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Are you music lovers, thrill seekers, and conversationalists here at Ricochet ready for an excursion into broadcast excellence? Well, unfortunately, I can't take you there. The best I can do is provide the theme song the late, great Rush Limbaugh used throughout his talk radio career, starting as a local host in Sacramento in 1984 and continuing on through his decades as a nationally syndicated radio host until his passing in 2021.
That song, of course, is "My City Was Gone," by the Pretenders, with its immediately recognizable and distinctive bass line; one which millions tuning into The Rush Limbaugh Show heard every weekday at noon Eastern Time for all those years. The song was written by an American expat, Chrissie Hynde, who founded the band with three Brits in 1978. The song is a complaint by Hynde about how her hometown Akron, Ohio had been ruined by development. The song was originally released in 1982 as the B-side to "Back on the Chain Gang" and later included in the band's 1984 album Learning to Crawl.
Getting back to Rush, at one point 10-12 years into his radio show, he received a cease-and-desist letter from EMI, the owner of the song, telling him he couldn't use the song anymore because Ms. Hynde didn't want to see the song associated with Rush Limbaugh. At some later point, Hynde found out about this and stated she was fine with Rush using the song because even though she was not a fan of Limbaugh, her parents were. So Rush continued to use the song until the end. This transcript from his March 11, 2016, provides Rush's account of how he came to use this song and the incident with EMI and Chrissie Hynde.
Discussion (14)
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Well, on August 11, 2000, I made the mistake of asking Ms. Hynde about Rush’s use of the bass line. The Pretenders were opening for Neil Young in Hershey PA and I had managed to be backstage. I consider Chrissie to be the absolute preeminent female rocker of all time (no one else close), and have never really recovered from the ignomy of being dismissed with a scowl and a hand wave. If only she’d slapped me or stomped on my foot with her spike-heeled boot, I would’ve at least had a moment.
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But evidently she didn't mind the money.
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Surprised that by 2000 the Pretenders were opening for Neil Young. At that point I would've been much more interested in seeing them than seeing Young.
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I seem to recall a story El Rushbo told about her folks being fans of the show and she relented to the song being played as his “theme”.
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I was just out for a walk on the trail, and for some reason had “Crazy on You” going through my head. And I was thinking that Ann Wilson has to be the greatest rock female singer.
Then I read this post and I thought, hmmm, let’s think about this.
Chrissie Hynde is unlike any other singer, and just plain gets it done, rock wise. And this song in particular shows that; couldn’t be covered by anyone else.
And I remember her being a mensch about Rush’s use of the song. Of course he was paying royalties, and his use made the song 100 times as popular as it would have been, so there’s that.
But think of someone today in her position who would say something like that—I’m not a fan but my parents are, so whatever, just let it go—without automatically calculating what it would cost them cancelwise or something. We certainly recently lived in much more rational, if not genteel, times.
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