GERONIMO - FROM HARLEY STREET TO MONTE CARLO

11 July  2021 UNDER CONSTRUCTION
moving to new server
AUDIO and WORDS will be reinstated by the end of the summer

Our documentary, Monte Carlo and Bust, which premiered at the Monaco Film Festival:

 

 

This website has no connection with Radio Geronimo on shortwave radio

 



Three Friends - the founders of Radio Geronimo
HUGH NOLAN                     GEOFFREY BASS                        TERRY YASON

 

Terry yason: “geronimo was the product of a generation seeking to break down barriers
between all the arts, media and politics...

...there wouldn't have been world music without Geronimo”

Geoffrey Bass: the airwaves were made for music...

 ...the uniting, binding force of beautiful vibrations encircling the Globe and, for a time at least, engendering a profound feeling of Love and Peace

 

Brief History: Radio Geronimo was the brainchild of Terry Yason… with Hugh Nolan and Geoffrey Bass… they enlisted the financial help of Jimmy Miller (record producer: Traffic, Rolling Stones etc.) and Tony Secunda (music biz entrepreneur and manager of bands such as The Move)… Following test transmissions (as Radio Rupert and Radio 428) in 1969 from the Pyrenees, Radio Geronimo hired airtime in 1970 from Radio Monte Carlo. Programming consisted of jazz, folk, blues, rock, classical and world music, along with useful advice of the counter culture. Geronimo was the antithesis of DJ culture – 'joined up radio' - the music spoke a language of its own, the presenter occasionally spoke the earthy language of the street, and the listener was treated as an equal… Unlike the pirate radio stations of the 60’s this most radical of radio stations was  totally legal. It was favourably compared to BBC Radio 3 and is fondly remembered by those fortunate enough to be there… Engineering was by John Lundsten. Barry Everitt (promoter, Astoria, Borderline) was also part of the Geronimo team. Richard Branson wanted to join in but his overtures were rejected.  As Geronimo Starship they recorded the 1971 Glastonbury Fayre and released a legendary triple album on Revelation Records. Geronimo were also contracted by Pan American Airways to provide their inflight jazz entertainment.


Barry Everitt and Hugh Nolan in the Harley Street Studio

Terry Yason comments (in October 2010):
 

"In 1968 there were three close friends Me Geoffrey Bass and Hugh Nolan. We met regularly at Hugh's flat in Manchester Street W.1. Geoffrey lived with his parents in Camden Town and I lived around the corner to him in a large bed sit.

Separately I was friends with Barry who had married an old friend of mine Evelyn.

I went to New York in 1968 and came back excited after listening to FM Bob Fash on WNEW who played the whole side  of Tommy without interruption in stereo.

I was a free lance PR in the music business and met Hugh who was a journalist on Disc and Music Echo. Our musical tastes met in the middle I was more into Jazz Blues and World music although that term was unknown at the time. Hugh's taste was mainly Grateful Dead The Byrds and the more eclectic Rock at the time. 

We met regularly in the Law Courts gardens lunchtimes which was close to Fleet Street where Hugh's office was. My excitement and sense of anything could be achieved resulted in Hugh and I to agree to attempt to create a radio station that made a new paradigm in Radio. We agreed a new format of reducing the role of the DJ and segueing music of all kinds knitting the programme into a trip introducing the audience to music they would never have heard.

Somehow we found bill hayes a free radio enthusiast from muswell hill and met with him who agreed to help and became our engineer recording the first programmes in his flat. With his girlfriend in the bath Hugh would record his vocals in the bathroom while I gave bill the albums to record and then we would switch roles.

Geoffrey was always in attendance being our guru and muse.

We decided to approach Radio Andorra one of Bills contacts who told us that this station was built by the Nazis to broadcast propaganda thru occupied Europe. Being Jewish this seemed a wonderful irony. Unfortunately Andorra was AM and our first test was mostly hiss and crackle.

Geoffrey became our new marketing man while Hugh and I were responsible for programmes as Geoffrey and I got a train to Paris to meet with Radio Monte Carlo bosses who we had found somehow as a FM alternative to Andorra. Geoffrey and I found a cheap hotel whose residents kept us awake all night as it turned out to be a brothel and  the customers would walk up and  down outside our room all night.  

