Wow, I have been so fortunate to have been able to Interview some of the best KOME had on the air! Today I have a awesome and detailed interview with Bob Lilley one half of the great morning crew Blazy and Bob that I am sure you all remember!
I can promise you that this interview will bring back the great days of Rock Radio! I am both honored and thrilled to have done this interview with you Mr Lilley and as I said before YOU ROCK!
Interview with Bob Lilley
KOME – FM On Air Personality
This photo was used with Permission by Ted Kopulos of http://www.ted.to/kome/stories.htm
Thank you very much for taking time to do this Interview with me, I was excited to know I was getting the chance to speak with you!
When did you begin your radio career and at what station?
I started in radio in 1976. I was fortunate to run in to a group of people who were in the process of putting a radio station on the air at Boise State University, my alma mater. It was suggested to me that I might be good at it so I attended a couple of meetings and they accepted me. I took the station over within a year. GOOD TIMES!
Have you always been a Rock DJ or are there other genres of music you appreciate as well?
My favorite type of music is Classical but I have only experienced doing Classical radio in college. Rock radio is much more fun. I tried my hand at Top-40 radio but wasn’t really cut out for it.
When did you come to KOME?
1986
How did you and Jeff Blazy come up with the comedy portion of your show, was it scripted or off the cuff? Did you know each other prior to starting Blazy and Bob?
I got to KOME in the fall of ’86 about the time that Frank Bennett had decided he’d had enough of doing mornings. I had never done mornings so I wasn’t really interested in doing that shift. Mornings is tough! You have to to get up so early that it screws up the rest of your day/life. Eventually the station decided to hire Blazy but he needed someone to work with. The station didn’t want to team him up with a real/professional news guy, they wanted a jock who was interested in news and who could read well on the air. So they asked me if I would consider teaming up with this new guy. We didn’t know each other from Adam, we just plunged in to it and hoped for the best. They told us they’d give us a couple of months to see if it would work out. I guess we passed the audition. As far as the comedy portion of the show goes, that was Blazy’s thing. He has spent years doing stand up comedy and he just has one of those “Class Clown” kinda personalities. Comedy comes natural to him. I’m much more laid back. I usually acted as a counter balance to his tendency to take things too far. I liked doing the news and offering useful information to listeners and I ran the board and took care of everything else that needed to be done. That allowed Jeff to just concentrate on what he had to do. I never paid a lot of attention to what Blazy was up to, fortunately we were in different studios. That way, when Jeff would do his thing, it was new for me, just like it was for the audience. We didn’t practice the stuff, he just did it and I was there to react to it. I told him, right off the bat, that I wasn’t a pushover. If he wanted me to laugh at his stuff, it had better be funny. He earned his laughs, they weren’t canned or to make him look good. He gave me plenty of opportunities to get in the punch lines but they weren’t rehearsed. If I missed my cue, well, I missed my cue and he’d pick it up and use it.
I read that you and Jeff were actually at Candlestick Park during the 89 Loma Prieta Quake, and that you both stayed on air, that must have been very hard to do. Do you have any memories of that day that you would like to share?
We broadcast from the Bay Bridge that day because it was the day the Oakland A’s were traveling over to take on the Giants in what I believe was the 3rd game of the World Series. We were long gone by the time the quake hit. Frank Bennett was on the air when the quake hit. He had some stories to tell!!
I saw on some web pages that are not online anymore, that your morning show had a great deal of Rock Bands come to visit with you. Are there any Bands that you had on your show that stand out in your memory the most?
Yeah, we had a great deal of Rock bands and stars come thru the show. You know we not only had in-studio guests and guests that we interviewed via telephone and satellite hook up but we also traveled a bit and talked to people all over the place. We must have done 3 or 4 Grammy broadcasts, a couple of the annual Universal Studio’s broadcasts, plus a week in New York, interviewing bands out of the old ABC ROCK Headquarters. We broadcast from the 1989 World Exhibition in Brisbane, Australia, the grand opening of Bill Wyman’s restaurant, “Sticky Fingers” in Kennsington, London, England and we did two trips to Jamaica and a week in Tokyo. I mention that because in every one of those places we got a chance to meet and talk to the kind of folks you’re referring to.
