MURRAY SAUL He became a WMMS icon with his weekly "Get Down."

As program director and later operations manager, Cleveland radio veteran John Gorman led the team that built WMMS into a powerful and influential station in the 1970s and '80s. His new book, The Buzzard: Inside the Glory Days of WMMS and Cleveland Rock Radio (hardcover / $24.95 / 320 pages) is filled with juicy behind-the-scenes details about how WMMS reshaped radio and helped establish Cleveland as the "Rock and Roll Capital." In this excerpt, Gorman talks about his early days at the station, rock radio exclusives and "Get Down" man Murray Saul's rise to local celebrity. The book is available at Northeast Ohio bookstores and online from Amazon.com. For more information, call Gray & Company, Publishers at 800.708.2819 or visit grayco.com.

From Chapter 1, "Welcome to Cleveland"

Fourth of July 1973. Welcome to Cleveland. There was a dead pigeon on the windowsill of my room overlooking Public Square in the Sheraton-Cleveland Hotel. Despite several calls to the front desk, the pigeon remained part of the decor for three long, hot, muggy days. It matched the desolate street scene below. Sure, this was a holiday, but still - at 10 a.m. there was not a single car or person on the street.

I'd come from Boston, the city I loved, to take the new job of music director at WMMS - a promising, "free-form" radio station whose program director and morning host, Denny Sanders, was an old friend in need of help.

Metromedia, WMMS's former owner, had recently sold its Cleveland properties to Malrite Broadcasting, a small company relocating from suburban Detroit. Most of the staff, fearing an inevitable format change, had resigned. Denny was now program director, trying to keep the station on the air with a limited staff hired largely from the Cleveland State University station.

The clock was ticking. Malrite's purchase of WMMS had been held up when a community group, led by activist Henry Speeth and a young councilman named Dennis Kucinich, convinced the Federal Communications Commission that the station's progressive format provided a unique public service. Malrite, which planned to change it to country, agreed to retain progressive rock for one year, starting in January 1973. If the station failed to generate revenue and ratings, Malrite would be free to change.

Denny asked if I was interested in coming to Cleveland. I was. It sounded like a challenge and, maybe, fun.

Malrite was putting me up at the Sheraton-Cleveland for my first two weeks of employment. I was expected to find a place to live in that time. What furniture I had wasn't worth the trouble of moving, and I hadn't owned a car for months because Boston's extensive transit system made one unnecessary. I had rented a small truck to move my records, books, files, and clothes, and I'd be searching for a furnished apartment on a bus or train route.

The Sheraton-Cleveland was frayed and musty. The hallway connecting to the Terminal Tower reeked of urine. The gutters on Public Square were littered with trash. Twelve blocks up Euclid Avenue, I was amazed to see a department store, Halle's. It was the only sign of life in an area whose name, Playhouse Square, appeared suited only to history. Its theaters were boarded up, seemingly abandoned.

I drove my rented truck to the WHK-WMMS studios on Euclid Ave. near East 55th Street to meet Denny, who was waiting in the parking lot off Prospect Avenue. The building's once-imposing facade at 5000 Euclid Avenue recalled the time, a generation earlier, when it was a glittering broadcast center, complete with auditorium and theater marquee.

Now it could have been a struggling old factory. The WHK call letters, on a vertical marquee, were grimy, and there wasn't even a sign for WMMS. The back of the building was tarpaper. To its left on Euclid stood a bank; on the right was a Blepp-Coombs Sporting Goods store with Indians and Browns jackets in the window. The view didn't improve inside the stations' dingy lobby. It was a place where the woman who ran a small snack stand died behind the counter as she was closing up one evening, and no one noticed or cared until the stench became unbearable.

There were two other cars in the lot. One belonged to Hal Fisher, the general manager. Lugging a briefcase overflowing with papers, he was wrapping up a half day of work on this holiday morning. "You must be John Gorman," he said as he shook my hand. "Welcome aboard. I'm looking forward to working with you."

The next day, my first on the job, I took the bus down Euclid and got an early start. Waiting for Denny to finish his morning show, I headed upstairs to the music library, switched on the intercom for WMMS. The library hadn't been a priority. Few albums were filed alphabetically or in the correct cabinet, and I found box upon box of unopened albums. I spent an hour trying to make sense of it. … On the intercom in the background, a song ended and a deep voice - like the voice of God - boomed from the speakers. "This is … Len Goldberg … on W-M-M-S. Good mornin' to you. Here's Van Morrison." This guy did middays? He made Isaac Hayes sound like Alvin and the Chipmunks.

