Joy, a Podcast. Hosted by Craig Ferguson - Shadoe Stevens

Episode Date: March 5, 2024

Meet Shadoe Stevens, who amongst many many things was the announcer on Craig’s old late night show. You can’t mistake his iconic voice for anybody else in the business. Listen to him talk about his career, drugs and his new endeavor mental radio! EnJOY! See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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my name is craig ferguson the name of this podcast is joy i talk to interesting people about what brings them happiness here's shadow stevens he was the announcer on my old late night show but he's been the about what brings them happiness. Here's Shadow Stevens. He was the announcer on my old late night show. But he's been the announcer on so many different shows, and he's done so many things, and to be honest, so many drugs. Listen to this and enjoy.

All right, so America knows you as Shadow Stevens. I know you as Shadow Stevens. I also, by the way, let me just apologize. If you're watching this as opposed to listening to it, it feels like we're in a dental office waiting room a little bit. Pretty much, yeah. Yeah, I'm sorry about that. We have a plant here.

And I don't know if you remember magazines. Remember magazines? It was like a blog, but papery. Sure. Right. Well, they used to have magazines and old magazines in the dental office. Life.

Life. What was the other one? People magazine. People. People. Us. Us Weekly. Yeah.

The stars, they're just like us. Yeah. Anyway, look, America knows you as Shadow Stevens. I know you as Shadow Stevens. That's not how you started out. No. Like, you were Terry... Ingstead.

Terry Ingstead. A proud Norwegian name. Right. So your people are from Norway. Yes. But you grew up in... Jamestown, North Dakota. The cattle and the wheat and the folks that can't

be beat and and also gota north dakota that was a song when i was growing up they had a contest for people to come up with the north dakota song and the one that won was you ought to go to north dakota see the cattle and the wheat the folks that can't be beat. Even as a child, I thought that's really embarrassing. You know what's interesting? I heard that song and I felt a little bit like I should become a serial killer just hearing that. Because it's a dark place. Well, it can be. Certainly in the winter.

Well, I always think it's a bit like Scotland. People forget it just gets dark in the wintertime all the time. And it makes you crazy, doesn't makes you crazy yeah there's no sun no sun and just and and gray skies that go on forever back there are tough yeah they're tough way tougher than me i have two brothers that still live there and um you're tougher than me nope they. You're people farmers? No, no. I grew up in really Norman Rockwell. I had an amazing childhood. In fact, so amazing that I was embarrassed to talk about it for a long time because people talk about how tragic their childhood was and how they were beaten. And my parents didn't drink or smoke or use drugs or curse or fight in front of the kids.

My parents owned toy stores and clothing stores. That's setting the bar too high. Yeah. My dad was a basketball star called the Hooker. He could make hook shots from center court and he was a North Dakota legend. And then he went into business and he started Tiny Town, which is a little tiny store with children's clothes. Then he moved into clothing and then he moved into toys. Then he moved into go-kart tracks. And then we had firework stands on the 4th of July. And of the five kids, each child would run a different firework stand.

We had the fireworks displays on our street with the leftover fireworks from the fireworks stands we would bring down to our house. So I always thought that your childhood was very rural, but it doesn't sound that rural then. It sounds like you- It's in town of 15,000 people. Right, okay. It's kind of rural. All my friends were pretty much farmers, or we worked on farms. Oh, you worked on farms?

I did. I did. And I came to the meaning of life. I should tell you about when I worked for the aliens. Okay, yeah. It's a good story. You should definitely tell me about that. My friends and I, one summer, worked for these aliens in Spiritwood, North Dakota.

Now, automatically, you think, hmm, sounds like the Twilight Zone. Is that a town? Spiritwood. Yeah, well, in an area there's Spiritwood Lake and then there's Spiritwood the town, which was, you know, a granary and a couple of shops or something. Okay. And he had a big farm and they were a little family of little

they looked like what people call greys. They had skulls that mushroomed. And all of them, the father and the mother. So they really were aliens? At the time, we just thought they were unusual. We didn't really think about that. And we went out and we would work on hauling bales of hay all day long. And you'd grab them with two hooks and lift them up into the truck from five in the morning until eight at night. And we would go back to the house and have Thanksgiving every day. And it was turkey and it was roast beef and it was pies and

everything. And all my friends, every day, and all my friends, there was really hard work, you know, out in the sun. And we would sit and we would joke. And the alien father would sit and he was very quiet, man. And he would go and we would say like the punch line is so he said zenith and everybody like and he would go and then every few minutes for the next five or ten minutes he would go and zenith i've been doing that my whole life so now where are they from these okay i'm going to tell. For years, I remembered them as having a very Ray Bradbury, Twilight Zone name. And I couldn't remember. And no one that I talked to could remember. People I talked to in the town.

And five years ago, finally, I realized I have to talk to my friend, Ray Bukley, who worked on the farm with me. And I called him in Missouri. And I said, Ray, you remember the aliens we worked for, the guys with the mushroom heads? And he goes, yeah. And he said, I've been trying to think of their name. And I put it in my book, in my contact list, so that I would never forget because what he said was, oh, you mean Virgie Shock. Virgie Shock.

Virgie Shock. The name of the Shocks? You worked for the Shocks and they were aliens? Virgie, like on the verge of shock. And Virgie was like- And it sounds like a name an alien would make. Yeah, Virgie should probably show up for Virgil. And no one knows whatever happened to them.

Nobody knows about them in town. They're not around anymore. Nobody remembers them. I think they may have erased their... Oh, you think it was like a Men in Black thing? Maybe. Okay. I can't be sure.

So, why do they have Thanksgiving dinner every day? I'm kind of like, I'm sorry to be Larry King about this, but I... Because it's very hard work. And this is all high school students who need to eat a lot. Apparently. But it literally was.

