Hey, this is Paul Martin. And Ray the Roadie for the Rock and Roll Chicago podcast. How's things going today, Ray? Things are going well.

I'm pretty excited about this week's episode. Yeah, we're taking a turn, kind of a left turn from our normal band interviews and interviewing another legendary rocker. A living legend.

Yes, a living legend. And that is radio personality Mitch Michaels. Doing the cruise with Mitch.

And Mitch has got a new book out, and he's still on the air at WERV 95.9, The River in Aurora. Yeah, in the western suburbs, you can catch him in the west suburbs and south suburbs. Just about, he's got a pretty good range there.

He's got a pretty good signal, I can pick him up where I'm at. That's good. So how are we able to hook up with Mitch? We were able to hook up with Mitch through my good buddy and bandmate, John McFarland from MNR Rush.

John is a good friend of Mitch's, and we want to thank John for hooking us up with Mitch and setting this all up for us. Yeah, thanks a lot, John. That's good.

So what do you say we get to this interview with Mitch Michaels right now? Sounds good to me. Okay, here we go. So this is Paul Martin.

And Ray the Roadie with the Rock and Roll Chicago podcast. This week we're speaking with a legend rock and roller from Chicago, Mitch Michaels. How you doing, Mitch? You know, I'm a little concerned that you lead right in with that legend thing.

I've always said I thought you had to be dead to be a legend. So maybe you could be alleged legend. A living legend.

I should have said a living legend. I could literally live with that. I'm doing well.

Thanks for having me on, guys. Thanks for letting us come in. So tell us, I mean, I know you started out in radio back in Bethesda, Maryland, and spent some time in Cleveland, which actually I spent some time in Cleveland.

Really? Yeah, when I was a kid, my mom and dad moved to Parma. I lived in Parma. Parma! Parma, yeah.

Parma! There was a guy in Cleveland named Ernie Anderson, real name, but he did this stuff on Saturday nights, and it was this goulard. And that's where Jerry Z. Bishop got his idea, because he was a disc jockey in Cleveland. He came to Chicago and started Sven Gulli.

And he would do Berwyn. Berwyn! Yes, right, exactly. But he's in Parma.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. I remember that. But this is Rock & Roll Chicago podcast.

That's fine. We'll leave Parma and Cleveland. We'll leave that behind.

As I did many years ago, but that's okay. And I know you were with WGLD and XRT and WD, and you name them, you were with them. I've been fired for most of the good stuff.

A couple times more than once. What was the order, and what did you do at XRT? I came here in 1971 and was working at WGLD, the beautiful Oak Park Arms Hotel in Oak Park, Illinois, the fifth floor of an old folks hotel. It's very bizarre.

I'm going to work at night with a bottle of wine, a couple of joints in my pocket, some albums to play, and some burning stuff to kind of kill it. And every night I'd take the elevator up, and the guy that was kind of the security for the place was this big old guy, missing a couple teeth in front, but, jeez, he was probably 6'2", 275. He looked like he was a badass at one point in time.

He would ride the elevator up with me every night. I mean, I had long hair, looked very suspicious back in those days anyway, but it was just so weird. I only worked there about six, seven months, but the guy, he thought one of these nights I was going to start sneaking down the hall looking for some 74-year-old ladies.

Now at my age, 74-year-old ladies don't seem so old. But WGLD, and then I was early on at XRT in 1972, went to WDAI. WDAI was there, exactly.

Yeah, that was ABC, was there for a couple, two and a half years, and went back to XRT. Then went back to DAI, and then Bob Pittman hired me at WKQX. I was the first voice ever heard on that station at 6 o'clock on New Year's Eve, 1976.

That was the famous no commercials and whatever for a few months and all the TV commercials and stuff like that. It was a big, very fun deal. I was there about two and a half years, and then I went to The Loop, and that was one of those magic carpet rides.

I can't even really explain all the stuff that happened in such a short period of time. I talk about it in the book, but it's just like we were doing one thing after another. Every week or every two or three weeks, it was just unbelievable.