We interviewed Ringo Starr and Carlos Santana, two the biggest names I could drop for you. But those interviews were over a satellite feed and even though we did spend a good amount of time with each of them, we never actually got to meet them face to face. Those satellite interviews were convenient for everyone involved and a way for us to do things and expose our audience to more than what was available at hand. We once had James Taylor on a satellite feed and even though we appreciated that Taylor wasn’t a KOME type artist, we always felt that our core audience was full of people who just appreciated good music. We would have welcomed Yo Yo Ma to the show if the opportunity had presented itself. We both liked James Taylor’s stuff so we put him on the air. He picked up a guitar and pumped out 3 or 4 of his classics; not abbreviated versions but album-perfect. What a treat.
But it got even better when we would get to meet these people. Some of them we saw repeatedly and they became kind of friends. Melissa Etheridge used to give me great hugs after her 2nd or 3rd time on. What a sweet lady.
Its hard to whittle this down to a couple of names; Jeff and I met a lot of celebrities. When we were in NY, we invited Ray Davies to come talk to us. At the start of the interview, both Jeff and I blurted out, in unison, “Ya know, you’re a Rock God.” He protested vehemently, “No, I can’t even hold on to a recording contract. The only thing anybody knows about me and the Kinks is that my brother and I feud all the time. That whole scene passed me by.” Jeff and I were dumbfounded, we exchanged a look and then Jeff said something to the effect of “We’d put you in a class with Hendrix, Lennon, Page, Beck….” Ray just shook his head, “You guys don’t understand, I’m nothing compared to those guys. I’m starting from ground zero again, nobody cares. Those guys, if they had a project out, they wouldn’t even need to promote it, it would just be released gold.”
Such stunning stuff. He was right, I guess, but hell, all Jeff and I could think of was, “WERE TALKING TO RAY DAVIES!” He went on the Letterman show that night and we both went to see what he said. He just joked around with Letterman. With us he bared his soul. We were honored.
Kind of like the time we had Ray Manzarek on the show. It was right after the release of that Doors movie with Val Kilmer. We figured he’d be jacked about the movie, what great exposure for the band. So Blazy says, “So what’d ya think of the movie?” And Manzarek went off! “They disrespected us! The made fools of us! They made Jim look like a complete idiot!” On and on. And Leah Garchic (sp) of the SF Chronicle is listening and calls Jeff up for a copy of the tape. Next day in her column she writes how we had landed the primo critique of the Doors movie. A few years later, I walk into the bar at the Four Season’s in SF and there’s Ray, sitting at the bar. He recognized me and called me over. Told me how great it had been for him to get that off his chest. We sat around for a while, drinking spirits and discussing The Doors legacy and whether or not any of the so called fans had ever really gotten what they were trying to say. By the way, if you’re a Doors fan, pick up a copy of the book “The Poet in Exile.” Ray Manzarek attempts to bring a sensible ending to the Jim Morrison story/myth. A fun read.
When we were in London we had one superstar after the other drop by Bill Wyman’s place and talk to us. Peter Gabriel, who actually helped me personally get in contact with someone that we knew in common. Ian Anderson, whom we also had on the show at the station. Jon Lord of Deep Purple. Blazy had our Program Director, who had come along to produce the shows, go out and find one of those little toy pianos that kids have; the miniature baby grands, and Jon Lord played “Smoke on the Water” on this toy piano. Hilarious!
Of course during that trip we also talked to Bill Wyman! Hell, it was his restaurant. “So why did you quit the Stones?” “Those wankers didn’t give me the credit I deserved!” “Every song was attributed to Jagger/Richards, but who do you think wrote the bass lines for all those tunes? They didn’t! They’d come up with a tune of some kind and I had to invent the bass line, I did that! Did I get a bloody writer’s credit? NO!” Wankers!
