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Introduction
I ntroduction
In early 1957, my father finished breakfast before I did and left his
favourite station on. What he did not realise was that this channel played
the current American hits beginning at 9 a.m. every Saturday morning.
When he left the kitchen, easy listening music was being broadcast. A few
minutes later, in his bedroom upstairs, he heard Teddy Bear by Elvis,
unaware that I had not changed the station.
He thumped downstairs to the threshold of the kitchen.
How can you listen to such damn music? he boomed, making a balletic leap across the room and turning off the radio in a single graceful
move that would have made Nureyev proud. It was the first time I had
ever heard my father swear. If this music has this much power, I thought,
there must be something to it. I became a regular listener to all the leading
New York DJs, who could be heard in Westport, fifty miles outside the city.
When I told this story to Art Garfunkel years later, he was not impressed.
You missed a couple of important years, he said regretfully. He was
right. I had missed the New York doo-wop movement, but at least I caught
up with it in time.
I became a rock n roll kid, listening to Top 40 radio three hours a day,
but I never adopted rock n roll fashions. This set the pattern for my life,
in which I became what I call a lifestyle tourist. I was as anti-war and
pro-civil rights as any college student of the late 60s, but I never became
a hippie, and though identifying with gay people in the 70s, I did not
have sex with a man until the 80s.
I ceased listening to popular music radio during 1960. Most of the giants
of rock n roll were off the scene. Elvis was in the army, Little Richard
had found God, and Jerry Lee Lewis had been disgraced by marrying his
thirteen-year-old cousin.
I did not return to listening until 1961, when two events piqued my curiosity. My class went on a field trip to the Metropolitan Opera House on
39th Street in New York City. Getting off the bus, Chuck Whalen started
singing a tune that sounded good.
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who lived across the street from us in the Bronx, had helped me learn to
read by taking me through the Donald Duck ten-pagers by Carl Barks in
Walt Disneys Comics and Stories, the bestselling comic book of the 1950s
and, indeed, of all time. In 1960, I was shown a copy of the Giant Superman Annual 1. I was so thrilled I went to Westfair Smokeshop the next day
and bought all the current DC comics, except for Wonder Woman. I loved
them so much that the next day I went back and bought Wonder Woman.
So began my glorious ride through the Silver Age of Comics, which
gained steam when Marvel launched The Fantastic Four in November 1961
and within two years began The Amazing Spider Man, The Incredible Hulk,
The X-Men and The Avengers. I became one of the three most published
letterhacks in early Silver Age comics, and succeeded the visionary Jerry
Bails, a hopeless task, as Executive Secretary of the Academy of Comic
Book Fans and Collectors. The editor of The Flash, Julius Schwartz, named
a character after me. The tailor, Paul Gambi, appears in DC Comics to this
day. I have become reconciled to the likelihood that he will survive me.
I first learned I had a knack for public speaking in 1965. Our junior
class president was expected to win the election to be the following years
Staples Student Organization president, the schools leading government
position. Because he was considered a certain winner, no one wanted to
run against him. A few of my friends begged me to run in the interests of
democracy. At least there should be two candidates!
Losing has never been an attractive proposition, but I agreed that someone should run. I sighed and said yes, vowing to myself that if I won I
would go home and play Dancing in the Street by Martha and the Vandellas, one of my favourite acts from my favourite record company, Motown.
In the primary that preceded the election assembly, my rival won easily,
as anticipated. I gave my speech feeling no pressure whatsoever, knowing
I had no chance. On the other hand, the favourite did feel stress. He was
nervous and awkward. On election day, I won in a landslide. I went home
and played Dancing in the Street.
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The new junior class president, my friend Dick Sandhaus, asked me if the
Staples Student Organization would like to co-sponsor a fundraising concert. I agreed. We visited three leading New York agencies, William Morris,
General Artists and Frank Barsalonas new Premier Talent. At GAC we were
present when an agent rushed in to tell his colleague some shocking news.
The Rolling Stones want $12,000 a show or theyll leave! he gasped.
Our host replied without missing a beat.
Tell them theyll never get it.
