WLIR-FM (the LIR stands for Long Island Radio) made a revolutionary move when it switched from rock to a new wave format in 1982. By the late 1970s, radio rock had become bloated and boring. Disco was hardly an alternative for people like me, who hated it. So, when punk and new wave blast upon the scene in the late 1970s, many musical iconoclasts (including myself) embraced this music with a passion.
WLIR-FM began in 1959 from a basement in the Garden City Hotel, playing a musical mix that was…not rock. In 1970 it switched to progressive rock, and in the late 1970s WLIR started to bring in some new wave and punk, but by 1982 management decided a complete format change was needed. Under the tagline “Dare to be Different,” the DJs began to play a mix of new wave, post-punk, alternative, and synthesizer-driven music from bands like Talking Heads, Blondie, Depeche Mode, Tears for Fears, Howard Jones, the Cure, Blondie, Simple Minds, U2 and other cutting-edge artists. The music was fresh and fun and you could dance to it.
Oh boy, could you dance to it. The music and the clubs created a thrilling new scene for twentysomethings like me. Instead of hanging at dreary old men’s dives and singles bars, we could dress up and go to places like Spit, Spize, and the Ritz, buy import records at Zig Zag or Record Stop, see our favorite new bands in clubs…and listen to WLIR. I and many others felt like this was our music, our scene, a refuge for those of us who danced to the beat of a different (usually electronic) drummer.
WLIR broke new musical ground, playing records no other station would touch, often months before their official US release. Soon, the station garnered national and international attention from listeners and record companies as the station to hear new music.
But, the music changed, new wave inevitably fell out of fashion (as a form of music that depended on being the “new thing,” the seeds of its destruction were practically embodied in its very nature) and in 1991 WLIR changed its format to alternative rock. Other format and ownership changes ensued, and there were legal issues that came to a head, and WLIR-FM eventually ceased broadcasting on…
Well, rather than provide an inadequate historical synopsis, I heartily recommend that you watch the 2017 documentary Dare to be Different, directed by Ellen Goldfarb. As the movie’s teaser states, “In August 1982, a small group of visionaries at the WLIR radio station knew they couldn’t compete with the mega-stations in New York City. The crew and biggest artists of the era tell the story of how they battled the FCC and the record labels.”
The documentary features music and interviews from Joan Jett, Billy Idol, Mike Score (A Flock of Seagulls), Vince Clarke (Depeche Mode, Yazoo, Yaz, Erasure), Ultravox, Talking Heads, Simple Minds, Mike Peters (the Alarm), Chris Stein and Debbie Harry (Blondie), Glenn Tilbrook (Squeeze), Fred Schneider (B-52’s), Katrina and the Waves, and a host of others.
The Long Island Music and Entertainment Hall of Fame recently had a screening of Dare to be Different, along with a panel discussion featuring Goldfarb, former WLIR program director Denis McNamara, and DJ Larry “The Duck” Dunn. Their talk provided insights into the story of the station, the brightly-burning flash that was the 1970s – 1980s new wave era, and the music and radio business. Here are excerpts from the discussion, which was moderated by LIMEHoF’s Tom Needham.
Tom Needham: I think this film is an amazing piece of work because you captured Denis’s work at the station, and also so much of about what that time period meant musically on Long Island.
Larry “The Duck” Dunn: What Ellen and Denis did with the film was a great statement of a great creative period, probably one of the greatest musical periods we ever experienced. I think it was also the story of a homicide, because we never really got to the point after [the station changed format] where we could continue that creative spirit. I just knew the fun was over. So, the fun I think is captured really well in the film.
Ellen Goldfarb: WLIR has a long history and different phases, but I wanted to capture the heyday that was 1981 to ’87, when they did what no other station in the country did, playing that music and just boom, boom, breaking these bands. And these artists are so appreciative to Denis and the DJs for doing that. They couldn't wait to do the interviews [in the film]. You touched so many people and I felt privileged and honored to make this film about these amazing people.
Panelists Tom Needham, Ellen Goldfarb, Denis McNamara and Larry "The Duck" Dunn.
