"The Last DJ," by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, played live on the David Letterman Show. This song was inspired by Los Angeles radio DJ Jim Ladd, who really was the last of the old time radio disc jockeys. Those deejays were the ones created a experience on the radio, rather than just playing the records the suits upstairs wanted them to play, to promote the latest hyped song. Jim Ladd died a couple of days ago, on December 16th, at age 75. He was truly the last of the great FM DJs in Los Angeles, who played the songs he wanted to play, doing what he called "free form radio." He's best known for careers working at KMET and KLOS radio in Los Angeles, and for the last 12 years has been on Sirius XM, with a show called Deep Tracks.
The years between August 2003 and November 2007 are all jammed together in my mind. I was driving a taxi in the Huntington Beach area during that time, working 70 to 110 hours a week. A lot of really weird stuff happened in and around my taxi, but I can't even remember what year those events happened. I worked 7 days a week most of that time, lived in my taxi, and never got enough sleep, that whole era is kind of a blur.
I would work until the bar close rush was over each night, usually about 3:00 am. Then I'd go to one of several parking lots, where I slept in my taxi, in the driver's seat, until about 8:00 am. I'd wake up, go get a couple donuts at a donut shop, and the go park in the taxi line at the Huntington Beach Hyatt, near the beach. I'd try to get a couple of more hours of sleep, a half an hour at a time, by the time most of the hotel guests checked out at 11:00 am.
I'd work in the cab from 8:30 am until 3:00 am Tuesday through Saturday, week after week. On Sundays I would work from about 7:00 am until 2:00 pm, then get a cheap motel room for the night. I'd buy a cheap pizza, and spend three or four hours watching TV in the room, and just forget about everything. I'd usually fall asleep in the early afternoon, and wake up about 1:30 am, right before bar close. My body was geared to being awake then. I'd watch a little TV, then go back to sleep. I'd wake up again at 4:30 or 5:00 am, throw some dirty clothes on, and go run two or three Monday morning airport rides in the taxi. Mondays were slow, and that $25 to $40 made early in the morning really helped. I'd go back to my room, get a shower, and just hang out, watching TV, until 11:00 am, milking every hour I had the motel room. Then I'd work on Monday, from 11:00 am until 3:00 am Tuesday morning. That's what it took to survive as a taxi driver in those years, when the taxi industry was dying, due to the new technology of computer dispatching.
I paid $550 to $600 every week in taxi lease, and spent $300 to $350 each week for gas. After paying those two things, every week, I usually made about $250 to $300 for myself. I spent most of it on food, and the motel room for one night. Every single night, for several years, I drove drunk people home safely from wherever they were partying, focusing on Main Street in Huntington Beach, and the whole H.B./Newport Beach/Costa Mesa area. The job took me all over, depending where rides went. I'd drive people up to L.A. sometimes, or down to San Clemente, even deep into Camp Pendleton Marine base a couple of times. As I said, a lot of crazy stuff happens when you deal with drunk people every night, and I'd drive all over Southern California.
There were several things that helped me get by, day to day. I didn't drink or do any drugs, we got random tested for both. I drowned by depression and sorrows in food, mostly. Pizza, Chinese food, and late night Del Taco meals were my favorites. Some taxi drivers chain smoked instead. There's a reason the average lifespan of a taxi driver was only 53 years back then. It was a pretty fucked up lifestyle, but had a weird freedom to it, since it wasn't an actual job. Taxi drivers existed in the gray area between jobs and small businesses. We were gig workers before that term existed.
One of the things that helped me survive day after day was music. I just had a standard car radio, and for a lot of those nights from 2003 to 2007, I had my radio tuned to KLOS in the evenings, to a show by disc jockey Jim Ladd. He was the last of the old time FM DJ's, the guys who would pull out and play obscure album tracks, play music I'd never heard, or hadn't heard for years. Many nights he would have a theme going, like "Songs with women's names in them," or songs about this theme or that. People would call in with suggestions. Jim would talk, like a human, in between songs, and he would tie the songs he played together, playing records in a order that had some sense to it, where it just seemed to flow. There was a mood, a vibe, to the music he played.
Jim Ladd, those weeknights on KLOS in the 2000's, played rock music the way it was meant to be played. For him, and for many DJ's decades earlier, as FM radio rose to prominence side by side with rock n' roll, playing music on the radio was an interactive art form. He called it Free Form Radio. Every time he was on air, it was different. Sometimes it was rocking hard and upbeat. Sometimes it was music with deep lyrics, or paying homage to nurses or truck drivers or some kind of working person. Other days it would get dark and moody. Jim Ladd truly loved music, and he made listening to the radio an event, and that's why he inspired Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers to write the song, "The Last DJ," in homage to the art of being a great rock n' roll DJ. Jim went on to work on Sirius XM, probably the only place he could do what he did, farther into the 21st century.
