Even before Spector was accused of murder, he seldom offered interviewers anything other than silence, but Donahue has known him "since I was a kid," she says, and kept the lines of communication open as time went by. Indeed, the announcer heard at the beginning of "Do You Remember Rock & Roll Radio?" from the 1980 Ramones album End of the Century, arguably the last major Spector production, was none other than Donahue's late stepson, Sean Donahue. In consideration of these connections, Spector allowed Donahue to use plenty of his music for a video valentine that features memories and anecdotes from a terrific lineup of notables headed by Tina Turner, Ben E. King, Darlene Love, Atlantic Records kingpin Ahmet Ertegun and Yoko Ono. (Donahue quizzed John Lennon's widow in the Dakota, the New York building where she lives, with the help of fellow filmmaker Albert Maysles, who co-directed 1970's Gimme Shelter, about the Rolling Stones' disastrous free rock festival at Altamont Speedway.) Spector sat before her camera, too, in the very home where Clarkson later died -- but not for long.
"He lasted about ten minutes," Donahue recalls. "He insisted that only I could mike him up and do his makeup, and then, in the middle of the interview, he stood up, said, 'No more!' and bolted out of the room with his microphone still attached. He dragged the sound girl right along behind him." This small amount of videotape is valuable because of ensuing events, but Spector would have to give Donahue permission to air it, and that's not about to happen right now.
Mark Manger
Love and Haight: Raechel Donahue climbs the
Mountain.
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A more recent Donahue production, Rock Jocks: The FM Revolution, which has been screened by PBS stations in Los Angeles, New York and elsewhere, strikes closer to home for her. Narration chores went to actor Howard Hesseman, who played Dr. Johnny Fever in the sitcom WKRP in Cincinnati. Furthermore, he once worked at KSAN and is a longtime pal of Donahue's. "I kind of programmed WKRP," she says. "Howard's a jazz fan, so he'd call me up and ask what rock songs he should play on the show." Rock Jocks glories in the raucous past of KMPX and KSAN with the assistance of commentators such as Rolling Stonepublisher Jann Wenner, the Dead's Bob Weirand original MTV video jock J.J. Jacksonbefore tracing the corporatization of FM that wound up bleeding the originality from that side of the spectrum. About the rise of radio consultants, who imposed homogeneity on the dial for fun and profit, pioneering jock Jim Ladd says, "That's what ruined FM radio. Once they took over, the freedom was gone."
In Donahue's view, the Mountain is a return to a more liberating style of radio, and its quality helped convince her to leave her precious California in favor of Colorado. Not that it's the reincarnation of KSAN. Once upon a time, Donahue could come up with conceptual sets of music on the fly, but now she's got to clear her ideas with programmers ahead of time. Program director Michaels insists this is done to avoid unintentional repetition, and it's true that the Mountain goes out of its way not to overplay cuts from its vast library; a computer prevents jocks from spotlighting the same tune more than once every eight days. Moreover, obscure compositions aren't simply banned from the playlist. On the night of Fletch's stopover, Donahue played several seldom-heard (and much appreciated) slabs of wax, the oddest of which was Randy Newman's quirky 1968 chestnut "The Beehive State."
The tradeoff for these pleasures are irritating links between songs featuring a sedate-voiced fellow identifying the Mountain and offering somnambulistic aphorisms. Michaels says these snippets are intended to help create "an environment that makes it easier to listen to music," and apparently it's working. In the summer Arbitron ratings book, the most recent full survey available, the Mountain ranked third in the market among men between ages 25 and 54, its target demographic, and fifth with women in the same bracket.
Donahue's been a big part of this rise, and she shows Fletch and his pals why when she yells "Shut up!" an instant before the end of the Beatles' "Mother Nature's Son" and rolls into an extended rap that's witty, informed and as effortless as a hippie on holiday. Once she's finished, one of Fletch's friends erupts with admiration. "Damn, girl!" he exults. "You got busy all of a sudden."
That's the way she likes it.