TN: [Denis and Larry], each of you and some of the other DJs would spend significant time finding the music, listening to the music, curating the music in ways that are really not done anymore. Can you share a little bit about what your secret was to doing that?
LD: The only way you can hear music is to listen to it in different forms and shapes and sizes. And at times it can be too much. Other times, bands can somehow magically hit that right song, and why, who knows? We were huge music fans, and that came across to people who listened to the station because you knew that we cared about the music, and what dared to be different was the music.
Let's face it, sociologically, it was a great time to have a station. But even at a good radio station, you had to work hard at it. And to be different on a musical basis and take that chance was why WLIR worked, and worked so well that we're still here talking about it.
We were always looking for the next hit, and labels were signing the bands that we were discovering, and we had different sources for our import [records], but it was always trying to find that needle in a haystack. We were spending 20-hour days. Personally, I was not hired really for my voice. It sounded like a chipmunk and it took two years of speech therapy to clean it up. But Denis hired us because we were good at what we did.
There comes a point around 15 or 16 [years old] where you can be the nicest person in the world, but you want to piss your parents off, and music's a good way to do that. So there really was an underground of people that looked out for [new] music. And the nice thing about new wave, if you want to use that term, was that people were really into the music and they liked telling other people about it, and radio stations liked playing music that other stations didn't have. So you remember what a good time it was and how exciting it was. Music was really f*cking exciting.
I think our secret too is that we had no fear. Anything went. It was a time when the no one tried to control your music. I mean, yes, they tried to control it somewhat, but there was so much Wild West to the way [we] worked with music [at the time].
The listeners came first. The record company didn't come first. I hate to say it, but the guys in the [record] stores and all the rest of it didn't come first because without a listenership, what do you have?
TN: It took seven long years to make [Dare to be Different]. One of the things that's really special about this movie is that you got the rights for a lot of the music. I don't know if people realize it, but sometimes a documentary is lucky if they can get the rights to one song, and they have to pay a lot of money for it.
EG: I co-produced the movie with Roger Senders, who's also an entertainment attorney. So he was extremely helpful in the legal department for us. But we did hire one of the best lawyers in Los Angeles who deals with fair use. And so he was able to help us navigate some of the fair use in the film, including visuals, the music…the publishing rights. Quite honestly, there were so many people in the industry that we interviewed that were huge fans of WLIR, so they were very helpful and they wanted to see this movie get made.
TN: Now that a lot of time has passed, when you look back at this era of music, do you think it's going to stand the test of time?
LD: A great song is a great song is a great song at the end of the day, right? Our youngest daughter, Jillian, her two favorite songs in the world are “Smalltown Boy” by Bronski Beat and [Billy Idol’s] “Eyes Without A Face,” which is actually number four now on TikTok. When you go to concerts and see 16-year-olds with Smith shirts, and original Blondie shirts, you realize that it [has] carried down generation to generation.
TN: You spend a significant amount of time focusing on the fans and the club scene and concerts and the culture that was part of the whole [WLIR] station experience. Why was that an important ingredient to WLIR’s success?
EG: We had the clubs, we had the fashion, we had the New York invasion, we had the British invasion. And the rise and fall of [WLIR] against the mega stations of New York City. If you didn't include all of those aspects [in the film], you wouldn't get the full picture of what we experienced. It was so important to include the guys from [Long Island club] Malibu and include all of those clips of the commercials for the clubs.
I used to go to all those clubs and that was part of our experience because we didn't we have the internet. Larry would say on the radio, I'm going to be at [the club] 007 tonight and come on down. I was like, OK! Hang out and listen to great music. There were some people, even friends of mine, that didn't “get” it. So I would go to the clubs to find those people that got it, that understood what I was so obsessed with.
TN: We can take some questions from the audience.
Audience Member: I listened to WLIR from 1976 on, and I remembered when you did the format change. I knew it was a business decision, but did you have any personal regrets about leaving that old music behind and the old friends that you made in the seventies, say bands like the Band and Hot Tuna and the Grateful Dead?
