Jed Gould, the influential Los Angeles disc jockey known as Jed the Fish, who used his off-kilter sensibility and deep musical knowledge to shine a light on artists like the Cure, Depeche Mode and the Offspring at the groundbreaking New Wave and alternative rock station KROQ-FM in the 1980s and ’90s, died on April 14 at his home in Pasadena, Calif. He was 69.
The cause was an aggressive form of small-cell lung cancer, Rudy Koerner, a close friend, said. Mr. Gould was never a cigarette smoker, he added, and before he was diagnosed last month, he had thought his recent violent coughing fits were related to the Los Angeles wildfires.
For decades, Mr. Gould served as a trusted musical savant — and drive-time friend — to young Angelenos, particularly members of Generation X. He also influenced future broadcasting stars.
In a social media post after Mr. Gould’s death, Jimmy Kimmel, who worked on the morning show at KROQ early in his career, described him as “a legend.” On his podcast, Mr. Kimmel’s old sidekick on “The Man Show,” Adam Carolla, a former host of the relationship show “Loveline” on KROQ, called Mr. Gould “an icon.”
With his boyish energy, free-ranging musical tastes and maniacal cackle, Mr. Gould helped lead a radio revolution at the maverick KROQ, based in Pasadena, starting in the late 1970s.
At a time when FM rock stations were dominated by hyper-produced corporate juggernauts like Styx and Foreigner, KROQ became a sensation for its “Roq of the ’80s” format, which shimmered with fresh sounds from New Wave bands like Talking Heads and Devo, synth-pop groups like the Human League and Spandau Ballet, and local heroes like X and the Go-Go’s.
“Jeddum Fishum,” as he sometimes referred to himself, and his fellow KROQ jocks brought a sense of anarchy to the airwaves, cracking irreverent jokes and dropping in audio snippets — like deadpan Jack Webb lines from “Dragnet” — at well-timed moments in the middle of songs, often with hilarious results.
Mr. Gould and his colleagues were in the “right place at the right time,” he wrote on LinkedIn. “We were leading the way but had no idea.”
Following a broadcasting philosophy that he called “consistent inconsistency,” Mr. Gould manned the afternoon slot at the station. His droll humor and his knack for musical surprises served as a needed tonic for a captive audience creeping along sclerotic freeways for hours that felt more like days.
“It took me years of imitation before I learned the simplicity of being myself on the air,” he wrote. “Turns out this was a wacky position to take, but people seem to like the honesty behind it.”
That prime post-lunch slot gave Mr. Gould a powerful platform for promoting new acts and hotly anticipated releases. “Because Jed was on from 2P to 6P, immediately following our music meeting, he would often do the honors of world-premiering new music,” Andy Schuon, a former KROQ program director, wrote in a tribute on LinkedIn.
In a social media post, Noodles, the guitarist for the Southern California punk-pop band the Offspring, wrote that Jed the Fish was the first D.J. to play the band’s 1994 breakout hit, “Come Out and Play,” “which changed our band’s trajectory in ways we never thought possible.”
With a personality that was “insane in all the best ways,” as Noodles put it, Mr. Gould was all too willing to defy convention. During a recent video tribute by former KROQ colleagues, Mr. Schuon recalled listening to Jed the Fish for more than an hour while driving to the office and noticing that he did not once mention the station’s call letters, a standard practice for D.J.s that was crucial for ratings.
When Mr. Schuon pressed him on the apparent oversight, Mr. Gould responded: “Everyone knows if I’m on the station, it must be KROQ. Who else would hire me?”
Edwin Fish Gould III was born on July 15, 1955, in Los Angeles, to Edwin Fish Gould Jr., a salesman for a valve-and-fittings company, and Joan (Hall) Gould. He grew up in the beach communities of Orange County before his family moved to Casa Grande, Ariz.
In high school, he hosted a local radio program for teenagers until he was fired for reading George Carlin’s famous “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television” monologue on the air.
He graduated from high school in 1973 and enrolled at the University of Southern California, where he received a bachelor’s degree in broadcast journalism. After college, he held a series of jobs at Los Angeles-area radio stations before landing a position at KROQ in 1978. His application consisted of a crude punk-style pink flyer that featured a picture of himself in a white leotard scrunched up in a chair and an offer to work “30 hours per week or less 90 day max FUR FREE!”
It was not long before he was helping to orchestrate the chaos in the studio. In a 2001 oral history of the station, he said that for an outsider to ask about the early history of KROQ would be like saying, “‘Tell me about Vietnam’ or ‘Tell me about the French Revolution.’ No one will ever know all of it.”
As it turned out, there was plenty about Mr. Gould that his listeners did not know. At one point in the mid-1980s, he said in the oral history, he left KROQ after he was kicked out of the Betty Ford Center for stealing a car to buy drugs.
He returned, but he was pulled off the air again when he was arrested on suspicion of possession of heroin and drug paraphernalia in March 1989. After more than two months in a detox center, he once again assumed his spot at the microphone.
“In the old days, I’d just shoot a bunch of dope, go on the air and do anything,” he said in an interview the next year with The Los Angeles Times, while discussing his newfound commitment to sobriety. “I’d developed my crazy style as a result of getting high. But now it comes out of being me. I’m more clearheaded and more focused.”
Mr. Gould worked at KROQ until 2012 and later moved to two other local stations, KCSN-FM and KLOS-FM. In 2019, he joined the “Roq of the ’80s” Sunday night show on KROQ’s HD2 station.
He is survived by a half brother, Tony Chatterton.
Throughout his career, Mr. Gould strove to keep the spirit of the music alive in his work behind the microphone. “When a DJ is playing music we expect you to dance to, I think it’s important for the DJ to dance,” he wrote on his professional site in 2018.
“It’s not that I’m a lithe and dainty dancer,” he added. “No one who incorporates a golf swing into their dance moves should be considered dainty. I just believe anyone in charge of the music should move with it.”
