Emperor Rosko talks in depth about his experiences with some of the greatest soul legends and give us a behind the scenes look at life on the road during the famous Stax Tour.
Interview by Rob Jones
Born Michael Joseph Pasternak, he is the son of Hollywood film producer Joe Pasternak. He was influenced in his career choice by KYA Radio Los Angeles disc jockeys Emperor Hudson and Wolfman Jack. Rosko's opportunity to broadcast came whilst in the US Navy where he presented a show on an aircraft carrier. He then went to Europe and hosted sponsored programmes in France and Belgium. He joined Radio Caroline, a pirate radio station broadcasting from a ship off the coast of England in 1964. There, his pacey American style soon made Rosko one of the station's best loved DJs. He then was heard on French language stations Radio Monte Carlo and Radio Luxembourg. It is Rosko who is heard introducing soul singer Otis Redding, as well as encouraging the crowd to chant and spell his name on Redding's album Live in Europe, recorded on March 17 and March 21, 1967. As a DJ with Radio 1 at its launch in September 1967, Rosko initially recorded shows in France for the Midday Spin programme. On his first Midday Spin show, Rosko introduced himself as "I am the Emperor, the greeter with the heater, your leader, your groovy host from the West Coast, here to clear up your skin and mess up your mind. It'll make you feel good all over."
The following is a transcript of a long-lost radio interview between Emperor Rosko and Rob Jones where Rosko spoke in-depth about his experiences with some of the greatest soul legends including a behind-the-scenes look at life on the road during the famous 1967 Stax Tour.You were responsible for popularising a lot of soul music back in your Radio 1 days.
Haha! well, what can I tell you? I heard what the other DJs were playing, and I didn’t want to be any part of that, it was just too poppy for me. When I started at Radio Caroline it was the same thing, which we won’t get into here because you didn’t ask me about it, but I was used to programming. I knew - because I was the DJ that went out and did gigs in the Top Ranks, in the Meccas and the clubs - I knew what the people wanted to hear from listening to what street DJs were playing and I would pick up on what they were playing, even if I didn’t know it, even though I was the one busting hits, I would pick up some that they had picked up even before me. And my thing was reggae, rock ’n’ roll and soul. Pop had to be extremely good. If pop wasn’t instant, it didn’t have a prayer. Soul, if it was a slow record it had to be extremely good. I wouldn’t play slowies because it was an 'up' show and I only had an hour back then, which was midday spins. So you really had to put a lot into it. And what I would do is if the BBC was really hot on me playing a song and it wasn’t really very good, I would edit the song from its two or three minutes or whatever it was, down to a minute and play it on tape. It was only a minute but it was impeccably edited so they didn’t realise I’d chopped two minutes out of it. That was one of the things I did, so actually I played probably more songs than most people (except Kenny Everett who did mini-vignettes on songs all the time), and a lot of times just to get the pluggers off my back – you needed a plugger, because they got you all the songs you wanted. They got you the stuff. They had all these big goodies. I had a hell of a record collection because of the pluggers.
And you know, you could go to the record company and open a cupboard and just take what you wanted, because they were so happy to get a record played on Radio - especially on the Rosko show. I used to go there and fill the trunk – the boot was absolutely choc-a-block full of stuff. The good stuff would be played and then the mediocre stuff would go to gigs for you guys and then I’d give that stuff away as prizes anyway, popularising the song on the show. We had five million people listening to us on a Saturday back then, which wasn’t as big as the breakfast show, but the thing was that people listened to me and bought records. It wasn’t just sitting at home listening to the breakfast show. They would wait and the club DJs would wait and they would hear what I would be playing, because I would make sure the guys back in the US would send me stuff that I knew. My mates who’d hear something really good would send it to me right away - no online downloading - there was no internet back then, so it arrived in the post! I would go back every four or five months, I would fly over and buy every 45 I could find, because I realised the power of that and I was more apt to play the B-side of a soul record than the A-side if the A-side wasn’t up to par. Anyway we would play the record on the Saturday, and it would be in the charts on Monday because that many people would go out and buy it.
Whenever you and I have these kinds of conversations, one record that always springs to mind for me is the Show Stoppers ‘Ain’t Nothing But a Houseparty’.
