Mary Westphal was flabbergasted after watching the heartbreaking
documentary Mayor of the Sunset Strip about KROQ DJ Rodney Bingenheimer.

“I couldn’t believe no one had ever done anything for Rodney.
He helped all these bands and made KROQ what it is today, and now he’s banished
to a time slot that’s so late no one knows he’s on the air. I mean, why hasn’t
anyone given him a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame? Rick Dees has one and
Rodney doesn’t.”

Westphal is a desktop publisher and old-school punk, who had a
fanzine called Vague. Now she’s started an online petition (www.rodney.panopia.com)
to get Bingenheimer into KROQ’s 7 to 10 p.m. slot on Sundays (currently, he’s
on midnight to 3 a.m. Monday mornings). If all goes well, Westphal plans to
tackle the Walk of Fame issue next.

Since December, she says, she’s gathered more than a thousand
signatures. Some of the groups supporting the petition include the Bangles,
the Muffs, Franz Ferdinand, Keane, Joan Jett’s Blackheart Records, and Redd
Kross.

With no real relationship to Bingenheimer other than interviewing
him once when she was 22 and seeing him around over the years at Denny’s and
at rock shows, the 40-something Westphal has been promoting her cause by word
of mouth, doing things like handing out fliers on the Sunset Strip when she
has time.

“I feel like Rodney’s getting screwed,” she says. “He
is very valuable to the radio industry, whether they want to admit it or not.
He is a quiet guy and a really great person. He will talk to anyone. If you’re
a music fan, you can just walk up and talk about any album to Rodney, and he
will tell you something you didn’t know. He’ll take time for anyone.”

It’s true that over the years, Bingenheimer, who started at the
station in 1976 and has been immortalized on episodes of The Simpsons
and SpongeBob Squarepants, has launched a mind-blowing number of bands
and played an undeniable role in making KROQ the monster Infinity Broadcasting
station it is today. He’s been credited as the first to play the Clash, Coldplay,
the Cure, the Ramones, No Doubt, Nirvana, the Strokes, the Vines, Oasis, Van
Halen, Billy Idol and Hole, to name only a few. He also helped David Bowie get
his first deal and, more recently, was involved in breaking bands like the Donnas
and this year’s KROQ Acoustic Christmas headliner Franz Ferdinand.

“When KROQ first started,” says Westphal, who lives
in Norwalk, “the station had such a small pickup that we used to have to
go into Whittier, to Rose Hills, where the cemetery was, to pick up the signal
and listen to Rodney.”

Before launching her petition, Westphal checked with Bingenheimer
for approval. She located an e-mail address for Mayor of the Sunset Strip
producer Chris Carter and wrote him. Carter, who spent seven years making his
film, told Westphal that Bingenheimer couldn’t be officially involved, but the
famous DJ wished her “good luck.”

Turns out Carter’s original motivation for making Mayor of
the Sunset Strip was also to inspire KROQ to give Bingenheimer a better
time slot.

“One of the reasons I made the movie was I owed Rodney,”
says Carter, who hosts Breakfast With the Beatles on 97.1 and is currently
producing a feature about the life of Edie Sedgwick starring Sienna Miller.
Carter was also in the ’80s band Dramarama, which became a staple act for KROQ
after Bingenheimer decided to champion their song “Anything, Anything.”

“For me, and my band, all my good fortune has been spurred
from the relationship I have had with Rodney. I was hoping that once the guys
at KROQ saw the film, they might want to give him his weekend hours back — that
was my main intent. We had a billboard on Sunset, he was on CNN and Entertainment
Tonight . . . but nothing happened. Over the seven years it took to make
the film, I talked to [program director] Kevin Weatherly, but I never thought
it was my place to say, ‘Give him his old hours back.’ I just thought it would
happen naturally. I mean, how many other DJs on KROQ have a movie made about
them?”

Weatherly was unavailable for comment, but given that some other
veteran KROQ personalities have disappeared from the station — where did Tammi
Heidi go? — it seems notable that the freeform Bingenheimer is still on the
air at all.

Since she started her online campaign, Westphal says, she’s talked
to Bingenheimer directly a few times, just to pass along fan mail she’s received.
Among his admirers are Redd Kross’ Steve McDonald (no relation), who thinks
the whole Rodney situation at KROQ is pretty ugly and approved a banner for
Westphal’s petition on the Redd Kross Web site.

“Rodney Bingenheimer personifies good taste in the field
of rock music,” he says via cell phone. “I would also say that Rodney’s
contribution to the rock music community, and KROQ in particular, is immeasurable.
KROQ’s decision to bump his time slot in favor of Adam Corolla’s mediocre lifestyle
advice to teenagers is a great injustice.”

“Loveline has to start at 10, so they had a slot from
7 to 10,” Westphal says. “They could have put Rodney in there, but
they put him in the graveyard.”

So should he just change stations? Westphal says “a third”
of the mail she receives is from fans urging him to move to competing station
Indie 103.1. Carter adds that the DJs at 103.1 have even gone on the air asking
him to make the move.

“Steve Jones and other DJs have gone on the air over the
past few months and said, ‘Come over here, we’ll give you any hours you want.’
But Rodney is such a loyal guy, he doesn’t want to jump ship.”

I ask if any official offers have been made.

“I don’t know if there’s been a formal offer from the administration
or not.”

Since he is a die-hard romantic, Bingenheimer’s personality might
have something to do with the problem. Some former DJs with impressive track
records have moved on to cushy executive jobs — Interscope’s Mark Williams and
Chris Douridas, who was whisked away to Geffen, DreamWorks and now Apple iTunes
after hosting KCRW’s Morning Becomes Eclectic. Yet Bingenheimer appears
to have never had ambitions beyond being on air at KROQ.

In this situation, his fierce loyalty, which makes him such a
priceless champion of so many now-beloved artists, has held him back. It seems
KROQ, a station he apparently considers home, may have, like his own family,
failed to recognize or understand Bingenheimer’s finer qualities.

Have you asked Rodney about the possibility of moving to 103.1?

Westphal pauses. “He just said, ‘Then I wouldn’t be Rodney
on the ROQ.’ “

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