The station was so promotion-oriented and had such a dynamic staff and a dynamic advertising campaign with Lorelei as the TV commercials. Let me just sidelight that real quick. Sidebar, she still is a friend of mine.

I speak to her often on Facebook and whatever else, and she's still gorgeous all these 40 years later. She really is. That's just a fun little sidelight.

Well, that just took off like crazy. It was crazy. It was time for a station like that.

We went in the ratings 3, 5, 5, 5, 7, 3 in three books, and we beat WLS straight up 12-plus in that third book, and that had never been done by an FM station before. They were like, yeah, yeah, yeah. We need to pay attention to these guys.

It was like, you know. But that was just magical. Why do you think that happened? I think it was part of the timing, part of the advertising, part of the mixture of talent and music.

If you think about the period of time, disco was just kind of waning at that point in time. Dahl had just come over from DAI, where they had gone disco and fired him. I'd been in the market for a while, so I was a reasonably well-known commodity.

I'd been here like eight years. They brought in Sky Daniels, the Abrams organization, just all the different combinations of things. Certainly the television campaign certainly didn't hurt at all, let me tell you.

And the fact that we were so promotionally active with just one thing after another, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Everybody talks about disco demolition, and oh, the disco riot, the disco disgrace, or whatever you want to call it. Quite frankly, it was probably the greatest radio promotion in the history of the business.

Because you know what they say, I don't care what you say about me, just make sure you spell my name right. And man, we were on every TV station, we were national news, and that didn't hurt either. And then of course, you had the crowd inside and another 30,000 people outside, but if everybody that claimed they were there that night were actually there, we'd have had a million and a half feature episodes.

It was one of those kind of things. Now you're saying you were at Woodstock. Oh, it was much bigger than Woodstock.

Now you say you were there, you were there that night. Absolutely, I did play-by-play, a bucket list thing for me, I did play-by-play with Harry Carey and Jimmy Pierce, I was a doubleheader and I did it in the first game. And I'm sitting there trying to explain to Jimmy, first off, the Sox didn't draw shit.

Right, right, right. Even when they were good, they didn't draw. But they weren't drawing, and this was an idea that Mike Beck had come up with, to put fannies in the seats.

We had a meeting that afternoon, and the highest number that anybody wrote, and we all wrote a number on the blackboard of how many people we thought would show up, the highest number was 28,000. And we were like, oh, wow, we got 28,000, this is going to be pretty cool. Well, needless to say, we had 42-plus in the building, and another 30 or so-plus outside the building trying to get in.

So it was pretty crazy. And I'm trying to explain to Jimmy, who all these people are, I said, Jimmy, the only way I can explain this to you is they're kind of double-headers. They're sports fans, and they're rockers.

So you've got to call them sports rockers. And he just couldn't quite figure it out, and Harry was just being Harry. But it was really cool.

And then the whole thing exploded once Steve and Gary and Laurel and I got out on the field. And here was the thing. Remember, back in those days, they had antifreeze at every, well, you know.

Every aisle. And Mike didn't have enough security to keep people in every aisle because we didn't think there was going to be that many people. So boom, first few people go out, and then more people and more people and more people.

It's like, you know, Mike comes to me, and he goes, can you get on the PA and see if you can get these people off the goddamn field? You know, the field already. Really, I don't think they realized what they were doing with the explosion because when they blew up all the records, there was a huge burn mark out in the outfield anyway before the kids even really got out there and started tearing up the grass and stealing the bases and doing the whole thing. But I got on the PA, and we did what we did at concerts.

So we had people who were still in their seats chanting, come on, back to your seats, and people were starting to come on. This is a true story, and let me preface it by saying I've always been a Harry Caray fan. Loved him.

One of my heroes. Maybe the greatest play-by-play guy ever. I don't know.

Harry comes back up out of the Barnes room. I guess he hadn't been watching. What the hell's going on? Holy cow! You people got to get off the place.