Well, a good example would be the Show Stoppers. It was owned by Milton Samuels who owned the label that had the Show Stoppers on it and Milton Samuels was one of those guys just like all the rest - he was so happy to get a record played on a Saturday. Rosko – Trojan, I owned Trojan basically, because I was always playing a couple of Reggae tunes and it was the only place they could get aired! I was god, they loved it. Milton had a flat in some mews in Marble Arch and he said he was moving out and I said great! Because I was always in the area looking for a place to live and I said, "I’ll take your place over when you go", and he said, "Fine OK." And so he moved out and I moved in and whilst he was moving, he had all these records out there and I said, "What’s this ‘Ain’t Nothing But a…'?" and he said, "It just came in." I played it and I went, "Ah this is awesome!" I said, "I’ll play this for you on Saturday." He said, "Oh yeah, cool, great." And the rest is history on that one. But that was just one song. I ended up living there for a couple of years and in the same mews - actually the group Yes were a couple of mews down and a couple of other celebs were in the area, but it was all low-key stuff. B.I.G.’s restaurant was around the corner and that was the Italian place to eat, that was my favourite place in the area.
Notably the Apollo which was a Reggae club. Why I like radio is because nobody knows what you look like. The guys that went to the reggae clubs back in the early ’70s had NO idea what I looked like outside a couple of appearances on Top of the Pops and a few this, that and the other. I was basically radio, unlike your Tony Blackburn; you know what he looks like because he was on Top of the Pops every week. So anyway I would get a booking come in, it would be a Reggae club and the agent would call me and say, "You wanna work this club? Just do your thing", and I’d say, "You don’t have to tell me how to do reggae, I know." I said, "Did you tell ’em what I look like?" and the guy said, "No, they didn’t ask, they just said 'we want to book the Rosko guy'," and so I go, "Oh here we go again!". I would show up with my van and sometimes without, sometimes it was just a PA - a personal appearance, but the Reggae clubs were really strange because they didn’t come alive until midnight. It’s not like your Top Rank at seven o’clock when you open the doors - these guys opened the doors at midnight, so it was always a hassle getting the equipment in or checking-in for a sound check because I didn’t trust their equipment if it was a PA, and the Apollo was just one of many. I showed up for the first time as a PA and the guy thought I was trying to hustle my way in! "You’re not Rosko, man! You’re white!" 'cause they all thought I was a black guy - and I couldn’t get in! "Let me in!" I’m saying. He said, "If you’re Rosko, do his thing, man, do like he do" and I’d say, "Have mercy! Blah de blah!" and his eyes would go all wide, "Oh…YOU HIM!" and I’d say, "Yeah, I’m him" and he had no idea because my driver’s licence doesn’t say Rosko.
That would happen quite a lot, they wouldn’t let me in. And of course, they opened the doors at night and I’d be there, Mr Efficiency, an hour before they asked me to be there because I wanted to make sure it was going to be kosher and good, and the lines were around the block! I had to struggle to get into these reggae clubs. So it's eleven o'clock, they let me in and they say I’m supposed to be on at one o’clock. "Oh yeah, yeah, man…ay, here…" and they’d give me a bottle of Bacardi, an ice bucket and a couple of cokes. They’d put me in some schleppy dressing room with a TV. And that was it.
Then of course the bass, BOOM BOOM BOOM – the whole room is shaking and I’m there, it’s midnight and I’m having my drinks, I’m not too fussed. If we had our own gear it was all set up, the roadies are having drinks with me and we’re all in the dressing room and the line never gets any shorter. I’d send the guy out every hour, go and have a look, see what’s going on, the place was packed – always. The line is still around the block and he’s jacking-up the price every hour. It might have been a quid to get in when it started but now it’s a fiver to get in - and there’s no room to get in anyway! If there was a fire marshal in the area he’d have shut the place down. They were hanging from the chandeliers. It’s now three o’clock in the morning. By now I’m already blitzed. I’m so drunk I can’t even talk anyway and I’m still not on! The Apollo happened but there were half a dozen around the country that were different names I can’t remember now, and I wouldn’t go on until three or four in the morning – by then I was drunk. It didn’t really matter, I mean, nobody seemed to care because I’d just do my thing and they loved it and that’s the way it worked. I was all Reggae all the time anyway. If I was using my own equipment of course, then it was slightly different because we’d have to blow them out - make them twice as loud as they were. And that was Reggae time back in the early ’70s in the UK. I just had to say this - it still amazes me I still recall it so well, how absolutely insane it was back then in those kind of environments.
You spent some time in the company of some of the great soul legends; so let’s talk about that. First of all, tell us about your most memorable experience with Wilson Pickett.
