No one associated with Southern California radio would dispute that the late Jim Ladd was one of the most influential rock DJs ever, at KLOS and other important broadcast outlets.

"Gentleman Jim Ladd" died of a heart attack at 75 on Sunday, and admittedly was hardly this radio junkie's (and underground rock journalist's) favorite FM voice during the years [1980-91] when I was based in Los Angeles. But I ALWAYS was impressed with the respect, even REVERENCE Ladd commanded amongst EVERY radio pro I ever worked with (or even merely knew). So Ladd was a natural choice for gentle rocker Jackson Brown and his promoters to recruit as emcee for their Peace Sunday at The Rose Bowl in 1982.

I am especially proud that I, along with my then-galpal Patricia Nagler, made the scene that for that landmark Woodstock-style event. (A transplanted New Yorker, attorney Nagler had in fact attended Woodstock herself* in the late summer of 1969, and for a fortnight prior had been persistently trying to persuade me that Dylan wouldn't pass on this affair as he had Woodstock, since Joan Baez WAS indeed one of the first acts booked--though I remained stubbornly dubious, as no local media coverage even hinted at that glorious but remote possibility.)

Peace Sunday was staged on the 38th anniversary of D-Day, June 6, 1982. And as you'll hear in the linked video, Ladd DID display some quite-uncharacteristic ignorance of important rock history when he seemed to declare, over the P.A. as they exited, that this musical pairing of frequent collaborators Dylan and Baez was unprecedented...an especially glaring error inasmuch as Baez was a central part of both of Dylan's famed Rolling Thunder Revue tours 1975-76, never mind their extensive teaming through the early '60s. (Ladd's full outro is transcribed below, verbatim.)

I was not merely somewhere lost in the throng in the 100,000-seat football stadium that sweltering Sunday afternoon, but rather up front. Patricia and I easily got backstage earlier, hanging out and hobnobbing for over an hour while various early acts were doing their musical thing for the almost-capacity crowd. I even ended up interviewing actor Ed Asner on camera at the request of a reporter-less KNBC-TV crew, a different group than the NBC Today Show had dispatched, as described below).

But by the time Dylan finally appeared about 5:30 pm, Nagler and I were again out front on the grassy gridiron, she back midfield by the assembled international media, and me finagling my way right up front beneath center stage, slowly making my way up during Baez's earlier solo songs (which are not on this shorter version of the NBC Today tape), so as to shoot 7th-row-or-so Super8 footage.

In the Today footage linked below, you'll surely notice during the set-up Baez tugging [!] on Dylan's hair halo, annoyed that he was distracted, turning around to acknowledge an L.A. Times photographer acquaintance he eyed peeking over the curtain to snap a shot. That very photograph would end up dominating the front page of the Times's Arts-and-Entertainment "Calendar" section coverage the next day, with, yep, a standing-Styble clearly visible right down front**, Super 8 movie camera in hand.

Mr. Inscrutable and Baez would end up performing three duets***, each of which is on the linked video.

Everything above I've related to many various Dylan fans over the decades, but until today, I've never added what is in the following paragraphs. So cue your best impression of the late radio icon Paul Harvey, as here's "the Rest of the Story", never published until now.

It so happens that though there were numerous foreign news crews shooting that day, only one sole, solitary tape of this performance has ever surfaced and circulated among the planet's many thousands of dedicated Dylan collectors. It was shot for the Today show under the direction of the morning show's then-West Coast producer, a Dylan fan himself, having instructed his crew to film one complete song by each act...UNLESS Dylan appeared, and in such instance they were to shoot his ENTIRE performance.

I only learned of all the Today aspects of this on Tuesday, June 8th, when I visited the NBC studios in Burbank--which is actually several miles due south of "Beautiful Downtown Burbank", as every Los Angeleno knows. I was invited to NBC ostensibly to merely watch the footage, after plying my Dylanologist's clout on the phone, setting up a screening session the morning after the concert. This nice fellow was appreciative I'd helped the KNBC crew with the Asner thing, and though he skipped the concert in favor of some family Sunday afternoon commitment, he wanted them rolling, as stated, on Dylan's ENTIRE performance. And with a couple brief drop-outs, they did.