Take me out to the ball. Well, the rest is history. They weren't hearing that.

More people were going out on the field. And we're coming up on the 40th anniversary. Yeah, they actually just had, last Thursday, they did the anniversary of it because the 12th of July is the day everybody comes out of the All-Star break, and the Sox are in Oakland.

So they couldn't do it then. So yeah, Steve was there throughout the first pitch. And supposedly threw out a strike.

Yeah, and I had several friends that were there, and they said it was pretty cool. It was great. It's funny because there's still been this pall that hangs over it about anti-gay and anti-Latino and all this kind of stuff that, you know, there was an article in the Tribune about it.

And it's such bullshit. I was involved with this thing from the get-go. There was never any, any, anti-anything except disco.

It was just the music and the attitude that was there. And that was it. How do you feel about the loop now? Well, it's very sad.

Very sad. I was actually in Mexico with the station on a trip. And we read about it on, like, Tuesday.

And then I found out that Dahl was doing the final broadcast on Friday. And his producer called me about 12 or 12.30. She goes, Steve, love to have you on. 2.33, I'll call you back.

So I was on the broadcast. And I didn't hear the broadcast because I was not, you know, somewhere that I could pick it up. But yeah, I mean, it's really sad.

We just had another station up north, 1039 The Fox. It just went, the same people bought them. And they went religious there as well.

I guess it's something that just happens in radio. You know, well, it's like anything. Change the format, change the owners, change the staff, change the idea you're going in a different direction.

It's like, that just happens. Fortunately, this place, Knock on Wood, is maintaining its luster, at least for now. The radios are good.

The sales staff is good. This podcast brought to you by 95.9. That's right, damn right. Or the river.

The river, yeah, the arrow. Get the arrow out and put it in you. What are you talking about? So have you kept in touch with Skye Daniels? You know what? Skye is not a send you a postcard, send you a note, whatever kind of guy.

He and I have exchanged stuff on Facebook. He sent me a couple of birthday cards, the jib-jab stuff, and whatever else. He actually just retired.

He was running a station out there in L.A., and I believe it was actually under an educational license, but it was a commercial station. Right, I did hear that, yes. And the station did really well.

It was very progressive, a lot of new music, which was what Skye, that was his passion. And so he just retired, I think. He was here, I mean, Skye was here for about a year and a quarter.

He did a thing, 9FM, We Play Anything, and I worked for him for about a year there. And it was kind of cool because it was three low-power FMs. There was one on the south side, one out west, and one up north, and they were simulcast.

Oh, I see. And so you had some coverage. Right.

But the idea was, I thought, wow, when we say We Play Anything, I mean, it's like, you know, you'd play U2, and then you'd play NWA, and then you'd play some jazz, or you'd play some blues. It really was just a total, there's a format called the jack format that is similar to that, but this was even more progressive in the sense of what we were doing with it. And it really was like, for me, it was very educational.

I play a lot of music I never would have played on the radio any other place, and it was a lot of fun. And it was, you know, it was kind of cool. It was very different.

What are your feelings toward satellite radio and Spotify and Pandora? You know what? I mean, they are part of the mix. You know, terrestrial radio is what I've always done. But, you know, if the folks at SiriusXM are listening, I'd be happy to have a deep track show.

Please call me. Scott Greenstein, I think you're the guy that runs the joint. Please give me a call.

You know, it's like, hey. You know, I mean, it is what it is. Radio used to be the only media.

You had television, obviously, radio, and newspapers. And that's what made radio so special back in those days. You wanted to know when the stones were coming.

You wanted to hear the new Van Halen album. You wanted to hear the interview with Stevie Winwood or whatever else. The only place you could hear it would be on the radio.

Now, I mean, you know, with all the different… You waited for that, too. You waited for it. You heard something new was coming out.

You waited to hear that. Oh, yeah. You were tuned in.

You didn't want to miss that. Absolutely. And, I mean, that was the magic of really being that only medium.