It was turkey and it was roast beef and it was pies and corn and potatoes and everything. And we would eat and eat and eat. I get eat well but i i get that but but do you think that they came to our planet because they really liked thanksgiving dinner i think we may be being groomed i'm not sure okay right so you work in there and they obviously they they want hay or something like that and they but you're working for the aliens. How do you get from this idyllic Norman Rockwell style childhood and you start looking towards California and Hollywood? What time of life is it? What's the era? What's the decade? What's going on with you?

was two years old my mother taught me how to how to play records on a record player and I was obsessed apparently from the very beginning when a record on play at home it's the greatest I started over again and and then she taught me to draw you can get a residency in Las Vegas now just doing that I know unbelievable yeah that didn't work for me yeah I was that age so I was obsessed with all this and I discovered my dad's tape recorder when I was eight years old. And I started recording stories on the tape recorder and everybody was fascinated by it. And they were probably terrible, but I was hooked. And I would edit them together by pausing the tape recorder and add another piece and be able to tell a story. And then my uncle, who owned radio stations, discovered that i loved this and

he sent me a kit that would allow me to broadcast into another room and this was magic to me why do you when this is that you're making your own radio show i was 10 years old and i soldered this thing together and i and then i went to the local you had a soldering iron at 10 years old yeah got a soldering iron and and then I put it all together and I went to the local tv shop and I said how do I soup this up they go well you can answer that and you have to put up a big antenna so I crawled to the top of our three-story home with a wire in my teeth and a hammer in my pocket and crawl right now I'm beginning to think that it's not a normal rockwell childhood, because you've got a 10-year-old kid

climbing up an antenna above the house. Hanging upside down, hammering in a loop, so that I can put the antenna to the top of a tree in the backyard, so I could broadcast a mile in every direction. And I did this every day. I had my radio station and they interviewed me on the man on the street and uh a local radio station and they said well what are you interested in well art and uh radio radio really yeah and i tell them about my

pirate radio station and they got really interested he said you should come down here maybe we'll put you on the air so then at 11 they put me on the air and put it in the paper as the world's youngest disc jockey and to have my picture with my stack of 45s and a big smile and a microphone just like this you know an inch away and and that was like the beginning of that was beginning and i did that for a couple of years and then worked part-time then went to the University of North Dakota to study art. Art. Okay. It was an art major for three years.

Yeah. Cause I know, I know that you still paint and you still, yeah, well I do more multimedia, but I I'm kind of captured by putting ideas together that, you know, don't necessarily go together. Well, I see now the thing is that I know about you that maybe some people don't know about you is how diverse and wildly creative your output is. Because you go through being the world's youngest disc jockey,

then you end up in Hollywood to do what? To do radio here? Well, I'll make it real quick. I went to the University of Arizona for two years. And then I majored in drama and journalism. So I learned to perform and to write. And then I got a job in Boston. So you could act and then you could report on your acting.

Yeah, both. I'm covering my bases. Write your own reviews. And then I was hired in boston and got real real successful in boston and 33 of all people listening to radio were listening and and you're playing rock and roll right rock and roll yeah it's top 40 station right and i started doing television there as well okay and then a year later i was brought out to Los Angeles. And I've been here ever since. I came to the biggest radio station in the country, KHJ.

So this is what, like 70s? This is like 69. Okay. And then the guy who had put me on television in Boston was now the producer of the Steve Allen show. And so he hired me to be Steve Allen's sidekick. On camera, announcer, talk things over. Oh, Steve, Steve.

I'm way out of my, yeah, exactly. I was way out of my element. I sweated like, like Albert Brooks in, in, uh, what was that movie? Broadcast News. Broadcast News. It was me. The makeup artist would come over and, you know, you really perspire with this. You have no idea. It's soaked underneath. So what happens, but you've become very successful at this point.

Now, I also know about you that you have, not only do you have a great deal of positive energy, you have a great deal of negative energy, right? So you have a self-destructive mechanism in there as well is that beginning to kick in at this point as well it was starting it was when i went to the university of arizona i discovered a wonderful drug called desbutol i've never even heard of that yeah it was um a brilliantly subtle combination of methamphetamine and uh barurate. So it would give you the energy and take off the edge, and you could get a bottle of 250 in a prescription.

So I got a lot done. I felt good about it while you were doing it. I felt good about it. Life was good for a while. It was highly abused and then discontinued. I feel like I missed out a little bit. I never got Desbutol. It sounds like a prescription speedball.

And as you did more, of course, there is a learning curve. And then things get dark. But then a guy says, you know, you got to try some weed. It's like, it's a plant. It doesn't lead to heroin. So I do it, and I smoke this hookah, and I, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Now I'm in the ceiling moving with the music, and I understand that this is like trying to explain the color blue to a blind man. It's experiential. And I bought an ounce that night, and within a month, I bought a pound. And then I moved to Boston. So what kind of weed are we talking about? I don't know what it was.

It's like grass, right? It's not like hashish or anything? No, it was just grass and a big four foot tall hookah with multiple tubes and blacklight posters and... It's interesting you talk about it because people that do weed and everybody does weed now. It's like America reeks of marijuana. Like you go out in the cities everywhere smells like marijuana and people who take marijuana always say it's organic like so it's not dangerous i mean i i've seen so many i

don't know if you've seen this but i've seen a lot of people ruin their lives with marijuana but it's so subtle that they don't know. I heard someone say it's like being nibbled to death by rabbits. It's like, because if you're an alcoholic or you take coke or heroin, it's pretty obvious you're destroying yourself. But with marijuana, you just destroy yourself with smug justification, it seems like, over and over, telling people... Smug justification? Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, there is a certain aloof condescension about the higher state of awareness that you're suddenly in i also i also get angry people that do a lot of weed i'm like do a proper it's an adolescent drug do a grown-up drug like coke coke or heroin this adolescent crap i can hear the music better shut up shut up less crap. I can hear the music better. Shut up. Shut up.

