Howard Stern is a mensch.
The King of All Media is not nearly as much of a bad boy as his reputation would imply.
After graduating college in 1985, I was hanging around my Dad’s house in Georgetown and began listening to this outrageous “shock jock” guy on the rock station DC101. I made the big move to New York and began working at SPIN right around the time that same shock jock also moved North to the City. At first he was on in the afternoons and I distinctly recall listening with George DuBose in the photo department. That interlude was brief (not surprisingly: it was disconcerting listening to someone talk while at the office) and shortly Howard Stern moved his show to mornings.
Before the internet, podcasts, ipods, mp3s, any of that, there was radio. Until the introduction of the Sony Walkman it was records or tapes at home, radio in the car. Howard, he was always Howard, so much so that when someone did refer to him as Stern it sounded distinctly off. Howard started his show at 6 am, sharp. In those days, I certainly never saw that hour on the clock, but I did turn on the radio the moment I awoke, listened until a commercial break (I could never actually tear myself away so compelling was the actual content) then booked it for work. Where I would turn on the radio to catch the last half hour or forty five minutes of show as Howard rambled on long past his allotted air shift. I had friends, like the photographer David Godlis, who awoke at 5:30 so as to be ready to hit record and capture every minute on the air to cassette tape.
Everyone listened to Howard, and I mean everyone. His radio show was utterly ubiquitous. Every UPS van, FedEx truck, construction site, bagel shop, taxi cab,Town Car, upscale photo studio and everything in between radiated Howard, from 6 am till he went off the air around 11.
The publisher of SPIN, Bob Guccione, Jr. had this annoying habit of going to lunch with someone who offered him a random idea for the magazine which he would run with, regardless of merit. His return to the office occasionally interrupted weeks of work just reaching a climax as the absolutely unmissable closing deadline approached.
“Tama Janowitz just gave me a great idea, we’ll do a swimsuit issue!” he would confidently announce into the melee. Not next month, not keyed to summer advertisers, not with any planning, no, right now, shoveled into the issue that’s closing in less than forty eight hours. More than anything else, this was the reason Bob’s face appeared on more than one dartboard in New York City in those days.
This too was the reason I, your humble Photo Editor typed, folded, stuffed then couriered a letter to the Howard Stern Show asking if Howard would appear in SPIN in a bathing suit. Which he then immediately read on the air with predictable (and suitable) mocking. He didn’t read my name, but he might as well have. I felt the crushing opprobrium of twenty million New Yorkers laughing AT me and my silly idea for Howard to pose in a bathing suit. It was truly terrifying to this introvert, let me tell you. Nearly forty years later I can feel my ears starting to burn at the mere thought. Howard passed on the opportunity, of course, but man, feeling the absolute outer penumbra of his glaring spotlight was intense.
About five years later I received the assignment to photograph Howard in his radio studio at K-Rock. As a freelancer I had even more time to listen and Howard’s fame had only grown. Though chary of meeting my heroes I treated my time on set with Howard as a gift. By this point on my celebrity photo beat I’d learned that preparation was everything. I could shoot in two minutes (or thirty seconds, cf. Red Hot Chili Peppers) as long as I had a couple hours to set up and be ready. We set up in a second radio studio down the hall from the main one. While setting up, the show was piped in making the setup like every other shoot I’d ever prepped for. The only difference was that the show we were listening to was being generated about ten feet to our left. So weird. And after my experience with the bathing suit issue thing five years before I was kind of keenly listening to see if he would talk about the photo shoot he was about to attend.
A truly eerie thing about NYC radio stations is the quiet. Thickly padded carpet, fabric walls, acoustic tiles, all added up to utter silence. Which is a thing indicative of corporate or old money in NYC. The only other place I ever heard that kind of quiet was in boardrooms high in the air above Wall Street. Even the doors played along, not a woosh or click to be heard. Howard ended his show that day with a pre-recorded live commercial. So his voice, “Dial-A-Mattress, am I right Robin?” was still booming out of the speakers when suddenly and silently there he was, all 6’6” of him. I’m right on the upper edge of normal height, more than anything else Howard’s enormous stature shocked and surprised. I knew better than to shake his hand, germophobe, I told you, I listened to his show. I used a Polaroid, taken of my assistant sitting right where he would be as a way to make him comfortable with what we were doing and give us something to talk about and share without physical contact.
One of the reasons people go into radio is to not have to have their photos taken. Howard, self styled King Of All Media, was just the kind of diva I worried about photographing. Then in the moment, he turned out to be professional, accommodating, and cooperative; not a cantankerous bone in his body. Howard is a mensch. There is a of course a bit of self defense involved in being nice to the photographer, but there are people, Howard is one, who behave in a kind and generous way. He is a mensch. For all the transgressive, media busting shenanigans (and did I mention the dick jokes?) Howard interacts with people (like a young photographer assigned to photograph him) with a deeply moral sense of kindness.
I asked if he remembered the bathing suit thing, of course not, ‘twas a mere fleeting moment in decades of show. Perhaps his most charming move was acting like you didn’t avidly listen or in fact had never heard the show. He would literally describe things that took place the day before, or explain who his producer was.
“Dude. I know.”
“Oh, then you’ll like this,” and we were off, getting our own private version of the day’s radio show. I still made him pose, and told him to shut up when his mouth was open and I was trying to shoot. I worked fast, firing off several rolls before asking him to move to a second set over by the “On Air” sign. I figured, correctly, that meeting his professionalism with my own would allow me to get us through an unpleasant task with a minimum of mishegas. He looks pretty happy in those pictures, and more to the point never mentioned them or the experience on air. Introvert-fanboi achievement unlocked, psyche!
A couple years later I worked with Howard again, this time on the set of his TV show. He was the same excellent professional partner, though we were even more limited for time due to the constraints of television. We had to wait for him to perform Trancendental Meditation before we could shoot. I know from hearing him talk that he credits TM with much of his success. He confided in me that his dream was to be able to hire someone whose sole job was keeping people quiet while he meditated (napped). Years later he revealed on air that he had indeed hired a real battle-axe of a woman dubbed “the shusher” who, you guessed it, runs around hushing everyone during meditation hour at Sirius Satellite Radio. No matter the pressure, his kindness shone through and he was an absolute joy to work with. Some bad boy!
I worked with Howard thirty years ago, and have continued to avidly listen. Since the switch to Satellite, there are now two Howard channels broadcasting twenty four hours a day, no longer just mornings. I’ve heard pretty much every show (there are only three a week nowadays, and they start at a much more genteel seven AM) in its entirety. Which on an hourly basis, is certainly more human interaction than this introvert has had with anyone other than my wife. As Howard has grown beyond dick jokes (oh, well, actually “Cocktober” is still a yearly thing so maybe we’ve just expanded the oeuvre) he has (not only but in particular) mastered the long form interview getting famously reticent people to speak at length and in depth. I had to pull over and cry about my own father as Bruce Springsteen opined at length when prodded. I recently shared a good laugh about Dolly Parton’s homespun wisdom with my boss, the Head of an elite prep school. Meeting our heroes can go so badly but it can be so inspiring when our idols behave heroically. Remember when everyone listened to Howard? A veritable plethora of us still do. Babbabooey!
Yeah, Barbra talked for almost three hours. But, as with Bruce (and Dolly) every minute was compelling and fascinating.
Thanks Nathan.
And, fixed!