Right. But now, with so many, you know, with the internet, with the… Well, podcasts. Podcasts.

I mean, it's just… You're killing me. You're probably taking some of my audience away. Turn that damn thing off.

You know, like anything, you have to adapt. Right. It's funny because I'm working harder now here because I have so many other things I have to do.

I've got to write a blog every day. I've got to do a verbal blog every day. I've got to make sure I've got an Instagram.

I've got to make sure I've got… It's like, holy… You know, it's like, I'm just rock and roll on the radio. Right, right. But, you know, it's like, can I hire an assistant to do this stuff? Yeah, if you want to pay him.

That's what happened to the guy on the other side of the window. Yeah, right. Hey, get over here.

Get me a beer and a sandwich while you're at it. What are you doing? Back in the day, the hay day, did you get out and see a lot of local bands? Oh, yeah. Yeah, we used to go to… There were so many different places we'd go to.

I'm trying to think of some. I mean, we'd go to Haymakers. We'd go to… God, what were the names? There were two or three places up north that we would go.

What was the place over on River Road? And you'd even get a chance to see some local bands because Arnie and Jerry, a lot of times, would have a local band open for somebody else. They'd be like the first on a bill of three or something like that. So you had a chance to see, you know.

And then, of course, we did the hometown albums. So the idea there was obviously for local bands to get their best stuff in to see if they could make the grade on that. And that was daunting in one sense.

God, I mean, that first one, we got, I mean, like 5,000, 6,000 tapes. It's like, you know. And it's like anything.

You listen to them, and 90% of them were horseshit. They really were terrible. But there were some that were pretty good, you know.

And, of course, Evan R. Rush ended up on the first Loop Rocks album. Thank you very much. You're welcome.

Check's in the mail, right? Yeah. But that was fun because you really got a chance to actually, you know, hear some people and actually go do some studio stuff with them as well. And then we did the concerts with it, which was even more fun, you know.

So you had a chance to put ten bands on stage, and they each did two or three songs, and people got a chance to see that. And they were always well-received. I mean, the concert tickets were expensive, but, you know, those shows, we did them, I think, at the Uptown, if I'm not mistaken.

Right, right, exactly. The beautiful Uptown, which now is in disrepair, but Jerry Michelson's in the process of raising some more dough, and he's going to have that open in another year, which was very exciting. So any favorites from back then? Local bands? Oh, wow.

My brain is just going completely south. KQX did it. We did two at KQX, and then we did two at The Loop.

Okay, right. Gosh, I can see people's faces. I can't think of their names.

You know, off the top of my head, no. I really never did like Kevin R. Rush. I'm kidding.

You know, there were some, I think of The Kind. The Kind was a band I knew. Mike Shy was a good friend of mine, still is, and he was their manager.

And I got to know those guys real well and saw them in more than a few places. Yeah, Frankie Capek's still playing, right, with five guys named Mo. Yeah, yeah.

Buster was an interesting band. They became, I think they got a contract. They ended up with like Capital or something.

They had a couple albums at Capital, I think. So, you know, there was a lot of really good bands, you know. Definitely.

Don't see that much anymore. Well, it's like radio. It's just a whole tougher deal to find a place to play and somebody's going to pay you.

Right. They want covers if you're there. They don't want to hear your originals a whole lot.

They want you doing Journey Foreigner and Bon Jovi. Right. You used to play to promote your albums.

Yeah, sure. Now it's the other way around. Exactly.

Now, what about big name bands? I mean, some of your favorites obviously have played in Dallas still to this day. Oh, yeah. Led Zeppelin.

I wish Led Zeppelin was still playing today. Well, I mean, not necessarily to go see. I mean, just to play on the radio.

Some of your true favorites. You know what? I'm still a huge Led Zeppelin fan. I'm still a huge Stones fan.

I don't get to play enough for you still. That stuff is... I grew up with that stuff. Right.

And so, you know, you think about that. The Eagles have always been a favorite of mine. I'll tell you one of my favorite bands that did very little, but what they did was incredible.

