The Official Dennis Elsas Website - Rock Authority, On Air Personality & Voiceover Talent

John Lennon – The Walrus and Number 9

By de_admin | December 28th, 2013

Dennis Elsas with John Lennon

Without question, my most memorable interview and on-air experience to date, was on September 28, 1974, a Saturday afternoon I spent with John Lennon. I’m very honored that the interview plays a very prominent part in the new PBS American Masters film, LENNONYC .

I had met him just a few weeks before at the Record Plant recording studio and casually asked him if he’d like to come up to the station to talk about his forthcoming album Walls and Bridges. I doubted anything would come of it, since none of the Beatles had ever visited our station before. When he showed up eager to talk, bringing with him some obscure 45’s he wanted to share with the audience, I didn’t know what to expect.

What began as an opportunity to promote the new album, turned into two hours of rare Beatle stories, insights into his immigration struggles, and John as the DJ, introducing and commenting on all the music, commercials and weather. Highlights from the interview were used in the Beatles Anthology and various documentaries. The complete show is part of the permanent collection of the Paley Center For Media (formerly the Museum of Television and Radio). Here are some favorite moments.

The Who – Roger Daltrey

By de_admin | February 28th, 2014

Under a Raging Moon

Roger Daltrey was just 21 years old in 1965 when he sang “hope I die before I get old” on My Generation, one of the Who’s earliest signature songs. It didn’t take long for that lyric line to take on ironic significance as The Who continued to tour and record over the next four decades.

Roger turned 70 this past March 1, 2014 and this truly classic rocker is still busy with an assortment of musical projects and an ongoing commitment to the charities Teenage Cancer Trust and Teen Cancer America.

I interviewed Roger Daltrey in 1985 for PM Magazine while he was promoting his then newly released solo album Under a Raging Moon. It had been just three years since the Who had broken up (for the first time) and Roger was already reflecting back on “his generation” at the age of 42.

The Who – Pete Townshend

By de_admin | February 28th, 2014

Dennis Elsas with Pete Townshend

Meeting Pete Townshend in the 1970’s, I was pleasantly surprised when he told me he often listened to my nighttime show. I wondered how that was possible, as he was living in England at the time. Pete explained that he had tapes of WNEW-FM sent to him regularly and that he often listened to my show while driving his daughter to school.

Being a huge Who fan, that was a great image to enjoy.

We’ve met up again several times since then and it was on his June 16, 1993 visit to promote his solo project Psychoderelict that he recalled his first NY appearance and the secret behind all those smashed guitars.

Elton John

By de_admin | November 28th, 2013

Dennis Elsas & Elton John

Elton John was a frequent and welcome guest at WNEW-FM in the 1970’s. One of his most historic visits happened November 29, 1974, the day after Thanksgiving, when he stopped by to co-host my show. The night before he had performed at Madison Square Garden and welcomed a “surprise” guest on-stage. Though no one could have imagined it at the time, it would turn out to be John Lennon’s final concert performance and we discussed how it happened.

Jerry Garcia – The Grateful Dead

By de_admin | November 27th, 2013

Jerry Garcia

When I met up with Jerry Garcia for a PM Magazine TV interview in a NY hotel room in late Fall 1984, the Grateful Dead were about to celebrate their 20th anniversary. The band had already begun to attract a second generation of Deadheads — extremely loyal fans who may have been too young to experience the 60’s firsthand, but were determined to embrace the experience in every way possible.

Jerry was in town to play a show with John Kahn at the nearby Capitol Theatre in Passaic, NJ. It was just one of several side projects he would often pursue. Relaxed and happy, it was surprising and sad when just a few months later he entered a difficult period that lasted nearly two years plagued by drug and health issues. Happily he and the band recovered to record 1987’s In the Dark, the album that would provide them with their first (and only) Top 10 single “Touch of Grey” (and the introduction of Cherry Garcia ice cream). “The long strange trip” would continue for almost eight more years until his untimely death in August 1995.

Memo From Scott Muni Regading The Grateful Dead

My first Dead working experience (not just as a listener) was as part of a historic broadcast on December 5, 1971, from New York’s Felt Forum a mid-sized theatre within Madison Square Garden. As was often the case that year, The New Riders of the Purple Sage were the opening act for the Grateful Dead. A Bill Graham production, it was the first live radio broadcast of the Dead in New York City and one of their earliest ever. We had the broadcast at 102.7 WNEW-FM and as the new kid on the staff, I was back at the studio to handle the station ID’s and be ready in case anything went wrong. In his role as Program Director, the legendary Scott Muni outlines the evening’s events as they are expected to unfold in this wonderful memo.

Julian Lennon

By de_admin | November 26th, 2013

Dennis Elsas with Julian Lennon

Julian Lennon was twenty-one years old when we first met and talked in 1984. He had just burst onto the music charts with the hit single and album Valotte. But his presence in the music world had been established years before for supplying his father John Lennon with the inspiration for the song “Lucy in The Sky With Diamonds” as well as being the subject of Paul McCartney’s Beatles’ classic “Hey Jude.”

With the platinum success of Valotte and a 1985 Grammy nomination for Best New Artist, it seemed that Julian was destined to continue in his father’s footsteps as a long-term recording and touring musician. Four more albums followed over the next thirteen years, but a growing sense of frustration and disappointment with the music business led Julian to pursue other artistic endeavors. He emerged as a talented photographer with well received and critically acclaimed exhibitions.

