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Jim Ladd, the longtime Los Angeles FM deejay known as “The Lonesome L.A. Cowboy” who had hosted a SiriusXM show for 12 years and was the inspiration for Tom Petty‘s album The Last DJ, died Saturday of a heart attack at his L.A. home. He was 75.
His death was announced today by fellow veteran DJ Meg Griffin, who hosted Ladd’s Deep Tracks show in his place today. Griffin said his wife Helene Lodge-Ladd had asked her to announce the news at the start of his show that aired live weekdays from 2-6 p.m. PT. It was Ladd’s first national program.
“I am so sorry for the shock that just hit you as you are listening right now,” Griffin told listeners. “He never stopped caring. He delivered the truth. He lived for the music.”
“As I have always done throughout my career, I will be choosing all my own music,” Ladd said in announcing his satcaster gig. “I will be playing everything I want — from Pink Floyd to Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, from the Doors to Moby Grape — freely and with no playlists.”
He always said he was broadcasting from “high in the Hollywood Hills.”
Ladd began his satellite radio stint months after being laid off from Los Angeles radio outlet KLOS-FM in October 2011. It was his third stint at the rock station, having worked there from 1969-75, when he moved to archrival KMET until the station changed formats in 1987. After a couple of other stints elsewhere — including startup KLSX-FM, which introduced the “classic rock” format to L.A. — he returned to KLOS in the nighttime slot until his exit.
A Jim Ladd “Lord Have Mercy” T-shirt c. 1995
Erik Pedersen/Deadline
Ladd made a name for himself playing what he termed “freeform radio,” eschewing playlists and creating themed sets of music and urging listeners to call in. Famed for the catchphrase “Lord have mercy” and for dubbing his female fans “long-legged ponies,” he was a mainstay on the SoCal FM dial who also hosted the syndicated radio show InnerView, during which he spoke with rock’s biggest stars. Another popular show was Headsets, during which Ladd played thematic sets intended for listening in headphones.
RELATED: Tom Petty Dies: Rock Legend Who Fronted The Heartbreakers For 40 Years Was 66
He also was the inspiration for The Last DJ, the 2002 Petty album and title track that skewered the radio industry. Ladd’s longtime friend Petty and the Heartbreakers played the song during an intimate show at Cal State Northridge days after Ladd’s firing. “Jim Ladd was fired this week for having an imagination,” the singer said from the stage that night before lamenting how music stars now are made on “game shows.” “Everybody wins, but you get f*ckin’ ripped off.”
The band later played the album’s standout track “Have Love Will Travel,” which features the lines: “And the lonely DJ’s digging a ditch/Trying to keep the flames from the temple.”
Ladd also was a longtime friend and supporter of Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters, and it’s his voice on the singer’s 1987 solo album Radio K.A.O.S. When the group’s seminal album The Wall was released in late November 1979, Ladd debuted Side 1 in its entirety for his L.A. radio audience. He noted on-air that the songs were going to flow into one another. “You know how the Floyd does,” Ladd told his listeners.
Born on January 17, 1948, Ladd was around for the birth of the underground album-oriented rock format. He began his career in radio — what he often called “theater of the mind.” He worked at Long Beach outlet KNAC-FM in the late 1960s. An FM staple by the mid-’70s Ladd was branded the Top Rock Jock by the Los Angeles Times in 1980. The paper cited his “passion that he brings to both the songs he plays and the words that set the mood. Ladd cares, and it shows.”
He also authored the 1991 book Radio Waves: Life and Revolution on the FM Dial, which chronicled his life on the airwaves from FM’s rebellious early years through its defeat at the hands of “the format machine” in the ’80s.
Ladd tended to infuriate his bosses with frequent comments about the corporatization of radio. He often played the Kinks’ 1981 track “Around the Dial,” which laments the sudden absence of a favorite disc jockey. Griffin played the song as she announced Ladd death on SiriusXM today. Sample lyric: “Where did you go Mr. D.J.?/Did they take you off the air?/Was it something that you said to the corporation guys upstairs?”
Griffin followed that up by playing “The Last DJ”: “Well you can’t turn him into a company man/You can’t turn him into a whore/And the boys upstairs just don’t understand anymore.”
There goes the last DJ, who plays what he wants to play and says what he wants to say.
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