The result was an agreement for them to broadcast test programmes. I'm not sure how many.

At this we decided to find a commercial backer who Hugh found Tony Secunda a rock manager of dubious reputation as a snake which he resembled wearing this extraordinary long leather coat which I felt was made from his shed skin. Tony offered the use of his  offices on the corner of Wigmore Street and Harley Street a contract which we never read and signed. No wages were ever discussed and we survived on selling promotional albums from the record companies. Tony managed Record Producer Jimmy Miller a healthy tall handsome American who produced the Stones.

As a supreme irony we began recording programmes at Radio Luxembourg studios in Hertford Street behind the Hilton. Kid Jensen had recently started on Luxembourg in competition even though we hadn’t seriously started broadcasting. I had got us some serious music press.

Hertford Streets midnight recording sessions became a centre for friends who kept us regularly supplied with joints. Amongst these was Barry Everitt.

Eventually Tony Secunda confronted me in a meeting with Geoffrey Hugh and I and demanded I diluted my programmes and use more commercial rock which I totally refused. Unless I did he would pull out his support for the Hertford studio. To their shame Geoffrey and Hugh and said nothing in my defence and I was sacked from the station I had created.

I was broken and went to stay with my parents for the summer, weak and sickly and didn’t speak to Hugh again for over twenty years.

In the meantime Barry took over my spot and the rest is history  

Best Wishes 

Terry Yason" 

 

Barry Marshall-Everitt writes (February 2010):
On February 15th 1970 Radio Geronimo started broadcasting weekly broadcasts from Radio Monte Carlo. Presenters Hugh Nolan & Barry Everitt played the now historic version of Amazing Grace by The Great Awakening and the Radio Geronimo was born.

This is the 40th Anniversary and sadly many of the team are now not with us, we have lost Hugh Nolan, and the backers Jimmy Miller & Tony Secunda and this 2010 show is dedicated to them and in particular the free form musical direction given to the station by Hugh Nolan.

Radio Geronimo was the first European free form radio station, broadcasting from Hitler's propaganda radio transmitters built in Monte Carlo in 1940. The signal was heard over the entire continent and even though it was a legal transmission it was referred to as a pirate by many countries, including the UK, it's free form non programming and use of very free speech seemed to upset the British Government and the BBC started to jam the signal, Radio Geronimo hit back by jamming the BBC headquarters in London with strawberry jam, Hugh & Barry were arrested and made the front page of the daily papers creating a massive new audience.

The success of the station also riled other broadcasters and as often happens other companies bought there way into Monte Carlo and by November 1970 Geronimo was off the air and became a legend.

 

Radio Geronimo returns to Monte Carlo
Documentary screened at the Angel Film Awards
(and wins two awards)

Monaco Film Festival December 2010



40 years ago, on the new site for the Angel Film Awards in Monaco, stood the famous Palace Radio Monte Carlo (RMC). From here after midnight each weekend, evangelical programmes from Trans World Radio were followed by inspiration of another kind. Europe’s hippest music station - Radio Geronimo. Beamed over Europe on RMC’s powerful medium wave transmitter, the programmes were recorded at a studio in Harley Street  London, and financed by Rolling Stones producer Jimmy Miller and record industry operator Tony Secunda (The Move, Marc Bolan). Radio Geronimo beamed a far-out mix of cosmic music and anarchic presentation through the Spring and Summer of 1970. Support for anti-Vietnam war protesters and ads for the biggest cigarette papers in the world were broadcast inbetween music ranging from Jimi Hendrix and Albert Ayer to Buxtehude. Somehow the ad agencies didn’t catch on and when funds ran out, Radio Monte Carlo’s management woke up and the brief dream ended. We remember this tumultuous summer of 1970 through the hazy memories of these intrepid broadcast pioneers.

Mark Dezzani (Europa Productions)

   

  Webmaster has a twice weekly radio show at Radio Seagull

 

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R.I.P. Geoffrey Bass, Hugh Nolan and Barry Everitt

 

 



 
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