At that same broadcast, (Sorry Jeff) Chrissie Hynde tried to pick up Blazy. I think I got under her skin by questioning some of her “Save the Planet” stuff by saying, “Ya know its not the planet that needs to be saved. When this planet gets sick enough, it’ll just dispose of us and begin the healing process. Your campaign should be “Save the Humans.” She told me that that was obvious, period. And she then ignored me as much as she could and zeroed in on Blazy. She kind of interviewed him a bit. Eventually we took control of the interview again. I remember asking her, “With all the stuff you tackle and as busy as you are, how do you relax?” Her response, which I still have on tape somewhere was short and sweet, “I smoke a lot of pot.” The Program director went nuts after she left, giving instructions back to the station that that whole thing should be cut out. The shows, by the way were being tape delayed due to the extreme time change. When the PD turned around, I counter manned his order and told Don West, back at the station, “Don’t you dare cut that out!” He later told me he was way ahead of me and that it had already been included.
But now, after the interview and before the flap about whether to keep that piece, when Chrissie ended the interview, you could tell there was something between herself and Jeff. She started asking personal questions and just making serious eye contact. I faded into the back ground and watched from a ways away. But Jeff had a steady lady back home and did the honorable thing. She asked him out for dinner and he turned her down. We were relentless in our ribbing him over that. What an evening it could have been. HA! How many friends of yours have been asked out to dinner by Chrissie Hynde?
We were at the Grammys one year and in walks Roger McGuinn. Now, Blazy always had a guitar with him. When artists would come to KOME he would have his guitar there and try to get any guitarists to play for us. Sometimes, if we were getting nowhere with that, he’d just grab the guitar himself and start to play one of the artist’s tunes, hoping they might get the hint. Sometimes we’d get lucky and other times we’d hit a brick wall, to the extent that one, so called rock star I vaguely remember saying something like, I only play for pay. Don’t remember who that was, but it happened. At other times, guys like Roger McGuinn would walk in, sit down, talk to us for a while about the great old days and then lean over to Blazy and ask, “Do you mind if I check out your guitar?” McGuinn played “Mr. Tamborine Man,” “Turn Turn Turn” and another tune that now slips my mind. Not just snipets but the whole tunes. Jeff and I just that there for our private Byrds concert with these huge grins on our faces. Wow!
I remember an embarrassing but fun moment for me at one of those broadcasts, I think it was at Universal Studios, but might have been at a Grammy’s broadcast. Steve Lukather, the amazing studio guitarist who was also a part of Toto was sitting with us. He had just grabbed the guitar, he knew why it was there and he was just one of those guitar rats. Couldn’t stand not to be playing. So he played us a bit of “Hold the Line” and then played some of “Africa” and then just started messing around, “You guys know this one?” And he’d launch in to like, Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love,” then something else and then something. Blazy started calling out tunes: “You Really Got Me” then another, I tossed a couple in too and we just couldn’t stump the guy. Finally, I yelled out “99″ and he came to a halt and looked at me with this strange look. I said, “Its one of yours….” It was the 2nd single off the album that had “Hold the Line.” And he went, “Oh yeah.” But by then I had broken the spell. That amazing moment was over because I chose the wrong song to yell out. I thought it would be an easy one. Oops
Hell, this could go on and on. Nils Lofgren played for us, Paul Rodgers and Neil Schon. Wow, did you catch their blues tour! Rick Wakefield, Ronnie Montrose, Leslie West, Steve Miller, Eddie Money, Graham Nash, Stephen Stills, Frampton, Fleetwood Mac….
Sometimes people would just drop by who weren’t there to be on the air. Once, I was working on a Saturday and one of the salesmen was on his way to take Al Dimeola to an in store promotion. They had had to stop by the station so the sales guy could do something. So he brings Al in to the studio so he won’t be bored sitting in the waiting room. I had a great conversation about the unfairness of the music business. Here he was, a graduate of the Berkeley School of Music in Boston and he was having a hard time getting exposure for his music when any idiot with a guitar could write pop songs and get rich. I told him I used to play him a lot in college but that KOME wasn’t quite ready for that. He understood. Spent quite a while in the studio and then took off. Not your typical studio visitor. Another day like that Eric Bloom of Blue Oyster Cult dropped in to the studio on a Saturday when I was filling in. He was actually at the station trying to get my boss to give him an air shift. He came in to the studio and started complaining about how he had another show that night and how he hated having to go thru the motions again and again. I remember sitting there in amazement as this guy complained about being a rock star. He moped, “I’d trade places with you in a heart beat. I wanna be a radio DJ, I’m tired of being a rock star.” I’m sorry but I just looked at him and told him that there are people out in the world who would cut their nuts off just to get a chance to experience one night of his rock star life. “And you’re cryin’ to me?” No sympathy. He left.