Get fucked up properly, for God's sake. Or don't. Yeah. So you get into weed and you're like hearing blue and stuff. Well, you know, it was, you know,

colorful at the beginning and then by the time I got to Boston, the guy says, you want to try some acid? Well, what's acid? Well, it's like grass, more intense, lasts longer. So I did that and, the guy says, you want to try some acid? Well, what's acid? Well, it's like grass, more intense, lasts longer. And so I did that. And then the first experience, I always tell

it the same way. I'm double parked on Beacon Hill and I'm the driver and my friends get out to get donuts and it comes on and my hands are on the steering wheel. My friends are skipping down the street in slow motion. Now you would think that anybody that had any sense would never do that again. Yeah, I know. But no. By the time I got to LA a year later we did it every weekend now I'm smoking dope every day then I get a prescription but you're being very successful at the same time very motivated right I show up and I get

things done and so you mostly you're high you're working high all the time oh yeah okay yeah and you're so you're playing are you doing America's top 40 or anything like that? No, no, no. That was a long time. There's a long way to get to that. But you're doing a lot of drugs. You're doing acid.

You're doing the Debutol thing's gone, right? Debutol. Well, that was gone, but now it was replaced by a prescription doctor, a guy that worked for me. Now, I went from KHJ and I quit because they didn't know, because I was doing television and they didn't promote me. I'm familiar with that situation. We don't know whether you want to be in radio or television. They promote each other.

You don't get that. And they wouldn't even put it in the contract that the next full-time or the bigger position that became available i would get so i quit and then i was hired by their competition and within a couple of months they made me program director okay and now i'm going to art center school part-time and i'm happy and all of a sudden he gives me this because i said we should be playing better music and he liked the research I did. So now you're the boss.

So he fired the program director and made me program director. So you're the boss of the radio station and you're getting twisted on all sorts of what you can... It's starting to amp up. Right. Now one of the guys that worked for me... This is in LA or Boston?

This is in LA. Right. And a one-armed man who worked for me said, you know, you've got a lot of responsibilities. You should see my doctor, Dr. Lex. Sounds like a Marvel villain, doesn't it? Yeah, he's out by the airport, Dr. Lex. Actually, he was at Wilshire and La Cienega. And he was the prescription doctor to the stars.

And he weighed 350 pounds and wrote his prescriptions on his stomach. And he would go, well, you had dexedrine last month. How about black beauties? Okay. You know, Dr. Lacks, things are going really well. I'm getting a lot done. Sometimes I have to stay in the studio through the night, and I've got a lot of people I'm responsible for, and I'm having a little trouble sleeping. He goes, well, you had Quaaludes last month. How about 2-in-1? Yeah, that would be good. And he would sell me poppers from behind the desk for cash. Oh, my God. So poppers is amyl nitrate, right?

Amyl nitrate, yeah. Kids don't know about that anymore. I don't think it's out there anymore, amyl nitrate. I hope not. It's very bad. But who knew? I was doing what seemed like a reasonable thing to do at the time. I'm kind of, these types of drugs, I mean, look, I'm no stranger to drugs and alcohol,

but then, you know, but what I, I never got into those kind of like the quaalude-y type things. I've heard people talk about quaaludes,

like, They were like buffers. They made you relax and feel really good. I thought they just like knocked you off. If you had the cocaine or if you had the,

you know, speed, you know, you have the energy with the chill. It's not getting in the way of your life at this point? Well, and then there's the acid every weekend or psilocybin or peyote or little mushrooms that came from the Amazon that looked like aliens. And you'd eat them and your nervous system would turn into rainbows. Wow. Good times.

Yeah, so at this point, I'm guessing a stable family life and relationship isn't something that's happening for you. It's starting to come unglued. Right. I was married to my childhood sweetheart, and we had a son, and I'm busy, you know, but this radio station is very very successful and

it beat the station I came out to work for and then I went to um to K-Rock I started K-Rock and was hired and that's a whole story we could go on for an hour about K-Rock it's um it's a stunning story it's an institution in this town. It is. And at the time, it was the brainchild of a guy that put together 13 partners and ran through money like crazy. And this is all drug-filled craziness then. All this stuff is going on, right? Well, he, yeah.

Well, I mean, pretty much everybody did. And he offered me a job from KRLA, which was at the Huntington Sheridan Hotel and state-of-the-art studios with engineers, to this funky little place in Burbank that he had put together. But he said, you know, I'm getting this FM station and I want you to do something original like you did for KRLA on FM. And what kind of car are you like? Porsche? Yeah. Got it. What color?

Wow. So he gives me this Porsche and I'm making money and going over there and waiting for the FM. Are you doing coke at this point then? Is coke coming in? Not very often. Right. It was mostly, you know speed and weed

the craig ferguson fancy rascal stand-up tour continues throughout the united states in 2024. for a full list of dates and tickets go to thecraigfergusonshow.com see you out there i I'm Angie Martinez. Check out my podcast where I talk to some of the biggest athletes, musicians, actors in the world.

We go beyond the headlines and the soundbites to have real conversations about real life, death, love, and everything in between. This life right here, just finding myself,

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Listen to the true story of the fake zombies on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Guess what, Mango? What's that, Will? So iHeart is giving us a whole minute to promote our podcast, Part-Time Genius. I know. That's why I spent my whole week composing a haiku for the occasion. It's about my emotional journey in podcasting over the last seven years, and it's called Earthquake House.

