Radio Caroline founder Ronan O'Rahilly dies aged 79
Apr 23, 2020 8:21:58 GMT
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Post by Stephen Byers on Apr 23, 2020 8:21:58 GMT
The man who made the boat rock: As Radio Caroline founder Ronan O'Rahilly dies aged 79, JANE FRYER recalls the ocean-going exuberance that revolutionised the entertainment industry
By the time he was 23, Ronan O'Rahilly had fled his native Ireland for London, was running a successful club in Soho, The Scene (which attracted everyone from the Kinks to Ray Charles), set up a record label, helped launch the band The Animals and was managing stars including Georgie Fame, Alexis Korner and, briefly, the Rolling Stones.
So those who knew him weren't remotely surprised when, in April 1964, O'Rahilly decided he was going to launch his own music radio station, too.
Not any old station, though — a station broadcasting from a former Danish passenger ship bobbing about in the North Sea in 'international waters' just off the Kent coast.
By doing so, he could escape both the stranglehold the big record labels had on airplay and the BBC's monopoly on radio broadcasting.
Radio Caroline (named after Caroline Kennedy, the then six-year-old daughter of U.S. President John F. Kennedy) was Britain's first pirate radio station, transmitting from the 702-ton Fredericia.
Ronan, who died on Monday aged 79, had had it specially fitted out — with radio studios on the upper decks, huge generators below and a 180 ft radio mast in the bow — at his father's shipyard in Ireland.
Broadcasting unlicensed, uncensored pop and rock long into the night, Caroline secured an audience of 25 million, broke the BBC's monopoly, changed the face of broadcasting — and spawned a slew of aggressively competitive copycat stations.
Within months of its launch the station had more listeners than the three BBC radio networks combined — partly thanks to a merger with Radio Atlanta, which added a second ship, the MV Mi Amigo, broadcasting as Radio Caroline South, from near Frinton-on-Sea, Essex.
Thanks to O'Rahilly, millions can remember a teenage rite of passage —listening to transistor radios hidden under pillows into the early hours.
He also transformed the lives of his star DJs — among them Johnnie Walker, Tony Blackburn, Emperor Rosko, Don Allen, Simon Dee and Spangles Muldoon.
That is, once they'd recovered from the lurching transfer across the choppy water to the Mi Amigo's rusting hulk, conquered their chronic sea sickness and rallied from accommodation that did not match the pirate radio myth of luxury living, five-star chefs, drugs on tap, and girls, girls, girls.
Because there are two versions of life at Radio Caroline.
There's the scenario imagined by Richard Curtis in his cult 2009 movie, The Boat That Rocked, where a pirate radio boat, based on the Mi Amigo, is awash with scantily-clad girls, sex, drugs, alcohol and the occasional very rude four-letter word broadcast in drug-addled error.
Thanks to O'Rahilly, millions can remember a teenage rite of passage —listening to transistor radios hidden under pillows into the early hours.
He also transformed the lives of his star DJs — among them Johnnie Walker, Tony Blackburn, Emperor Rosko, Don Allen, Simon Dee and Spangles Muldoon.
That is, once they'd recovered from the lurching transfer across the choppy water to the Mi Amigo's rusting hulk, conquered their chronic sea sickness and rallied from accommodation that did not match the pirate radio myth of luxury living, five-star chefs, drugs on tap, and girls, girls, girls.
Because there are two versions of life at Radio Caroline.
There's the scenario imagined by Richard Curtis in his cult 2009 movie, The Boat That Rocked, where a pirate radio boat, based on the Mi Amigo, is awash with scantily-clad girls, sex, drugs, alcohol and the occasional very rude four-letter word broadcast in drug-addled error.
And the real one, created by O'Rahilly, where the world-famous 'chef' was a gay Dutch man who favoured oily meatballs and flavoured everything with cinnamon, while the DJs lived on toast and Weetabix, earned £25 a week and worked in a tiny studio with a single porthole.
Beers were limited to two a day, drugs were banned (a rule not strictly observed) and girls weren't allowed on board (after an unfortunate incident with one DJ's girlfriend, a transparent negligee and the more red-blooded staff). Only cigarettes were unlimited.
As Emperor Rosko (real name Mike Pasternak) once put it: 'Sex on Radio Caroline was more like a British bank holiday — every once in a while.'
The fan mail — which arrived by the sackload — was wildly fruity. One DJ got a letter from a girl saying: 'It's my 16th birthday coming up. Please can I come out to the ship because I want you.'
And when occasionally a boat (usually organised by fan clubs) did pull up in the choppy waters alongside the Mi Amigo, the sex-starved residents didn't waste any time.
Any accompanying boyfriends were offered a tour of the transmitters while the girls were whisked downstairs for a rather different inspection altogether.
Every third week the DJs had a week off and would arrive back in London at Liverpool Street Station to be met by hundreds of screaming girls. 'The week ashore was something I could never remember,' said Emperor Rosko. 'We would party like there was no tomorrow.' But they would always return for another two-week stint of DJ-ing in the swell.
Ronan O'Rahilly was mysterious, stylish, private and fearless and his staff worshipped the ground he walked on. This was despite his habit of paying them in whatever foreign currency he had to hand (so they couldn't work out how much it was, until it was too late).