But I guess the coolest thing we ever did with a rock band was, with the help of a dear friend of ours, local South Bay Rocker Robert Berry, we facilitated the reunion of Emerson, Lake and Palmer. Berry had been working on an album with Emerson and Palmer, he was like the new Greg Lake. Well, they were all in Campbell, recording and we knew that Greg Lake was around because we had a pretty good relationship with him. We had had him on the show in London and had kept in contact. He had no problem with Emerson or Palmer and didn’t care that they were recording with a new guitarist, our buddy Berry. So we invited Robert and Emerson and Palmer to play on one of our monthly live shows. Then we invited Greg Lake. When they all showed up at the crack of dawn it was like old home week. Big hugs all around and during the show, after Berry had played a couple of songs with Emerson and Palmer, he gave way to Lake and we were all blessed with a mini ELP concert. The crowd went crazy!
I know I’ve left out a lot but I imagine this will suffice.
What was your reaction to the fact that your show was canceled for Howard Sterns show? Was there any recourse you were allowed to pursue to stop that from happening?
NO , My reaction to it was that it was business.
What was the feeling on the streets about how KOME was evolving? ( I was out of state by this time, and had no idea this was happening ) I am interested to know if there were any protests by the fans.
I got fired in 1992 because the station was having problems and they thought that changing the morning show might help out. That, which started out as one of the worst experiences of my life, quickly changed in to one of the highlights of my life. The listeners jammed the phone lines and the fax machine. The station could not conduct business because the phone system kept maxing out. I was honestly touched and humbled. And the station called me back and renegotiated a much nicer contract for me. But when we left in 1994, nobody much seemed to care. The station had taken such poor steps over the last year that I think people were sick of us. They brought in Stern for mornings and a guy named The Greaseman for evenings. Frank Bennett had been fired, we were moved to afternoons, followed by the Grease, Scott Lewis was taken off the air. Erectus was gone. The station was ripped apart; the listeners were gone. Nobody cared anymore. Management had hung us out to dry, purposely, so they could create a Howard Stern in the Mornings, New Rock all day station. We should have seen it coming and left before it ended.
Who are your picks for the top five Rock Bands?
5 fave bands. Only 5?
Pink Floyd, Beatles, CSN&Y, Peter Gabriel, Doors, Traffic and lest we not forget, the most under appreciated super star in music, The Queen of Rock and Roll, Joni Mitchell. Is that 5?
What are you doing now, are you still in radio?
I am a house husband. Haven’t been on the air in years. Why bother when automation does radio so well……………..
Do you feel that the ratings system that is employed in Radio was to blame for KOME being taken off the air, and do you feel that the ratings system was accurately reporting for KOME during those last years?
Everyone in radio takes the ratings with a grain of salt. They can be right on or so far off base you have to scratch you head in wonder. Whenever we had bad books it was usually because the majority of San Jose diaries that period wound up in South San Jose zip codes. The latinos didn’t listen to us. The ratings weren’t to blame for our demise, our demise was the direct result of poor management. Our management lost its edge, fired their consultants and fell on their faces. What we needed was management that hadn’t lost its edge. But we never got it. There is a lot that goes in to running a radio station, and passion is a huge part of it; you have to care. Once your leader losses his/her passion, change must happen or you’re dead. We died because our parent company saw that management no longer had a passion for what we had been doing so they took the opportunity to blow the station up and create something new. And that is what they did, with Howard Stern, The Greaseman and New Rock.
I have to ask, was the Turkey Drop as outrageous as it sounded and did anyone get video of that day?
That was a mess. Wish I’d called in sick that day. I hope there is no video and if there is I don’t want to see or hear it.
And lastly – If by some miracle KOME were brought back to the airwaves in some form, would you be open to coming back to the Bay Area again, or do you think this idea is just a pipe dream? YES
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