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So you're doing Speed and Weight, but I want to try and figure out how you get from that to stuff like the Trax movie and the big kind of mainstream stuff. Yeah, let's fast forward. Right, okay. So there's, you know, you're America's sweetheart in Hollywood Squares and you're doing America's top four and all that. How did you get from

like drug fueled, crazy alien mushrooms to, to be in more mainstream? What's, what's the, what's the bridge? Well, you know, I went through radio, had big success, quit in rages, and started my own production company. I ended up doing commercials. I did the Blues Brothers movies and Fast Time at Ridgemont High in 48 hours. Were you doing commercials for these movies? Doing commercials. I did the whole advertising campaign. Right.

And then I did this Federated, where I sold them this idea of a fast-talking Dan Aykroyd bass-o-matic pitch man who talks a mile a minute. And then at the end, my original idea was we just say we smash prices and I smash a TV with a circus hammer. And he goes, well, that's fun. Well, let's do that. And I said, well, if I do it and it's successful, will you give me creative control? Because I never want to do the same thing twice or people want to kill me. And he rolled his eyes and went,

fine. And then business went up 500% the first weekend and I was off and running and I ended up doing 1,100 commercials for them. We would do four to eight commercials a week for the next seven years. These commercials are for movies, right? a week for the next seven years. These commercials are for movies, right? These are for the federated group.

They were like a Best Buy. Oh, okay. Right, right, right, right, right. And they're all like done with me and five guys. And during this time, at the beginning of it, my drug use got worse and worse. A lot more cocaine. So this is now the 80s where everyone's in the 80s. Yeah.

Right. and a lot more cocaine. So this is now the 80s where everyone's... It's in the 80s, yeah. And then I basically, you know, I was living in Malibu Canyon and going home and going to the bathroom for a couple of hours and coming out and hearing whisper outside the window. Is there anybody outside the window? I don't know. So I put sheets over the windows and the doors and then I put quilts over the sheets

and then I put nails at one-inch intervals around the quilts, and then I took my 12-gauge short barrel, and I walked, and I stalked outside to wait and confront my destiny. Are you armed at this point? 12-gauge, short barrel, double-aught buck. You don't have to aim. You just point and pull. I'm familiar.

So I squatted down beneath the bedroom window, and I heard a rustle in the bush and I jumped up screaming, now you die, motherfucker. And I chased him through the bush. But they got away. So I went back to the bathroom to celebrate and locked the door. You've got to celebrate by having more cocaine because you're... Well, you lock the door, you put a towel under the door and then run the bath so they can't hear you. Now I can have another hit.

And then I went into convulsions and my head would crack on the floor. Crack, crack, crack, crack, crack. So you're full-blown psychosis at this point, right? I am way into psychosis. And yet you're still working and making money. It's starting to fall apart. Oh, okay. And I have video proof of it.

Some of those commercials got tragic. They were funny in a really dark and getting darker way. And I knew it was falling through my fingers and I couldn't,

and I gained 50 pounds because I didn't stop eating. I didn't stop eating. I didn't stop drinking. Now I'm drinking a quart of Canadian Club a day and Covasier and tequila and anything anybody put in front of me

every day. So I have to ask you a personal question at this point. Why aren't you dead? I don't know. You know, I think about that all the time because it got really scary. Most of the time, I was terrified. I thought people were

trying to kill me. I was looking behind me. I was like, I thought people were trying to kill me. I was looking behind me. I was trying to lose people in the car. Somebody threw a cigarette out in the car in front of me. I thought it might be a bomb. I didn't know what was real. And I literally did not know what was real. I didn't know if there really were people that I could hear. It was like outside the window, and I'm peeking out there, and it was terrifying. So my doctor said, if you're lucky, you're going to die. You're probably going to have a stroke or heart attack.

You're really out of control. And I said, I know. And he said, you've got to stop. And I go, I know. But I was so embarrassed that I grew up in this beautiful childhood. Parents didn't drink or smoke or do anything. I didn't take aspirin.

So your family are still back at home in North Dakota. They have a feeling that things are odd, but they don't really know. And finally, I had an overdose in my studio, and my friends found me at four in the morning, and they got afraid. And they talked to my family, and they ganged up on me and talked me into going into rehab so you go it was an intervention that they did and my mother said you know you've got to get help you know you maybe betty ford or something so i went to betty ford and they said there's no room betty ford was still around and yeah would come to your house with tea and cookies and stuff.

They found me a room in Scripps in La Jolla. And I went there and I thought I'd give it a day. And then my roommate that they gave me made me laugh. And that's what it took. It took laughing my way forward. And so I'll give it a day. Well, I'll give it another day. And we would write poetry and we would draw and cover the walls. And we'd sit give it a day. Well, I'll give it another day. And we would write poetry

and we would draw and cover the walls and we'd sit and smoke cigarettes by the window and laugh till three in the morning and then get up at seven and start again. You're still in touch with that person? I am. And unfortunately, he is diminished in his... He went out a bunch of times.

So he didn't stay clean and sober then he didn't and entirely oh he has been for years but then he started having a bunch of seizures and so he lives a really quiet slow life now and is not the guy that was going 100 miles an hour and making me laugh all the time but he was really the reason that that i got sober And then the counselor came in about two weeks in, and he said, you know, you've got a lot of anger issues. Maybe you should get a sense of humor. If you don't have a sense of humor about who you are and where you've been and what you've done and where you're going, you're in for a rough ride. Life gets tricky. And a bell went off in my head, and I woke up the next morning and started meditating.

