Aircheck Tracker
Profile: Howard Rose / Crispian St. John / Jay Jackson
Here at AIRCHECK, we were saddened to hear of the death of Howard Rose back in July 2002. There are no better tributes that those already existing on the internet already. Therefore, with acknowledgments to the sites concerned, we feature a collection of some of the tributes from people who knew him well - these tributes are not only extremely fitting, but are also taken from sites that are extremely well put together and are well worth a visit for their other content. Further tributes will be added in time. Where possible, where a link shows, we have included a description of what else you can find in the site.
In this first tribute, the Radio Sovereign mentioned is that of the 'pirate' station which operated prior to the start of Eastbourne's commercial station now owned by RIL. Information on the commercial station can be found here via our AIRCHECK UK feature. AIRCHECK does not necessarily endorse the views of pirate radio as may be expressed in the tributes.
Ian
You Are On My Mind
July 2002 by John Kenning - taken from www.icce.rug.nl/~soundscapes/VOLUME05/Kenning_on_RoseUK.html
On the evening of July 17th, 2002, Howard Rose, aka
Crispian St. John, aka Jay Jackson died in hospital after surgery.
John Kenning, founder of Radio Sovereign, wrote this tribute to the man who, as he says, lived and breathed radio.
'The last time I saw Howard Rose -- or Crispian St. John, as he was known then -- was back in 1985.
Crispian once told me that he had cribbed his name, in part, from a singer called Chrispian St. Peters who had had a hit back in the 1960's with
"You Were On My Mind." By 1985, Sovereign in the UK had finished and I was about to set off to the French and Italian Rivieras to set up
Radio Sovereign International and I had pleaded with Howard to come with me to help set up the new station but Howard had his own plans -- he wanted to set up a radio magazine -- and he declined my offer.
I had hoped to have met up with Howard again one day, alas, this will never happen now.
I had come to know Howard well through the early Sovereign days and somewhere, I have a photo of Howard, Paul McKenna and me which was taken by my girlfriend at Foxtrot Oscars, a restaurant in London. In the photo, taken in 1983, the three of us are seen plotting how to set up Radio Sovereign in the UK. The things I remember about Howard -- apart from his craggy face -- were his radio talents. He had a brilliant radio style which I and many of the other jocks on Sovereign envied. His voice was also highly distinctive and reminded me of the old Radio London DJ style from which he probably emulated his. Nonetheless, Howard somehow integrated his own style into a unique blend of everything that was best about the 1960's offshore pirate pop jocks.
Then there was his sheer professionalism. OK, he had many weaknesses, but when I chatted to him about radio, his sheer brilliance and knowledge of all things "radio" was an inspiration to me and I learned much from this slightly eccentric radio man! Howard really knew about radio and today's so called "radio programmers" and "planners" would have learned much from him. But then, I have always held the view that real radio pirates know more about radio than any of their modern day contemporaries.
I always remember Howard bellowing to other jocks "Give me a bang when you're ready, Shag," his way of asking for a cue or a wake up call. It went on to become a standard saying on Sovereign and every jock adopted the phrase when they needed a cue. At one point, Howard used to do the breakfast show on Sovereign -- the station was based at my home in Twickenham where Howard had commandeered one of the bedrooms. He would often roll out of bed, switch on the mic and even though he was still half asleep, his voice would boom out over the air as if he had been up all night practising his opening link ... proof, if any were needed, that this guy lived and breathed radio.
On several occasions, Howard didn't make it to the studio on time for his opening announcement.
So he would cunningly start to play a record from about halfway through the song, then he'd back announce the record as if he had been there all along!
I challenged him about this once and accused him of being late on air ... he just smiled and said my radio receiver had probably not been tuned in correctly and that of course he had been in the studio on time. What could I say?
RIP Howard, if ever there was A Real Radio Salty Dog ... it was you.'
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This next tribute is taken from www.jacobsladder.org.uk/rosehoward.htm, and is written by the very popular radio man Hans Knot. Again, our acknowledgements and thanks in anticipation go to Hans. The following is taken from the home page of the site where the article is taken from: www.jacobsladder.org.uk is a free service designed to help all of us remember those who have lived with us, have risked their lives for us, have helped us to overcome the burden of living, or simply have helped us to move one step forward.
Ian
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On the evening of July 17th, 2002,
Howard Rose died in hospital after surgery. Avid listeners of Radio Northsea International, Radio Caroline or
Radio Atlantis will know him better under the deejay names of Crispian St.
John and Jay Jackson. For over twelve years he edited The Radio Magazine and made it into the leading news weekly for the UK radio industry.
Lost for words, Hans Knot wrote this obituary.
'During the more than 33 years that I'm writing about the medium radio, never before it was so difficult to find the words I was looking for while compiling a story as today. Yesterday evening, July 17th 2002, after an operation,
Howard G. Rose died at the age of 49 years after a heart attack.
