Approximately 7AM – 8AM: Dave Sholin joins Dr. Don Rose to talk about the last interview with John Lennon just the day before. Rose takes phone calls from listeners.

by contributor Scott Rayer

Here’s all three hours of Dr. Don Rose on KFRC from December 9, 1980.

It is probably one of the few times that listeners had the opportunity to hear Dr. Don talking “straight” with all joking aside. You’ll hear that Dr. Don was not his usual happy self in this broadcast. Loads of Lennon/Beatles songs were piayed, and the newscasts gave some scant details about the circumstances behind Lennon’s death.

The three hours were recorded on a Pioneer RT-701 Reel recorder, at 3 3/4 ips. This recording would not have been possible if it was not for my college friend, Gary Langley, who opened up the world of radio and recording back in my Fresno State days in 1975 amd 1976. Gary had an unbridled enthusiasm for Top 40 radio, and an old reel recorder. He showed me some tricks that could be done with it: Higher fidelity recordings than what cassettes could do back in the day, with fewer problems of tape dropouts, too, plus editing, and with a three-headed recorder, reverb! Two years later I had enough money saved up to buy my Pioneer reel deck for $430 (equal to $1,430 in 2010 dollars). I did a modest amount of recording with the deck. Critical “once in a lifetime” recordings were done with the reel deck.

I first heard about Lennon’s death from Howard Cosell during the ABC-TV Monday Night Football broadcast. That night, KFRC said a littie bit more about it, with Candice Chamberlain on-the-air expressing her sorrow for Lennon’s death, but also expressing her appreciation for the sum total of his work and legacy he left behind for us to appreciate and enjoy. Being cognizant of the grim historical milestone of Lennon’s death, I sensed that Dr. Don Rose’s KFRC show the next day was going to be something different, but I also had to be at work by 8:00 AM, too.

So, getting up just before 6:00 AM, I cued up my reel recorder, and recorded it at 3 3/4 ips so that I could get 90 minutes of Dr. Don’s show when I was not home. If I had the luxury to stay home that Tuesday, I would have recorded it at 7 1/2 ips for the best fidelity. I did not know what to expect from Dr. Don, but I was not surprised how the show was handled. I did the recording, flipping over my tape reel just before leaving for work.