‘The Airwaves Belonged to the People’
Maybe it didn’t change everything, but beginning in 1968 WBCN in Boston helped define a generation’s music, politics and counterculture. John Scagliotti and Andy Kopkind were part of that station’s news department in the 1970s; they also created the first gay program on commercial radio anywhere, ‘The Lavender Hour’ — a reflection of what John describes in the film as BCN’s experiment as a place where white people, black people, gay people and women worked together and ‘diversity took over in a much greater way’. The Airwaves Belonged to the People: WBCN and the American Revolution tells the story of radio that was uniquely shaped by its times as it also helped shape them. On Sunday, October 4, at 4 pm, this acclaimed documentary will be shown at the Latchis Theatre on Main Street in downtown Brattleboro. Kopkind’s co-founder and administrator, John Scagliotti, who had been BCN’s news and public affairs director before becoming a documentary filmmaker, will be on hand for Q & A afterward.
‘At a time when many Americans feel powerless, the film is a reminder of how media, dissent, music and collective action can bring real social change,” says the film’s director, Bill Lichtenstein, who workshopped the documentary in its early stage at Kopkind/CID Film Camp. Lichtenstein was 14 years old when he started at WBCN in 1970 as a volunteer on the station’s Listener Line; in time he became a newscaster and announcer with his own program.
As the movie shows, WBCN had been a bankrupt classical music station. When it went back on air with a new format in 1968, it had one essential rule: play whatever you want; say whatever you think. What followed was a radio station that, along with dissent and rock and roll, helped end a war, drive an unpopular president from office, and give a voice to people who had never had one. It was transformative for FM radio as well.
Bob Marley, David Bowie, Lou Reed, Jerry Garcia, Jane Fonda and Abbie Hoffman all came through the station’s studios. WBCN gave Patti Smith and her band their first live radio broadcast. It gave Bruce Springsteen his first radio interview and his first live in-studio radio performance. The film features the night Springsteen played the Harvard Square Theater in Cambridge in 1974, opening for Bonnie Raitt — the show that prompted then-critic Jon Landau to proclaim, ‘I saw rock and roll future and its name is Bruce Springsteen.’ It also features radio legend and Kopkind friend and supporter Charles Laquidara.
But music was only part of it. WBCN ran the phone lines for Boston’s antiwar movement, broadcast from the middle of demonstrations, and, in addition to the investigative reporting of Danny Schechter and exposé, it pioneered a form of radio documentary that combined radical commentary, found sound, music and news clips. It gave a platform to the civil rights, prisoner’s rights, women’s and gay rights movements when almost no commercial outlet would. Scagliotti brings this aspect to life in the film:
The Airwaves Belonged to the People is built from more than 100,000 pieces of archival audio, photographs, film and ephemera from the era, much of it donated by the people who were there, including never-before-exhibited footage shot by Andy Warhol. It had a successful festival run in 2018, won Best Documentary at the DC Independent Film Festival, and was distributed to PBS stations nationally. An initial theatrical release in 2020 was cut short by the Covid pandemic. The film has now returned to theaters, with 35 booked so far and a goal of playing in 104, one for every point on the dial at WBCN’s 104.1 FM.
For tickets and information, go to https://latchis.com/#current Part of the proceeds will benefit the Kopkind Colony.
‘I watched the movie with awe’, The Boston Globe‘s Ty Burr wrote. So come and be awestruck. And stay for the conversation!