Most people in radio land knew him as deejay Crispian St. John or
Jay Jackson. He was one of the very first British Anoraks whom I came to know after I started writing for Pirate Radio News in 1969.
Very young, 16 years of age at that stage, Howard wanted to grab and eat everything which had to do with Pirate and Offshore Radio and so he also did read my magazine and got, on regular base, in contact with me.
Of course he couldn't avoid to start his own station at that time and he was doing some illegal things in England working for a land based radio station. Although this was a very tiny, little one, bigger stations would come soon reality for little Crispian. It was in 1971 that he, as an 18-year-old guy, climbed onboard the MEBO II, in those days the radio ship of Radio North Sea International. There he became part of the international service which supplied us with the perfect sound of "RNI, the Summer of 71". Howard learnt a lot from his fellow deejays like Paul May, Martin Kayne and the guy who hired him at that time, Steve Merike. It was also on one of my visits to the Oude Boerenhofstede at Naarden, where the land based studio's of RNI were housed, that I did met Crispian for the very first time. In 1971 he was fired by the station -- recently he wrote a story about it for this journal.
It was not only RNI which took the interest of Howard. In 1972 he went to the station, where he tuned in to the sixties: Radio Caroline. In March 1968 both Caroline vessels were towed away of the British Coast and went into Amsterdam harbour. After being there and in Zaandam harbour for many years, they were sold for scrap in order of the Wijsmuller Tender Company, to which Caroline had to pay still a lot of money. It was Gerard van der Zee who bought the MV Mi Amigo back for Ronan O'Rahilly, so Radio Caroline could return to the air waves again. First they started as Radio 199 and as it was almost winter the station came in clearly and we especially enjoyed the Christmas programming in 1972, where Howard, a.k.a. Crispian, played a key role. It looked like the station would stop as quickly as it has restarted, as the crew, which wasn't properly paid by the organization hijacked the ship and towed it into harbour. With some hard work by the deejays and volunteers, however, the MV Mi Amigo was soon back on sea and the most famous radio station on earth was rocking again on the only place where Radio Caroline can be: the international waters.
It seemed Crispian was very restless and later, at the end of 1973, he wrote me that he would soon leave for Germany. There, in the harbour of Cuxhavn, a new radio ship would be fitted out under very hard conditions. Even one of the crew members died during the outfit of the MV Jeanine. The new ship would be used for Radio Atlantis, which earlier on had hired transmission time from Radio Caroline. With their own ship, off the coast of Zeeland, they started also an international service and Crispian once again was part of a very good team including Steve England, Andy Anderson as well as Terry Davis.
In the 1970s Howard played a role within Independent Radio, which started with LBC and Capital Radio in 1973 as the first commercial stations in Great Britain. He could be listened at stations like Swansea Sound and Viking Radio, but the sea still had a special attraction for him. Abe Nathan's Voice of Peace, a station in the Mediterranean was the next station he went to work for. There Howard stayed for many years. While doing my research for my book on the history on the Voice of Peace I interviewed a lot of people and every time Crispian was mentioned as a very good deejay and friend, although some told me that he sometimes could be very pigheaded and tried several times to get things done his way.
Then more "Rocking on the Northsea" came for Howard under his nickname Jay Jackson, sometimes adding a middle "J" between both these names. Not only was he responsible for the newsroom from 1983 on board the MV Ross Revenge, the new Radio Caroline ship, he also made a lot of prestigious album music programs, we will never forget. The combination of the music he played, added to his knowledge of the music and his beautiful voice made it all complete for listening with good pleasure. About his period on board the MV Ross Revenge Jay Jackson wrote a book called 'The Pirates Who Waive the Rules', a book which didn't get the publicity it deserved.
In the 1980s Howard played an important role in co-starting the very first golden oldie station in Britain, Radio Sovereign. It became headlines, not only in Britain but over the whole of Western Europe. It was an illegal station and therefore, one day it was forced to go off the air, but it returned later at the Riviera in France. Over the years Howard made thousands of contacts within the radio industry and he decided, taking a new step, to highlight the radio world from another corner. An own radio magazine was his idea. After a false start a second attempt was very successful and The Radio Magazine was born, now already more than twelve years ago. In between he was also one of the co-owners of KCBC, a radio station in his home town Kettering.
Howard, which whom I stayed in contact all those years, one time more than the other, asked me to write for The Radio Magazine for the news from the Benelux. He also wrote on regular base for the Freewave Media Magazine since the late seventies of last century. Just last week the message came in that Howard and Patricia, his wife, had sold The Radio Magazine and the Goldcrest Communications to a big publisher. It was stated that Howard would be staying as the key role man, but this next step in his career could not last for longer than a week. He died yesterday, leaving behind his wife Patricia whom he did marry last year, and three children. I hope that they in time may find the strength to carry this heavy loss.'