Twenty-five years ago today, Chris Carter stepped behind the microphone to lead one of Los Angeles radio’s most cherished traditions, “Breakfast With the Beatles.”
Joining Sunday’s anniversary celebration was a performer whose own legendary rise began with a television series about a band dreaming of following in the footsteps of Liverpool’s Fab Four: Monkees icon Micky Dolenz.
Dolenz, 81, wearing a black hat and his familiar yellow-tinted glasses, stopped by the eighth-floor studios of 95.5 KLOS in Burbank as he gets ready to launch his “Micky Dolenz: 60 Years of The Monkees” tour.
He remains the last surviving original member of the four-man group that first conquered television and then became a major force on the 1960s pop charts.
“It was a television show about a band. They lived in a Malibu beach house and wanted to be The Beatles. On the television show we never made it,” Dolenz said.
Dolenz also shared that his first glimpse of the Beatles came on a stolen television set outside the famed Los Angeles burger spot Bob’s Big Boy.
“There was a guy who had a TV in the parking lot with rabbit ears.”
Only three years after that parking lot introduction, Dolenz was spending time with John Lennon at Abbey Road while the Beatles were recording their groundbreaking album “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.”
“It’s bizarre, I feel blessed,” Dolenz said.
The Monkees went on to score three No. 1 singles on the Billboard Hot 100 — “Last Train to Clarksville,” “I’m a Believer” and “Daydream Believer.”
Their hit NBC television show turned Dolenz and bandmates Davy Jones, Michael Nesmith and Peter Tork into pop-culture icons and helped unleash Monkeemania across America.
“Micky Dolenz: 60 Years of The Monkees” kicks off in Phoenix before arriving in Los Angeles on Sept. 12.
For a quarter of a century, Angelenos have woken up on Sunday mornings to Carter spinning an eclectic mix of Beatles classics, rarities and deep cuts.
“It’s like going to church,” said Alex Macias, better known to listeners as “Oxnard Alex,” who was in the studio for Sunday’s anniversary celebration.
Macias has painstakingly kept a spiral-notebook diary documenting every song played on the show.
“That’s 894 shows. I started writing down the songs when I was going through a hard time, and it helped me get out of it,” Macias said.
“Breakfast With the Beatles” was created by pioneering LA radio personality Deirdre O’Donoghue, who hosted the program until her death in 2001. Carter took over later that year.
And his tenure began during one of the darkest moments in American history — just days before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
“I remember the executives gave me a list of songs not to play because of the tragedy, and one was ‘Imagine’ by John Lennon. I immediately rebelled and played it every hour, my first week could have been my last,” Carter said.
“If it weren’t for Deirdre, we wouldn’t be here,” Carter added.
The program is billed by KLOS as “America’s longest running Beatles show” and remains a Sunday morning fixture in Southern California.
Carter has interviewed Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr numerous times, along with George Harrison, whose interview with Carter for Capitol Records became Harrison’s last.
Loyal listeners are treated each week to famous guests with connections to the Fab Four, Beatles trivia and a playlist stretching from monster hits to rarities, outtakes and solo material.
On Sunday, after filling the Los Angeles airwaves with three hours of John, Paul, George and Ringo — plus a little Dolenz — Carter closed his 25th-anniversary show with his signature sign-off.
“It’s been a pleasure playing the Beatles for ya.”
Then came the Beatles themselves, singing the immortal closing line from “The End”:
“And in the end the love you take is equal to the love you make.”
“Another one down,” Carter said as he took off his headphones and left the studio smiling.
“Thank you for having me for 25 years,” he added.
