Pete Fornatale,
a disc jockey who helped usher in a musical alternative to Top 40 AM
radio in New York in the late 1960s and early 1970s, presenting
progressive rock and long album tracks that AM stations wouldn’t touch
and helping to give WNEW a major presence on the still-young FM dial,
died on Thursday in Manhattan. He was 66.
Mr. Fornatale was at the forefront of the FM revolution, along with
WNEW-FM colleagues like Scott Muni, Rosko, Vin Scelsa, Dennis Elsas,
Jonathan Schwartz and Alison Steele (who called herself “the
Nightbird”). They played long versions of songs, and sometimes entire
albums, and talked to their audiences in a conversational tone very
different from the hard-sell approach of their AM counterparts.
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