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Radio Caroline The True
Story of the Boat that Rocked
Ray Clark
Stroud: History Press, 2019 (First Edition, 2014) Paperback. 352 p. ISBN 978-0750992534. £10.99
Reviewed by Claude
Chastagner Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3
There are probably few people around nowadays
who heard, back in 1964, the first programs broadcast by Radio Caroline from a
tiny ship anchored just outside the territorial waters of Great Britain, in the
North Sea, but the story of this unique radio station is worth telling. Worth
telling because millions listened to it in the following years, and because
Radio Caroline is a quintessential story of the 60s, of how the era saw the
coming together of pop culture, business, and politics in a way that changed
the face of the Western world. A story of how the intermingling of cultural and
economic issues could be presented as a fight for freedom, worthy of the
“pirates” the protagonists were soon associated with. The nickname “pirate
radio” was given by the Conservative politicians as a way to criticise and
chastise what they saw as the dubious and illegal proceedings of unscrupulous
businessmen whose sole purpose, in contravening Britain’s broadcasting
legislation, was to increase their personal wealth. Indeed, what this modern-day
piracy had in common with the old-time pirates was that it constituted an
attack from the sea upon a coastal area in order to appropriate valuable “property”
(in this case, advertising revenues). But what the politicians chose not to
remember was that piracy, as much as privateering, was often a practice
condoned by the highest authorities. And on many occasions, the story of
Britain’s most famous pirate radio station crossed the path of politics. It is this complex and exciting story that
Ray Clark endeavours to tell in the second, updated edition of his 2014 opus,
not so much as a story teller per se, but rather as an overseer, an
organiser in some sort, inasmuch as a sizeable portion of the text (about two
thirds) is a clever assemblage of the numerous interviews he conducted with the
various actors of the Caroline story, as well as the transcripts of interviews
they had already given to various media, and excerpts from actual programmes.
So that the tale is told first and all by those who lived it: entrepreneurs,
politicians, crews, staff, DJs, etc. There lies the real
value of this book, in the voices of those who made history. But it is also the
source of its main limitation. Indeed, what we are given to read is mostly the
very detailed, technical history of the birth and rebirth(s) of Radio Caroline,
but with little insight about the context, be it political, social, or most
importantly, cultural. Ray Clerk has chosen to focus on the story of the boat,
or rather the several boats that hosted the Caroline radio station. In the
process, he has curtailed what could have been said about the lofty ideals
supposedly at the heart of the Caroline adventure, namely the quest for
freedom. Too little is also revealed about how the medium was instrumental in
spreading new sounds and music (and which) to a new audience. Similarly, there is
little devoted to the British specificity of Radio Caroline, as compared with its
North American models. The numerous black and white and color photographs that grace
the book suffer from the same contradiction. They are at the same time extremely
valuable because most of them are seen for the first time, but too often
restricted to views (some of them breathtaking) of the ships and the
protagonists. One would have appreciated a broader scope in terms of visual
documentation. Despite these restrictions, for those who
want to apprehend and understand the era from the narrow focus of this
incredible adventure, the book is an excellent read, well written, and well
organised, in a mosaic of 33 short chapters. For it is an incredible adventure.
It started at a time when the only programmes that could be heard in Great
Britain were those of the BBC: The Home Service, The Light Programme, and the
Third Programme, marred, according to many young listeners of the time, by a
very conformist style, and staid music, a situation made worse by the fact that
the BBC could only play a limited number of hours from records, as opposed to
live music, a rule imposed by the Musicians’ Union, though we could remind the
readers, however, that these programmes were free from commercials. Since
British law granted broadcasting monopoly to the BBC, the only way to reach a
British audience was to broadcast from a boat anchored in international waters.