As it happened, when I got to NBC on Tuesday, this oh-so-accomodating fellow had called in sick. I offered to come back days or a week later, but his assistant said no, I'll take you down to downstairs to an editing bay and you can watch it without him anyway. But then she left me alone with the engineer.

As the genial-if-gullible was cuing up the tape, I pretended like I'd never been in a TV station before, gee-whizing him about how it was unfortunate he didn't have adequate equipment to make a duplicate copy. The middle-aged fellow responded, "Are you kidding? It's state-of-the-art here--I can run off a 3/4-inch copy so pristine that you won't be able to tell it from the original!"

While recording a duplicate, we viewed the entirety of the Today crew's tape--most of Baez's full set was on there too (but again, NOT on the version linked below), she rather improbably INCLUDING in her lengthy set "Diamonds and Rust", that Baez-penned tribute to their long, rocky relationship which is arguably the best song ever written about the future Nobel Literature laureate, and who would in mere minutes be joining her onstage.

Needless to say, once the screening was over and he handed me the copy, I hastened my departure, fearing the ailing producer's aide would soon reappear downstairs and put a halt to my hoodwinking of the kindly-but-naive engineer.

I reached my car in the NBC parking lot with no one upstairs the wiser. And within months, privileged Dylan experts around the planet were watching copies of it, albeit ones generations-down in video quality, like the one linked below. (I never made a dime from these shenanigans, AND never tried.)

You could say I "stole" that tape, but it would be more accurate to say I exploited uncanny luck--and by the YouTube era, ALL Dylan fans could finally behold one of the most sterling moments in the short-statured rock giant's unparalleled career.

As you can hear for yourself over the P.A. speakers, by the time they finished their three duets, the off-camera (and vocally low-key, typically) Ladd was clearly more excited than even the Super8-cameraman Styble down in the audience:

"Joan Baez and Bob Dylan! [crowd roar] I said Joan Baez and Bob Dylan, on the same stage, come ON! [another crowd roar] This is Peace Sunday, can you believe what we're doin' here today?!?...I've been listening to Joan Baez and Bob Dylan ALL MY LIFE--I've never SEEN them on the same stage--I can't believe it! Goin' NUTS here!"

BRYAN STYBLE/Florida
Publisher/Editor of Zimmerman Blues magazine 1975-79
(and Dylanologist-for-life***** 1972-2023...and beyond[?])
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* Whereas I was a clueless 15-year-old back in suburban St. Louis that historic rocking weekend of August 15-17, 1969.
** You can ALSO spot me in motion briefly in the Today footage. You'll see the rear (and brief profile) of me for a couple seconds [in a white short-sleeve shirt, with long hair] standing up and shooting Super 8mm footage at the bottom of the frame just right of center, at video timer 0:10-13 seconds). As you'll note, I pointed to my right--as I erroneously expected Dylan to come up from the right stairs. But after Baez introduced him with, "The suspense is killing me...Robert!", Dylan emerged up the LEFT stairs, where he appeared accompanied by Dylan confidante Stan Golden (also Dylan's longtime dentist AND motorcycling companion, not incidentally), that slender guy in the red shirt. Much later in the Today tape you'll also see the late gospel stalwart Clydie King, a frequent Dylan-backup singer, rocking her body with the rhythm in a grey warmup jacket. Though Dylan WAS an unannounced addition to Baez's slot, I had already known for a couple hours that he'd appear, as backstage I saw his name inserted ["+ Dylan", it read] next to Baez's on the performers' whiteboard roster.)
*** Those three songs would turn out to be "With G-d On Our Side"; a cover of Jimmy Buffett's "A Pirate Looks at 40" ****; and "Blowin' in the Wind".
**** It was the ONLY time in his 1957-2023 performance career Dylan has ever publicly sung "A Pirate Looks at 40", with all those touching lyrics and that positively lovely melody! (Okay, it would have been impossible for him or anyone else to sing it before Buffett wrote it circa 1974.) And it was reported later Dylan went forward with that terrific rendition AGAINST Baez's vigorous backstage resistance, as she feared she'd flub Buffett's lyrics--DESPITE their working on it at Dylan's Santa Monica headquarters upstairs in his rehearsal studio at 2219 Main Street the previous afternoon. (And indeed Dylan DID end up soloing [THANKFULLY, as her powerful voice often drowns him out] for most of that sixth and final Buffett verse.)
***** Should anyone doubt my credentials as a bonafide Dylan scholar, kindly consult "The Dylanologists" by Pulitzer Prize winner David Kinney at your local library. Kinney charts my history chasing the recording artist around North America (and occasionally but recurrently 1975-2005, even interacting with him), featuring me in a chapter entitled "Mirrors", which wrapped his 2014 book after he chronicled a dozen fellow prominent practitioners worldwide of this immensely idiosyncratic sub-genre of rock journalism.
====================https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/celebrities/2023/12/18/jim-ladd-los-angeles-rock-radio-sirius-xm-host-dead/71967070007/
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEhEcz7iKsw