In 2011 he decided to return to making music and began work on a new album. Officially released worldwide in 2013, Everything Changes is his first album in fifteen years and the title seems to be the perfect description for Julian’s approach to his life and career.

Talking with him at WFUV in November 2013, he performed songs from his new album as we discussed a variety of subjects – including why he chose to reference a well known Beatles’ lyric in his own music, reclaim his family legacy, recording with Steven Tyler, and how a comment John once made inspired Julian to create the charitable White Feather Foundation.

To hear the complete interview and view performance video click here

Ringo Starr

By de_admin | August 24th, 2013

Dennis Elsas with Ringo starr

He was the last to join the band and it felt like he was the last to leave. His songwriting and musical skills were overshadowed by the others and yet it was his steady backbeat that kept them moving forward.

Richard “Ringo” Starkey turned 70 this year, but you’d never know it as you watch him perform on tour with the “All-Starrs.”

Since 1989 he’s toured with an impressive and ever-changing group of musicians (including Edgar Winter, Levon Helm, Clarence Clemons and Rick Derringer) that serve both as his back-up band and co-stars. Playing their own classic hits and supporting Ringo on his, the show is a joyful experience filled with positive energy and great memories.

I caught up with Ringo in July 2006 backstage at Mohegan Sun in Connecticut just before a show. We talked about his latest group of “All-Starrs,” his most recent solo album and of course that other band, the Beatles

Almost two years later in January 2008 we sat down in a New York Hotel room across from Central Park as he reminisced about Liverpool, the music that influenced him as he was growing up, and possibilities of a reunion with Paul McCartney.

Click here to listen to the full interview.

Sid Bernstein and the Beatles

By de_admin | August 23rd, 2013

Dennis Elsas with Sid Bernstein

Rock ‘N’ Roll History is filled with a wide assortment of personalities and Sid Bernstein was one of it’s most unlikely heroes. As a 45 year old talent promoter working for the General Artist Corporation in New York City, he was intrigued by the reports he was reading in the British press about a young English group that was creating “hysteria.” Despite the fact that his own agency was not interested in persuing them, he reached out on his own to the band’s manager, Brian Epstein, at home, and wound up booking the Beatles into Carnegie Hall long before America experienced Beatlemania.

The phone call took place early in 1963, the Beatles played Carnegie in February 1964 and Sid brought them back to perform the first rock show in a major sporting arena at Shea Stadium in August 1965. Sid would go on to be involved with an assortment of rock and pop performers, most notably guiding the early career of The Young Rascals. He always held out hope and actively tried to re-unite the Beatles for just one more show, but of course, it was never to be.

Sid Bernstein, who passed away recently (Aug 20, 2013) at the age of 95, was described by almost everyone as a really nice man (‘a mensch’) devoted to his musical passions. I experienced that myself when I got to interview him for my documentary, “It was 40 Years Ago Today” chronicling the initial days of the Beatles conquering America. Sid recalls his first conversation with Brian Epstein, a very unlikely beginning to one of the greatest chapters in Rock ‘N’ Roll history.

To hear the entire documentary, click here

Richie Havens

By de_admin | August 16th, 2013

Dennis Elsas with Richie Havens

The first time I ever met Richie Havens was in May 1968. I was working at my campus station WQMC (Queens College) and he was a rising folk-star and a staple of the newly blossoming FM airwaves. We talked at his manager’s office on East 55th Street and it was the first artist interview I ever did for the radio. It would be over a year later in August 1969 that a much larger audience would be introduced to him and experience his musical power as he electrified the opening of the Woodstock Music and Arts Festival.

We met and spoke many times through the years after that both on and off the air.
In May 2008 (40 years after that initial interview) I was hosting an event for the opening of the Museum at Bethel Woods (on the site of the Woodstock Festival). It was the perfect opportunity to ask Richie just how he happened to become the opening act of the Festival.

Just a few months later we were together again. This time it was in Studio A at WFUV, as Richie was promoting his newly released album Nobody Left to Crown, telling stories, performing live and making everyone that met him that day feel just a little bit better. His recent passing, on April 22, 2013, has left a great void not only in the musical world but also among his many fans and friends who experienced his positive and spiritual energy.

Listen to that complete show here.

For details about this Sunday’s remembrance of Richie, click here.

Bill Wyman — The Rolling Stones

By de_admin | December 9th, 2012

Dennis Elsas with Bill Wyman

He’s played with a band called Willy and the Poor Boys and still performs with the Rhythm Kings, but Bill Wyman remains best known as the long time bass player for The Rolling Stones. He joined the Stones in Dec 1962 and for the next thirty years recorded and performed with the group as they became “the world’s greatest rock ‘n’ roll band”. Recently he reunited with them briefly as a special guest on stage as they kicked off their 50th anniversary celebration.

After leaving the Stones in 1992 to focus on getting his personal life straightened out, he has written numerous books, continued to play and record music and even opened a successful London restaurant called Sticky Fingers. An avid collector of many things, Wyman has often been called the Rolling Stones archivist. His impressive coffee table style Rolling With The Stones book is a wonderful insight into the band’s history, filled with a remarkable collection of photos, posters, ticket stubs, and stories that only he could tell.

I spoke to Bill Wyman in the fall of 2002 when the book was released and among the many subjects we covered, I wanted to learn the definitive story of how the band got their name.

In The Archives

Welcome to the Archives

In The Archives