Sandhaus and I wound up promoting the Beau Brummels, who had
just enjoyed two consecutive major hit singles, Laugh Laugh and Just
a Little. The evening was a sell-out, beginning a string of 1960s concerts
at Staples that are the subject of a book by Mark Smollin called The Real
Rock n Roll High School.
My grades were good enough, and my position as SSO president sufficiently impressive, for me to get accepted at Harvard, Yale, Princeton
and Dartmouth. I assumed at first that I would choose Harvard, but was
horrified when I visited its town of Cambridge, Massachusetts. I noticed
a dead fish floating on the Charles River, which may not have shocked
city dwellers but stunned someone like me who had grown up in a small
town with clean water.
I dined in the Commons of one of the colleges at the invitation of my
predecessor as SSO president, Tom Dublin. I sat at a table next to someone eating alone. I asked him if he was glad he had come to Harvard.
Absolutely, he replied. This is the one place where I can go down to
the banks of the River Charles, read a book and not need another person in the world.
Being a more sociable person than this young man, I was put off Harvard
and travelled to Hanover, New Hampshire, to check out Dartmouth. As
a snow lover, I was thrilled that there were still traces of the white stuff on
the ground as late as mid-April. As a music lover, I was awed that the college radio station, WDCR, was playing the new singles I Am a Rock by
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Simon and Garfunkel and Did You Ever Have to Make Up Your Mind?
by the Lovin Spoonful before they hit New York airwaves. I heard them
as I was taking a walk on Route 120, the road to the nearby town of Lebanon, listening to DJ Scott McQueen on the show Sounds for the Tri-Town.
WDCR was the largest commercial station in the country run by students, a 1,000-watt AM facility. The Federal Communications Commission,
feeling that northern New England had been ill-served by radio, had
granted the trustees of Dartmouth College a licence. I felt that I had to
attend Dartmouth if only for the radio station. I didnt want to be on it,
I just wanted to be near it.
Inevitably, I was on it. During Freshman Week at the beginning of my
first year, the college held an Activities Night, on which all organisations
held open house for the new students. I checked out WDCR and was
invited to take a voice test in front of programme director Bob Buck and
chief announcer Scott McQueen. I passed.
My four years at WDCR while a Dartmouth student were so rewarding
that two decades later I wrote a memoir about them, Radio Boy. Virtually
everything I did in my adult career I learned to do in that tiny town of a
few thousand people.
Towards the end of 1969, it was time to apply to graduate schools.
Only one person at Dartmouth, my friend John Ritchie, suggested I seek
a career in radio.
You can do this, he said.
But I fell under the spell of what was then established thinking. We
were told that the future leaders of America would be lawyers. As Watergate would soon demonstrate, the future criminals of America would be
lawyers, but that scandal was still a couple of years away. I applied to and
was accepted by Harvard and Yale Law Schools. Being located in Connecticut, Yale was too close to home. I chose Harvard Law.
One morning, I was crossing the Dartmouth Green and ran into my
classmate Bob Harrington.
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I ntroduction
A blessed career followed. I was the only person to ever have regular
programmes on BBC Radio 1, 2, 3 and 4, not to mention the commercial channels Classic FM and Capital Radio. Since Radio 1 was at its peak
a natural source of television presenters, I found myself also being a regular at one point or another on BBC One, BBC Two, ITV and, when
they began broadcasting, Channel 4 and Sky TV. These clean sweeps were
made possible because I had a wider range of interests than most presenters and because I was not so famous for one thing that I wasnt allowed to
do something else as well.
What would be my ultimate calling card became apparent to me in
the third-floor corridor of Radio 1 in 1976. I was appalled because Tony
Blackburn had not known a particular pop fact. I then realised that none
of the other DJs knew it, either. In fact, I was the only one who knew it.
I was the freak!
The following year, brothers Jo and Tim Rice, Mike Read and myself
published the first edition of The Guinness Book of British Hit Singles. We
had slaved on it for four years because we wanted it as a reference book
for our own research purposes. Ten months after its publication, I was
stunned to see it listed as number six in the Sunday Times bestseller list.
No one had told me it was selling! The next week we were number four.