It was the Traveling Wilburys. That first album is an extraordinary piece of music. Every song on there is just a masterpiece.

You're talking about a super group. Right. Those five guys.

Are you kidding me? They're all Hall of Famers. Yeah. And it's hard to find Volume 2. There is no Volume 2. Well, there is.

They did do a second album. It's called Volume 3. Oh, is that what it was? Yeah. But Roy Orbison had already passed.

Right. And he was such a special part of that. Yes, he was.

Yeah. It was a great group of guys. Whoever thought of that.

Well, it was a happenstance. I mean, the way I understand it, Harrison was having dinner at Bob Dylan's house, and Jeff Lynn was there, and Roy Orbison might even have been there, too. And Harrison realized he'd left his guitar at Tom Petty's house.

So he called Tom Petty and said, Hey, can you bring... So Petty shows up, and then the five of them just started jamming on Handle With Care, and boom, the rest of it is magic and is history. So it was one of those kind of... It wasn't really meant to be, but it was really meant to be. Kind of like a modern-day million-dollar quintet.

Yeah, exactly. Bingo. Exactly.

Just happened to be there and happened to... Oh, you want to... Let's... Okay, try this. I mean, that's the magic of music anyway. It draws from so many things and does so many things.

But you talk about bands... Not only that I love to play on the radio, and there's a lot of them that I don't get to play, but I still fall back on my experiences and my extraordinary access that I had for so many years of being able to walk in the back door... Oh, yeah, get him in here. Oh, yeah. We don't even have to cavity-search.

Well, actually, maybe we should cavity-search. But having been the voice of jam for a dozen years, all the jam shows, and I was in really good stead with the guys from Celebration Clubside as well. They were friends.

So I had access to just an unbelievable amount of music. And I saw Led Zeppelin four times. So, you know, I mean, just that kind of circumstance.

I know you've got some great stories. I know in your book, Doing the Cruise, Memories from a Lifetime in Radio and Rock & Roll. Right, right.

Available on the Eckerd Press. There you go. If you can plug, I can plug.

That's right. Ray Ray. I've read the book.

It's very good. Thank you. I know you've got some great stories.

Can you tell us maybe a story that you didn't include in the book? I'll tell you a story that I thought was going to be in the book. There's a story about the boys from Illinois. You talk about a local group.

Dirty Dan and those guys, all good friends of mine, they were playing at the Park West. And they opened for somebody. I forget who it was.

And Dan and I were always roughhousing, having fun and whatever else. And we get into a wrestling match up at the bar, between bands. And Bob said, we're up on the bar, rolling down the bar, knocking drinks over.

And there was no, I'm going to kick your ass. That was just having, packing the bag, having fun. And the security guys come up and grab us by the scrubs of our necks.

And they look and they go, normally we'd throw your asses out of here immediately, but we're going to let you stay off the bar. Stay. And let's keep a little distance between us.

Sadly, that story got cut from the book. It was just one of those, yeah, we get it. I think, I don't remember if the story of, another Dirty Dan Buck story.

He's such a maniac anyway. Loop Fest, which was in February of 1980. Two days at the amphitheater.

We set a two-day attendance record. We had 46 or 47,000 people there in two days. And bands playing every day, and vendors, and it was the whole wild thing.

It was crazy. And the boys were playing, and there was a stack of speakers. They had to be 10, 12 feet up in the air, maybe higher.

Ian climbs up the stack. He's up there, and he jumps off. Now, if I had jumped off, I'd have broke both my legs.

He rolls, he's fine, he gets up, it's like, unbelievable. It's like, but I'm starting with my own eyes. It's like, oh my God.

Here's the end of the show. Yeah, really. Here's the climax.

I mean, if I didn't put a bag of water in, when it hits at a certain speed, it just goes flat. I remember that show a time or two. Personally, I got to meet Lorelei.

I was just like, oh my God. Yeah, that was great. Those were great times.