Denny walked in, his show over, and brought me down to the studio to meet Len. If Central Casting was looking for a mad cave dweller, Len would have been the essential choice. His thick head of hair was a veritable jungle, and his full beard matched. Small, square reading glasses perched on his nose, and he had on well-worn bib overalls over a blue T-shirt. His voice could rattle windows like a passing freight train.

"The music department is completely fucked up," he said. "Half this fucking library is scratched to shit, and there's a lot of things I want to play that we don't have. You want a list? I'll give you a list." He paused and took a hit of pot from a tiny pipe, probably to see my reaction. Although surprised, I pretended that I saw that sort of thing every day. "Meet JC yet?" he asked. "My advice to you is not to let JC run this fucking radio station. If you are the music director, you should run the fucking department the way you see fit. Understand? You do that and we'll get along just great."

We walked down the hall toward the archaic production studio, and I met the new production director, Jeff Kinzbach - six feet tall, rail thin, with shoulder-length hair. Then I followed Denny to a claustrophobic office in the back of the FM sales office and met the sales manager, Walt Tiburski. He proposed a Cleveland tour to visit a few clients and record labels, immediately suggesting a date and time.

My next order of business was to meet John Chaffee, Malrite's national program director, who had approved my hiring. From phone conversations, I pictured a conservatively dressed executive in his early 30s. Short, dark hair, light to medium build.

"We call him JC," Denny said. "JC is brilliant, brilliant in his own way. He's very product oriented."

I asked what he looked like. "Like a hippie on Dragnet," Denny said. "You know how Dragnet stereotyped everyone. Just think of how Dragnet would portray a hippie. He wouldn't look like a real hippie. He would look like a Jack Webb version of a hippie. A stereotyped character."

At that instant, someone who looked exactly like a hippie from Dragnet entered the hallway. Graying, shoulder-length hair. A slightly wild, medium-length beard. Dark, piercing eyes. A two-piece outfit, not exactly a suit, of a peculiar fabric in a medium blue hue. Cuban-heeled boots. A furry shoulder bag. JC, extremely courteous, welcomed me "on board" and marched toward the back of the building.

Denny suggested lunch at Hatton's. As we pulled out of the parking lot, he cranked up the radio - "Evil Woman" by Spooky Tooth. Then it happened. "Eeeeee-vil (click) Eeee-vil (click) . . . Eeeevil (click)." Len Goldberg, in his best burning bush voice, boomed through the speakers, "If anyone from the music department is listening, we need a new copy of that Spooky Tooth album" - followed by a loud crack.

Celebrity guests Roxy Music joins Kid Leo (l) and Gorman (r) in the WMMS studio.

"Denny, did he just break the album on the air?"

"Hmmm. Sounds like it, doesn't it?" …

When people recalled their favorite stations, they referenced the disc jockeys: Joey Reynolds, with his theme song sung by the Four Seasons to the tune of "Sherry." Murray the K's Swingin' Soiree and "submarine races." Jerry G's "alligator counting." Cousin Brucie's "cousins," and Arnie "Woo Woo" Ginsberg, "Woo Woo for you-you." I coveted that for WMMS. We had to be personality radio. Everyone needed a style, a hook, and signature lines.

I loved disc jockey nicknames. It was Murray the K, not Murray Kaufman; Cousin Brucie, not Bruce Morrow. It was "Emperor" Joe Mayer. I rejected pre-fab "Ron Radio" nom de plumes. I vowed that if I had to change a name, it would either be close to the original or way, way out there. I had a head start with Kid Leo, who named himself after Kid Jensen, a popular British radio DJ, and his friend Matt the Cat, whose name took a little more work.

Matthew Lapczynski was working weekends as a part-timer. Born in Belgium, he'd immigrated with his family to the United States in the 1950s, stopping first in Massachusetts and then settling in Cleveland's Slavic Village. He was soft-spoken - just this side of too soft - but his music selection was the most mainstream on the station. He joined WMMS on April 21, 1973, the day after his 20th birthday, and within three and a half months he had worked every shift on the station except morning drive …

I liked him, but not the one-name air name Matthew, which sounded too progressive-rock '60s. I wouldn't have minded Lapczynski, except I knew it would get butchered in ratings diaries. This is the reason why "on-air" names tend to be simple and easy to recall. Denny, Matt, and I had lunch to discuss a name, but every suggestion sounded "too radio." Matthew Williams, Matthew Thomas, Matthew Martin. Lapczynski, tall and rail thin, ordered a chocolate fudge sundae for dessert. He scooped up a chunk of vanilla ice cream, ran the spoon around the inside the glass dish to pick up some extra fudge, put the spoon to his lips, stopped, and examined it. There on the spoon was a sharp, nearly invisible sliver of glass.

