| Steve Dahl | |
|---|---|
| Born | November 20, 1954 Pasadena, California, USA |
| Show | The Steve Dahl Show |
| Country | United States |
| Website | Dahl.com |
Steven Robert Dahl (born November 20, 1954 in Pasadena, California)[1][2] has been an American radio personality and humorist for more than thirty years. He is currently podcasting, and releases the podcasts for download daily from his own website as well as the iTunes store. Originally, Dahl broadcasted with Detroit stations WABX and WWWW and later with Chicago stations WCKG, WDAI, WLUP, WMVP and WLS. He also served as a columnist for the Chicago Tribune in their Live section as the resident "vice advisor" until November 2010.[3] Additionally, Dahl has served on the Board of Trustees at Columbia College Chicago.[4]
Dahl's radio show took an "every guy" approach to life in Chicago and Dahl often told bucolic stories about his life and family on the air. Dahl is also well-known in Chicago for his song parodies and his impressions. He is considered a pioneer in talk radio[5][6] and has been influential for many other radio personalities.[7] He gained a measure of national attention after the Disco Demolition Night promotion at Comiskey Park,[8][9] and he is also known in Chicago for his longstanding former role as one half of the "Steve and Garry" team (with Garry Meier).[10]
In addition to his radio career, Dahl is a singer, songwriter, and guitarist. His band, Teenage Radiation, recorded and performed a number of song parodies (which he often played on his show throughout the 1980s) and since 1990 he has performed and recorded as Steve Dahl and the Dahlfins. Dahl has also dabbled in acting, appearing in the 1984 cult classic, Grandview, U.S.A. with John and Joan Cusack. He also appeared in the 2004 film Outing Riley, and in the 2006 indie comedy I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With (which was written and directed by Chicago native Jeff Garlin).
Dahl grew up in La Cañada, California, a Los Angeles suburb northwest of Pasadena. He is the son of Roger and Carolyn Dahl, an electronics parts manufacturer's representative and a homemaker.[11] He is married and is the father of three sons.
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In the 9th grade, Dahl began hanging around a local underground radio station, KPCC-FM,[12] in his home state of California. At the age of sixteen, after he starting working at the radio station full-time, he unofficially dropped out of high school.[11][13] Dahl later explained, "I convinced my parents and the school that I would do an independent work-study thing. I never got around to it."[11] At the age of eighteen, he obtained his GED and briefly married a woman he met after she called him on-air to request Suzanne, a song by Leonard Cohen which told a tale of a troubled relationship. Dahl later explained his short-lived marriage by commenting, "I should have paid more attention to that song."[11]
Dahl was told by radio executives that he'd never make it in radio because his voice was too high. At one point, Dahl was so discouraged that he quit for about six months and attempted to pursue a career as a recording engineer. However, this never amounted to anything more than making mix tapes of popular songs for play on airplanes. Throughout this time period, he was making efforts to reconcile with his ex-wife, who by then was dating the program director at the Los Angeles radio station where she worked. He later admitted to stalking her by sleeping in his Subaru outside her house.[11]
In 1976, Dahl's ex-wife told him about an opening for a morning show in Detroit, Michigan on WABX-FM. He managed to secure the job, despite the fact that he did not think he was good enough for it[11] (he later learned that the station was owned by the same company his ex-wife worked for). At WABX, Dahl learned as much as he could about what constituted "good radio" and also began experimenting with his content. His popularity increased to the point that he achieved a 7.2 market share.[11]
During his time at WABX, Dahl was introduced to Janet, a junior high school English and drama teacher in a Detroit suburb, who was casually dating a friend of his and was also a listener of his show. The two hit it off after Dahl invited her to a "hump day" broadcast he was doing from the camel area of the Detroit Zoo.[11]
WDAI executives in Chicago, attracted by Dahl's 7.1 share, approached him and offered to double his salary to $50,000 a year.[11] However, Janet did not want to leave her family in Detroit and he did not want to leave her. This prompted Dahl to ask his bosses for $35,000 a year to stay in Detroit. They flatly refused by telling him to "Go fuck yourself. Go to Chicago. Fall on your fat face."[11] In 1978, after Janet accepted his marriage proposal, Dahl left Detroit for WDAI in Chicago.[11] The pair eventually married in 1980.