I'd learned to meditate back with the Beatles and meditated with the Beatles well I learned because of them all right okay and you made it near the Beatles yeah yeah and I started meditating and then I haven't stopped for 38 years meditate every day every day I learned deeper kinds of meditation I meditated last night from 3 30 until 5 5.15 in the morning. What does that look like? Do you chant? Do you have... No, it is a focused kind of meditation, and I have an altar that I had built 20 years ago by a Chinese artist named Po Shun. And it's made from wood from all over the world, from the Amazon and from Africa and the Himalayas, and it's made from wood from all over the world from the amazon and from africa and the himalayas

and it's really beautiful and it's like a jigsaw puzzle with a secret ways to open the doors and uh secret compartments and things and nobody sees the inside but me has things that that i find empowering and i do a focused meditation i ended up it's a kind of a combination between Vedanta that I learned in the 70s and then self-realization Kriya Yoga. And it's a highly focused kind of meditation that takes you into a breathless state. So you get to a place where your body gets so quiet that your fingers are numb and your body feels like it's the skin of a soap bubble, you know, maybe a foot away. Sounds like that thing you were getting in Arizona, the thing with Desputol. Yeah, it's everything I ever wanted in drugs, but with no downside. Nice. So this is when then, so in your life when you get clean and sober, this is when the mid-80s?

Yeah, now that's when everything changed right um and it literally did i i uh when i got when i came back to la i got into martial arts i started doing yoga i meditated every day i went to meetings i was being of service i was happy being alone and not in a marriage where i was fighting all the time. I didn't want to ever have another relationship. And nine months into my sobriety, a guy that worked for me met a beautiful model at the bank and brought her over to the studio to hear what we were doing. That's Beverly.

No, I have to say, I mean, you know, I'm very fond of you, Shadow, but the best part of you is Beverly. There's no question. Yeah, yeah, I get it. My wife is just a work of art. She's a spectacular human being. She really is. Spectacular human being.

Now, for people that don't know Beverly, let's talk, because she, I think, a lot of the joy of your life is your, I mean, when I observe you, the joy of your life is your wife and kids. You know, it seems to be, you give the most wholesome Christmas cards every year. You and the kids all wearing outfits.

And I mean, it's spectacular. And now the grandkids as well. And everyone is very beautiful. They are. So talk to me about, because Beverly is not just beautiful. She's a very unusual person, Beverly. I kind of halfway think maybe she should be a guest here. She could easily be.

Yeah, because she has this joie de vivre this joy of life so what happens when you when you meet her what what's it like you know what it's i walk in the room and i'm happy being alone remember and i say uh hey so hi um yeah and i'm trying to be cool because the most beautiful person i've ever seen in my life And I'm trying to be cool because the most beautiful person I've ever seen in my life. She's spectacular. And she's African-American and never occurred to me to date. I just didn't.

I grew up in North Dakota. There weren't any black people in North Dakota. I have no frame of reference at all. And I'm looking at this out of the side of my eyes. Oh, why do you play her? Oh, yeah, you should play her. And she leaves. And I say, who was that?

He says, that's this international model. I met her at the bank. Does she sing? Yeah. Get her back. So she came back. And at the time, I had sold a project that I wrote called Shadow Vision, which is crazy. It's sort of like Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy on speed.

And we were doing this jingle in it. The first thing we ever did together was to sing, Oh, you perspire. Yeah, you perspire. And she'd go, And I'd go, So we did that about a hundred times. It's getting a little weird. It was so funny.

We've been together ever since. So that, I mean, you just get together and... It's magic. It was so funny. We've been together ever since. So that, I mean, you just get together and... It's magic. It was just magic. Now, is this when your career starts to go in a little more of a mainstream direction?

Yeah, well, like right away, because Federated was so popular all over the West Coast. It was the most successful advertising campaign, regional advertising campaign in U.S. history. And because you couldn't watch television without seeing these commercials,

and they changed every 10 days. So there was something new, something new, and they were all funny. And as a result of that, I got a three-picture deal with Dino De Laurentiis, famous producer. So he gives you a three-picture deal with Dino De Laurentiis, famous producer. So he gives you a three-picture deal as an actor? Yes.

Okay. And I'm going off to do this movie Trax, which was really exciting. Trax is a real find for people. Trax is so insane. Trax is T-R-A-X-X. Right. Can you give us a brief rundown of the synopsis?

Okay, Trax was a mercenary who is tired of the mercenary business, and he just wants to be the next famous Amos. He wants to bake cookies. So he takes his savings and goes off to a cabin in Texas somewhere and starts baking sushi cookies and puppy swirls. And he just thinks these are really creative. They're terrible. And he runs out of money and he's brought into town.

He goes into town as a town tamer, a town overrun by crime in the mafia. And he goes in to whip things together. Oh, right. What's his name? Mike tracks? No, just tracks. He's just one. He's just tracks just he's just one there's a whole bunch of really things are really wrong

with this movie he didn't even give like a name like bob tracks or something it's like it's just tracks okay and he makes cookies but he's a mercenary and he's come to clean up the town yeah so far i think this is a great movie it It's pretty funny. And I've met a lot of people who say it's one of their favorite movies of all time. Quentin Tarantino at your show. Right, that's right.

When I met him. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I said, I want to introduce myself. The only guy I ever introduced myself at your show. And I said,

I'm just really, I know you. Shadow Stevens tracks. Went, yeah, that's funny. He's seen every movie in the world. He goes,

no, it's a great movie. It's hilarious. And went, well, that's a funny little weird movie. He's seen every movie in the world. No, it's a great movie. It's hilarious. I went, well, you just made my whole life. Yeah, yeah. Well, it is a thing. People should know about that movie, because I haven't seen all of tracks,

because I can't find all of tracks. Yeah. I cut it down, because it had the worst soundtrack in the history of movies, and I couldn't deal with it. It was really badly put together, and it was a really funny script. It was meant to be funny. Oh, really?

