SIDEBAR - DICK BIONDI

The fast-talking wild man of Chicago radio, Dick Biondi called himself The Screamer, The Big Mouth, The Big Noise from Buffalo, The Wild Eye-tralian, and The Supersonic Spaghetti Slurper. Praising his energy, presentation, and appeal to young listeners, pioneer radio programmer Mike Joseph called Biondi one of the all-time great Top 40 disc jockeys and said that he sounded like a rock jock should. Biondi came across as a young man excited by what he was saying, playing, and doing. At WKBW in Buffalo, New York, he earned notoriety for going to Memphis, Tennessee, and picking up leaves from the lawn at Elvis Presley's Graceland mansion to give away to listeners. He was eventually fired for encouraging his listeners to throw rocks at his boss's car. He landed in Chicago in 1960, where WLS had just adopted a Top 40 format. Biondi's work earned high ratings and won him Deejay of the Year honours twice from the trade publication The Gavin Report. After a stint at KRLA in Los Angeleswhere he played a key role in the staging of concerts by the Beatles and the Rolling Stoneshe returned to Chicago in 1967 for a five-year run at WLS's rival WCFL before he shifted to primarily oldies-format stations. Ben Fong-Torres