‘Eccentric’ Radio Caroline pirate rock broadcaster had rebellion in his DNA
In 1964, the young and rebellious Irish entrepreneur Ronan O’Rahilly, along with his corps of DJs, started beaming Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones – and other artists spurned as ‘‘a menace’’ by the staid BBC radio monopoly of the time – from a converted ferry off the east coast of England, just outside British territorial waters.
Unlicensed and uncensored, O’Rahilly’s Radio Caroline was the nation’s first pirate radio station and became the heartbeat of British youth. It broadcast into the early hours to hundreds of thousands who listened to transistor radios tucked under their pillow while their parents were tuned to Frank Sinatra and Perry
Como on the BBC.
O’Rahilly, who has died in Ireland aged 79, drew an audience of
25 million in his prime and was credited with helping to spark the Swinging Sixties and with forcing the BBC to ‘‘get with it’’ by setting up its own pop music station.
Musicians, including Pete Townshend of the Who, have said O’Rahilly was influential in reshaping Western European musical culture. The Times called him ‘‘godfather of the pirate radio stations which revolutionised British broadcasting in the 1960s’’.
O’Rahilly had named his rusty ship the MV Caroline after President John F. Kennedy’s young daughter. He became a lifelong fan and amateur historian of Kennedy, America’s first Catholic president.
Rebellion was in his DNA: His grandfather Michael O’Rahilly was considered by many a leader and martyr of the Easter Rising of 1916, when he was killed by a British machine gun.
His grandson deliberately chose Good Friday 1964, at precisely noon, to launch Radio Caroline, with the Rolling Stones’ version of Not Fade Away. The opening line – ‘‘I’m gonna tell you how it’s gonna be’’ – was O’Rahilly’s first shot across the bows of the BBC bosses who at the time wouldn’t touch Dylan or the Stones with a bargepole.
The Radio Caroline story was told, with a high dose of fiction, in the 2009 British movie The Boat That Rocked. Aodogan Ronan O’Rahilly was born in Dublin into a wealthy family; his father owned a private shipping port. Ronan later claimed he had run away from home seven times before he crossed the Irish Sea to seek his fortune in England.
With his good looks, charisma and blarney, he set up a music club, the Scene, in London’s Soho district. It attracted young artists from around Britain, including Eric Burdon and the Animals, jazz/pop pianist Georgie Fame, the Kinks, and the Rolling Stones. To his admirers, O’Rahilly was a renegade visionary and a skinflint con man.
O’Rahilly became Fame’s manager and, after the BBC refused to play the artist’s music, he decided to set up his own radio station offshore. He realised there was an unhealthy relationship between the BBC and the major record labels who were paying BBC insiders to have their tracks aired. The system was called ‘‘payola’’, described by Burdon in the Animals’ breakthrough track The Story of Bo Diddley.
O’Rahilly bought a disused Danish ferry for £20,000, sailed it to Ireland, kitted it out with equipment and took it to the North Sea just off Felixstowe in England, three miles outside British territorial waters. Radio Caroline was born.
In 1967, the British Labour government, led by Harold Wilson and his key cabinet minister Tony Benn, announced a new law, the Marine Broadcasting Offences Act. Officials denounced Caroline and ordered it to shut down because it was not paying royalties to artists.
O’Rahilly kept the station going, even though the BBC stole some of his initial DJs for its new Caroline-inspired pop programmes. O’Rahilly retaliated, through Radio Caroline, by supporting the victorious Conservative Party in the 1970 election. In 1991, the MV Ross Revenge, a former fishing trawler that had replaced the MV Caroline, ran aground off the English coast.
Outside his pirate radio career, O’Rahilly became manager of Australian model turned actor George Lazenby and helped him get the role of James Bond in the 1969 movie On Her Majesty’s Service. O’Rahilly talked Lazenby out of doing more than the one film, making an ill-advised argument that Bond had become passe. Roger Moore took over the role. O’Rahilly produced Lazenby’s 1971 action flop Universal Soldier.
O’Rahilly was married in 1993 to Catherine Hamilton-Davies. In 2012, he met Ines Rocha Trindade, who became his partner and cared for him after he was diagnosed with vascular dementia. Survivors include his wife, his companion, Trindade’s son, and three sisters. His death, in County Louth, was confirmed by Moore.
Radio Caroline still broadcasts off the southeast England coast as well as from digital studios. ‘‘Ronan was a clever man, sometimes verging on genius,’’ Moore said. ‘‘Eccentric, of course, sometimes unscrupulous, but suddenly kind and warmhearted.’’
‘‘Ronan was a clever man, sometimes verging on genius.’’
Roger Moore