Yeah, absolutely funny and scathingly funny, and it would never get made today, ever. Right. So I cut out all the parts that didn't work and just made a more contemporary soundtrack and put it up on YouTube. Were you the director of them? No, no.

In fact, I went out the first day of shooting. I was all excited. I went out in this beautiful set of this town and went, wow, this is great. And then I see that they have three electric chairs in the town square and the villains were in three different, like those childhood pajamas with the footsies yeah and uh red white and blue and I'm horrified and I go to the to the producer and I say I've got a really good sense of humor what what is this yeah so no people can love this that's so funny and i wrote in my journal that night we're doomed

this is never going to work out they're going out and drinking every night and rewriting the script and putting in stupid stuff that you can't make this funny so tracks is not a cookie no it's not no in fact what happened is that uh dealertta's company went bankrupt as it was being finalized. And Jay Leno had done a movie at that same time. And they were all thrown together. I think I remember that. What was that? What was Leno's movie? Do you remember?

I don't remember. I think I know what you're talking about, though. He was also a kind of detective-y sort of guyy sort of guy yeah i think that was the thing that yeah yeah so it got bought by uh hbo and they showed it a few times and it was deeply disappointing but at the same time hollywood squares comes along now the guy that put me on the steve allen show comes back with hollywood squares right and he's going to produce a new hollywood squares and he says, I got John Davidson, I got Joan Rivers,

and I want you to do the voice of the show, and I did, and it was the biggest hit of the year. It sold, I was like number one. And he said, we want you to do the show, and I went, no, I have a shot at acting, and I really want to try, you know, and if I just do another announcing thing, and he goes, well, and so I turned it down and then he comes back again. I turned it down again.

And then he came back a third time. He said, how about this? I'll put you in a square and we'll make it part of the show. And if you have to leave to go do like the movie and you come back, you'll just be, you know, out for a while and then come back and tell us what. And I went, okay. And then Hollywood Square is turned into the biggest show in the world. It was like the number one show in America. And none of us saw that coming.

I'm Angie Martinez. Check out my podcast where I talk to some of the biggest athletes, musicians, actors in the world. We go beyond the headlines and the soundbites to have real conversations about real life, death, love and everything in between. This life right here, just finding myself

just relaxation. It's not feeling stressed. It's not feeling pressed. This is what I'm most proud of. I'm proud of Mary because I've been through hell and some horrible things. That feeling that I had of inadequacy is gone. You're going to die being you. So you've got to constantly work on who you are to make sure that the stars align correctly.

Life ain't easy and it's getting harder and harder. So if you have a story to tell, if you come through some trials, you need to share it because you're going to inspire someone. You're going to you're going to give somebody the motivation to not give up, to not quit. Listen to Angie Martinez IRL on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Want to know how to leverage culture to build a successful business? Then Butternomics is the podcast for you. I'm your host, Brandon Butler, founder and CEO of Butter ATL. Over my career, I've built and helped run multiple seven-figure businesses that leverage culture and build successful brands.

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Authors of books that have changed my life. Now you're talking about sympathy, which is different than empathy, right? And basically have conversations that can help us get through this crazy thing we call life. I already believe in myself. I already see myself. And so when people give me an opportunity, I'm just like, oh, great, you see me too. We'll laugh together. We'll cry together and find a way through all of our emotions. Never forget, it's okay to cry as long as you make it a really good one. Listen to A Really Good Cry with Raleigh Dablukia on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

so the combination of tracks the disappointment but then all of a sudden there's hollywood squares and then on the top of hollywood squares comes american top 40 and because you're the voice of american rock and roll at this point then the the uh the announcer of american rock and roll right yeah well and it was um and it grew into 110 countries. And for the next seven years, they flew me around the world to promote the show. So I was in Oslo, Norway and Bali and Tokyo and everywhere. And it was in South Africa. And it was a really big deal.

Very exciting and a lot of fun. Did you have a lot of influence on music at that point? Were you able to pick and choose? You know, the thing about doing American Top 42 is because my entire career has been tongue-in-cheek, funny, satire, parody. Everything, every radio station, everything I'd ever written all my

commercials everything had always been funny now i'm stepping into the shoes of the most earnest man in the history of mankind right keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars it's casey casey right yeah right and and the nicest guy in the world and we were friends had been friends for for for probably a decade. But here I am doing it, and everybody's paranoid. And then they go, well, I can't do that. So the first show that we recorded, the four-hour show, took 18 hours to record.

We had to rewrite every sentence that I did because I couldn't do his that. It sounded awful talking like that not like i was trying to mimic his voice but just trying to find my own the intonation humor so okay so where he would say keep your feet on the ground to keep reaching so i would say and remember if the world is your oyster and you can't find your pearl. You can always have lunch. Bye-bye out there. But also, I used to say, your friend in the void, the shadow.

And they said, void? What the hell? Yeah, no, I like that. Your friend in the void, the shadow. Can you tell me why Shadow Stevens, by the way? Because if you're Terry, Terry Angstead seems like a perfectly serviceable name to me. Yeah, it's not exactly a catchy radio name. No, that didn't work for me and and at the beginning i i named myself jefferson k i always thought that that would be

like you know kind of soulful and the first the first big radio show i did in fargo they put me on and i did all r b which was all my favorite music, was always black music. So I was like the black DJ Jefferson Kay on KQWB in Fargo. And then I kept it when I went to Arizona, went to the University of Arizona, and I was working full time. You're still Jefferson Kay at this point? I'm still Jefferson Kay. Now, I get the job in Boston. I'm heading across the desert in my white Corvette.

