Legendary DJ Dick Biondi subject of loving fan’s documentary

Anyone who grew up in Chicago area in the 1960s and tucked a transistor radio under their pillow at bedtime will remember the voice of Dick Biondi.

Biondi dominated the Chicago airwaves on stations where rock ’n’ roll was king, WLS and WCFL. The “Wild I-tralian” blazed the trail followed by DJs like Bob Sirott and John Landecker. The clear channel signal of WLS ensured he would be heard across the nation and even into Canada.

The late Biondi’s life is now chronicled in the documentary film “The Voice That Rocked America — The Dick Biondi Story.” It is available on digital platforms including Amazon Prime, Apple TV and YouTube Movies.

The work, a labor of love by longtime Biondi fan Pamela Enzweiler-Pulice, will be screened at a premiere event March 29 at the Des Plaines Theatre.

Enzweiler-Pulice met Biondi in the summer of 1961.

“He was doing a remote program over at the Hillside shopping center, which was the place to shop at the time,” she recalled. “He arrived in a helicopter, and all the kids were going crazy. I was tongue-tied.”

At the time a student at Jackson Junior High School in Villa Park, Enzweiler-Pulice showed up with her sister and their best friends. She remembers Biondi being immediately friendly.

She wound up starting a fan club for him and the two developed a friendship.

The film is the capstone of that friendship.

The Des Plaines Theatre will roll out the red carpet at 3:30 p.m. March 29. A miniconcert by The Stingrays kicks off the celebration at 5 p.m., followed by a screening at 6 p.m. and a question-and-answer session with the filmmaker. An auction featuring an autographed guitar will also take place.

“Just to have Dick Biondi’s name and his career perpetuated is very cool,” said Ron Onesti, the film’s co-producer and operator of the Des Plaines Theatre.

Onesti was also pals with Biondi, who died in 2023 at age 90

“He was like everyone’s uncle or grandpa,” Onesti said. “He was such a warm person, probably the most humble person you’d ever meet.”

Biondi’s high-energy radio personality burst onto the Chicago scene with an unprecedented intensity.

In many ways, he set the blueprint for future rock jocks, including a venture into song parody with “On Top of a Pizza,” a sendup of “On Top of Old Smoky.”

“We had never heard anything like him,” Enzweiler-Pulice said. “At that time, most disc jockeys, like Howard Miller, were very mild mannered. They would tell the time and temperature. But Dick Biondi was slurping his coffee and telling goofy jokes, acting like a kid, acting like one of us. He was like the Jerry Lewis of radio.”

Onesti said Biondi would always be shocked when fans would approach him for an autograph or take pictures with him.

He was also a proud member of the Italian-American community. Onesti said Biondi was once presented a guitar painted in the colors of the Italian flag.

“He always said it was one of his favorite possessions,” he said.

Biondi, who is enshrined in the National Radio Hall of Fame and the Illinois Broadcasters Association Hall of Fame, joined WLS in 1960 after two years at WKBW in Buffalo, New York, and lasted there until 1963.

Enzweiler-Pulice said Biondi was the key figure in WLS’ transition from the Prairie Farmer AM station to the iconic rock ’n’ roll broadcaster it became.

He later was on the air at WCFL, WMAQ, WBBM and WJMK. His career came full circle, when he joined WLS 94.7-FM in 2006.

Enzweiler-Pulice began the documentary project not long after. She called Biondi at WLS-FM, and he said to her, “Yeah, let’s do it!”

“I was just so honored,” she said. “Later, I found out he had turned down many people that wanted to do books and documentaries.”

She believes he agreed because her film would be told from the viewpoint of the fans.

“He was a real pioneer,” she said. “He was there at the birth of rock ’n’ roll. He got into it when rhythm and blues came into rock ’n’ roll.”

He was influential in spreading the music, bringing artists like Jerry Lee Lewis, Frankie Avalon and Bobby Darin to sock hops. In 1963, he became the first American DJ to play the Beatles, spinning “Please Please Me,” which hit #35 on the station’s charts in March that year.

“This is a time when being a DJ meant you had the power to control the music and make or break a hit record,” Enzweiler-Pulice said.

The documentary contains appearances by the late Brian Wilson and Al Jardine of The Beach Boys, Tony Orlando, Frankie Valli, Frankie Avalon, Bobby Rydell and Paul Shaffer.

Shaffer, famous for leading the band on “Late Night with David Letterman,” helped sponsor the film, Enzweiler-Pulice said.

Also appearing are Biondi’s DJ peers, including Sirott and Landecker.

Enzweiler-Pulice has been promoting the documentary with appearances at Barrington’s White House and the Helen Plum Library in Lombard.

Wheaton resident Debbie Bliss, who attended the Lombard event, remembered listening to Biondi.

“There were two stations, WLS and WCFL, and I would just switch back and forth between those two all the time.”

For Enzweiler-Pulice, the documentary is a fan’s dream come true.

“Who would think this would happen to me?” she said. “I was just a fan. I just love the guy and I wanted to tell his story.”