Talk to anyone who’s been on the air, and chances are you’ll eventually hear stories about groupies. Most everything you hear, no matter how strange, is probably true.
Groupies, God love ‘em, were a valuable part of the business. No matter what the format, there were regular callers to keep you company on those days/nights when you wondered if anyone was listening. I’m not saying it was always intelligent conversation, mind you, but it was entertaining.
These females were attracted to an image that was usually always wrong – that theater of the mind thing, you know. They sat there in their loneliness and created this fantasy about the guy on the radio. Once they got up the nerve, the phone call was made.
But those stories I mentioned, they provided our entertainment.
Had one call me at home once. My first marriage was gasping its final few breaths before going under and I answered the phone. The voice on the other end was that of an adult woman:
“Are you the Frank Absher who’s on KMOX?”
“Yes.”
“Are you married?”
“Yes”
(Click)
Once when I was working at a rock station in Anchorage, this nice-sounding woman began calling several of the announcers during their shifts. She was obviously lonely and not unintelligent. She told us her husband was a golf pro (in Alaska!!) and that she worked in a local donut shop.
She probably never knew that she was the subject of several discussions at our staff meetings. As luck would have it, I was about to move back to the lower 48, so I volunteered to take one for the team and actually go into the donut shop to check her out anonymously.
Well, she was quite attractive, almost a dream groupie. I dutifully reported back to the troops at the next meeting. Never did find out the outcome.
We all know that the odds of finding a good-looking, intelligent groupie are almost as slim as the groupie having a realistic picture of the jock she’s calling (There’s a reason most of us didn’t go into television.)
My favorite story has to do with the local announcer who came to the station one night with this gorgeous, well-appointed woman, “giving her a tour of the station.” When she went to powder her nose, the guy informed us that they’d talked a lot, and that night her husband was out of town, so he was making his move by taking her out to a nice dinner. Then he’d bring her to the station during his shift and off to a hotel afterward. His wife would never know.
He came back from the restaurant alone two hours later. We asked where she was.
He sighed. “She wanted to get home to call her husband and tell him she’d just gone out to dinner with me.”
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