Magical times. So, tell us a little bit about the book. You know, the book was obviously a long time in coming.

How it came about, I got a buddy of mine named Don Ramsell, who's an attorney, and he's the smartest guy, and he's also one of my best friends. And he's written a couple of law books, probably 10 inches thick. I mean, I've seen him working on these things.

It's like, dude, what are you doing? So, you know, he and I are together a lot, and I tell a story or something about something, and he goes, are you writing this stuff down? So, you know, your memory gets bad. You should write a book. You need to write a book.

He said that to me for a couple of years. Well, finally, one day, he said it, and then somebody else said it, and I'm like, maybe I should. So, I was having dinner with my buddy, John Howell, and another guy, Joe, I can't think of his last name, Joe, he's a sales guy, and I'm telling him about my idea about doing a book.

He goes, I got the guy for you. I got the guy you should plug into. His name's Ken Chirilla.

I'll give you his number. You should call him, get together with him, see if you like him. He's a writer.

He wrote a book already, does a lot of magazine stuff. So, Kenny and I got together, and we clicked. he started, I said, okay, let's set up our deal and whatever else, and he came over two or three days a week, and we'd sit in my living room, and I just tell stories, and we kind of did it in chronological order, and he recorded it as well as taking notes, and then he'd send me, you know, 20 pages, and I'd go, this is good, this is good, and I'd rewrite stuff, and, you know, and it took us two years, and it was very cathartic, and it was very, it was funny.

I mean, things would trigger other things. I'd be, we'd be talking about something, I'd go, oh, wait a minute, you know, I was like, what about, you know, or something would just spark a light bulb. I mean, I was, I was talking about the early days when I was at WGLD, and we'd gone on and moved on to other stations, and all of a sudden, I'm sitting there going, wow, I forgot, I gotta, we gotta, we gotta talk about the first show I ever MC'd in Chicago, and it was a live broadcast as well, and I did 7 to Midnight.

The show was in the afternoon, and it happened to be from the Cook County Jail. Wayne Cochran and the CC Writers, live from the Cook County Jail on WGLD, and I'm the MC. I'm on-site MC, okay? I got the bell bottoms and the hair down to my shoulders and whatever else.

It was 1972, and one of the freakiest things ever was they opened that first big chain link fence, and you walk in, and then they close it, and it's got the razor wire up on top, 25 feet up there. If you can get that high before they shoot you, and then they open the second one, and they let you in, and so, yeah, it was, you know, it was one of those, wow. How'd the show go over? It was Wayne Cochran.

Come on. The guy, he was a showman. Right, right.

Now, WGLD, was that a publicly funded station? No, it was owned by Egmont Sonderling, was the guy's name. He owned WGLD, W-O-P-A, which was the AM station. The AM station was even more unique.

These long-haired freaks playing rock and roll on the FM station. The AM station was the cornucopia of life. You had the Greek hour, and the English hour, and the French hour, and then you had the polka hour, and, you know, all this kind of stuff, and we had a window.

Our studio was relatively small, but it had a pretty good-sized library in it, and then there was a window to the next room, which was a much bigger studio, and that was the AM studio, and at seven in the midnight at night, there was three or four different shows that went on over there, and it was like, you know, it was like the changing of the guard, you know. Right, right. It's like, okay, I think we're back to the Greek isles again.

Thank you. It was like, where are the girls? Where's the suntan oil? Now, a few years prior to this, I understand you did some news reporting at Kent State. Well, I was working for a station in Cleveland.

I was a board op engineer back in those days, first job in Cleveland, and I was going to Kent State. I was a student there, and the unrest of the Vietnam War spilled over into, you didn't go to college, you went to Kent. It was a Midwest teacher's college.

It was not a hotbed of protest or whatever else, but it was a big school. It was 20,000 people, state school, and Nixon invaded Cambodia, and that brought substantial reaction from a lot of places, including at Kent, and there was four days of just crazy shit going on. The first of May was a Friday.

