We’re choosing the path between the stars…
Rodney Bingenheimer was finally given the recognition he has long deserved with the 2,330th star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame yesterday.
David sent a message to his long-time friend via telegram, which read thus: “You getting a star is the high point of the season. We are all delighted for you.”
Regular visitors to these pages will know all about Rodney’s association with DB, and here are links to just two stories which highlight that association: 03.16.2004 NEWS: UNRELEASED DB ACOUSTIC TRACK OUT IN US TODAY & 02.10.2005 NEWS: SEE DB AND FRIENDS ON THE BIG SCREEN
Most online pieces seem to have used the same PA story, which I’ve posted below…
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LA rock DJ Rodney Bingenheimer gets star on Walk of Fame
Dubbed the “Mayor of the Sunset Strip,” Rodney Bingenheimer launched the careers of such bands as Blondie and Blur on his long-time radio rock show. On Friday, the Los Angeles disc jockey received some glitzy gratitude: a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
“I can’t believe I started this in 1976 playing the Ramones,” said Bingenheimer in an emotional speech at the ceremony for the walk’s 2,330th star.
Guests included Brian Wilson, the Bangles, Bingenheimer’s sister and hordes of cheering fans.
“Once upon a time, three little girls pooled their daytime job money together to make a record. We have Rodney Bingenheimer to thank for playing it,” said the Bangles’ Vicki Peterson.
For 30 years, the unassuming Bingenheimer ? shy and thin, with a squeaky voice ? has hosted “Rodney on the Roq” on local radio station KROQ-FM.
He is known as the first DJ to play records by such bands as Blondie, the Ramones, the Sex Pistols, Duran Duran, the Cure, Joan Jett, No Doubt, Blur, Nirvana, Sonic Youth and Coldplay.
In the ’60s, Bingenheimer became Davy Jones’ stand-in on the TV series “The Monkees.”
His ’70s-era Hollywood nightclub Rodney’s English Disco attracted the likes of Iggy Pop and Led Zeppelin, jump-starting the L.A. glam rock movement.
In the 2003 documentary “Mayor of the Sunset Strip,” stars including Mick Jagger and David Bowie paid tribute to Bingenheimer and his journey from music fan to scene legend.
“You getting a star is the high point of the season. We are all delighted for you,” Bowie wrote in a telegram read Friday at the dedication ceremony.
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Well done Rodney, great to see people are finally beginning to understand just how important your contribution to music has been.
Thanx to BowieNetter mephisto for the pointer and the Documentary International magazine cover scan.
I’ll leave you with a Bowie quotation regarding Rodney from July, 1992: “Alone in L.A. Rodney seemed like myself, an island of Anglo ‘nowness’. He even knew British singles and bands that I wasn’t aware of. There was nothing about him that wasn’t ‘on’. Rodney single-handedly cut a path through the treacle of the 60’s, allowing all we ‘avants’ to parade our sounds of tomorrow, dressing in our clothes of derision.”