Dahl began at WDAI Chicago on February 23, 1978 with his solo "Steve Dahl's Rude Awakening" show,[2] but it never achieved solid ratings despite media attention. Ten months later, on Christmas Eve, 1978, WDAI changed formats from rock to disco and fired Dahl.[11]
In March 1979, after a few months without a job, Dahl was hired to do a morning show at WLUP where he met overnight DJ Garry Meier (who was then broadcasting under the pseudonym of "Matthew Meier"). Shortly thereafter, the two began a cross talk that eventually led to Meier being teamed up with Dahl as both sidekick and newsman.[2][11] Dahl effectively forced Meier to use his actual name by calling him "Garry" on-air accidentally. After openly discussing the subject, again, on-air, Meier officially dropped his pseudonym. They also comically lampooned themselves with their out of commercial intro sung by a local trio, All Nite Diner (Mark Milano, Andrea Carlson, and Jim Molnar): "Steve and Gary, Scum Bag Worm Meat Idiots......" http://chicagoradioandmedia.com/multimedia/audio/1599-steve-a-garry-jingle-scumbag-worm-meat-idiots
In response to Dahl's firing from WDAI, Dahl and Meier mocked and heaped scorn on disco records and WDAI (calling it "Disco-D.I.E." mocking the station's slogan, "Disco-D.A.I.") on the air. Dahl even recorded and started playing a parody of Rod Stewart's Da Ya Think I'm Sexy?, which he called Do You Think I'm Disco?. The song managed to crack the national charts to peak at #58 on the Billboard Hot 100 and received airplay across the country.[11]
During this same time period, Dahl and Meier, along with both Mike Veeck (son of then Chicago White Sox owner Bill Veeck), and Jeff Schwartz of WLUP promotions, came up with a radio promotion and tie-in to the White Sox called Disco Demolition Night which took place on Thursday, July 12, 1979. The concept was to create an event to "end disco once and for all" in the center field of Comiskey Park that night by allowing people to get tickets at the box office if they brought $0.98 (for WLUP-FM's 97.9 location on the dial) and at least one disco record. The records were collected, piled up on the field and blown up. Hundreds of rowdy fans stormed the field, refusing to leave, resulting in the second game of the doubleheader being postponed. American League President Lee MacPhail later declared the second game of the doubleheader a forfeit victory for the visiting Detroit Tigers. Six people reported minor injuries, and thirty-nine were arrested for disorderly conduct.[14][15]
After the Disco Demolition Night promotion, and all the surrounding media coverage of not only the event but what it stood for, the musical genre of disco began to lose its popularity.[16]
As a result of Disco Demolition Night, Dahl attained national recognition and his popularity increased significantly. He established a syndicate and the Steve and Garry show began airing in Detroit and Milwaukee, where it performed well.
| “ | I always used to get ticked off when I would get lumped in with Howard Stern as being a shock jock. I guess I did shock people, but I did it unintentionally. It comes out of who I am. | ” |
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—Steve Dahl[11] |
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During the Iranian Hostage Crisis, Dahl, along with Teenage Radiation, recorded and released a parody of The Knack's song "My Sharona," called "Ayatollah." He also made on-the-air prank phone calls to the "Islamic Fried Chicken" (a play on Kentucky Fried Chicken), ordering buckets of chicken for the hostages in the US embassy, which the State Department later reprimanded him for.[17] Dahl also parodied the John Wayne Gacy murders with his song "Another Kid in the Crawl" (to the tune of Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall"). He stopped playing the song when parents of the murdered children called to complain. Although the previous parodies were funny without hitting below the belt, Dahl crossed a line of poor taste with "Another Kid In The Crawl" that was profoundly offensive to many, particularly the parents of 33 boys who were still grieving over their childrens deaths.
In February 1981, WLUP fired Dahl, citing "continued assaults on community standards." "It was going on in El Paso and Los Angeles, like, on Monday, and on Friday they fired me," Dahl later said.[11] Meier was offered the opportunity to continue the show by himself, but he refused.[2] Within a month, and after many hurry-up negotiations, they were hired at another local station, WLS-FM. They immediately began an assault on their former employer, telling their fans and new listeners to boycott listening to now what they considered "the enemy on that other side of the dial."