I worked until 12.30, got home about 1.30, and there was police blocking the road, and they were checking IDs of people because a lot of kids had gone in and smashed a lot of storefront windows and stuff like that for whatever reason. Second night, we're blocking the streets again, but this time they weren't letting anybody in. They didn't care if you lived there or not.

I had to do about a 25-mile detour around, come in the back way because the kids had burned the ROTC building, and they were a bunch of kids sitting in the middle of the street. I went back down to the campus. There was about 2,000 people sitting right in the middle of the main street and Route 12, I think, or whatever.

It was right there, and another probably 4,000 or 5,000 around them. It was a helicopter right out of a movie. You had the spotlight on them, and they called out the guard and whatever else.

So Sunday night, I worked early Sundays, and I got done at like 6 or 7 o'clock, so I was back in Kent by 7.30 or 8, and there was going to be a big rally that night. I had press credentials. I had my recorder, and the guard was out in force.

They had brought the National Guard in in force, and these guys were all wearing gas masks. You couldn't identify them anyway. It was pretty scary looking.

I'm trying to get through this one spot, and this guy clocks me right in the jaw with his rifle and knocks me over. I said, dude, press. He goes, get the fuck out of here, man.

He didn't care what I was. So I took his advice. I went home that night.

I reported what I could. I was doing stringer reports from there for the station in Cleveland, and Monday, there was supposed to be another gathering, and it was about noon or so, and I was taking my wife to the dentist, and we're going down. We lived off to the southeast of campus.

We're coming in through campus, and all of a sudden, there's like three ambulances flying the other way, so I did a U-turn and followed right behind them. Got over just behind the building behind the architecture building, and kids were still running and whatever, and I get out and told her to lock the doors of the car and come around the building, and one of the ambulances was picking up one of the kids who had been shot right there in the parking lot, and it was very bizarre. And that was like 12.30 maybe.

By 2 o'clock, the campus was clear. 20,000 people had gone. The only people on the campus were faculty and the guard, and it was really eerie, bizarre, eerie.

This whole thing unfolded. It was a day I will never forget, needless to say. That's understandable.

Mark Mothersbaugh, I think his name is, from Devo, was a student there, and they did some stuff on it. Chrissy Hine was a student there. She left school and went to England.

Joe Walsh was a student there. He said, I'm done with this. I'm definitely following up on music full-time, so probably a good move on Joe's part.

We used to see the James Gang. They would play in the bars there. You'd see the James saying, hey, Friday night, the James Gang at this or that.

It's funny to see that and experience that. We had a lot of groups out of Chicago that had come out like that, too. We've seen guys like Cheap Trick, Survivor.

They were all playing in the bars. Oh, absolutely, absolutely. The Sticks.

The old-day Chicago. Think about those guys, too. The Sticks paid their dues for years.

The Dex Card Tours. Those things were like, Sticks Thursday night in Maryville. Sticks Friday night in here.

Sticks Saturday night. Those were crazy guys. Two shows on Sunday.

Yeah, that's right. A matinee. Younger ones.

And they didn't care what kind of M&Ms were in their bowl. Absolutely not, really. Did they think they were Van Halen? It was like crazy.

So now you're at WERV. The River 95.9. And I know you mentioned you're busier than ever. I am.

They got me working so hard. It's like, you know, I'm old. I've got to rest.

Come on. What are you talking about? What about retirement? You know what? It's funny. I turned 71 in March.

And I get people that ask me. They go, well, you think about retiring? I'm like, well, let me tell you. First off, I'm still having a lot of fun.

I'm still doing what I love to do. I think I'm doing it at a relatively high level. People seem to like it.

You know, they're not throwing cabbages and rotten tomatoes at me when I'm out and about. Or even here, when my key still fits in the door, they let me in. So it's like, you know.

You talk about the book. It's been such a treat to have people respond after reading the book. And talking about, oh, jeez, you took me back.

I was there. I felt like I was there, and this and that. It's such an easy read.

