In 1970, Bob Rabin had flunked out of law school and was in search of a Plan B. A friend from Sheboygan, his hometown in Wisconsin, helped him land a job at KQRS, a fledgling station that was then headquartered in a small house in Golden Valley. Manager Dick Poe had just abandoned jazz format in favor of a format he called “progressive rock”—Eric Clapton, The Allman Brothers, Black Sabbath, and such—which was just catching on with the youth, hippies in particular.
“You’d get there in the morning and somebody would have left a cake,” Rabin remembered. Other fans showed their admiration in more novel ways. “In the 1970s there was this thing called streaking. Every once in a while someone would run through the station naked.” Then there were the groupies who would hang outside the sound booth, waiting for a certain good-looking deejay named Russell Russ to end his shift. “It was like a dream. There were so many interesting people involved,” said Rabin. He held his hand over his eyes and shook his head, as if trying to knock loose the memories.
While the jocks were spinning The Moody Blues and winning the attention of nubile women, Rabin was doing the less glamorous work of selling advertising for the station. In 1984, he would jump ship to Cities 97, when it, too, was a fledgling radio station, and he remains employed there today. Walking with a visitor through the St. Louis Park offices of Clear Channel, Cities 97’s corporate parent, coworkers greeted Rabin with a strange sort of reverence: Some did their best Wolfman Jack-style yips, while others emulated Rabin’s Milwaukee-ese.
Rabin is a fair-skinned, slope-nosed, stout fellow. He has huge, rounded shoulders that seem to swallow his neck. He admits to being a little world-weary after toughing it out in the business so long, having witnessed the radical, rather rapid progression to highly formatted, computer-driven radio from days when, as Rabin recalled, a jock could play love songs all night if he so pleased. He enjoyed similar liberties in the early days of his career. “When I was twenty-five, I had complete freedom. I set my own prices, I set my own hours. Now I’m in a situation at sixty years old where everything is completely structured.” Nevertheless, he has hung onto a jocular style of doing business, which can make him seem rather hapless and also endear him to clients.
Rabin pointed out a 70s-era photo of himself on his cubicle wall. “That’s how I really look,” he said. Running his hand over a bald spot and through his ring of gray hair, “This is just an impersonation of me.” Stumping around the office in khaki slacks and blue checked dress shirt, he hardly looks the part of the rebel he professes to be. “That guy on WKRP, Herb Tarlek, all the other guys used to look like him. They had plaid jackets and striped ties. And I was the guy walking around with a beard. I was calling on head shops and concert promoters. I never wore a suit. My hair was down to there. One day after work I was sitting outside with my neighbors when they asked, ‘What is it you do for a living?’ I said, ‘I sell advertising for a radio station.’ And they said, ‘Oh my God, we thought you were a drug dealer!’ ”
Still, certain concessions were made in order to bring in money. For instance, Rabin found potential advertisers he was calling on around the Twin Cities were put off by his real name, Rabinovitz. “I came from Sheboygan, where we had names like Latenschlager. But everyone up here was named Olson. They couldn’t pronounce my name! The first week, I was calling, leaving messages, and no one was calling me back. What I realized is that people up here in Minnesota don’t want to offend anyone. So rather than try to pronounce the name, they just wouldn’t call me back.”
Longevity in any career has its perks; in radio, some of them can involve celebrities. Rabin can rattle off a long list of encounters—everyone from Waylon Jennings to President Bush, Prince, and Emeril Lagasse. His all-time favorite rub was with Jerry Lewis, his idol, whom he met backstage at Orchestra Hall some twenty years ago.
Then there was his brush with John Lennon. It was 1975, and Tac Hammer, a legendary KQRS on-air personality and production manager, was listening in on a media conference call with the former Beatle, who was then plugging Rock-N-Roll, a tribute album to 50s- and 60s-era rock. Hammer handed Rabin the phone. “Some production director is just raking John over the coals—saying, ‘What do you want to do a Buddy Holly song for?’ And I’m listening in and I’m just furious! But of course, I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want Tac to be mad at me. And then a couple years later John Lennon is dead! And I could’ve stuck up for him! It’s one of those things you regret.”
Leave a Reply Cancel reply