There were a few attempts, as early as 1958, directed at Britain, but also at
Denmark, Sweden, and the Netherlands (Radio Mercur, Radio Nord, Radio Veronica,
GBOK), but none very successful or long lasting. The only permanent alternative
to the BBC was Radio Luxemburg, but the signal was poor and they seldom played
records that were not paid for by EMI or Decca, the most powerful record
companies of the time. Radio Caroline is thus the first successful, and most
famous, British offshore radio station, so famous that it was the model for the
2009 Richard Curtis movie The Boat That Rocked about a fictional pirate
radio station. Radio Caroline’s first official broadcast was
on Easter Saturday, 28 March 1964. The station’s originator was an Irishman
with famous Republican ancestry, Ronan O’Rahilly, which made him something of a
rebel. Initially running clubs in Soho, he soon got interested in launching a
radio station. But the costs incurred (the equipment, the vessel, the salaries
of the various crews) delayed the birth of his business venture (the book describes
with much detail the legal and commercial arrangements behind the scene). The
station was immediately extremely successful, with up to 7 million listeners
tuning to the 12 hours day-time programming, even though in the early days, the
style of the DJs or even much of the music was, on all accounts, uninspired and
hardly imaginative (partly because they had to play records that had been paid
for). Broadcasts stopped at 6 pm, for lack of financial means, and the largest
audience was around breakfast time. As of May 1964, the night shift was taken
over by Radio Atlanta, originally a competitor, but soon a partner geared to
the London era, while the original ship was anchored near the Isle of Man, for
broadcasts directed to the North of England (with a more pop-and-rock-oriented
programming). Unsurprisingly, the government tried to block the station (and its
rivals, Radio City, Radio London, Swinging Radio England, etc.), but the
legal weaponry took time to be ready and it was only in August 1967 that a law
was enacted to ban pirate radio stations (in the meantime, even government
quangos booked commercial time on Caroline!) Meanwhile, the pirate stations had
“opened up the pop music industry to countless new artists, producers and
record labels” [175], for many small, independent labels had their first hits
thanks to the pirates. But with the 1967 law, life became very difficult for
the offshore stations. Following the demise of the pirate stations,
the BBC hired their best DJs to launch Radio 1, a new, pop-music-oriented
service, though not as exciting as the pirates’. The book also details the very
complex legal and physical battles fought by Radio Caroline throughout the
following decades, down to the present day, in order to keep on broadcasting.
For indeed, after becoming an officially sanctioned small, local, commercial
radio in 1992, and broadcasting from mid-river Blackwater, in Essex, and later
from London’s Docklands, on December 2017, Caroline started its first official
broadcasts on AM radio and the Internet. On all accounts, then, the story
continues… As said earlier, because of the opposition of
Conservative and Labour politicians, the story of Caroline is entangled with
the politics of the days. The very name Caroline, for instance, is probably an
allusion to the wife of J.F. Kennedy or the daughter of Tory Chancellor of the
Exchequer, Reginald Maudling, in the (vain) hope that it could attract his
sympathy for the project. The government had to tread carefully in its effort
to close down the station, because 1964 was an election year and “closing down
popular radio stations was hardly likely to enamor voters to the incumbent
government” [86]. Also, Caroline’s location close to the Isle of Man had a
positive impact on the Island’s reputation and was beneficial for tourism. Consequently,
the island’s local government lobbied intensively to protect the station. Ray Clark is particularly good at rendering
the living conditions on the various boats: cramped living spaces, appalling,
dangerous weather, belated delivery of supplies, including food, late arrivals
of replacing DJs, which implied staying on board for sometimes weeks on… Being
part of the Caroline adventure was decidedly not for the meek, but it allowed a
few DJs to become famous later (Tony Blackburn for one). The book teems with delicious anecdotes. For
instance, when the transmitter was being tested while the ship was still at
quay, everything electrical in the vicinity became affected to the extent that
“it blocked out television reception and you could see on the harbor lights
that the lamps were blinking to the music” [61]. Clark also recalls how once
listeners on a sunny day flashed mirrors from the coastline to communicate with
the DJs onboard. If the book could definitely have welcomed
some improvements (but it would have been another one), it remains a very
interesting one for the numerous fans and scholars of popular culture. To quote
Ray Clark, Radio Caroline can be remembered as a service that “has been provided
free of charge and giving untold enjoyment to millions over the years, […] a
service that has started an industry and promoted British music which has
influenced the world” [313].
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