Heroes And Villains released 45 years ago today

[Julia]

AM station KHJ in LA had the Heroes single listed as a Hitbound (new entry on the chart that week) on their survey for the week of July 12 '67. This was soon after Brian and his caravan of BB's and friends showed up unannounced with the fresh pressing of the new Heroes single, found Tom Maule working his shift at the station, and then found that Maule would not play the record on air until he called his boss Ron Jacobs. This was in the week leading up to that week of July 12th.

Over a year ago (circa May - June 2011) there was a thread concerning the story of the night in July 1967 when Brian and company took an acetate of Heroes and Villains to LA radio station KHJ, offering a worldwide premiere and exclusive, only to be told by the dj that he couldn't play anything that was not not the playlist.

Back then I contacted KHJ's 1956-69 program director, Ron Jacobs, for his comments on the story, and was surprised to find that he had no knowledge of it.  I paraphrased some of his comments in a post back then, and promised to post his detailed comments "soon" which I never did.

So now, with Ron Jacob's permission to post his emails, for those interested in the story, here are Ron Jacob's comments (in yellow) concerning the incident.

From: Ron Jacobs
Subject:    Re: KHJ July 1967
Date:    May 27, 2011 7:47:39 PM PDT
To: Rob Shepherd

On May 27, 2011, at 2:33 PM, Rob Shepherd wrote:

...

I didnt include the whole post in my quote for the sake of brevity but I am SO GLAD I found this post again. I remembered reading it years ago and when the board was acting up really bad last week, the thought of preserving this singular anecdote above all seemed of particular importance to me.

This is arguably the best, most important post in all of SS, certainly the best individual sleuthing that I ever saw occur in the forum's history along with disproving the "Beatles heard SMiLE" myth. My hat is off to you, sir!

Things like these two disproven urban legends make me wonder what other commonly accepted "facts" passed around are really just total bullshit. That David Leaf quote "oh but its such a great story why disprove it?" is kind of infuriating because it shows the people writing the books, articles, and liner notes that become history are willing to fabricate evidence if it makes the story more interesting, which I think is wrong. I really wish I had been this age in the 70s-90s so I could do my own research with the principals and write my own book. At this point though, everyone's dead and the events are 50-60 years old so I dont see the point. But the more I learn of the Priores of the world, whom we've trusted to transcribe the truth, the more I want to scream.

[guitarfool2002]

AM station KHJ in LA had the Heroes single listed as a Hitbound (new entry on the chart that week) on their survey for the week of July 12 '67. This was soon after Brian and his caravan of BB's and friends showed up unannounced with the fresh pressing of the new Heroes single, found Tom Maule working his shift at the station, and then found that Maule would not play the record on air until he called his boss Ron Jacobs. This was in the week leading up to that week of July 12th.

Over a year ago (circa May - June 2011) there was a thread concerning the story of the night in July 1967 when Brian and company took an acetate of Heroes and Villains to LA radio station KHJ, offering a worldwide premiere and exclusive, only to be told by the dj that he couldn't play anything that was not not the playlist.

Back then I contacted KHJ's 1956-69 program director, Ron Jacobs, for his comments on the story, and was surprised to find that he had no knowledge of it.  I paraphrased some of his comments in a post back then, and promised to post his detailed comments "soon" which I never did.

So now, with Ron Jacob's permission to post his emails, for those interested in the story, here are Ron Jacob's comments (in yellow) concerning the incident.

From: Ron Jacobs
Subject:    Re: KHJ July 1967
Date:    May 27, 2011 7:47:39 PM PDT
To: Rob Shepherd

On May 27, 2011, at 2:33 PM, Rob Shepherd wrote:

...

I didnt include the whole post in my quote for the sake of brevity but I am SO GLAD I found this post again. I remembered reading it years ago and when the board was acting up really bad last week, the thought of preserving this singular anecdote above all seemed of particular importance to me.

This is arguably the best, most important post in all of SS, certainly the best individual sleuthing that I ever saw occur in the forum's history along with disproving the "Beatles heard SMiLE" myth. My hat is off to you, sir!

Things like these two disproven urban legends make me wonder what other commonly accepted "facts" passed around are really just total bullshit. That David Leaf quote "oh but its such a great story why disprove it?" is kind of infuriating because it shows the people writing the books, articles, and liner notes that become history are willing to fabricate evidence if it makes the story more interesting, which I think is wrong. I really wish I had been this age in the 70s-90s so I could do my own research with the principals and write my own book. At this point though, everyone's dead and the events are 50-60 years old so I dont see the point. But the more I learn of the Priores of the world, whom we've trusted to transcribe the truth, the more I want to scream.

Make sure to read the rest of the discussion, all of the pages, where Desper directly contradicts what Ron Jacobs said, since he actually drove with them in a Rolls Royce to the station that night, along with other contradictions of Jacobs' comments, including Jacobs' own previous published comments about getting "exclusives" hot off the press from artists including Brian. And how KHJ effectively bootlegged the song Valleri off the Monkees' TV show and aired it as a "KHJ Exclusive" complete with Jacobs' whispering that phrase over the record, a similar thing which may have happened to Heroes since KHJ was spinning the record on air prior to the release, proven by that Bobby Tripp aircheck. 

The great tragedy is that the Bobby Tripp KHJ aircheck I heard and referenced (and transcribed on the old Smile Shop) where he played "Heroes" on KHJ before its official release is "scoped" (edited), and you can't hear the actual song, only Tripp's comments after the record played, which were lukewarm to say the least.

This isn't the "gotcha" moment you may think it is, just adding more colors to the overall picture and seeing someone who was actually there contradict who you may think blew up the story. The truth lies somewhere in the middle of all of it as is usually the case. Melcher may have exaggerated the tale, but Desper confirmed it happened and they got into the station and  the record got on the air, and that goes against what Ron Jacobs told Custom Machine in that exchange.

[Julia]

Hey not at all, thanks for that! Somehow I didn't remember that part of it when I first saw this thread however many years ago, but honestly two revelations for the price of one makes the thread even better!

[WillJC]

This was a very interesting thread to rediscover. To add some further clarity here, in 1998, Terry Melcher re-told the story in greater, less dramatic detail, and again specified that the station was KHJ. Terry said that he called up Bill Drake (Ron Jacobs' boss) to straighten things out with the DJ and noted that it took place at about 2am, hence the trouble getting inside. He described the entourage of other cars as people from Capitol Records.

There's this, from an article in the July 16 LA Times: On July 5, Brian Wilson finished the tape and invited Capitol’s director of artists and repertoire, Karl Engemann, to the house to hear it. “I arrived,” Engemann said, “and no one was there. Brian had gotten so excited with the finished tape that he had taken it to radio station KHJ so he could hear it on the radio.” Then he took copies to other local stations, placing Capitol in the difficult position of listening to music which legally belonged to the company but which the company could not immediately distribute. Legal difficulties, however, appear to be near settlement and the latest word from Taylor is that the single should be distributed late this week on a new label, Brother Records, Inc., distributed by Capitol.

Heroes and Villains b/w You're Welcome was delivered to Capitol for mastering on July 7. So, based on that report, late at night on July 5 or very early in the morning of July 6 checks out as when it happened, however much of it did happen in reality.