Fass, a long-time New Yorker, had been in the hospital with COVID-19 this month but died of congestive heart failure, his wife Lynnie Tofte told The New York Times.
Bob Fass, Pioneer of Underground Radio, Dies at 87
His provocative “Radio Unnameable,” long a staple of the New York station WBAI, offered a home on the FM dial to everyone from Abbie Hoffman to Tiny Tim.
Bob Fass on the air at the New York FM station WBAI in 1972. “I’d put anyone on,” he once said, “because the idea was if you didn’t like what I was doing, three minutes later I’d be doing something else.”Credit.Donal F. Holway/The New York Times
April 25, 2021Updated 10:48 a.m. ET
Bob Fass, who for more than 50 years hosted an anarchic and influential radio show on New York’s countercultural FM station WBAI that mixed political conversation, avant-garde music, serendipitous encounters and outright agitation, died on Saturday in Monroe, N.C., where he lived in recent years. He was 87.