At this point, Guinness got back in touch and requested a second edition.
We wound up doing ten editions, one every two years for two decades,
with related titles in the off-years.
Throughout my life I have been nicknamed Gambo wherever I have
gone. The first person to use this name was Denis ONeill, who was the
leader of our gang in fifth grade at Greens Farms School. This was no
urban gang. It simply was a group of friends who met on the playground
every morning during recess. As leader, ONeill had the right to assign our
code names. He called me Gambo. This nickname has lasted all my life.
I hope his hasnt. He called himself Frenchie.
In the same way, I received a professional nickname without seeking
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one. In the 1990s, BBC Two and Channel 4 started producing numerous
documentaries on popular music history. Inevitably, a couple of guests
appeared regularly as talking heads. I was one. To my amazement, the two
channels independently started captioning me Professor of Pop. Even
more incredibly, I really did become a Professor of Pop in 2009 when
I served as News International Visiting Professor of Broadcast Media at
Oxford University.
Throughout the mid-1980s to late noughties, I had a series of relationships with men that each lasted a couple of years. My partners always
moved on, two marrying women, one moving to California in an attempt
to become a film star, and one joining the United States Army without telling me. It amused me to see a photo of him sitting on Saddam Husseins
throne, but the Iraq War was out of my loop. I had lost him to Uncle Sam.
I was always comforted in periods of romantic loss by the lesson of Gene
Kelly. I had once read in The International Herald Tribune that the great
dancer and film star had gone three years between his first and second marriages. My first thought was: How did he cope for those three years? My
second was: If he could handle it, I have to. I always remained an optimist, hoping against hope that I would one day find a permanent partner.
In February 2010, I received a friendship request on Facebook from a
fellow graduate of Oxford University, Christopher Sherwood. I was losing my interest in Facebook and in fact remained on it for less than a
year, because I was receiving a disturbing number of friendship requests
from people around the world wanting to know what Freddie Mercury
had really been like. This was my own fault, since one of my photos was
an old favourite of the two of us in animated conversation, me wearing a
tuxedo and Freddie in a Flash Gordon T-shirt.
Chris Sherwood got his request in during the last months of my Facebook site. His photo showed him holding a bottle of wine by the neck,
which did not appeal to the teetotaller in me. But he had two things in his
favour. First, he had been to my old university. I am as guilty as anyone
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of thinking that people who went to my school are less likely to be crazy
than people who went anywhere else, a misconception proved wrong daily
around the world, yet one that universities rely on in their fundraising.
Second, Chris had been captain of the Oxford University Gymnastics
Club, which meant that he was probably still fit and that he had a sense
of self-discipline, a trait required both to stay in shape and to do a regular Saturday radio programme for four decades.
I noticed that two of Sherwoods photo albums concerned his recent trip
to New Zealand. At this moment a notification popped up on my iMac
screen. It named my friend Stacy Rowe, who lived in New Zealand. Oh, I
thought, I get it, Chris met Stacy on vacation and Rowe is vouching for him.
In fact, nothing of the sort had occurred. Stacys name popped up
simply because he had gone online at that moment. The timing was a
coincidence, pure and simple, but it was one that led me to accept Christophers friendship request.
I soon received a message from Chris suggesting that we meet. I replied
that I had two tickets for the following Tuesdays performance at the
Hampstead Theatre of the Royal Shakespeare Companys production of
Dunsinane, David Greigs sequel to Macbeth. If we got on, great. If we
didnt, there was still the play.
We got on.
On 23 June 2012 we held our civil partnership at Le Manoir aux
QuatSaisons in Great Milton, Oxfordshire, chosen for its proximity to
our common university. For our honeymoon we went to New York City
and got married. Britain did not offer same-sex marriage at the time,
although civil partnership bestowed all the important rights of marriage
and getting wed in New York simply meant that we could file joint state
income tax returns, an unlikely prospect. Chris and I married in the New
York Botanical Garden. The beautiful site, undervisited because it is in
the Bronx rather than Manhattan, is within walking distance of both the
hospital in which I was born and our 1950s Sedgwick Avenue apartment.
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