My most memorable moment probably was seeing the whites of his eyes and the look of sheer terror on his face in the rear view mirror of my motorcycle. He had just done the Albert Hall and those were in my crazy days. You have to understand that I’m now a senior citizen. I deal with things in a much more relaxed manner. Back then, I was a little bit mad, and a night of partying at the Albert Hall, buzzing around with all the the stars. I was chatting with Wilson Pickett and I said, "well, the record company’s throwing a dinner for us. You wanna come on the back of the motor cycle? Or you can wait for everybody else. I’m taking my bike." He said, "Yeah, fine, okay," and he got on, and I guess he was not used to going fast and I was just roaring through London – zoom, zoom, zip, zip! you know, much like the guys who deliver packages, the guys in traffic – zoom, zoom, zoom! and he was holding onto me like for death, he was just "Let me breathe, man!" I looked in the mirror and he was going, "Slow down, slow down!" and I did. But that is my instant thought of Wilson Pickett.
And of course you did spend a lot of time with the great Otis Redding.
Otis is my story, you know, one of the stories I have of artists who spent time with me and then died very quickly afterwards. It’s almost like a Halloween thing isn’t it! I toured with Otis all across the UK for what, six, eight weeks, something like that, the whole tour. Arthur Conley, I think he kicked off, then who did we have - Carla Thomas for a while, Percy Sledge and then Sam & Dave - and that’s when things really started livening up, when Sam & Dave took the stage. They closed first half. Nowadays you don’t get that kind of value for money, right? Now you imagine all these are coming on and doing ten minutes, and I’m bringing the acts on, every night, different place. Then the second half would kick off with Booker T - again a little warm-up, and then would come Otis and he would tear the house up!
You’ve told me some great stories over the years and my all-time favourite is the one about Sly Stone, which I don't think has ever been heard in public before, so tell us about Sly.
Sly Stone... He was always totally bananas! You have to understand that Sly grew up in a ghetto. He grew up in San Francisco, so that makes it a liberal ghetto. Liberal ghettos differ to normal ghettos because they have visions and they are much more apt to acting on them and having attitude. And so when I met Sly - he was playing conga drums at a club. I was in the military at the time and we were based in Oakland, California, and I was working as a car park attendant to pick up extra change at the time, so I would see him coming and going and we got talking and we had a lot in common - we both liked radio.
Then I found out that he also was a musician, so we became buddies and I thought, this guy has a lot of chat. And I then got out of the service and went to disc jockey school because back then you had to go through school and get a licence before you were allowed to DJ - kind of the opposite of the way pirates operate in London, where you buy a small transmitter and stick it in the boot and off you go, reggae town. In the US you had to have at least what we call a third ticket to even be able to sit behind a microphone. That means you had to go basically pass a test and to pass the test you could study a book or you’d go to school. I went to school because I wanted the whole nine yards, and it lasted I think about two or three months. I thought, Oh Sly might do this. This would be good for him, ’cause he could get out of the rut he was in and do something different. So I got him into the Chris Borden School of Broadcasting, so we got even closer because we were in school together and one night after school, (this is the story I know I mentioned to you and what you’re waiting for patiently) we went out.
I guess it was midnight or one o’clock in the morning, San Francisco. We decided to get something to eat and we went in one of these all-night Trucker cafés (that was with a 'T', heehee). We’re sitting in this cafeteria-like place and ordered food and there was a table of, I guess you would call them red-necks, sitting over there, giving us dirty looks. What can I tell you. That’s the way it was - this was 1964. And this guy, the typical overweight, lots-of-jowls hanging on his face, you know, kind of fat, pink-red type, sauntered over and started giving us - mainly Sly - a lot of flack about "What’s a black guy doing in here?" and "What’s a n*r doing eating breakfast in this place?" and this type of thing. You could see he was trying to build himself up to a punch-up and he had a table of five buddies not too far away and I’m thinking to myself, These odds are not good.
Sly, now he’s a ghetto boy so he’s reacting a lot faster than I am to this - I’m a Bel Air boy, and I’m thinking, Hey, where’s the nearest exit? That’s what I’m looking for - if things break out, I’m not hanging around. The next thing I know, this guy’s kind of got down to table-level and at the level of us, bending over and about to start something, and Sly grabbed a fork. I’m used to fisticuffs, but I never saw anybody use a knife or fork or whatever. He grabbed this fork, and before I could even say anything, he - whoosh! stuck this fork in the guy’s face, right in the meaty part of his cheek, and it was sitting there like a tuning fork, vibrating, twing-ing-ing!