And I stop in Alamogordo, New Mexico. And I get out, and I and I'm heading across the desert in my white Corvette and I stop in Alamogordo, New Mexico. And I get out and I go to a phone booth and it says atomic testing range, do not enter right across the street. It's like pivotal. And I call, I say, I'm on my way. And they go, yeah, look, we're not going to, you're not going to be able to use that name. There's a Jess Kane and a JJ Jeffries. And believe it or not, there was a Jefferson K here some years ago. So we're going to change your name. We're thinking of calling you Shadow Man, Shadow Lane or something. That's the worst name I ever heard in my life. I was humiliated. I drive across country at 100 miles an hour going Randy Road,

Johnny Lane. I mean, I'm looking for names and billboards and signs and trying to think of, now, by the time I get into Boston, I've got a list of names that I could live with. And I hear on the radio, and starting Monday, Shadow Stevens, 68 WRKO. No, I'm in hell. Oh no. And I was humiliated. It was like, oh God, this is a dumb name. And then they would say, that's not your real name, is it? So what I did is I came up with a backstory that I could live with. And the backstory was, well, you know, it's Native native american really yeah do you know what tribe i go well i'm from north dakota so i suspect it's mandan uh could be sue i'm not sure oh really so do you know what it means yes it means he who walks with the light

no kidding this is all a pack of lies right yeah it's made it up okay but it's true yeah and then it made me it gave me my sense of humor it gave me a whole way of looking at life and um i became it so it was given to me by god so you you identify as you think of yourself as shadow stevenson you're not Terry. Oh, since probably 1980. Yeah. For a while, I kept both names, and then I was Fred Rated, and then it was Terry and Fred, and I'd go to the bank, and they'd go, who are you?

And I went, I just can't go on. And I felt like who I'd decided to become, so I just changed it legally about 1979, I think. Okay. So now you're clean and sober. You're in Hollywood. You and Beverly are together. You've had your children.

And the greatest moment of your life arrives. You get the call from me to be the announcer. It's so true. It's so true. It was pivotal. And actually, it came after a number of spectacular failures. I had done, here I am doing the biggest radio show in the world, and they decide to cancel it, to just go into distribution, and made it so that I couldn't do another one. to just go into distribution and made it so that I couldn't do another one.

And I'm in a top 10 sitcom, Dave's World, on CBS. Yeah, that's right. And that went on for four years, and it was great fun. And that ended. That's a great life, a multi-camera sitcom. It's the best. Oh, wow. It's the best. It's like a couple of days a week, you roll in, work a little bit, get paid a ton

of money, leave. Yeah, make people laugh. It's great. Greatest. So they all ended. And then my agent, who is Howard Stern's agent, Don Buchwald. You know what? I interviewed with him when I first came to Hollywood.

Don Buchwald. Yeah. He said, I could be your agent. I was like, oh, great. I was the same agent as Herstel. And then I never heard from him again. It was a guy who worked in his office, maybe. And I thought, nah.

Well, I have it worse than that. Because I went with them, and they never did anything. And then they asked me, after everything fell apart, they asked me to find another agent. And then, of course, by that time, everything's fallen apart, and I don't like what I'm doing. So I started a thing called Rhythm Radio based on my travels around the world, finding all this music and other cultures that was really fabulous.

So for the next number of years, I created Rhythm Radio, and we built it up into being on the air in 30 countries and on the internet in seven languages. And we sold it a year title sponsorship to Nescafe. And then the dot-com crash happened. And they said, you know, the internet's a fluke. Yeah, I thought it was going to be like a CB radio, the internet. Like people would kind of come and go. I think it might be here now for a little while.

I think it's going to probably do well. So when you and i are working together and then i and then i quit and then leave you high and dry again and that is this when you start what you're doing now which is mental radio which is i did a couple of things one of the things i did is i started a radio station for sammy hagar called cabo wabo radio and i designed studios for cabo cantina and they had called cabo wabo radio and had designed studios for cabo cantina and they had what happens radio it was it was actually really fabulous yeah i didn't get good support from sammy uh we went to we uh there was a service uh called um live live 365 that broadcast radio shows and they had our stations and they had 10,000 and we rose to number one in just a couple of months. You know, the, the title I came up with was hot rock smuggled across the border from Mexico. And it was all up, all rock, all party all the time. And it was,

you know, rock, all kinds of new rock and old classic but it was all fun and party music and i i had a guy to sell it and i went to sammy and i said you know um i got a guy who'll sell it and he said i'm not going to pay anybody to to sell so i go back to the guy who had sold all over the world and and sold to Sultan of Dubai and to Steve Wynn in Las Vegas. And I said, well, he won't pay you. And he goes, fine, I'll do it for free for 30%. So I go back to Sam and he say, he'll do it for free for 30%.

30%? Fuck him. Fuck him. That's what he said. Okay. And I went, there's no- Sam Hagar swore? Yes, he did.

And I was deeply- I mean, you can't believe in anything Okay. And I went. Sammy Hagar swore? Yes, he did. And I was deeply. I mean, you can't believe in anything anymore. I'm sorry. It was like Santa Claus turning on you. Yeah. And I realized it wasn't going anywhere. So, you know, I had to let that one go. And then I started early mental radio was more like guests and things.

Right. So tell me a little bit. We're going to play a little of metal radio because i know it's quite hard to understand but can you give me a kind of idea of what mental radio is okay metal radio was started at the beginning of the virus when we were all shut down it was march of 2020 yeah and i realized everybody's freaking out and i was a little edgy myself and i real I've got this big studio and I thought I've got to create something funny and uplifting and I don't know

what it'll be but I'm going to start writing and I started writing and I started recording and then I started like looking for music and I called the guy that was my director in Federated and he became a really world-class music composer. And he said, I've got all this music I own. You can have anything you want. And he opened up the library. Now I have cinematic music. And I attracted a writing partner, Joshua Weinstein, who is a script writer. And I said, here's how you write. Here's how you do it. I taught him how to do it, and we hit it off. And now it's become 24 episodes, 11 hours of stories and adventures and serials with cliffhanger endings and parodies, and it's quite funny.

