The sacking of Timothy Leary
Orange County's most dangerous radio host didn't last long at a rock station that purported to "Kick Ass,' but he had fun
Drug guru and cultural troublemaker Timothy Leary died May 31, 1996 — 25 long years ago. To mark that day, here’s a little piece I wrote for the Los Angeles alternative paper, the LA Weekly. It’s a report about what happened when the owner of a rock station in conservative Orange County found out when he came back from vacation that his station manager had hired Dr. Tim. Because I was a part-timer at the LA Times, I used the fake name ‘Derek Humble.’ I was paid either $10 or $20, I forget.
LA Weekly
November 20, 1980
Orange County U.S.A., land of Disney, Birch and Rev. Schuller, just wasn’t ready for Dr. Timothy Leary, talk show host.
The man who put the 1960s drug cultist and all-around trouble-maker on the air, KEZY-AM-FM general manager Dan Mitchell, said the ex-West Point cadet and ex-Harvard psychologist was "entertaining, beguiling, witty, intelligent and had a lot to say.” And the album-oriented rock station’s audience didn’t complain. After all, they tune in to the Anaheim rocker because "KEZY Kicks Ass.”
Yet some of the folks who have earned Orange County its well-deserved reputation as Reactionaryland didn’t dig Dr. Leary’s still-crazy stream of consciousness — especially the man who fired Leary, KEZY owner Harris Thomson, who Mitchell described as a "senior citizen,” a retired multimillionaire who "owns the walls and calls the shots.”
"Because Leary was anti-Establishment, they won’t forgive him,” Mitchell said. "They hold him responsible for all the kids who killed themselves on drugs in the ‘60s. Unfortunately, a lot of people who are professed church-going Christians are about as forgiving as a rattlesnake.”
The emotional response too was strong, Mitchell said, and it came from the older people in the community — "the peers of our owner.”
Even at 60, Leary turned out to be a walking talking generation gap and relentlessly enthusiastic purveyor of psycho-scientific ideas and adult-shocking hedonism.
Before he got the radio show, he had been busy writing books, lecturing, and working nightclubs as a standup philosopher who called himself a "cultural humorist, a "space cadet and a "change agent.”
On the air, he bemused his listeners with such announcements as "The San Diego Freeway has disappeared.”
At his Beverly Hills apartment, Leary was his cheeky, cheery self after losing his first regularly scheduled job in 17 years. He said he’d just finished writing "Tommy the Trojan” Thomson a friendly letter, inviting him out to lunch, so "he can find out what a nice guy I am.”
Before he was sacked, Leary said, he thought everything was going fine. His ratings were going up, the mail was positive, and most of the callers were friendly.
"Except for one guy who read the Bible to me, he remembered fondly. "But I love to devour Christians, especially on Sunday nights. It’s an old Roman custom, heh-heh-heh.”
Leary, who says his cheerful, reckless, arrogant enthusiasm puts off 90 percent of the people because our culture is Judeo-Christian, didn’t sound too bummed.
"Orange County needed me more than I needed them. I was just trying to fill a void, heh-heh-heh.”
Mitchell said the negative response to Leary’s radioed madness came shortly after an L.A. Times article about his radio gig. "The people who read the Times don’t like him or what he stands for. They don’t want to give a man like him a forum. They threatened to contact our advertisers.
"That’s reality,” Mitchell shrugged."I wasn’t thinking about the reactionary reaction. I was thinking about today and what Leary says and thinks today, not 15 years ago. But they loathe the man. They loathe what he stands for. They hate rock n roll and what it stands for.
"They think everything negative is caused by rock 'n roll — sex, drugs, violence. I was stupid to not realize that that point of view is pervasive. It’s been a real education for me.”
Here are three quotes from Leary, one of America’s most quotable human beings.
Think for yourself and question authority.
Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition.
You're only as young as the last time you changed your mind.
And here is a pretty good documentary on YouTube — in Spanish and not in anything close to HD.