Dahl and Meier won a local Emmy award[12] for a television special they did in 1981 called, Greetings from Graceland, which was a comedy spoof on the tourist shrine[18] and featured Elvis Presley's "Uncle Vester" selling Elvis cookbooks from the guardhouse.[2]
In 1982, he stated on the air that motorists could allegedly substitute Necco Wafers for coins in automatic toll booths on Chicago's tollways. The Illinois Tollway System later claimed that approximately a dozen toll machines broke down due to people trying to use the candy to pay tolls.[2][17]
They briefly had a morning television show titled It's Too Early on local Chicago station WFBN-TV, which nationally syndicated columnist Bob Greene called "the best program on television", "amazing", and "hypnotic" in his June 20, 1983 column. The show was canceled after four weeks on the air because it was deemed "unsuitable for general viewing... in particular for young children"[18][19] after Dahl was shown fully clothed sitting on a toilet seat reading a newspaper.[18]
From 1984 to 1986 WLS suspended them on numerous occasions and in retaliation they staged many high-profile walk-outs and no shows. On Monday, January 6, 1986, Steve & Garry were moved from afternoon drive time to mid-day even though they were the number one rated afternoon drive show in Chicago, but in reality morning DJ Larry Lujack made sure he could move from mornings to afternoons in January 1986, citing exhaustion in coming to work so early. Steve & Garry would resign from the radio station in mid-March.
Dahl decided to get a vasectomy in March 1989, which was performed live on the air at a urologist's office in Indiana.[2][11][17][20] According to Arbitron ratings for that survey period, Dahl and Meier's ratings jumped from a tie for seventh place in afternoons to a tie for third place.[2] According to Paul D. Colford, a former writer for Long Island Newsday, Howard Stern listened to tapes of Steve and Garry sent from Chicago by a friend of the chief engineer at WCCC Hartford. Colford claims Stern eventually developed his on-air style as a result of these tapes. Later, Stern was hired at WWWW Detroit (which Dahl had left when he moved to Chicago).[7]
Steve and Garry ultimately returned to WLUP where they stayed until their split in 1993. The alleged reason for the break-up was Dahl's on-the-air comments about Meier’s new wife, commercial real-estate broker Cynthia Fircak, while the new couple were on their honeymoon.[11] Meier also blamed Dahl's alcoholism and unpredictable behavior. Dahl, for his part, blamed Fircak for the split, once saying on air "When I met her, I knew the rules had just changed."
In 2003, Robert Feder, a columnist for the Chicago Sun Times, said, "It's the divorce that just keeps on giving: A decade after Steve Dahl and Garry Meier severed their legendary radio partnership, their breakup remains a source of bitterness and anger for them — and continuing fascination for their fans."[21]
After the team broke up, Dahl went to Sports Talk WMVP AM and teamed with Chicago sportscaster Bruce Wolf.[11]
Dahl ended up on WCKG, broadcasting an afternoon show on that station.[22] He eventually teamed up with Buzz Kilman, who was Dahl's newsman starting in 1980 on WLUP, and the show was available as a podcast at Dahl's website and streamed live on WCKG's website. Dahl's afternoon show was rated fifth (4.1) among men 25-54 in the winter 2006-2007 ratings report.[23] Recently Dahl was named one of the '100 Most Important Radio Talk Show Hosts' by Talkers magazine.[24] On June 22, 1999, Detroit's WKRK FM 97.1 dropped his show, replacing it with the Erin & Gonzo Show. This ended Dahl's bid to achieve syndication.[25]
On Friday, August 18, 2006, Dahl was doing a remote broadcast of his show at Oak Street Beachstro, a restaurant on Chicago's Oak Street Beach. Coincidentally, Garry Meier was eating lunch there with friends. After Dahl learned of Meier's presence there, he invited Meier to appear on the air with him, which Meier accepted. Meier wound up staying for the remainder of the show. This event was covered widely throughout the Chicago media that evening.[26][27]
On April 2, 2007, Meier returned to Chicago radio, doing the 8 AM-11 AM show on WCKG. He appeared briefly on Dahl's show that same day. They occasionally contributed to each others' shows, and Meier spent the first hour and a half in studio during Dahl's show on the 28th year anniversary of Disco Demolition Night, recounting the events of that night.[10]
Dahl announced on October 29, 2007 that he would move to mornings at WJMK on November 5, 2007 as WCKG changed formats. He was the only live personality at the Jack FM outlet as the rest of the station is preprogrammed and run by computer. Dahl's son Matt was part of the regular WCKG lineup and hosted the show immediately following his father's. However, the WCKG format change, from an FM talk station to an adult contemporary station[28] was the end of Matt's show on WCKG.