One night in my taxi, in downtown Huntington Beach, I picked up a guy in a leather jacket. He got in, and in a strong, New York/New Jersey accent, told me he was going to Whittier. That was a big ride, so I was stoked at first. But there was a vibe to this guy. A bad vibe. His leather jacket was straight cut on the bottom, not waist length, and not down below the knees, it hung to his hips. It was the jacket of someone from the East Coast. He also sounded Italian in background.
A couple of minutes after I started driving, he began yelling, "Are you talking to me?" Are you talking to me?!" Yes, the same line Robert Deniro made famous in Taxi Driver, and with similar intensity, but a different tone. My head snapped around, I wasn't sure if he was on his phone, or yelling at me. The picture came together for me, this guy was a real world Goodfella. A gangster. As in Mafia-style gangster, the real deal. And I was taking a half hour drive with him. I'm pretty sure he threatened whomever was on the phone. Luckily for me, he fell asleep before I got to the 405 freeway, several miles inland, on the other side of Huntington Beach.
I wasn't exactly sure how to get to Whittier, so I was flipping through the Thomas Guide map book as I drove on the freeway. I got on the 605 freeway, heading inland. As I drove, Jim Ladd's show played in the background, it was a dark, melancholy night on his show. Slow, oozing guitars, one song after another. I took a wrong exit off the 605, realized it, and prayed the gangster wouldn't wake up before I got back on the 605. I didn't want that guy accusing me of taking him the long route, as many taxi drivers did to people, to milk the passengers for more money.
He didn't. But he woke up right after, as Jim Ladd played a positively haunting version of "Amazing Grace." The gangster woke up with a start, and got animated, as Italians from New Jersey do, and joked darkly about me not taking him the long way. but he was pretty blitzed, and he passed back out again. Jim Ladd played another, dark, soulful version of "Amazing Grace," and then another. I thought to myself, "Oh my God, I'm about to get robbed and shot, and die in my taxi, and there's a fucking soundtrack playing as it happens." I seriously felt like I was in a movie, in the tense part right before someone gets killed, with the soundtrack playing on the radio. Jim Ladd was playing the perfect soundtrack to the end of my life, live on the radio. That was so cool. But I was scared shitless at the same time.
The dark, haunting music kept playing, as I got off the freeway, and headed into Whittier. The gangster woke up, found a piece of paper, read it, and gave me an address. It was a dark quiet night, without much traffic. The taxi death movie soundtrack kept playing, as I pulled over into a small parking lot to look the address up in the Thomas Guide. The nap had sobered the guy up, and now he was in a pretty good mood. But with a hard edge, a "don't fuck with me taxi driver" vibe. I rolled up to the address, seriously half expecting him to get out and pull a gun. Instead he said, "pull down that alley." That's a huge red flag to a taxi driver, you never want a passenger to have you drive down a dark alley. That's where taxi driver's get robbed and murdered. Taxi driving was the #1 one job for getting murdered at the time. But I was there, I'd rolled with it all until that point. The meter was over $50. I pulled slowly down a completely dark alley between two houses.
As I passed the house on the right, a single, naked light bulb came into view. There was a small house behind the first one. The lonely light bulb lit a small brick porch. "Stop here," my passenger said. I stopped. He got out of the right rear door, and closed it. He walked slowly around the back of the taxi. I had the driver's window all the way down. He leaned down and looked in, "What's on the meter?" I told him the fare, sitting there, in the dark, in an alley, in a city I didn't know at all. The music had lightened just a bit, but Jim Ladd's hour of dark melancholy continued. The guy broke off a couple of twenties and and enough extra for the fare and a decent tip, and handed it to me. "Thanks taxi driver," he said, and turned and walked towards the door, lit by the single, uncovered light bulb.
I breathed out, and headed on down the alley, which I could just barely see opened out on the next street. Still alive, I cranked up the most memorable set of songs I ever heard Jim Ladd play on KLOS, and drove back to Huntington Beach. The mood of the songs lightened up naturally, as it should have. I went right back to work. Another night, another crazy taxi driver story, another drive slowly down Main Street in Huntington Beach, looking for the next fare, and the next adventure in my cab.
I imagine there are hundreds, maybe thousands of people, who have stories like mine, of some show Jim Ladd DJ'd. The night his music melded with the goings on of their life, in a way that seemed uncanny. There are probably a lot of people who remember a an evening Jim played the soundtrack of their life, live on the radio. That's the magic of Free Form Radio. It blends together, and we can project our lives into the music as it plays on and on.
A toast to The Last DJ. Rest In Peace Jim Ladd, and thank you for sharing your gift, and for making radio something special, long after nearly everyone else had given up on it.
I listened to the entire The Last DJ album by Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, while writing this post. I'm listening to to the most amazing version of Aretha Franklin singing "Amazing Grace," as I finish. Music is the best thing human beings have come up with, and reason enough for our entire existence to have happened. Amen.
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