DM: Absolutely. Those are people you worked with closely. Those are people that had great successes because of their mutual relationship with the radio station. That was a very difficult decision. It was not over the course of a couple of days; that was months in coming. In the end it was done because of things that were beyond our control. And yes, that is radio and that is business. Of course, I had reservations about it. It was one of the toughest decisions I made in my life. Looking back on it, my God, it went well. I mean, it could have [gone] all wrong.
Frank Doris (from the audience): I lived through this whole era and went to [Long Island clubs] Spit and Spies and spent way too much time in Legz. And there was a real sense of the music being underground. And yeah, we felt kind of like outcasts, but who had a community where we could all gather together.
I distinctly remember when Human League’s “Don't You Want Me” became a hit on mainstream radio in 1982. And I remember thinking, “wow, that's it. New wave has broken through. It's mainstream now.” Clearly, MTV was responsible for popularizing a lot of these bands, but when did you start to see the music go from being an underground thing to being commercially accepted?
DM: Yeah. Well, the time U2 played the Nassau Coliseum [in 1985], that was like, we've come of age, right? The Cure and Depeche Mode were playing Giants Stadium. It’s the evolution of rock music. I saw the same thing happen with the Beatles, the Stones, the Who, and on and on. The B-52’s went from being a band that played at local clubs to doing weeks in Las Vegas. So that's part of rock and roll. And it's not uniquely just rock and roll. [Look at] the Swifties. Each generation has its own set of people.
At the Dare to be Different screening: Tom Needham, Kelly Leung (LIMEHoF board member), Denis McNamara, Barry Fisch (LIMEHoF manager/board member), Jeff James (LIMEHoF board member), Ellen Goldfarb, Larry "The Duck" Dunn.
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Totally Wired: A New Wave Playlist
These songs aren’t all in the movie; they're just a bunch of favorites of mine in no particular order. You wanna re-live the era? You wanna dance? Turn it up!
The Cure – “In Between Days”
Our Daughter’s Wedding – “Lawnchairs”
Talking Heads – “Burning Down the House”
The Clash – “Working for the Clampdown”
Depeche Mode – “New Life”
Generation X (Billy Idol) – “Dancing With Myself”
Blondie – “Hanging on the Telephone”
Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark – “Enola Gay”
Ramones – “Sheena is a Punk Rocker”
B-52’s – “Give Me Back My Man”
Simple Minds – “I Travel”
Tears for Fears – “Change”
Positive Noise – “Positive Negative”
Classix Nouveaux – “Guilty”
Lena Lovich – “New Toy”
Duran Duran – “Planet Earth”
B-Movie – “Marilyn Dreams”
Pete Shelley – “Homosapien”
ABC – “The Look of Love”
A Flock of Seagulls – “Telecommunication”
Heaven 17 – “We Don’t Need This Fascist Groove Thing”
Human League – “Don’t You Want Me”
Howard Jones – “New Song”
Echo and the Bunnymen – “Rescue”
The Normal – “Warm Leatherette”
The Buzzcocks – “What Do I Get?”
Martha and the Muffins – “Echo Beach”
Spandau Ballet – “Chant No. 1 (I Don’t Need This Pressure On)”
Q-Feel – “Dancing in Heaven (Orbital Be-Bop)”
New Order – “Blue Monday”
Yazoo – “Situation”
Elvis Costello – “Pump it Up”
Television – “Marquee Moon”
Bronski Beat – “Smalltown Boy”
Joy Division – “Love Will Tear Us Apart”
Gang of Four – “I Love a Man in Uniform”
Devo – “Whip It”
XTC – “Life Begins at the Hop”
Thompson Twins – “In the Name of Love”
Bananarama – “Aie a Mwana”
Culture Club – “Time {Clock of the Heart)”
Sex Pistols – “Pretty Vacant”
Pigbag – “Papa’s Got a Brand New Pigbag”
The English Beat – “Twist and Crawl”
Haircut 100 – “Favourite Shirts (Boy Meets Girl)”
Soft Cell – “Tainted Love/Where Did Our Love Go”
Tom Tom Club – “Genius of Love”
The Selecter – “Too Much Pressure”
The Specials – “Nelson Mandela”
Cult Hero – “I Dig You”
The Fall – "Totally Wired"