"Look," he said. "I almost swallowed that."

"Lucky you," I said. "You're like a cat - using up one of your nine lives." Silence. "Matt the Cat! Matt the Cat. What about that name?"

Denny liked it. Lapczynski thought it sounded stupid, and not believable. And Kid Leo was? It's show biz, I told him. It fit, it wasn't derogatory or offensive, it was catchy, it rhymed, and it didn't sound like "Ron Radio." Besides, listeners might feel they knew him a bit better because of a perception that Matt the Cat was his nickname.

On the first day he used it, he got hang-up calls saying, "Matt the Cat - pussy!" from the usual suspects who complained about everything. Ride it out, I suggested. It would work. Look at Leo, with his share of late-night callers saying, "Kid Leo, huh? Prizefighter? I'll come down there and kick your ass." I made sure the Saturday schedule changed "Matthew" to "Matt the Cat," which was how he signed on that afternoon. Within a couple of weeks, the name was established, and the peanut gallery harassers moved on to another element of WMMS to complain about. A few years later, a research study showed "Kid Leo" and "Matt the Cat" among the most recognized staff names on Cleveland radio.

Being known and recognized was important. I wanted our staff to be out in public, to be on TV, to get their pictures in the paper. I wanted listeners to place voices with names instantly. No surprises, and none of that "you don't look anything like you sound" on my air talent. I wanted them to be rock stars in their own right, respected, even loved.

From Chapter 11, "Continuous Party"

The Beach Boys' World Series of Rock show opened a summer [1975] that propelled Murray Saul to cult status. We saw it most clearly on Labor Day weekend, on the odd occasion when the Regional Transit Authority held a rally on downtown Mall C to celebrate its creation from the merger of the Cleveland Transit System, Shaker Rapid Transit, and five suburban bus lines.

Because WMMS was trying to get an ad buy from RTA, Carl Hirsch asked if I could get a band for the rally. It was short notice, but Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show agreed to appear because they were in town playing the WMMS Freakers Ball at the Smiling Dog Saloon. It was advance publicity. I suggested we also have a live Get Down. Murray didn't want to do it, because RTA wanted him to announce all the cities they would serve. I told him we needed it, it would take only part of his Get Down, and he could do it his way. But none of us knew what to expect.

The fact that he could draw a crowd surprised everyone, including Murray. It was his first interaction with a live audience. He went through the cities - "Bay Village! Beachwood!" - and drew moderate applause for each. Then, "East Side! Are you with us?" That got a big cheer. "West Side! Are you with us?" A bigger cheer. "We're here to celebrate something else, too! We're celebrating the first year of Nixon being in exile!" That drew the biggest cheer of all. Energized, Murray started running down his Ten Commandments of the Easy Life, including "Honor thy Colombian and thy Gold!" He shocked us at the end by jumping into the crowd to continue his "Gottagotta- gotta-gottas." At one point, he lost his mic, which was quickly picked up by a fan who yelled into the mic, "Eat your pussy for the weekend."

Back at the station, part-timer Shelley Stile was running the board and handling production of the broadcast. Her original outcue was "Get down, dammit!" and applause. But she knew how to read Murray, and kept the lines open to Mall C. It ended with Dr. Hook and Charlie Kendall bringing Murray back on stage, with Dr. Hook's eye-patched Ray Sawyer saying, "Murray got down, but he couldn't get up."

The performance took Murray from a cult following to a mass audience. Exit magazine did a feature story about him the following week.

"Saul on the Mall" took us into fall. Murray's fame was further recognized when [radio trade paper] Radio & Records asked for him to do a Get Down at its annual convention in Houston. We were becoming recognized on the industry convention circuit, and Murray wanted to do it, but the request was turned down. The decision went all the way up to Milt Maltz, who feared the appearance would either make Murray a national star, sending him to a larger market, or would get him busted for smoking pot on the streets of Houston and make Malrite look bad. I felt the opposite, but read the room and didn't argue the issue.