He was born in Ireland in 1940, the third of five children. His grandfather, Michael O'Reilly, was one of the Irish rebels shot dead by British soldiers in Dublin during the Easter Uprising of 1916.
Beers were limited to two a day, drugs were banned (a rule not strictly observed) and girls weren't allowed on board (after an unfortunate incident with one DJ's girlfriend, a transparent negligee and the more red-blooded staff). Only cigarettes were unlimited.
As Emperor Rosko (real name Mike Pasternak) once put it: 'Sex on Radio Caroline was more like a British bank holiday — every once in a while.'
The fan mail — which arrived by the sackload — was wildly fruity. One DJ got a letter from a girl saying: 'It's my 16th birthday coming up. Please can I come out to the ship because I want you.'
And when occasionally a boat (usually organised by fan clubs) did pull up in the choppy waters alongside the Mi Amigo, the sex-starved residents didn't waste any time.
Any accompanying boyfriends were offered a tour of the transmitters while the girls were whisked downstairs for a rather different inspection altogether.
Every third week the DJs had a week off and would arrive back in London at Liverpool Street Station to be met by hundreds of screaming girls. 'The week ashore was something I could never remember,' said Emperor Rosko. 'We would party like there was no tomorrow.' But they would always return for another two-week stint of DJ-ing in the swell.
Ronan O'Rahilly was mysterious, stylish, private and fearless and his staff worshipped the ground he walked on. This was despite his habit of paying them in whatever foreign currency he had to hand (so they couldn't work out how much it was, until it was too late).
He was born in Ireland in 1940, the third of five children. His grandfather, Michael O'Reilly, was one of the Irish rebels shot dead by British soldiers in Dublin during the Easter Uprising of 1916.
His father, Aodhogan, was a wealthy businessman. Blessed with charisma and good looks, Ronan took pride in being a rebel — he was expelled seven times from school — and was effortlessly hip.
At 17, he was in London and soon established as a member of the cool Chelsea set as he worked his way into the music industry.
It was while trying to promote a single by Georgie Fame that he realised that the industry was rotten, with every radio station committed to promoting major record labels only — EMI, Decca, Pye and Philips — which had been booked in and paid for.
A year later, after persuading some businessmen to help finance it, Radio Caroline went on air — on Easter Sunday 1964.
Thanks to innovations such as 14-hours' air time, album-oriented playlists, individual programme sponsorship and those larger than life DJs, Caroline was an instant hit.
It set a new agenda — promoting Motown and rock and turning singles into hits and artists including Tom Jones and The Who into stars.
When not broadcasting, the DJs passed the time as best they could. Tony Prince taught Emperor Rosko's pet mynah bird how to swear so filthily on air he had to be removed from the boat.
The Irish businessman named the boat after Caroline Kennedy- the then six-year-old daughter of U.S. President John F. Kennedy
Rosko briefly lost his job after mixing the sounds of people having sex into religious music.
In rough seas the DJs would brace their legs against the tiny studio walls to stop themselves rolling about, while the turntable needles were weighted with old pennies to stop them jumping. If it was really rough, they relied on tapes instead.
On January 20, 1966, the Mi Amigo lost its anchor in a storm, drifted and ran aground on the beach at Frinton-on-Sea — a welcome relief for the crew and broadcasting staff.
But the good times did not last. In 1967, the Marine Broadcasting Offences Act outlawed offshore radio stations. It was then that many of O'Rahilly's DJs moved to the BBC's new 'youth' station, Radio 1.
Radio Caroline moved to Dutch waters where it continued broadcasting at sea until 1991, when the Ross Revenge (from which it was then transmitting) ran aground off the Kent coast.
Not all Ronan O'Rahilly's hare-brained schemes — and there were many — fared as well as Radio Caroline. He dreamed of projecting films on to clouds using laser beams, and in 1970 invested £1 million to start a pirate TV station — broadcasting from two cargo planes circling the UK.
On moving into films, he persuaded Australian actor George Lazenby to abandon the role of James Bond after just one film, on the basis that the Bond franchise would collapse in the 1970s, and that he would be far better off appearing alongside Germaine Greer in an improvised film O'Rahilly was producing called Universal Soldier.
Given the career he missed out on, the actor's comments this week are testament to Ronan's charm and likeability. 'He convinced me to not stay on as Bond — I'd be in danger of becoming part of the Establishment,' he said.
'Something he rebelled against. [The film] Easy Rider was supposed to be the way forward and I could do three or four of those type of movies for every Bond.
'I wanted to be a free spirit, make love, not war. Ronan wouldn't let me sign the Bond contract — kept sending it back . . . Who knows what would have happened had Ronan not got a hold of my brain? But I don't regret a day of my life . . . Rest well, Ronan. Love George xx.'
In 2013, and suffering from vascular dementia, Ronan O'Rahilly returned home to Ireland with long-term partner Ines.
News of his death this week was announced on Radio Caroline — now broadcasting on the internet — with a message that perhaps sums up its founder best.
'In a pastime populated by unusual people, Ronan was more unusual than all of them combined. In a world where we all follow rules created by others and imposed on us, Ronan had no rules other than his own. He said he was in the business of 'why not?'.'
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