Glenn Lambert short take

 

In 1971, I became program director for a free-form hippy-dippy radio station in the Berkshire mountains of Massachusetts -- starting salary, as I remember it, $80 a week. (It eventually soared to $130.)

That December, I was in SF, where I'd lived briefly in 70-71, and had been a devoted KSAN listener.

Now, I had some connections through various East Coast radio comrades. Through them, I had somehow arranged a lunch with Tom Donahue.

So I showed up at the Sutter St. highrise studios. The very first person I met was Thom O'Hair, who looked me over with the o'hairy eyeball. "Why are YOU here?" he asked. Blah blah, I answered, dropped a name or two, mentioned Donahue. "You want a job, don't you?"

"No," I answered, I already had a job, I just wanted to visit radio mecca... "Bullshit!" O'Hair replied. "Of COURSE you're looking for a job, that's the only reason anybody comes here. Well, let me tell you something..." (By now we're inches apart, he's pointing his finger right in my face...) "You can take any ASSHOLE off the STREET and put him behind a MICROPHONE, and he THINKS he's a DEEJAY. But you know what he is?" (Pause, point) "He's STILL an ASSHOLE!!!" With that, O'Hair turned and exited the room, ending our warm one-minute 
relationship. I picked my jaw up off the floor.

That day I ended up being introduced to a few other people, all of whom were nicer (not hard). Stefan Ponek, maybe Bonnie, maybe Richard, maybe Rick Sadle, I don't remember clearly, and of course Tom Donahue his own large self...

About 5 years later I moved back to SF and ended up working at KSAN. O'Hair was gone by then, though we did meet at a few reunion-type affairs over the years. Of course I told him the story. Of course, he didn't remember.