We saw more proof of Murray's popularity at Kent State University, at a Jethro Tull concert co-sponsored with WMMS a week before Halloween. The band's label chartered a bus to make the long drive from the station, and Murray boarded with a younger woman he'd invited as his date. She told him during the ride that she wasn't interested in sex with him, which soured his mood.

We arrived at Kent in time for the opening act, UFO. Dan Garfinkel, who had recently become our marketing and promotion manager, checked arrangements with Wendy Stein from Belkin. Dan, known as the Duck, was a Brandeis graduate we met when he worked with Ray Shepardson's group to save and revive Playhouse Square, and we were trying to tie in with its long-running revue, Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris. He filled a need that was becoming urgent, one that Denny and I could no longer handle ourselves, and he was Murray's neighbor in the Coventry area. When Wendy said she needed someone from WMMS to emcee and introduce Tull, Garfinkel immediately suggested Murray as a natural choice. It was a Friday night.

Murray, who was glad to have an excuse to get away from his date, got his instructions from Garfinkel and walked backstage. As he later described it, "A side of beef stops me and says, 'What are you doing here?' I say, 'I'm going to bring on Jethro Tull.' He says, 'Jethro Tull requires no emcee. If you don't have a pass, leave!'"

Garfinkel, figuring his work was done, dropped some acid and found his seat. Murray stormed down the aisle. I heard shouting from the station's section of seats. It was a highly animated Murray, looming over Garfinkel and berating him furiously: "Don't ever subject me to that again! I will not allow that!" Garfinkel was gripping his seat, probably thinking he was having a bad trip. Murray went on and on, at the top of his lungs. People in front and in back stood on seats to see. People finding seats stopped to watch. The tirade probably lasted five minutes, but it seemed like an hour. Murray, still angry and shouting, finally sat down.

The Whole Crew The WMMS staff in the mid-'70s.

Huge applause broke out. In front, from behind, from the rafters. I told Murray to stand up. The applause swelled and quieted. Murray, suddenly inspired, shouted, "Got-ta, got-ta, got-ta, get DOWN!" Now there was cheering. Murray climbed onto his chair and stretched out his arms like the pope. He began turning slowly in acknowledgment, and he was showered with joints. Jethro Tull did not get crowd reaction even close to Murray's that night.

From Chapter 12, "The Switch"

We gave listeners something they couldn't get elsewhere: true exclusives - new music that other stations didn't yet have.

Denny and I recalled exclusives from Top 40 radio of the 1960s, when stations would scramble to be first with a new single by the Beatles, the Rolling Stones or the Beach Boys. The winner would milk it for all it was worth, building anticipation by tracking the progress of a record from the airport to the station, playing it with great fanfare, and grandly releasing it to other stations, which they'd claim were taping. It was great radio.

Exclusives went out as record labels built more sophisticated marketing campaigns, which they called "set ups." Album rock stations didn't play the exclusive card because it smacked of Top 40. We knew better. Exclusives added to the station's excitement and image, and they became part of our ongoing battle with M105. On rare occasion, they beat us. ([M105 program director] Eric Stevens had some connections we didn't, because of his history with [top 40 station] WIXY and relationships he established in the music industry over the years.) Mostly we beat them. One Rod Stewart album came to us, two months before release, from the general manager of Malrite's station in Milwaukee. One of his jocks was friends with a member of Stewart's band, who gave him a tape.

Exclusives also came from a secret weapon: The Switch - a small toggle switch under the desk in my office.

Frank Foti, our engineering wizard, installed the on-off switch and connected it to a tape machine set up next door to my office, in the production studio, which recorded from the turntable in my office. When a record promoter came in to preview an album that wouldn't be released for weeks or months, I'd flip The Switch as soon as he put it on. While we were listening, tape was rolling next door. I recorded dozens of exclusives that way, and we were careful how we used them. Timing was everything. Playing cuts immediately or too soon might tip our hand. Playing a record that wouldn't be released for three months made little sense. But we'd have it on hand to play a few weeks before anyone else had it.

Most labels hated exclusives. They wanted airplay, which has always amounted to free advertising for their product, but they had elaborate marketing and sales campaigns worked out. Advance exclusives muddied their plans and brought complaints from other stations wanting exclusives or favors of their own.

