Remembering Arnie Passman, poet and punster whose classic book examined radio DJs’ influence on pop culture

Arnold Passman, known to friends as Arnie, died on Tuesday, April 8, at the Vale Medical Center in San Pablo. He was 88. He would’ve preferred to announce the news himself … but his time ran out.

Born in Chicago on May 22, 1936, Arnie was a word maven, a poet, a prolific punster and a writer. His book The Deejays: How the Tribal Chieftains of Radio Got to Where They’re At, published in 1971, examined the influence of radio disc jockeys on popular culture. The Deejays provided an in-depth look at the first disc jockey to ever play a record on the air to the early-’70s rock/shock jock explosion.

An updated edition was published in 2020 and was given the subtitle “The First 50 Years: An Irreverent History of Radio and Its Sorcerer-Impressarios.” In addition to The Deejays, he wrote two plays focusing on Black radio history, a collection of works called Climbing Whateverest and an epic poem titled Occupy Your Nearest Country Club. After combing through the files at Oakland’s DataCenter, Arnie composed numerous musical anti-corporate ditties.          

He was a staff writer for such publications as Playboy and Scanlan’s Monthly, where he wrote among other pieces, “The Bastard Children of Cecil B. De Mille Are Making Films in San Francisco.” Arnie was heavily engaged in the Bay Area comedic community, serving as a publicist for The Committee, a California-based improvisational group. 

A lifelong devotee of world peace, Arnie organized annual pilgrimages to the Gandhi Memorial, an 8-foot-tall sculpture — located in the plaza southeast of the San Francisco Ferry Building — to celebrate the anniversary of the creation of the Peace Symbol.

Arnie was a lifetime Cubs fan, suffering the slings, arrows and outrageous misfortune of years and years of defeats, until Nov. 2, 2016 (although the game actually ended slightly after midnight on Nov. 3) when the Cubs won the World Series for the first time since defeating the Cleveland Indians in 1908. By the time the Cubs won in 2016, Arnie had been in the Bay Area for many years and was a big fan of the Oakland A’s.

Arnie loved traveling, camping and hiking, and organizing theatrical events around the Bay Area, mostly in Berkeley. He was active in the literary and performance scenes and organized numerous events at Berkeley’s La Peña Cultural Center and the Berkeley Fellowship Monthly Open Mic. His eclectic conversations ranged from politics to poetics, from baseball to barbecue.

On June 15, 2021, days after Arnie turned 85, Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguín declared Arnie Passman Day in the city, honoring him for “speaking puns to power and advancing peace and justice through writing” and for being “a vital and unwavering voice of Berkeley culture, values, and wit” for over 60 years. The resolution noted that he had “urged the passage of three holidays — the Peace Symbol’s Birthday (February 21), Midsummer Day/Peace Day (August 6) and Gandhi’s Birthday (October 2).”

Arnie attended the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He was pre-deceased by his parents and his younger sister Nancy.  His nieces Pamela Weiss and Betsy Weiss, and Betsy’s daughter Natasha survive him. Betsy said he spent many hours hanging out on her deck with her beloved dogs.

Special thanks to, and great appreciation for, Arnie’s extraordinary caregiver, Eric Sydney, of Alameda County In-Home Support Services, who had been with him since July 2011.