The Sunday-morning radio show on KLOS-FM survives with its singular purpose intact
Since taking over as host in 2002, Chris Carter has broadened the show's perspective to include performances from radio and TV broadcasts, bootlegs and solo music by former Beatles. “The role of the host is not to have his jollies," Carter says. “It's the people's show."
RADIO programs that survive in Los Angeles for a quarter-century come along about as frequently as a SigAlert-free day on the freeway. On that front alone, this year's 25th anniversary of “Breakfast With the Beatles" constitutes a minor miracle, to say nothing of the longevity of a weekly show devoted to the music of one band that released just a little more than 200 songs during a short but spectacular eight-year recording career.
“The fun thing about the Beatles is that it's just never-ending," said Chris Carter, 48, the show's host since 2002 and only the second person to anchor this exploration of the recorded legacy of the most influential and popular rock band ever. “It's now 38 years after the group broke up, but there's still news every week about what's going on in that world" -- a reference to the “Beatle News" segment of his show that's been airing on classic-rock station KLOS-FM (95.5) since late 2006. (The show is heard Sundays from 9 a.m. to noon.)
There's no big anniversary celebration scheduled, in part because no one's quite sure about the actual date the show went on the air in 1983 at long-defunct rock station KMET-FM. The original host, Deirdre O'Donoghue, who died in 2001, would hold court every Sunday with a new playlist largely drawn from those 200 or so tracks the quartet released from 1962 until they broke up in 1970.
He's upped the show's cred among Beatle fans through phone-ins from Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, George Harrison and Harrison's widow, Olivia. And he's missed at least one call from a surviving Beatle.
