Rodney Bingenheimer is punk rock's biggest cheerleader. In the mid-'70s, long before record labels found punk commercially viable,
Bingenheimer beamed two-cord, two-minute garage pop via his Rodney on the ROQ radio show on Los Angeles' pioneering alternative station KROQ. The impact of his program was felt throughout Southern California; struggling young acts found exposure they couldn't acquire anywhere else while many of its listeners, such as
Dexter Holland of
the Offspring and
Gwen Stefani of
No Doubt, eventually took the Orange County punk and ska that
Bingenheimer had long championed onto the Billboard charts.
Bingenheimer began his career as a stand-in for
Davy Jones of
the Monkees in 1966. Raised in Mountain View, CA,
Bingenheimer ran away to L.A. after a suggestion from
Cher. Called "The Mayor of Sunset Strip,"
Bingenheimer became such a prominent cult figure in the L.A. music scene that
the G.T.O.'s wrote a song about him entitled "Rodney." In 1972,
Bingenheimer opened a club that catered to the glam crowd, attracting visitors such as
David Bowie,
Marc Bolan,
Led Zeppelin,
Joan Jett, and even
Elvis Presley. Rodney on the ROQ debuted on KROQ in 1976, and the show's underground discoveries -- including punk rock icons such as
Agent Orange,
the Circle Jerks, and
Social Distortion -- were compiled onto
Rodney on the ROQ albums in the '80s. In 2000,
Bingenheimer was the executive producer of
Blockbuster: Glitter Glam Rock Experience, a tribute to the early '70s U.K. imports he once spun in his club.
–
Michael Sutton, Rovi