Rodney Bingenheimer

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Rodney Bingenheimer, born December 15, 1946 in Mountain View, California, is a radio disc jockey on a well-known Los Angeles rock station, KROQ. He has been a fixture in rock and roll circles since the mid-1960s, when he was a double for Davy Jones on the tv series "The Monkees".

Bingenheimer is one of the very few DJs on commercial radio in Los Angeles who has autonomy over what he plays. As a result, he has been the first to play many up-and-coming bands, including The Runaways, Blondie, The Ramones, Van Halen, Duran Duran, Oasis, The Donnas, No Doubt, Coldplay, Dramarama and others. Many bands, such as Lippy's Garden meekly knocked on the parking lot door of KROQ's old studio in Pasadena and handed Rodney a copy of their music. If he found a track he liked such as Agent Orange's 1979 hit "Bloodstains" , he would play that song within the hour. Although his show has now been relegated to a midnight to 3 a.m. slot on Sunday evenings, it still has a fair amount of power to make or break new artists in some genres.

Bingenheimer was also responsible for three Rodney on the ROQ compilation albums on Posh Boy Records.

1 History
2 Cultural appearances
3 Quotes
4 External links

[edit] History

In the early 1970s he owned a nightclub called Rodney Bingenheimer's English Disco, located on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, near to his various Curson Street apartments of the past 30 years. It was a favorite hangout of many rock stars and essentially introduced much of Los Angeles to glam rock. When the club closed in 1976, there was thought that Bingenheimer was so disenchanted with the stylized dance genre that he abrubtly abandoned his 'English Disco', so as not to be associated with the popular movement. The real reason was less provocative as Bingenheimer later clarified: "English Disco didn't close down because of the oncoming "disco" movement...it really closed down because of a disagreement among the owners."

Due to his down and deep connections within the burgeoning Hollywood music scene, Bingenheimer was given a show on then minor Pasadena FM and AM radio station KROQ, called Rodney on the Roq, which began in 1976 and continues to the present day, albeit with some changes in time slots.

[edit] Cultural appearances

He is the subject of the film Mayor of the Sunset Strip directed by George Hickenlooper and produced by Chris Carter.

Californian punk rock band Angry Samoans wrote a song about Rodney called "Get Off the Air" [1].

His name is referenced in the song "Come Back Down" by Nerf Herder.

There is a song about Rodney on the album Permanent Damage by the girl group The GTOs.

NOFX references his show in the song "13 Stitches" off of the album "War on Errorism."

Bingenheimer has a booth named for him at Canter's deli in Los Angeles.

After years of grassroots support, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce decided to acknowledge his contribution to music and radio with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame which will be presented in 2007 [2].

As a token of their appreciation for his promotion of the band, the members of Blondie served as Bingenheimer's backing band in a limited release single of "Little G.T.O." credited with being performed by "Rodney and The Brunettes."