On December 5, 2008, Dahl announced the end of his show on Jack FM due to low ratings.[29][30]
"They were saying, 'Well, do a couple of weeks, a farewell.'" Dahl said. "I said, 'It's not a farewell. You guys are taking me off the air. I'm not retiring.' ... "I still have two and a half years left on my deal so, quite frankly, I'm not letting them out of it." Dahl stated that he is prepared to stay off the radio for the remainder of his contract, which extends to mid-2011 and is said to be worth more than $1 million annually.[29]
After the end of Dahl's final broadcast, Howard Cogan, the normally sarcastic signature voice, Jack, heard on many Jack FM stations, delivered a sincere sendoff to Dahl followed by Life's Been Good by Joe Walsh, a long-time friend of Dahl.[29][31]
Dahl was still under contract with CBS when they agreed in July, 2009 to partner with him on a daily podcast that included some paid commercial breaks. Dahl began the podcasts from the basement of his home on September 8, 2009. Most of the podcasts are about 90 minutes long and include guests and familiar Dahl friends like Tom Thayer and Buzz Killman. It was assumed Dahl would return to radio when his CBS contract, which prevented him from working on any radio station while he collected the remainder of his contractual salary, came to an end in 2011.
Dahl's contract with CBS expired in July 2011 which fueled speculation that he would return to the airwaves in Chicago. Merlin Media's WKQX & WLUP and even the Tribune's WGN were seen as the most likely possibilities for Dahl. He sent out a Tweet on July 11, 2011 stating that he would continue his podcasts for a fee of $9.95/month as of August 1, 2011 which set off a tirade of angry sentiments from long-time fans who felt betrayed that they would now have to pay for podcasts that had been available for free since September, 2009.
In addition to recording parody songs for his radio show with his early band Teenage Radiation, Dahl began recording and playing live performance with a new band in 1990, called Steve Dahl and the Dahlfins. This band has recorded and released several albums, including 1992's "Tropical Tides"[32] and 1997's "Mai Tai Roa Ae."[33] In 2007, backed by Des Moines, Iowa band The Nadas, Dahl embarked on a tour of Chicago-area concert venues.[34] In collaboration with record producer Joe Thomas, Dahl played a large role in the comeback of Beach Boy Brian Wilson. The three co-wrote the song "Your Imagination" which appeared as a single and on Wilson's 1998 album Imagination. Dahl claimed to provide backup vocals on the song as well, although has not been credited as such on the liner notes of the album.[35][36] An alternate version of "Your Imagination" with slightly different lyrics and Steve Dahl singing lead is occasionally played on The Steve Dahl Show.
Currently, Dahl resides in the western suburbs of Chicago with his wife Janet, a non-practicing lawyer, whom he married in July, 1980.[37] Before law school, she taught junior high for seven years in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.[37] They have three sons: Patrick, who works with video media for the Chicago Blackhawks; Mike, a writer/producer at Comcast SportsNet in Chicago; and Matt Dahl, a recent graduate of DePaul University who is following in his father's footsteps in broadcast radio, along with being the drummer in the band Pet Lions.[38] Dahl is also an avid Chicago sports fan, holding season tickets to the Chicago White Sox,[39] Chicago Bears,[20] and Chicago Blackhawks.[40]
Dahl has battled alcoholism throughout his adult life, which he has alluded to a number of times.[41][42] He has been sober since 1995, the day after a drinking bout at the White Sox home opener, achieving it cold turkey.[43]
It was sort of prompted by the fact that I realized that Patrick (eldest of his three sons) was 14 and I was rapidly approaching a 'Do as I say, not as I do' situation. I didn't think I had a right to comment on [my sons'] behavior based on my behavior. Plus, once I turned 40 (in November 1994) some metabolic thing happened to me and I guess I just got old.—Steve Dahl[43]
In 1999, his wife filed a multi–million dollar lawsuit against Mancow Muller over lewd comments Muller made about her on his show. In 2001, the case was settled. Although the terms of the deal were not disclosed, it was reportedly seven figures.[44]
Also in 1999, Steve Dahl admitted secretly recording conversations among staffers at WCKG because he suspected they were talking about him behind his back. In snippets Dahl has played on his afternoon show, two station employees can be heard mocking him as "Steve Dull" and ridiculing his show. Dahl said, "I did it within my organization to confirm my suspicions. This was in a studio filled with microphones and cameras. Legally, I don't feel they had any expectation of privacy in that case."[45]
Criminal suspect Drew Peterson and his lawyer, Joel Brodsky, called in to Dahl's show on January 23, 2008. Dahl had been lampooning Peterson since the start of the former police officer's notoriety. Brodsky suggested that Dahl host an on-air "dating game" with Peterson the following day, but WJMK managers and Dahl later decided not to go through with it. "[46]