To limit their ability to block us, we often premiered our exclusives on Friday night, after the local label and distribution offices closed for the weekend. If one of them called the studio, or sent a cease-and-desist telegram or fax, I was the only person authorized to respond, and I would make myself impossible to reach. This wasn't paranoia. There were occasions when I recognized the cars of record promoters parked outside my home, hoping to hand-deliver me a cease-and-desist letter. I'd always come in late on Monday, during the last hour of the morning show, and Charlie Kendall or Jeff Kinzbach would announce we'd received a warning and couldn't play the exclusive anymore. But we'd had the whole weekend and Monday's morning drive to play it, and the labels looked like bad guys spoiling the party.

The leak of a Rod Stewart album so upset Russ Thyret, the head of Warner Records, that he stopped service of all Warner product to WMMS. The embargo ended after a few days, when he made a rare trip from L.A. to meet with us. We refused to reveal our source but agreed to be more considerate. At least for a while.

The same company was furious at WMMS when we broke Fleetwood Mac's Tusk album as an exclusive, early in the fall of 1979. That one came on cassette, from a friend in New York. To ensure its delivery, I had to buy a seat for it on a commercial flight. I was a nervous wreck waiting for it at the airport - once again on a Friday night - and drove it to WMMS, where Denny Sanders immediately put it on the air. We played one cut every half hour, inserting "WMMS exclusive" in case anyone tried to tape it. Warner was upset because Fleetwood Mac was their most important act at that time, and they worried about Tusk being a somewhat experimental double album which sounded nothing like its predecessor, the multi-platinum Rumours.

My favorite was when Henry Droz - president of the Warner-Elektra-Atlantic music group, the umbrella distributors of those labels and their affiliates - flew in for a dinner meeting at Swingos with WEA's regional representatives. Dave Lucas, the local marketing manager, was called away during dinner for an important phone call. The interruption wasn't welcome. He returned with color drained from his face. Twenty minutes later, he was called away again, and again returned white as a sheet. When the waiter called him to the phone a third time, and Lucas returned visibly upset, Droz, impatient and tired of the interruptions, demanded to know what was going on.

Lucas told him WMMS was playing the new Jackson Browne album, Hold Out. Now Droz was upset. He was known as "the architect of modern music distribution" and this wasn't the way he liked things done. It's worse, Lucas said - WMMS also has the new Queen album, The Game. Droz asked how it could happen. Didn't the label have control?

They have another one, too, Lucas said - the Rolling Stones' Emotional Rescue. Droz erupted. My answering machine filled with messages from Lucas and others from the WEA staff. "Please, please, you don't know how serious this is."

For us, it was a hat trick, a triple crown. But it did fuel the suspicion that we were taping, though the Browne and Queen albums came from an independent promoter who knew Droz would be in town and wanted to make trouble for WEA. He used me, and I used him.

The Stones album did come via The Switch, from Paul Goldberg, the local Atlantic representative. I got him to play the entire album for me by showing interest and having staffers stop in - on cue - to hear the tracks. Weeks after we went on the air with it, he asked if I had a way to tape from turntable. Instead of answering directly, I told him that Carl Hirsch had a Learjet at Burke Lakefront Airport. Whenever there was an exclusive available, I would use it to pick up our copy. I said that Emotional Rescue came from a secret source in Toronto, and that I'd flown there, had dinner at my favorite restaurant, and flew back in time to world-premiere it on WMMS.

I don't know if Goldberg believed it, but he and Larry Bole, the local Warner representative, came to my office to catch me soon afterward. Bole put an advance copy of Fleetwood Mac's Live on the turntable. While he and I listened, Goldberg walked into the production studio and started talking with engineer Tom O'Brien - looking around inquisitively and hoping O'Brien would somehow give himself away. Bole lifted the needle from Live to break up the track.

By then, however, we had moved the tape machine into a different studio and hidden it where it couldn't be seen from production or the on-air studio. Tape was rolling. Because Bole had lifted the needle, it took O'Brien an hour of editing to reassemble the tracks we had, and to fake a couple of edits by playing parts of songs twice. We figured it would go unnoticed by an untrained ear that hadn't heard the material before. We had our exclusive. Bole rush-delivered the album to all radio stations in the region after he heard us world-premiering it and wrote off the rumors that my turntable was the source.

We had exclusives every week by the mid-1980s. The Switch was never the prime source of them, but it qualified as a sort of WMMS exclusive itself. Years later, the record guys weren't really surprised when I finally told them how I did.

Adapted from the book The Buzzard: Inside the Glory Days of WMMS and Cleveland Rock Radio © 2007 by John Gorman (with Tom Feran). All rights reserved. This test may not be reproduced in any form or manner without written permission of Gray and Company, Publishers.

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