Art Bell

Art Bell squatted like a blood-tick on the margins of the AM radio airwaves in the 1990s. Back then, most people hovering along the options on that part of the dial listened to Rush Limbaugh’s rightist diatribes, or Dr. Laura’s “Go take on the day!” platitudes.

But me? I kept AM on late, until midnight. Then, Georgio Moroder’s pulsing synths would spill out of the tinny radio speaker - Midnight Express, naturally. And as the music died down the star would go into his schtick. Art Bell, the man who provided a space on talk radio for conspiracy theorists back when that usually meant well-meaning UFO nuts and not wild-eyed blowhards obsessed with the idea the Feds were putting something in the water to make the frogs gay. Deep of voice and with a born announcers gift for inflection, Bell was the ultimate poker player when it came to appearing to sound as if he took every single one of his guests and callers to be completely truthful and believable in the things they said. Which, you know, was pretty tough in some cases. It’s almost thirty years on, but I still recall one regular Boston caller on the “Wild Card Line” insisting he was prone to fits of werewolf-ism.

Bell never laughed at the guy or treated him like a kook - the Boston Wolfman was treated with the same respect as Michio Kaku or Waylon Jennings or some brothel owner in Pahrump, where the host hosted his fabulous late-night program.

Pahrump. Sounded like an extinct form of donkey, maybe. But it’s a real place - remote, desolate, better known for the infamous Bunny Ranch than the rustic charm of the surrounding mountain ranges. Only a guy like Art Bell could appreciate such a place, and give it a personality on the national airwaves. Nowadays I don’t live that far away, out here in the Nevada desert. That fact still seems like a strange miracle to me. It’s almost as if Art Bell’s voice drew me out here for reasons I don’t think I could wrap my head around if I tried.

Bell died a few years back. If I’d known he still lived in the area, I would’ve tried to visit with him. Makes me a little sad we never had a chance to speak. Then again, sometimes when you meet your heroes, come to find out they walk in feet of clay just like you, me, or the Boston Wolfman.

Some people are better appreciated with distance, and a perspective of history. I think Art Bell was probably one of those people.

But I miss his show.