ROCK RADIO LEGEND
By Rick Kaempfer
Mitch Michaels
When Mitch Michaels steps up to the
microphone at the River every weekday afternoon at 3:00pm, he brings more with him than
a good radio voice. He brings a lifetime of
experience in the format and the music. Mitch
hasn't just played these tunes. He's lived them.
"And I still love them. I really do," Mitch
admits. "The studio is right next to the general
manager's office, and when I get in there every
afternoon, I crank the first few songs. He'll
poke his head in and say, 'Hey, I can barely
hear myself think!' I say 'Hey man, just diggin'
the tunes."'
Mitch has worked at virtually every rock
and roll station in Chicago, including WDAI,
WKQX, WLUP, and WCKG, and while some
of Mitch's stories about his radio past are legendary, some of them are hard to believe for
the younger folks he meets in the radio business today. "Imagine if you will, the record is
on the turntable," he says, setting the scene,
"and I'm flipping through the albums in the
record racks looking for some inspiration. The
song is ending, and I'm just picking out my
next tune. What am I gonna play next? That's
how it was at WXRT, and that's something
that is completely foreign to some of the
younger people in radio. Imagine being able to
play absolutely anything across all different
formats – Coltrane, Miles Davis, Jimi Hendrix
– Band of Gypsies, Stones. You had the entire
spectrum of music." That was in 1972, but
18 illinoisentertainer.com november 2015
Mitch was on the radio in Chicago even before
that. He was on the FM dial when radio didn't
have any rules.
"That's not totally true," he corrects. "At
WGLD we had to play something from one of
the top 30 albums twice an hour. That was it.
Now think about what was out in 1971. We're
talking albums like Who's Next, Led Zeppelin
IV, and Every Picture Tells a Story. Oh no, do I
really have to play that? (Laughs). I still think
1971 was the greatest year in the history of
rock and roll. Anyway, one night I was doing 7
to midnight and I had a buddy in the studi