I mean, it's so nice to hear that from people. I'm glad. I wrote it because I had a lot to say.

I wrote it because I thought the stories would be interesting for people. And that's the fun part about what I'm still doing on the radio. I'm still telling stories.

It's still my reflective of 50 years of rock and roll, and people still seem to like it. They seem to find a home here. Yeah.

Longest job I've ever had. Knock on wood or whatever. Yeah, they seem to be at least happy with me through today.

They want their key back at the end of the day. I guess I'd have to give it to them. But so far, so good.

But I'm having fun. Isn't that what it's all about? It's definitely what it's all about. Why are you guys still making music? Because we're having fun.

We enjoy each other's company and making music together. Exactly. I mean, you're not socking away $600,000, $800,000 every weekend? No, unfortunately not.

Neither am I. But, yeah, I mean, it is for the love as much as anything else. And, you know what they say, if you find something you really like, pursue it. It won't work a day in your life.

I was out of radio for a few years. Well, we're glad you're still hanging in there. Well, thanks.

Thanks for your concern. I'll give you the Mitch.org number you can send your contributions to. Well, speaking of which, where can people obviously find you here on the radio? I mean, social media-wise, anything? Facebook, for sure.

I'm very active on Facebook. It's funny, my kids now think I'm a dinosaur. I probably am, but I said I'm not extinct.

I still come kick your ass. I got some T-Rex left in me. But definitely Facebook.

I've got an Instagram or two pages. I don't use Twitter much. I should probably use it more.

But Facebook is the main place. There's a Mitch Michaels 95.9 The River page. There's a Yeah Baby Tunes page, which is my yeahbabytunes.com. It's my website for when I was off radio for a few years.

I was producing all these vignettes. There's probably 120 or 130 music vignettes that are there that are available for fun and profanity or whatever else, including the Rod Stewart story. Right, the Rod Stewart story is a great one.

We'll leave that for people to read the book. There you go. Pick up the book and read about some of the great stories.

I mean, you've got some journey stories in there. Oh, yeah. And Rod Stewart is definitely good.

Perry Perry stories, Mel Brooks stories, a lot of fun things. I was very fortunate to have a lot of fun people come through. There were some people that were a pain in the ass, too.

I think some of those got noted in the book as well. We won't mention Billy Joel's name. Gee, what a coincidence.

Yeah, imagine that. It's called Doing the Cruise of Memories of a Lifetime in Radio and Rock and Roll. That's me, baby.

And we thank you very much. Guys, thank you. My pleasure.

Thanks for having me. It was great. Thank you very much.

Thank you. See you soon. Yes, sir.

So that was living legend and radio personality Mitch Michaels. Boy, there was a lot of history there, a lot of great stories about local bands as well as national bands. Yes, he does.

He's got some great stories and some great stories in his book. Be sure and pick that up. It's called Doing the Cruise, Memories from a Lifetime in Radio and Rock and Roll.

And I actually read that book because I can read. That's good. That's good.

We're proud of you, Ray. Thank you. Thank you.

It really is a good book. I'd recommend picking it up and checking it out. There's a lot of good stuff in there.

Yes, there is. There's a lot of great stories, like you said, from national bands and local bands and some great pictures in there as well, too. Yes, and you can still pick him up at 95.9 The River.

He's on Monday through Friday from 3 p.m. till 7 p.m. Still doing the cruise. That's right. So thank you very much, everybody, for listening.

And be sure and subscribe, as usual. And check us out on Facebook at Rock and Roll Chicago Podcast and at And share, share, share. That's S-H-A-R-E, right? Right.

Yeah. No, no, we're not. We're not.

Oh, I thought we were doing share next week. Oh, no, no, no, no. She's not from Chicago.

Oh, OK. Good. Good.

All righty then, everybody. We will see you guys soon. We'll see you soon.

Next up. Next up is a great band. And we'll keep you in suspense until then.

But so have fun, everybody. We'll see you next time. And thanks for listening.

Take care, everybody.