Photo: ROBYN BECK / AFP / Getty Images
HOLLYWOOD (CNS) - A star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame was unveiled Thursday honoring radio personality Richard Blade, culminating the effort by his fan club to get him a star.
Talk show host Jimmy Kimmel, punk singer Billy Idol and Oscar E. Alvarez Jr., coordinator of the Richard Blade Fan Club, joined Blade in speaking at the ceremony adjacent to The Aster boutique hotel and members club on Vine Street.
Kimmel was "Jimmy The Sports Guy" on the "Kevin and Bean" morning show on KROQ-FM (106.7) from 1994-99 when Blade was a disc jockey at the station. Kimmel called Blade "a true L.A. icon if ever there was one."
"Richard, even though he was a legend and I was a punk who came in from Tucson wearing shorts to work, welcomed me very warmly," Kimmel said. "I could tell right away he was the rarest thing possible in the radio business, a very nice person."
Idol said Blade "super deserves this" honor.
"It was fantastic for us back in the 80s to have someone like Richard on KROQ, supporting the new music coming out of England and America, because we were getting a lot of blowback from the people in the 60s and the 70s who just didn't want to believe there was anything good about the 80s," Idol said.
A number of KROQ's personalities were in the audience for the ceremony, as well as record producer Jimmy Jam and actor Wil Wheaton.
Blade thanked everyone for attending, adding that he wishes his parents could see the event, saying, "If they were still with us, they would not believe today."
He reminisced about his first thoughts about living in California -- when he was 10 years old in England.
"My journey how I got here today ... it started on a cold, wet night in England. The rain was banging against the windows and I thought, `I gotta get out of this place. I gotta go somewhere where it's sunny, where there's palm trees, where there's friendly people, where they make endless superhero remakes.' And so I figured Hollywood had to be the place to be," he said. "But I was 10 years old when I figured that. I was way too young, so I had to wait.
"And then I ended up at Oxford University and I became the college DJ there," Blade said. "And at the end of the four years I left with two degrees and 700 records. And it was like a sliding doors moment -- do I use the degrees or do I use the records?"
He said he then got invited to tour clubs across Europe as a DJ, which he did for two years before he remembered his dream as a 10-year-old to travel to America, so he traveled to California and got a studio apartment four blocks from Hollywood Boulevard.
Blade's star is the 2,782nd since the completion of the Walk of Fame in 1961 with the initial 1,558 stars. It was approved in 2021 by the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce's Board of Directors after the fan club submitted the nomination. Honorees often schedule their ceremony to coincide with something they have to promote, Martinez said.
The ceremony coincided with the release of Blade's latest novel, "Slapton Sands," inspired by one of America's worst military disasters of World War II, an Allied dress rehearsal for the Normandy landings that left around 700 dead.
Born Richard Thomas Sheppard on May 23, 1952, in Bristol, England, Blade graduated from Oxford University and started his career as a club DJ in England and the European continent before moving to Los Angeles in 1976.
Blade began his radio career in 1980, working for stations in Bakersfield (KMGN-FM 98.7 now KNZR-FM), San Luis Obispo (KZOZ-FM 93.3) and Long Beach (KNAC-FM 105.5 now KBUE) before joining KROQ in 1982, taking a new name from the 1982 science fiction film, "Blade Runner."
Also in 1982, Blade began hosting the daily music television program "MV3," on KHJ-TV Channel 9 (now KCAL).
Blade created, produced and hosted the weekly music series "Videobeat" which ran on KTLA-TV Channel 5 from 1984-86.
Blade was instrumental in boosting the careers of many new-wave bands, including Duran Duran, Depeche Mode and Tears For Fears.
Blade left KROQ in 2000, moved to St. Maarten in the Caribbean, taking a two-year break from radio to work on several writing projects.
Blade is a host on Sirius XM's "1st Wave" channel, which the satellite radio service bills as "the First Wave of alternative music, centered in the 1980s but including legendary artists and cult classics from the '70s through the early '90s."