And if you listen with earphones, sounds come from behind you and characters move around in your head. It's deeply immersive. And I'll play you this. This is Malibu Beach Romance. Biff Brando, known as Dr. Coat Grapple on Loving Tomorrow, the number one soap on television, lives with Piper, a star so big she only has one name. But Biff has a fling.

Yes. But Biff has a fling with a barista and a coffee bean and tea leaf in Tarzana, and she's named Coco Poefs, and things take a dark turn, very much like Fatal Attraction. Hey, Biff. Bitchin' house, catchin' rays. And there she was, Coco. He quickly flexed his six-pack and smiled back. How could he forget the barista from Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf in Tarzana and that fling in the restroom beneath the hot breath of the hand dryer?

I knew I'd find you. Love the billabong board shorts. You look so hot. Take a walk. He gazed at her cat-eye Maui Jimpua Kennekeni shades, ample bosom and blonde hair wafting in the wind, and flinched. He looked back at the house, lucky that Piper, the love of his life, always slept late. He had to get Coco out of here.

He jumped off the deck. Dude, a sick, rad move. You look so good. Yeah, yeah, thanks. So, uh, rad move You look so good Yeah, yeah, thanks So, uh, what's up? I knew you and me were inevitable, Biff When you ordered that triple shot low fat latte Hint of vanilla, one Splenda

And it added up to 666 I freaked But when I did the life path and destiny on it I realized that the root number was 6 plus 6 plus 6 Or 18 and 1 plus 8 is 9 Look look you're a beautiful woman but i have a girlfriend i did the i chan it said nine in the second place means perseverance brings good fortune so i will persevere all over you biff yeah that's uh that's so it's it's kind of it's a little bit old school radio as well, right? Yeah, I tried to bring, you know, radio theater into the 21st century.

And make it, and I call it genetically altered humor. The whole conceit of it, the mythology behind it, is that everything comes from a former Masonic temple somewhere in Hollywood. And I greet you there as the voice of reason in the middle of the madness. And there are theaters and labs and laboratories and the outlook chamber at the top. And it's all kind of an allegory for the brain. And we go in and we see these stories, these adventures in the theater or in the opera house, and they all have messages. So there are episodes called Doubt and Fear and Gloom and Faith and Space and Time and on and on. And each story is something like that. I'll just play you one

other one real quick. It's a shorter one. Dixon Ticonderoga is a writer looking for trouble, and he finds himself in Atrocity, kind of a town like the Bronx before it got nice. And he goes to Whelan's Kitten Caboodle and meets a pile of mussels with a t-shirt named Buddy Malone. Last time he saw Buddy was at the Alley Cat Bowl and Food and Puff and the virus that he had in a jar and Dixon dropped it and the virus got out. But now he's meeting Buddy again.

So what do you got going? You heard about the giant lizards and goats? Yeah, taking over cities. I got a blood hornet, size of a bat. Got him down in Argentina, doing a little ransom. The size of a bat? You got it here? Yeah, it's out in the truck. I followed him outside Wayland's Kitten Caboodle past the dumpsters to Malone's Indigo Blue custom lowered 1950 Chevy 350 fuel-injected pickup with flames on the hood and just the right amount of pinstripes. And there it was on the real camel-colored leather seats, a bell jar so big it took two hands to pick it up. Fins, teeth, and stingers.

Stingers? Like more than one? Three rows of teeth. Look in, teeth, and stingers. Stingers? Like, more than one? Three rows of teeth. Look in there. Lots of stingers. He dropped the jar. I looked on at the hornet shark with its bat wings flapping and saliva coming out of three sets of teeth

and it opened its jaws and flew at my face. And suddenly I left my body and I could see what was happening in slow motion. I could see it for what it was without being afraid. And I thought, wait a minute, it's not like it's a rhinoceros. They're big and they run. I could see it coming at me and it wasn't a shark and it wasn't a bee. It was a freak and it was the size of a bat.

So I smashed it with my fist and it was stunned, stomped in the air, confused. Then it fell to the ground with a thud and I stomped it with my foot. And I felt good. Wow.

So where do you get this? Where do we find it? Well, it's at mentalradio.net. Okay. And there is a free app that is for Apple or for Google Play. Right. And you can just download it and put it on your phones. Or you don't have to listen with earphones, but it's deeply, it's a whole different experience when you listen with earphones.

A sonic experience. Yeah. It sounds a little bit like it's influenced by the noises that you heard outside the window the window in malibu when you were in psychosis shadow stevens you have been and will always remain a joy to me thanks for coming today thank you i appreciate being here. the notorious Tori Spelling, as she takes us through the ups and downs of her sometimes glamorous, sometimes chaotic life in marriage. I just filed for divorce. Whoa. I said the words that I've said like in my head for like 16 years. Wild. Listen to Miss Spelling on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Angie Martinez, and on my podcast, I like to talk to everyone from Hall of Fame athletes to iconic musicians about getting real on some of the complications and challenges of real life. I had the best dad, and I had the best memories and the greatest experience,

and that's all I want for my kids as long as they can have that. Listen to Angie Martinez IRL on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Guess what, Will? What's that, Mango? I've been trying to write a promo

for our podcast, Part-Time Genius, but even though we've done over 250 episodes, we don't really talk about murderers or cults. I mean, we did just cover the Illuminati of cheese, so I feel like that makes us pretty edgy. We also solve mysteries like how Chinese is your Chinese food

and how do dollar stores make money. And then, of course, can you game a dog show? So what you're saying is everyone should be listening. Listen to Part-Time Genius on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.