he’ll give you a kiss.” Well, of course the place went crazy, you heard them outside—W A A A G H!—through the windows. There were thousands of them.

When I got off the air a Mrs. McGowen called me. She said, “Cousin Brucie, my name is Mrs. McGowen and my daughter, Angela, found Ringo’s St. Christopher medal.” Of course she ripped it off his neck, we all knew that, but “she found it,” her mother said.

“Is she in any trouble?” she asked.

I said, “No, on the contrary, she’s going to be a very big hero in the newspapers and television and radio because she ‘found’ the St. Christopher medal.”

I knew right away that I had a tremendous news piece and I didn’t want anybody else to get it.

I said, “I would like you to stay right where you are, I’m going to send a car for you.” So I sent a car for them and I sequestered them at the Hilton Hotel. That night I had my security guards from WABeatlesC get the girl and bring her back to me at the hotel. A huge number of press corps were there, television, radio, movies, you name it, all in that room, and Ringo and myself.

If you go onto the Internet, you can see the whole thing. The young lady was there with her friends and she got a kiss and Ringo got his St. Christopher’s medal. To this day he remembers that medal and how I found it for him.

I INTRODUCED THE
Beatles at Shea Stadium with Ed Sullivan—that was a very important part of my career. The Beatles were in the dugout at Shea and they were very nervous because there were sixty-five thousand screaming kids. You could feel the cacophony, the pressure of the emotion of the place.

John Lennon said to me, “Cuzzin”—he used to call me “Cuzzin”—“is this dangerous?” and I said, “No. John, let me tell you something. They’re there for one reason, to share space with you. This is love, you’re hearing love, emotional love, they just want to see you.” Of course I wasn’t too sure what was going to happen because it
was
a dangerous situation.

On the way up to the stage Ed Sullivan was in front of me. He was a real square fellow. He didn’t really even know what the Beatles were, very honestly. He didn’t know their power.

So he turns to me and says, “Is this dangerous, Cousin Brucie?”

I looked at him with his eyes bulging and I wanted to get him. I just knew I had him. And I said, “Yes, Ed, very.”

He said, “It is? Very?”

And then he goes up another step. I follow, and he says, “What do we do?”

I thought to myself
I got him!

To him I said, “Ed, pray!”

And he asked, “Pray?” He got so scared.

Anyway, to make a long story shorter, we went up there. I introduced Ed, he introduced the Beatles. Nothing happened of any disastrous nature that day. The police asked me to patrol with them and I went around Shea Stadium with them, calming everybody down and talking to them. The police were great.

So nothing really bad happened, everybody was contained and they were there, as I’ve said, with huge emotional love. There was so much energy—and this is something I love to say—that Con Edison, our public utility, could have turned off their turbines and electricity
still
would have been delivered to New York City because of the emotion and the energy.

As for the screaming girls, it was historic, you know? Why they did it is really a great psychological question. I’ve talked to shrinks about it, psychologists about it. We all need heroes. And people tend to be very emotional. Now boys, unfortunately for them, they hold it in, they don’t get as crazy outwardly emotionally. They hold their emotions in.

Women, young girls especially, have a capacity to let their emotions flow. And it’s good, because they release it, and that releases tremendous energy. When they have somebody they love, they build up this pressure and they release it. Men do not do that too often.

AS FOR THE
so-called rivalry between [WINS disc jockey] Murray the K and me, first of all, he’s gone. He passed away many years ago. He had a terrible end to his life, so it’s kind of tough to even talk about him.

He called himself “the Fifth Beatle,” and honestly the Beatles did not like that. In many places in the country, in a lot of major markets, there was always a Fifth Beatle. So he hung on to that because he knew it would be a good thing for his career. But it was not official and it was not accepted or appreciated by the Beatles.

I
never
did that. Never did that, never claimed it. I was just there with them and we had a great time. They appreciated what I did for them and I appreciated them because they really saved the music industry. But that Fifth Beatle thing was nonsense.

I SPEAK TO
Paul when he comes to town, he’ll make an appearance on my SiriusXM radio show. So does Ringo. They come on and, you know, we talk and they either come up live or they call me on the telephone.

Paul is a warm, loving human being. He’s a guy who says “Give me a hug.” He’s a terrific guy! I’ll keep calling him “Sir Paul” to his face—I have such a respect for him. But he stops me, saying, “Brucie, it’s
Paul
.” Ringo’s the same way. They’re both terrific guys.