And Sly was up and gone. I mean, this kid was fast. He could have been on a track team. He was heading for the front door. This was a big café. The five guys were up from the other place and they’re running after him. The other guy’s there with the fork and he’s wondering, What the hell? and he’s trying to pull this fork out, and you could tell he was really kind of mystified at what this thing was; where did it come from? And he pulls it out and he’s running. They all wanted to chase Sly because he made it out the door. Sly hit the big glass doors in this restaurant - it’s amazing how certain things stick in your head after all these years - I can still see him. He hit the door and paused – because these guys were ten feet behind him – and paused just long enough. He swung this big glass door at them. It was like in a movie, BANG! They crashed into this big glass door, and he was gone, and I was gone. So I go to the car - I remember I had a big, old green ’47 Packard or something and I thought, Where am I gonna find him? We’re in the middle of nowhere, so I drove around the neighbourhood for a while, never saw him and wasn’t until the next day I saw him again at school. I said, "What happened?" He said, "Oh I just ducked down, ran away. End of it." I said, "Wow, that was pretty serious, man! Can we dance to the music, or was it a family affair?" (I threw that last bit in here just for the fun of it.)
I had quite a shock a while back when you told me one of your jingles was a custom recording by soul legend Doris Troy!
Doris Troy and I were mates. But why not? I was a star Radio 1 DJ and ‘Just One Look’ was instant for me. I put it on the air immediately, and I immediately became her best friend. Long story short, she was also a back-up singer and I had a label back then called Mother Records, which is another one-hour story just on that alone. We were cutting a track and we needed a B-side. In those days, B-sides were things you kind of gave away. Radio Luxembourg at the time was if you wanted a record played you gave them the B-side for publishing. And so I thought, let’s put something together. So I told Chris my music director that we gotta do a little jam here, and I said to Doris, "Can you just riff on this thing?" I bashed out some lyrics and I said, "Let’s just call it 'Groovin’ with Rosko'. I wish I could think of the A-side. And so it was a one-take oobie-doobie-doobie, and I thought it was quite good, and I forgot about it. It was on the back of a record for twenty years until I started going through my material semi-recently and that’s when I played it and that’s when you wigged out because it appears that it had a bit of legend that I didn’t know about in the UK. So that’s the story of Doris Troy and if you wanna play it that’s OK with me. And by the way, can you send it back to me because I lost the record!'
Doris Troy’s ‘Groovin’ with Rosko’ has become a major collectible in its own right these days and it's still out there on 45 somewhere. Speaking of your most collectible recordings, tell us about the Atlantic albums.
Oh! and I almost forgot - because a lot of you are always asking about the jingles; I had heard of a guy called Ben Freedman who made jingles and I’m thinking to myself, OK why don’t I try and get Ben to make me some jingles, because everybody charges for that you know, it’s not cheap. You gotta get singers in and do things – and I’m not 100% sure of this, whether I did it without asking, or I did ask him - anyway I ended up with some Ben Freedman jingles and I put them on the Rosko albums to make the segway happen and to blend the songs together and to get my name in there and sound professional and oobie-doobie-doobie. I gave him a name-check and put his address and phone number on the back of the album. Now, what happened was a lot of you DJs out there called Ben Freedman and wanted jingles and that started a whole lifetime of Ben Freedman being very grateful to me remembering what I did for him once and he never forgot it, he always sent me stuff which was really nice, so that’s how that all happened.
Let's talk a bit about your touring days, the now legendary Stax tour etc
You mean when you get on a bus with Booker T & the MGs and the Bar-Kays? Gosh, so many of them out there - Otis Redding, Sam & Dave, Carla Thomas, Arthur Conley, the Spinners... They didn't all make every single date but what a show. I don't even know where to start. I was just the Emperor back then as you know and it was primarily soul, rock & roll, but primarily soul, because that's what people wanted to dance to more than anything else - yeah, a few enchanted Teddy boys that always wanted their rock & roll but that was basically about it. I guess because I was on the air on Radio 1 they wanted somebody that would mention it on the air and so I got lucky.
I remember a lot of the little details but not all of the big ones except that I was introduced to everybody on the bus. They were all friendly. Otis was a little bit aloof to start with. I didn't know him, he didn't know me. I mean nobody knew me. He only knew that I played their records on the radio so I was accepted warmly in that respect and off we went to do this tour. I guess we were playing venues with a couple of thousand seats every single night and it was sold out every single night. Booker T & the MGs would always start off. They would be the first act on and then the brass section would come up with the Bar-Kays and they would do a couple of numbers. I think Arthur Conley happened to be riding at number one. It was 'Sweet Soul Music' at the time, so he was really doing his thing and getting it on. He would kick off and then it was Carla Thomas, Eddie Floyd, they would do a couple of numbers each. You couldn't afford to do a tour like that now! I mean, the number of stars! I remember Sam & Dave would always close the first act and it would simply be Otis in the second half. So first of all that was the running order as my lame brain tries to remember all this good stuff. After that I did other tours, the Stevie Wonder tour and things like that.