Wiki editors are disputing the earlier-reported date of Jim Ladd's death in Los Angeles, placing it on Saturday, December 16th (rather than Sunday the 17th).

STYBLE/Florida

On Tuesday, December 19, 2023 at 8:40:28 AM UTC-8, radioacti...@gmail.com wrote:
> Wiki editors are disputing the earlier-reported date of Jim Ladd's death in Los Angeles, placing it on Saturday, December 16th (rather than Sunday the 17th).
>
> STYBLE/Florida

I saw something that said Carmichael. I had to look it up. It's near Sacramento.

Loved listening to him in the 1980's as a pre-adolescent radio addict and into the 90's on KLSX but at some point his rambling monologues and knowing there are still 25 minutes of commercials in this hour I had to go somewhere else if I wanted to actually hear music.

I hadn't seen Carmichael, California reported as Jim Ladd's death locale, so thanks for your augmentation, Topic.

Oddly enough, I actually lived in that Sacramento suburb for a while (while hosting a KPLA afternoon drive-time commercial newstalk radio broadcast 1991-92), and was amazed that few of my Carmichael neighbors remembered (or never knew in the first place) that that our obscure Greater Sacramento burg only 16 years earlier made international news as the site of an infamous terrorist strike (which which came the wake of an even more infamous kidnapping).

It so happens that it was the Carmichael branch of Crocker Bank--which by the mid-'80s had been subsumed into San Francisco-based Wells Fargo Bank--that the ragtag Symbionese Liberation Army notoriously robbed on Monday, April 21, 1975, in the process killing bank patron Myrna Opsahl, who had been waiting in line to deposit funds for her church.

Abductee-turned-terrorist Patty Hearst was the SLA getaway driver that day in Carmichael. (The familiar, globally-published security-cam photo of a beret-topped Hearst--using her nom de guerre "Tania"--wielding a submachine gun was from an earlier SLA bank robbery in San Francisco the previous year, on Monday, April 15, 1974*.) And reportedly it was the Hearst-fortune heiress herself who much later fingered Emily Harris to authorities as the SLA renegade who inadvertently shotgunned that unlucky bystander.

STYBLE/Florida
-------------------------
* Had the extensive, serpentine trail of SLA evidence ever led the FBI to my front door, I always had a ready, ironclad alibi: on that particular Monday, April 15th (where throughout Massachusetts, it was that year's annual state holiday, Patriots' Day), I was fully a continent distant, running in the Boston Marathon. (And yeah, I finished my first [AND last] 26-mile-385-yard jog--though with an absolutely abysmal time of 5 hours 22 minutes.)
============https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbionese_Liberation_Army#Crocker_Bank_robbery