Radio pirates
When I was a child, I had a dream. If I had a time machine, I would have gone to the UK the in 6os. Because in my imagination it was a Wonderland with numbers of live shows of my favourite musicians: The Beatles, The Who, “Queen”, and others. I thought that everybody there should have listened to this music instead of the strong and boring USSR music at the same time.
If I really took this journey to the past, I would be very surprised — the official mass media in the UK were pretty much the same as in the USSR. The government thought that the radio was too influential as a means of mass media communication to be in someone else’s hands. The radio should be informative, educational and broadcast music, it should promote the moral values. In other words, there was no place for rock music.
It’s fair to say that there were radio stations that played popular music, for example — Radio Luxembourg. But there was another issue. They were controlled by the major record labels: Decca, EMI, etc. If you made a record in your attic and wanted to bring it to the radio, they probably would have kicked you out. When Ronan O’Rahilly, an Irish entrepreneur, decided to promote a band he recorded, he encountered exactly the same problem — BBC 1 and Radio Luxembourg didn’t accept his band.
As a Russian proverb says, there wouldn’t have been fortune, but misfortune helped. O’Rahilly, whose grandpa joined the Irish rebellion in 1916, didn’t want to give up. “If you don’t want to play this music, then I will”, — that’s what he should have thought I suppose. A dude actually created a new format for the radio station, and he wasn’t going to ask the government’s permission.
First of all, he learned that the UK governance jurisdiction ended 3 miles off the coast , and there were several stations from other countries that already had used this loophole for their transmitters on the ships. So, O’Rahilly bought a ship, put a transmitter on it, and called DJs to work. The radio itself got a name — “Caroline”, in honour of John Kennedy’s daughter.
The station went on the air on Easter Morning 1964 with The Rolling Stones’ single “It’s all over now”. The boat that rocked was born.
If you want to take a deep dive into Radio Caroline’s history, you can read the book “Radio Caroline: The True Story of the Boat that Rocked”. Here I would like to share some curious facts.
The name. Why Caroline? As I mentioned before, it was the name of president Kennedy’s daughter. As the legend goes, once she went into the Oval Office during an important meeting, and her father, the president, stopped the meeting and played with her. This story inspired the station’s founder O’Rahilly — he wanted his radio to be playful and disruptive, just like Caroline Kennedy.
About the ship. Actually, there were two ships — one in the North, named Frederica, one on the South, named Mi Amigo. But they both were known as Radio Caroline.
Broadcasting. Caroline wasn’t the first pirate radio station, but they did a lot of revolutionary things which are normal for us now. For example, they broadcasted around the clock. Where did they find so much music, you might ask. This is a good question, and I assume DJs might have repeated tracks a lot, and also they could have played unknown musicians who weren’t accepted on the official radio stations.
About the team. At this point I would like to dethrone some sweet myths we got after watching the movie. Richard Curtis created a great picture where we would like to put ourselves. Amazing music, crazy fellows, tons of fun every day. As usual, reality was quite different.
According to one of the first DJs’ words, after the radio had started its work, he spent six weeks onboard. Two DJs, two technicians and the captain. Pretty hard. But later things changed, a lot of new DJs arrived, and they could work in shifts.
A lot of DJs couldn’t swim, some had never been to sea, they suffered from seasickness as well. One of them said in the interview that he used to read the news with a brown paper bag beside him. In bad weather the crew had to eat canned food and had no opportunity to leave the ship. If you might think that DJs were kind of rich or at least had some money, you’re wrong. It was “for the idea” kind of work. And, by the way, all of the crew could have been caught by the law, so they took this risk.
Anyway, the guys spent a lot of time together. As they said themselves in the interviews, it was a great team. They ate together, had fun together, cried together, got drunk together, and so on. That’s why the pirate radio station’s DJs were different from any other radio DJs. It was much more than a family, I would say.
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What about women? “No women on board” — it was the law. Apparently, it was established after someone’s partner or wife was caught walking around the boat wearing a see-through negligee.
Myths and legends. First of all, it was true that on Caroline an international DJ team worked, and there was a kind of competition between British and American DJs. But as far as we know, they competed only in the radio room. So, did Richard Curties come up with a story when two DJs climbed the radio mast? It is hard to imagine, but it was true. Once during the storm one important cable on the mast had been ripped, the guys were waiting for the technicians from the coast, but they couldn’t come. And the DJs decided to fix the cable themselves. An absolutely crazy idea, they must have been so scared, but they did it. This story was told by one of these crazy DJs. He also mentioned that Ronan O’Rahilly was coming to the boat at that time and wanted to fire him, but after the story with the cable and the mast, Ronan forgot about it.
Another myth, thanks to Curtis again, is that the ship sunk. A dramatic ending is good for the movie, because the reality was boring. After Radio Caroline became illegal under the Marine Offenсes Act, they tried to broadcast from Netherlands’ water, but the audience decreased, and in the end the ship was sold for debts. Stupid boring reality.
The Empire Strikes back. Radio Caroline and others happily worked for several years bringing people joy and music. They overcame the problems, their popularity was high, everything seemed to be fine. But somebody wasn’t happy. British government. After years of research, they made a statement saying that the pirate stations didn’t pay loyalties, they didn’t pay taxes, and more importantly, they could be dangerous for other ships in the region — their signals could muffle others, some boats could ask for help and nobody would help. I don’t know exactly, if they made this up or not, but The Marine Offenses Act was accepted, and all the pirate stations became illegal.
What was next? BBC finally started its own entertainment radio station, and some of the most popular DJs went to it. Pirate radio stations ended their glory days in the late 1960s, but they did their part in shaping the way the radio stations are right now.
They played their part in shaping radio stations the way we know them now.
Radio Caroline still exists as an online radio station and you can listen to it if you want. A lot of pirate stations broadcast in the USA — it’s cheap and you don’t need fast mobile internet to listen to them. So, pirates are still alive, the show must go on.
Links
- Long interview with Ronan O’Rahilly https://www.offshoreechos.com/Ronan.htm
- Short history https://history.howstuffworks.com/historical-events/pirate-radio.htm
- A good told story with pictures and video https://nostalgiacentral.com/music/music-by-decade/music-1960s/radio-caroline/
- Another long-read https://radiofidelity.com/history-of-radio-caroline/
- A lot of quotes from real DJs https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-08-13/radio-caroline-reunite-50-years-after-broadcast-ship-shut-down/8801582
- A history of DJs