Did you travel around with the artists on the tour bus?
Traveling on the bus was a hoot, so much to the fact that I actually got a car and would follow the bus because I didn't have to do as much as they had to do. They had to set up, rehearse and do all that stuff. I could just go and mosey around. Introducing that first night after we did our rehearsals, they really got into it because I don't think they'd ever really had anybody introduce them with that much enthusiasm. And of course the British fans who would see that tour, they were the dedicated soulites. They recognised the fact that this was probably one of the greatest tours put together EVER. I can think of one-nighters that were bigger, but not a tour; not night after night after night. I would chug a few shots, get in the mood, the curtain would open and I would come out and everybody would cheer and we'd just have a lot of fun and be with the audience. I would always say, "There's a big box down there if you have any special requests for the radio - write them down and before you go home, stick them in the box" so I had a million requests! I lived off those requests for about a year. I would bring on Booker T & the MGs. In a very funny way we would start off with the bass player and then we would go to the organ maybe or the drums - you know, one at a time and we'd build this up and they got into this kind of thing, and they let me do rhythm and rhyme over their riffs - that was really cool. Then the Bar-Kays would hit it. These guys just lit the place up. There was an atmosphere you couldn't really find anyplace else on the planet Earth... the Soul Stax Tour.
What are your memories of the Stax Tour onstage?
Next, it's time for Otis, a couple more shots to pump it up and get out there. Now you can taste the atmosphere and they're waiting. My standard thing was, when they'd tell me he was ready, to get them to spell his name: "Give me an O!" so on and so forth. A lot of you probably heard that because you were there. A lot of you would have heard it on the live thing on YouTube and all the rest. He would then take over and OWN the room. Nobody ever did as good, for me, as Otis Redding. He really knew how to play the crowd and embellish with the music, get them in with it. I think I'd be safe in saying I never ever missed if I was there watching Otis Redding, because it was just mesmerizing - it was a learning curve. And when he would start stomping and going up and down that stage, when he really got going, he was the personification of the Soul Man. So that was kind of like what happened on stage back then. Otis and his girls in the back...well that's another story altogether. Everybody was partying all the time.
And offstage?
What was really interesting was some of the artists who were from the Deep South who were very poor, had never really eaten 'fancy' food; Euro food, things like snails, that type of thing, you know. I think I'm mixing up two different tours I did...Rufus and the Spinners always got me crazy at the dinner table because back in those days, these guys were the gods. The record company would invite the whole tour out and we would go to a good restaurant in London. It would be Curzon Street, the White Elephant or someplace and we'd have a private room and in that private room there would be twenty or thirty people all ordering anything they wanted, compliments of Atlantic Records and I was eyeballing Rufus and the Spinners.
I try to remember what it was, something Rufus had never had before and I was giving him a little elbow saying do this, do that. I can't remember what it was but it was something like doing an artichoke or something. That's what I was fascinated by because this was foreign food to them. On the other hand the Spinners had grown up dirt poor, you know, just bread crusts...I mean really poor, as poor as you can get and still live, and so these guys could never ever eat enough. They would even take the take-away when we'd leave. I mean, I used to tuck into my nosh but those guys put me to shame! I talked to some of the other ones and say, "Why do they eat like that?" and they'd say, "They grew up poor Rosko, they grew up poor." So when you ask me, "What do you remember the most?" I remember watching them eat. We could be in Birmingham, Manchester, Nottingham, we could be anywhere; of course we'd be going out to a fairly decent restaurant. Usually we'd eat in the hotel, but these guys, they're taking all the bread and sticking it in their shirts for later. It was like you're never going to see food again. I remember the Spinners being that way and Rufus made me laugh - he never really knew anything 'fancy' you know, things in their shell, that type of thing.
That was touring in that period. Action, stations! The bus would roll in and we'd get into these icy cold theaters, closed until we arrived. They'd put the lights on and everything would be cold and damp. We'd have to wait for the heat to come on. Roadies would be setting up all the gear and I would think to myself, "Is this really gonna fill up?" You're looking at an enormous room full of empty chairs, balconies and all the rest, and then I'd go outside after the rehearsals or whatnot before the show opened and there's lines around the block as far as they can go! Of course you're happy to see that. I felt sorry for the people out there, freezing. You may even say, "Gee I remember, I was there myself." So night after night, we piled on the soul and then I'd get back and do my radio show and talk about it. I guess that's why I was hired.
© Emperor Rosko/Rob Jones 2008/2011
Thanks to Emperor Rosko and Rob Jones for their permission to reproduce this interview.