Tom Donahue

...

Tom Donahue.

There was some real trailblazing where for, for the first time, it was not Top 40, uh, which we had all grown up on in the '60s, but it was now album rock.

You could play an entire album on the air with no interruptions.

Which one do you want me to? So, gosh, let me see.

I think there's one with Tom Donahue.

Donovan on the 60s?

tribal drum meeting of hippies yeah

That would be the moral equivalent in that tribe.

Sending out the FM spatial drum would be how I would relate to its origins.

asked about this later tom donahue is reported to have said

i'll be saying because everyone else was first

They made FM mean something.

When Tom Donahue sat down 17 years later to figure out where to put his freeform rock radio experiment, he didn't choose FM by accident.

The concert stations had cleared the ground.

And there was a third thing happening on FM in those years, smaller, stranger, and more radical than the concert stations.

That a voice between the records mattered.

That what you chose to play, and what you said about it, and who you were when you said it, shaped what America heard, and therefore, what America knew.

In 1967, a large and florid man named Tom Donahue sat down and wrote a manifesto.

He'd spent 16 years inside Top 40 Radio.

Actually, 1967 to December 31st, 1969.

So initially you guys tried to interest Autumn Records in the group, you know, Tom Donahue thinking that the connections would help and Tom wasn't interested, which is probably just as well because Autumn folded soon afterwards.

Instead, you guys picked up the philosophy of holding out as long as possible, preferring to keep your independence.

So, you know, this early period of your career, which holds so much mystique for not just me, but any real fan of the band.