Joe Moser
Stodgy bastion of cultural conservatism and old boys’ clubs. City of youth and bold ideas. Boston undoubtedly fits both these descriptions, but as a college student there in the late 1990s, I never got any hint that the Hub City had once been a hotbed of countercultural activity. The documentary “WBCN and the American Revolution” challenged my notions about the city and deepened my understanding of Boston’s virtues and contradictions.
For many folks who lived through the 1960s and 1970s (and for those who’ve ever wished they had), the film will serve as an enthralling commemoration of courageous creativity and resistance to the media and political establishments. This 2019 documentary has only increased in timeliness and urgency since its theatrical release was cut short by COVID. It screens at the Savoy Theater in Montpelier on Saturday, July 11, at 6:30 p.m.
Directed by Bill Lichtenstein, who worked at the eponymous radio station in his teens, “WBCN and the American Revolution” tells the stranger-than-fiction tale of WBCN’s meteoric ascent beginning on March 15, 1968, when its “American Revolution” underground rock programming began to supplant the classical format of the then-moribund station; by May 1968, the station’s metamorphosis was complete. The film’s opening uses archival film of Boston landmarks in the 1960s and archival audio of the era’s repetitive top 40 radio programming to set the stage for this rock-and-roll uprising on the airwaves.
With fiery young deejays and the mantra “Ugly radio is dead,” WBCN became one of the first stations to play deep album cuts by late ’60s and early ’70s heavyweights such as Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, Queen, Bruce Springsteen, and Patti Smith, whose rousing, profane cover of the Who’s “My Generation” serves as fitting end punctuation for the film. As WBCN rapidly evolved, its mission expanded to include edgy news coverage, a gay-themed program called “The Lavender Hour,” and a volunteer-staffed Listener Line to offer advice and foster community connections. According to one WBCN veteran, it was radio “not as performance but as a relationship between us and the listeners.”
Lichtenstein’s documentary provides an exceptionally effective balance of retrospective interviews and period footage, employing selections from the wealth of archival recordings and photographs that he and his collaborators unearthed for the project (an archival collection focused on the film is now housed at the U-Mass Amherst Library). Connecting WBCN’s cultural and political bent with the currents of the time, the filmmakers offer concise political context via references to LBJ, MLK, RFK, and Nixon, along with photos of the massive student-led anti-Vietnam War protests in Boston. While interviewees Noam Chomsky and Bill “Spaceman” Lee briefly chime in with celebrity testimonials about WBCN’s stature, the filmmakers never get sidetracked by famous faces, allowing the station’s staff and listeners to shape the narrative.
Out of more than a dozen insiders featured in the film, some of the most compelling figures include WBCN founder and financial backer Ray Riepen, news director Dan Schechter, and influential deejay Maxanne Sartori.
While Riepen (who died in 2024) and Schechter both sat for insightful interviews for the film, Sartori did not participate, though her voice is nonetheless prominent.
Riepen, a lawyer from Kansas City who loved rock and roll, brought a brash entrepreneurial ambition to a trifecta of Boston cultural institutions: the Boston Tea Party rock club (where the WBCN studio briefly resided), the “Cambridge Phoenix” newspaper (later known as the “Boston Phoenix”), and WBCN.
As for Schechter, his promotion to the job of WBCN news director is a wild story in itself (as is that of his run-in with overzealous FBI agents), and his work as “the news dissector” infused satire of the powers that be with coverage of current events that empowered listeners to question dominant narratives.
Wisely, the filmmakers keep their focus on WBCN’s rapid rise and halcyon days and only briefly allude to its mid-’70s decline into more commercially driven programming. The documentary clocks in at a full two hours, but since it has a great deal to say about the past and present, it more than earns its running time.
Quoting Abbie Hoffman (a native of Worcester, Mass.), Dan Schechter offers the film’s summative statement: “‘We were young, we were sometimes crazy, we made mistakes, but we were right.’ I think that could be said of WBCN.”
“WBCN and the American Revolution” screens at the Savoy Theater in Montpelier on Saturday, July 11, at 6:30 p.m.
