Rewind

The people who were there look back twenty years to the sixties' pirates

PHILIP BURCH
(Boss of Radio London)

"Nothing as dramatic has happened in broadcasting as the pirate radio era, certainly in sound broadcasting."

TONY WINDSOR
(Radio London Chief DJ)

"People still stop me in the street and say 'When are the pirates coming back?' It's a lovely thought but it's finished and I think we have to accept that. What it has done is to give the listeners so much more professional broadcasting and competition and changed the whole face of radio." (Speaking in 1982)

KENNY EVERETT
(Radio London D.J)

"We didn't know about groovy until the pirates came along. We'd only had the BBC.'

JOHNNY WALKER
(Radio England and Caroline DJ)

"I think a large part of the romantic appeal of the pirate stations was that we were pirates and we were out there on a boat. The listeners knew that there wasn't a boss breathing down our necks saying 'you mustn't say this' and 'you mustn't say that or 'you mustn't play this'... There was an exhilaration and that feeling of excitement and anticipation that you were going back out to be free again. To challenge the whole might of the British Government."

SCREAMING LORD SUTCH
(Boss of Radio Sutch)

"The music being played on the BBC and other programmes was very, very straight. They wouldn't play much rock 'n' roll and the BBC seemed to have banned every other record so we decided to set up our own station."

TONY BLACKBURN
(Radio Caroline and London DJ)

"I am very proud to have been a part of that era in broadcasting. Quite honestly if I lost the job here I wouldn't rule out the idea of going back to the pirate ships."

RONAN O'RAHILLY
(Boss of Radio Caroline)

"Before Caroline popular music was literally non-existent on the dial. There was two hours on a Sunday afternoon when you could hear Alan Freeman do a show on the Light programme and that was it. To go from that to 24 hours a day was a very significant step. Using that as an analogy I think we could go at least as big a step again. There should be 30 to 40 stations operating in London alone."

DAVE CASH
(Radio London DJ)

"Caroline made its statement in the sixties and now it is now worth recapturing that statement or trying to. I think that now the land-based pirates have something to say."

Copyright 1987 TX Publications / 2001 amfm.org.uk. All rights reserved.