Rodney Bingenheimer
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Rodney Bingenheimer, born in 1947 in Mountain View, California, is a Los Angeles disc jockey on radio station KROQ. He has been a fixture in rock and roll circles since the mid-1960s, when he was a double for Davy Jones on the TV show The Monkees.
In the early 1970s he owned a nightclub called Rodney Bingenheimer's English Disco on the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood. It was a favorite hangout of many rock stars and was where Los Angeles discovered glam rock.
His show on KROQ, called Rodney on the 'Roq, began in 1976 and has continued to the present day, albeit with some changes in time slots. He is one of the very few DJs on commercial radio in Los Angeles who gets to play his own music. He was the first to play many up-and-coming bands in the 1970s and 1980s, but also to the present day, having been the first to play such acts as Blondie, The Ramones, Van Halen, Duran Duran, Oasis, and others, ranging up to The Donnas currently. Although his show has been relegated to a Midnight to 3 AM slot on Sunday evenings, it still carries a fair amount of power to make or break new artists in some genres.
He is the subject of the film Mayor of the Sunset Strip by director George Hickenlooper.
External link
- Mayor of the Sunset Strip - Official movie site (http://www.mayorofthesunsetstrip.com/)