Tom Lodge, the real radio pirate

It was my great pleasure to interview Tom Lodge, one of the leading figures of Radio Caroline, the off-shore radio station that brought the rock revolution to Britain in the 1960s. The film “Pirate Radio” is a fictional re-telling of the Radio Caroline years, written and directed by Richard Curtis.

That’s a shame, because Tom was there and would have served as a great resource to make the film a bit more accurate. The real story is almost always more fascinating than what Hollywood comes up with.

Here are a few photos we didn’t have in my story:

Need any proof that “Austin Powers” got it right? Lodge told me the fur on his back was a wolf he killed himself in the wilds of Alaska.

Lodge conducted a super-secret interview with the Beatles in which even he wasn’t told about. He was picked up in a limo and driven to a hidden spot in Chelsea, and put into a room with no idea who he was about to talk to. At that point, in walks John, Paul, George and Ringo. He promises to publish the complete transcript of the interview in his new book “The Ship That Rocked The World.”

Lodge became a celebrity because of his work on Radio Caroline. He told me that what the film really got wrong was the emphasis on recreational drugs. “I hadn’t even heard of marijuana until 1968,” he said.